Futures Near and Far

by Dave Smeds

  Karate, however, is with me three or more times a week, fifty-two weeks a year. My parents have long since thrown out the television set on which I used to watch David Carradine walk through walls on “Kung Fu” and Bruce Lee shape himself into a legend on “Green Hornet” and “Longstreet” (the movies came later). Back then I could believe the myth that ninety-pound weaklings could master enough secret arts in a few weeks to wipe the floor with the hirsute, muscular bullies who had been persecuting them. Though I wasn’t exactly a weakling (I was, in fact, on the way to becoming not only hirsute and muscular, but a good deal more than ninety pounds), I had been a victim of bullying. In my imagination, I was the protagonist of no small number of martial-arts power fantasies.

  But by the time I was writing professionally, karate was part of my real world. I had come to know the potential of a punch. I had sweated through bouts with opponents who were bigger, stronger, faster, more confident. I had passed the point where I could “make stuff up.” I had to be true to what I knew. My expertise paradoxically had made it harder for me to write a karate story.

  So it was with some trepidation that I set about composing the piece for Zelazny (who, alas, died the very month the book came out). But in the end, the process was sweet. As I sifted through the maze of accumulated experience, out came the ambience of the dojo, the richness of the lessons I’d received from my instructors, Don Buck and Gosei Yamaguchi of Goju-Kai Karate-Do U.S.A. A lot of me went into this one — perhaps more than I was comfortable with at first, but looking back now, “Fearless” has become one of my favorites of all my stories.

  FEARLESS

  I knew the Peruvian would be trouble from the moment he appeared on the tournament floor. He seemed to hover an inch above the polished hardwood, coiled and ready to spring. He was heavily muscled, dark, hairy — the quintessential kick-ass karate player.

  Armando Ruiz. Mongo, his enemies called him, though never to his face.

  I wasn’t likely to spar him until at least the quarter-finals. A lot could happen between now and then, but the way things looked, Mongo was the competitor most likely to steal my shot at the trophy.

  I’d already defeated my first opponent; my second match was half an hour away. I had an opportunity to devote full attention to Ruiz as he stepped into the ring and exchanged bows with a sturdy, Nordic Shito-ryu player.

  He scored a kill in eight seconds.

  The match consumed so little time I had to replay it in my head to fully grasp it. Mongo had charged forward, punches flying one after the other, erasing the Viking’s powerful defense as if it had been made of smoke. Three, four, five potent impacts to the face and the Viking logged off, leaving empty floor behind.

  The referee raised Ruiz’s arm and declared him the winner. The audience roared. The Peruvian waved at the bleachers, seemingly intoxicated by the noise. The stadium bulged to overflowing, attesting to the increasing popularity of vr combat arts. And why not? Not since the days of gladiators had sport combat been to the “death,” and there was no such thing as a poor seat. Though the figures I saw seemed to extend up to the rafters, every spectator experienced the tournament as if from front row center.

  Mongo strutted out of the ring, joining the contingent from South America. After the mandatory sixty-second delay, the loser logged back on in a fresh surrogate. The Viking, though now whole and uninjured, shook his head as if dazed and wandered off to the end of the tournament hall, where the consolation rounds would begin. The crowd mocked him.

  Beside me, Mr. Callahan ran his fingers through his mop of intensely black hair. “First boxer I’ve seen at a wuko event this season,” he commented dryly.

  At tournaments sanctioned by the newly reestablished World Union of Karate Organizations, contestants were supposed to be karateka, testing their skill against others of their kind. Ensuring that had been a problem long before the advent of full-scale virtual reality conferencing. Now it was worse. All sorts of opportunists were flocking to bask in the glory and prize money, including those who had scarcely seen the inside of a dojo.

  I’d studied Ruiz’s record after the contestant list had been issued — just as he no doubt had checked mine. The Peruvian did have a black belt, but it was a hastily awarded sho dan from some backwater South American kenpo school known for its loose standards. Winner of dozens of boxing matches, the man had ridden the karate tournament circuit less than two months, just long enough to qualify for single A class. Now he’d come up to northern California thinking to walk over the players accessing the prestigious San Francisco vr node.

  Mongo was a fake. A cheat. He diminished us all.

  “Think you can beat him?” Callahan asked.

  The grandmaster could answer that better than I. I figured it had to be a trick question, a teacher-to-student moment.

  “I don’t know.”

  Callahan smiled. Apparently that was the correct reply. He leaned close and said conspiratorially, “Think of it . . . as a challenge.”

  o0o

  I won the remaining elimination rounds. I’d figured I would. The players who faced me were good, but their moves were transparent. The important thing was not to think about Mongo while I was in the ring with others, and I succeeded. I’d always been able to focus during a match.

  Ruiz won as well. He backed one opponent up against the perimeter of the ring. The invisible wall, uncrossable to contestants during a match, served as his ally. Despite all the running away the other guy did, Mongo took a mere twenty-seven seconds for the kill. The next competitor’s fighting technique bought him two solid kicks, but in the end he lasted no longer.

  Three opponents out in less than thirty seconds each. I’d never done that well. Ruiz was radiating self-confidence. But I didn’t tremble as I entered the ring.

  “Go get ’im, Fearless,” called my dojo-mate, Keith Nakayama.

  “Fearless! Fearless! Fearless!” shouted the crowd. I appreciated the support, but I made myself ignore them all. It was time to concentrate. Mongo swaggered into position. We bowed.

  “Hajime!” the referee shouted, back-pedalling out of the way.

  Ruiz charged forward, cocking his fist at his right side, left hand extending to brush away any block I might raise in his way. It was the same attack that had overwhelmed his previous opponents.

  Side-stepping, I planted a roundhouse kick to his solar plexus. He grunted, momentarily dropping his guard. I took the opening to his face. Blood exploded from his nose as my fist landed, staining both our gis as well as the referee’s shirt.

  He staggered back. I chased him. Wrong move. He surprised me with a right hook.

  Stars flickered across my field of vision. My ears rang. Suddenly I knew what I was up against. Nobody should have been that fast or hard with their fists. I resisted the urge to close in — my normal inclination. I circled, keeping him at kicking distance.

  He wanted none of it. Blood pouring from his nose, he sucked air through his mouth and moved in, trying to put a stop to me before I got lucky. His knuckles battered against the bones of my arms.

  Escaping to the left, I slammed a side kick into his lower thigh. He cried out and pitched to the ground. Good enough. I’d missed the knee I’d been aiming for, but the muscles of Ruiz’s leg were spasming so much from the impact, he couldn’t stand.

  I swept forward, raising my foot to crush his throat.

  Too slow.

  His good leg lashed out. Instantly I felt as if I’d landed on a spear. My groin and then my entire abdomen clenched. I folded up and tried to roll away — anything to dismiss the pain.

  Ruiz tripped me. I fell to my hands and knees, and somehow a moment later he was crouching over me. He landed a hammer strike on my left kidney.

  My diaphragm muscles locked up, taking my wind. The Peruvian slammed his fist down again. The pain sharpened to an unbelievable level—

  And suddenly I was no longer in the arena.

  The pain vanished. Time held motionless. Around me loo
med the familiar walls of my room at home. A view of the tournament filled the videoscreen on my desk. I saw my surrogate on hands and knees, Ruiz raising his fist for a third blow. The referee leaned over us, his expression a study in concentration.

  The neural jack at the back of my neck itched. A warning light on my virtual reality deck was flashing: I had one point three seconds to reengage the link to my surrogate or it would dissolve.

  I gripped the arms of my wheelchair and thumbed the switch—

  Back in my vr body, a malicious agony greeted me, but I couldn’t give in to it. If I permitted Ruiz to land the third hammer-strike, the pain would once again surpass the safety threshold and drive me out. I rolled—

  His fist glanced off my side. I kept twisting my body, wrapping my legs around Mongo’s hips: Scissor throw. We ended up tangled together. I grabbed his arms and the match degenerated into a wrestling contest. That gave me some of the recovery time I needed.

  “Yame!” shouted the referee. “Start over.”

  Mongo seemed reluctant to disengage, but he wiped the torrent of blood from his upper lip and stalked back to his starting place.

  I got up slowly, partly to earn even more of a respite, and partly because I was incapable of rising quickly. My breath came in rapid snatches — that was all the fierce tightness in my midsection allowed. Judging from the burn in my groin, at least one of my testicles was herniated.

  I dared not delay too much. The referee would disqualify me. I straightened as much as possible, facing Ruiz at regulation distance.

  The timeclock loomed huge in the background. Eighty-seven seconds left in the match. Ruiz glared, daring me to fight hard. If neither of us killed or drove the other from his surrogate in the remaining time, we’d both be declared losers and be ineligible to continue to the next round. I guess he figured that in my condition I might play defensively, ruining his chances out of spite. The Peruvian wanted his victory.

  “Rei!” the referee cried. We bowed to each other once again.

  “Hajime!”

  Ruiz hurtled forward, eager to seal his triumph. I maintained a squinting, defeated expression until he was committed to his attack.

  I kicked. This time I didn’t miss his knee. Bone gave way beneath my foot. The jagged end of Ruiz’s femur, broken just above the joint, jutted through skin and pant leg.

  As Ruiz collapsed, I staggered back. Loose, rocky objects rolled in my mouth and it dawned on me that while I’d kicked him, he’d punched me. I spat the teeth out and moved in. Mongo was vulnerable now, occupied with the pain of his destroyed limb, perhaps even driven out of his vr body altogether. I wasn’t going to let the opportunity slip away.

  I shaped my thumb and forefinger into a pincer shape — koko, or tiger-mouth — and struck, capturing the Peruvian’s larynx and ripping it from his throat.

  He gurgled. His body spasmed. Blood gushed from the hole between his jaw and clavicle. Then he vanished as the software logged him off.

  Alone in the ring with the referee, I straightened up. All I had to do to cement my victory was stride to my starting place and allow my arm to be raised. But the room was spinning. My head felt swollen to five times normal size. Mongo’s earlier blow had done more than liberate teeth. It was threatening to become a knockout punch after the fact. The anguish from my groin and kidney area also demanded that I give up.

  Hell with that. I staggered across the distance. My arm went up. The applause from the gallery began. “Log off and reboot,” I sighed gratefully.

  My vr deck accepted the cue. My battered surrogate dissolved. For an instant I was back in my wheelchair at home, then I rematerialized at the tournament. Gone was the pain, the blood, the exhaustion.

  The cheering reached a crescendo. I must admit it felt good. But I waved to the spectators strictly for the sake of form. Tonight there was only one person whose approval mattered.

  I headed for the group from my dojo, who stood dressed in gis at the periphery of the floor.

  “Congratulations, Fearless,” they called.

  “On to the semi-finals!” added Keith.

  I nodded, smiling, and turned apprehensively to Mr. Callahan, who waited slightly apart from the others, hands folded across his chest.

  “Block your face, block your face, block your face,” the grandmaster stated as if reciting a mantra. He was interrupted by a torrent of boos from the crowd. We turned to see Mongo, logged into a fresh surrogate, standing on the ring. He was staring at me as if I were some kind of Inca king somehow resurrected from the dead. Whirling, he stalked off toward the South American contingent.

  “Still can’t believe he lost,” Keith chirped.

  I laughed. Soon I forgot the incident entirely as sensei began advising me regarding my next match. A warm, satisfied glow suffused like liquor through my body. Though Callahan’s comments might sound like criticism, I knew better. I hoped I wasn’t grinning like a fool.

  Hours later I won my category, clearing the way for advancement to double A level. I was walking on air by that time. I lingered as long as possible, enjoying the congratulations, and left with the stragglers.

  It was always difficult to abandon the vr environment. Had the deck not been hardwired to prevent constant use, and were the access fees not quite so high, I might have spent ninety percent of my waking hours ambling around in my surrogate. You would, too, if your real body were like mine.

  A miasma of aromas cascaded into my nostrils as my sense of smell, held in abeyance while in the virtuality, regained its natural place in my perceptions. The faded traces of fried onions drifted from the kitchen, the redolence of unflushed toilet from down the hall, and closer to home my terrycloth sweatsuit reminded me that I needed to throw it in the laundry basket soon. I stretched muscles grown stiff from my long sit in the wheelchair, released the restraining straps and neural jack, and wheeled into the bathroom for an overdue draining of my bladder. I didn’t waste time with the reflection in the bathroom mirror.

  I rolled down the long hallway toward the kitchen and living room. “Dad?” I called.

  Silence. I searched for a note on the fridge. Nothing.

  “I won, Dad,” I said to the air.

  Oh, well. All in all, I didn’t have it so bad. Dad might not have approved of my interest in combat arts — “blood sports,” he called them — but at least he let me pursue them, and had even before I’d turned eighteen.

  He’d never been that indulgent with my older brother Bennett, but Bennett wasn’t a double amputee. Especially not a double amputee as a result of Dad’s drunk driving.

  After a snack, I returned to my room and ordered my vr deck to replay my last match. On the videoscreen a lean, mean, fighting-machine version of myself took on Ruiz. My moves looked worse in playback than they’d seemed to me at the time. Mongo’s looked better, especially the punch that had scattered my teeth.

  Ruiz had done it so effortlessly. He hadn’t even thrown a full karate-style strike, but simply extended his hand forward ten or twelve inches at hyperspeed.

  It fascinated me. I should have been a good boy and exercised my real body on my physical therapy equipment, but I kept studying the video, trying to devise strategies that would help me out next time I faced a skilled boxer. I couldn’t afford weaknesses. I was on my way. Thomas Callahan himself was watching me. Thomas Callahan, reigning champion of the Tokyo International Tournament of Karate Masters in the unrestricted category. The big cheese of the big event. He wasn’t just tolerating my presence in his classes, he wasn’t just humoring me. He was paying attention. Two of his senior students had even told me that he was grooming me as a successor. It wouldn’t be too many more years before he’d have to retire. No one, naturally, would ever beat him in the ring, but after all, he was eighty-two years of age. What better way to go out than have one of your own students assume your place?

  I wasn’t there yet, but I would be. Double A play next season, then triple A, then the master’s circuit. A lot of players sto
od in my way, but I knew I could beat them eventually.

  The front door opened. “I’m in here, Dad,” I called. Engrossed in my big plans with my eyes pegged on a slow motion version of the match, I barely paid attention to the footsteps coming down the hallway.

  And then my head was spinning, my cheek swelling, and blood was trickling down to my chin. My wheelchair spun around.

  Mongo loomed over me, teeth bared, his real body as intimidating as his surrogate. “No cripple makes a fool out of me,” he said in Spanish, and struck.

  My head slammed into the chair’s headrest. Teeth — real teeth — bounced off my tongue and palate.

  My reflexes, conditioned by my vr fights, kicked in. I threw up a block as Ruiz’s second punch came in. My technique and timing were perfect, and my real-life arm was nearly as strong as that of my surrogate, but it didn’t mean much. Without legs, I couldn’t back off, couldn’t veer enough. I blocked two punches, missed, blocked the fourth, and then my focus was gone.

  Boom — there went my nose. The spray blinded me. A groan spilled out of my mouth; I couldn’t help it.

  I kept expecting the safety feature to log me off. All I could feel was pain, pain, pain. Overriding it came the stench and taste of blood, reminding me that this was no virtuality. There was no escape.

  “How does it feel, cripple?” Ruiz hissed. “Think you can win this one?”

  Still he battered me. My hands fell limp — I’d lost the power to keep them raised. There was a spiked ball-bearing slamming back and forth on the inside of my skull.

  He wasn’t going to stop, I realized. Mongo had left the rational world behind. He meant to kill me. He was holding back his strength, prolonging my suffering, but he was going to keep punching until I died.

  I don’t know how many times his fists crashed into me after I came to understand just what kind of danger I was in. Adrenaline alone was maintaining what little shred of consciousness I had left. I felt myself sinking down a funnel. Following me was the echo of my own sobbing and a distinct blast very much like a gunshot.