by Dave Smeds
o0o
I woke up slowly, through a haze of pain. The odor of antiseptic and bleached bed linens wormed through the gauze and bandages covering my nose. My bloated tongue pressed uncomfortably against the stumps of my teeth. I recognized the pinch of an IV tube feeding into my left arm. Wires held my lower jaw together.
I opened my eyes. Dad rose from a chair beside the hospital bed and leaned over me. In the far corner sat a pasty-skinned, gray-haired man I didn’t recognize.
“Kaiser Hospital,” my father explained. “You’ve been unconscious about eighteen hours.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. The woozy feeling had to be from the painkillers, I decided. Whatever they had me on, it wasn’t enough.
“Mongo?” I mumbled. Between the wired jaw, the swollen lips, and mashed tongue, I sounded like Jabba the Hutt without subtitles. The old man was first to understand.
“Your father was napping in his bedroom. The noise woke him,” the stranger said. His voice tickled my memory. Maybe one of the hoarse old senior citizens from the physical therapy clinic?
“I shot him in the ass,” Dad said.
I blinked, wondering if this was the same man who had raised me. “You had a gun?”
“I’ve had one since Desert Storm. I never said violence didn’t have a purpose.”
Live and learn. “He’s . . . alive?” I mumbled. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
“Of course,” Dad replied. “In jail, booked for assault, battery, and attempted murder. You won’t have to worry about him. He’ll serve time, then he’ll be deported back to Peru. He’ll never be local enough to do this again.”
“And wuko has already banned him from tournament play forever, upon my prompting,” said the old man.
Now I knew where I’d heard the man’s voice before. “Sensei?”
“Yes.” Mr. Callahan climbed laboriously out of his chair, straightening up with arthritic awkwardness.
It was really him. He’d come all the way from San Francisco to my Sacramento home. I didn’t know which to feel: I was startled to see just how old and bent his real body was, even though I’d heard about it from veteran students. And I was damn proud that I mattered enough to deserve a bedside visit.
“Looks like I still have to work on that upper block,” I tried to joke.
The grandmaster smiled, reached out a gnarled hand, and squeezed my elbow. “Just get back into the tournament circuit as soon as you can. Think of this incident . . . as a challenge.”
His usual advice. I tried to grin. “Hai . . . sensei . . .” I murmured, and sank back into a morphine haze.
o0o
Mr. Callahan had left by the time I next awoke. I didn’t hear from him during the weeks that followed. By the end of my convalescence, the memory of the visit had paled, vividness drained behind the ordeal of pain and drugs. It resembled more a dream than something that had actually happened.
When my surrogate finally materialized at his headquarters dojo, the grandmaster just pointed to my regular place in the line, as if I were just another student who had been attending all along. During warm-ups, basic exercises, and partner drills, he focussed on other pupils. There were, after all, plenty of them to focus on. As usual, the night’s class filled the room; in fact the walls had been expanded to accommodate a heavy attendance. Richard Callahan’s reputation drew hundreds, perhaps thousands of potential students. Not only was vr karate a big prize money affair these days, but vr dojos eliminated the constrictions of classroom size and the hassles of commuting. A student still needed to live within the radius of the local node to participate in partner exercises such as sparring, because bouncing data off satellites introduced too much delay into reaction times, but others who were content to restrict themselves to observation and individual exercise could attend from anywhere in the hemisphere. Callahan kept the group at a manageable size only by restricting attendance to the cream of the crop recommended by lesser instructors. That’s how I’d gotten in, back when I was fifteen.
I had never felt so invisible. Sure, there were a lot of people, but this night of all others, I had expected a word or two, a nod, a “Welcome back.” The other students expected it as well. They cast sideways glances from me to sensei and back, anticipating interaction. None came. Finally the class completed a long session of kata and sat down to rest.
Callahan was pretending to be an inscrutable Oriental. It was a role he played regularly. His surrogate body was as freckled and red-headed as his Irish surname would indicate, but like many of the original generation of great American players from the 1960’s, he wore the legacy of his direct study under traditional Japanese and Okinawan experts. Those old farts never gave anyone a break. They marched like God in front of their students, all aloofness, hardness, and discipline, even if they liked you. Maybe especially if they liked you. Right then, I didn’t know what was lurking inside the grandmaster’s head.
“Jiyu kumite,” Callahan announced, signalling the beginning of the sparring section of class. Tonight’s session would be freestyle combat. Unlike shiai — competitive sparring — there would be no declared winners or losers, no points taken. The object was to show off a diversity of karate technique. The best performance was that which demonstrated artistry and a balanced repertoire.
Yet because the venue was an integrated virtuality, contact would still be hard. Killing and maiming might occur. This possibility kept us on our toes. It gave us the attitude Callahan wanted us to have — gave us a opportunity to practice bushido, the way of the warrior.
I submerged into that alertness. I kept my breathing steady, synchronized with my heartbeat. Warmth radiated from my skin, stoked by the fires in the muscles beneath. Rivulets of sweat travelled down my torso. Except for the lack of odor, my surrogate felt more like me than my real body. At times, while at rest, I could feel featheriness in my legs as if my real body somatic sensations were written atop the simulation as on a palimpsest. But not tonight. Tonight I was there.
Mr. Callahan looked down the long line of practitioners local enough to spar. Often during freestyle, he would simply divide these students in two equal groups and everyone would fight simultaneously. Tonight he selected his favorite alternative: He picked just one pair at a time, leaving the rest of us to serve as an audience.
I licked my lips as two of my dojo-mates faced each other. I wanted to be out there.
The pair danced around for most of their session, coming away intact save for bruised forearms. The second match followed just the opposite pattern — one partner got the drop on the other immediately, and proceeded to batter him severely, though Callahan had them pause twice and restart. The third pair charged at each other so enthusiastically they both were logged off by the pain threshold override.
Abruptly the crowd vanished from my view. The moment I’d been waiting for had arrived. The only figures I could see on the floor were Mr. Callahan and, facing me, an opponent. I couldn’t identify the latter — his appearance was a composite of average Caucasian features, which was probably how I looked to him.
The headquarters dojo master program had temporarily disguised us. Callahan believed that students would have difficulty attacking friends and classmates with proper vigor unless identities were secret. Only the grandmaster and the audience saw who was who, and the latter, invisible and inaudible, could only reveal what they knew after the kumite session had ended. I didn’t yet know whether I was facing, for example, my pal Keith Nakayama or that asshole ni dan from Oakland.
The grandmaster gave the commands. At last.
As always, I seized the initiative. My opponent faded back, avoiding a front kick, so I drew back my hand to strike—
The other guy started to cock his own fist. Without intending to, I hurried my punch. It glanced off the player’s chin, rendered meaningless by my overreaction. Simultaneously, his counterstrike hit me hard in the ribs.
I backed away. My opponent pressed, narrowly missing with a roundhouse kick, partia
lly connecting with a face punch, and landing a stout kick to my midsection that I handled only because I tensed my abdomen correctly at the last moment.
My momentum was gone. I fought hard and made my partner earn every gain, but the match felt wrong. I should’ve been dominant. I should’ve been shaping the give-and-take. I always did that. All too soon Callahan yelled, “Yame!”
I limped to my starting place, nursing a swollen cheek, sore ribs, and a lacerated shin. My opponent was bleeding a little from one nostril, but seemed otherwise untouched.
The grandmaster excused us. The dojo master program cycled us off. Reappearing two seconds later in a refreshed surrogate along the sidelines, I saw from the reaction of my dojo-mates that my opponent had been Mark Evanoff, a player I barely knew. The man was an undistinguished student who competed at C level in tournaments — a good karateka, but not the sort I had ever had problems with before.
I hadn’t “lost.” That term didn’t apply to freestyle. Nor did I regret that Evanoff had done so well; he’d earned it. Yet I had never come away from a match so devastated.
I turned to Callahan. The grandmaster met my glance with a neutral expression that could have meant anything, then called up the next pair of partners. Back to the routine of the class.
I put on a mask of indifference, acting by rote until the last sparring session was done and everyone lined up to bow to the Shomen, to the grandmaster, and to each other. As was his habit, Callahan logged off as soon as the closing ceremony was over. As soon as was practical, I followed suit.
The yellow and green status lights of my vr deck and the stale odor of the cologne I’d put on that morning greeted me as I became aware of my all-too-real bedroom. I remained in my chair, straps snug, neural jack connected, staring out my tiny window that almost allowed me to see the state capitol.
Almost was the key word. I could almost walk normally. I could almost get by without people directing their stares at my empty pant legs.
And now, in the one place where I had still been as complete and perfect as anyone else, I no longer measured up.
o0o
“I can’t help you,” said Dr. Lavin. “The condition has nothing to do with the surrogate or the interface. The reflex is buried in your brain and in your spinal trunk nerves.”
I’d expected as much, but I’d wanted to hear it from a vr specialist. By this point, no straw was too thin to grasp. Nothing had improved since that first workout. Whenever I sparred, I flinched.
I wasn’t afraid to step out on the floor. I still had all the courage I’d ever had. The problem was below the level of conscious manipulation. As Dr. Lavin had so depressingly confirmed, my neurons remembered the beating Mongo had given me. I couldn’t just shake off that psychic legacy the way I could repair a wiped-out surrogate.
“We’re able to erase fatigue or pain or tissue damage in a surrogate because those experiences are entirely part of the simulation. The programming automatically negates those parts of the construct each time you log off.” Behind his bottle-bottom glasses Lavin’s eyes blinked exuberantly. The man was one of those intense, wiry engineering types who once given a start on his favorite subject could hold forth for hours. “Of course, the surrogate does learn. Your deck performs an on-going analysis of data in order to preserve gains. That’s how you develop stamina and coordination and strength. If this reflex of yours was a flaw recorded somewhere in the heuristic net, I could probably find and purge it. At the very least, we could reconfigure the surrogate as it was the day before the attack. You’d lose some of its accumulated customization, but you’d still have everything up to that point.”
He sighed. “I work in an industry that seems to make anything possible. That’s a chimera, my boy. We can send all sorts of input along an existing nervous system, we can trick the brain into establishing a whole second set of somatic feedback loops in order to operate a surrogate — as long as the simulated body is a close analog of the real one — but we can’t recreate the nervous system itself. If we could do that, you wouldn’t be tied to that wheelchair and vr deck. We’d be able to fashion you into a cyborg with legs as good as any you were ever born with.”
The technical details obviously fascinated Lavin. Lost in his expounding, he didn’t understand what all this meant in human terms, what it meant to me. This slight effect, this involuntary tic, changed everything.
Fearless, they had nicknamed me. And it had been true. I’d always attacked full-out. It was reckless, maybe, but it allowed me to dominate players of better technical skill. My boneheaded confidence was my secret weapon. So what if a surrogate was obliterated? I could be back a minute later, ready to go again. My subconscious had accepted that.
Now when a partner made a move against me, flashbacks of Mongo’s fists would pop up — not so much the actual image as my reaction, my recollection of cringing. With that sort of handicap, I could never win tournaments. At my level of expertise, there was no room for distraction. My competitive career had just been aborted.
“You’re awfully quiet. Have you been following all this okay?”
“Fine,” I said, staring at his Far Side desk calendar. “Just wondering what I’m going to do now.”
“It’s manageable, I would think,” persisted the specialist. “Over time the symptom may extinguish itself. Meanwhile, there are plenty of vr sports that where a slight hesitation won’t matter. Tennis, perhaps. Certainly bowling. Have you tried golf?”
o0o
“Log on,” I ordered my vr deck, and listed the code for Mr. Callahan’s headquarters dojo.
“Password?” asked the deck in its pleasant, motherly voice.
I was surprised when it accepted the one I gave. I hadn’t tried it in eight months. I’d expected Callahan to have dropped me from the roster of those who had clearance into his vr conference address.
The headquarters dojo foyer materialized around me. Out on the floor several players were loosening up. Mr. Callahan was not there; he would make his appearance precisely at the hour, if he followed his habit. Six minutes to go.
I felt like a damn fool. I avoided the glances of dojo-mates who recognized me. I didn’t need their pity. I’d been a player who counted. A player who was going places. Now I wasn’t. Everyone knew that. That knowledge had kept me away the better part of a year.
Yet retirement hadn’t worked. Karate-do had written too many chapters in my book. Call it an addiction, maybe. In any event, I’d decided I’d rather be able to add a page or two to the narrative once in a while than let the work lie totally fallow.
For six minutes I paced the foyer. Right on time, Mr. Callahan winked in on his dais of honor. He raised an eyebrow at me and gestured at the workout floor where everyone was lining up for the opening ceremony. I took my place with the others of my rank. Callahan continued in silence to the front of the room.
I blew out a pent-up breath. First hurdle crossed. I was allowed to resume training.
The class knelt and bowed. Warm-ups began. I fell into the familiar routine. With each callisthenic, and later with each move of kihon — basics — I relaxed more and more. This was what I needed. I belonged here.
Finally we wrapped up a choreographed attack drill and lined up for sparring. Callahan had not taken much note of me — just a slight posture adjustment during kata practice — but I didn’t let what he did or did not do affect me. I was here simply to run the paces. I’d worked out as hard as possible. Harder, even, in that I’d set my surrogate’s default so that “I” was just a bit out of shape. Normally, like most vr players, I maintained my body’s programming at the prime level of strength, agility, youth, and flexibility possible for my morph. Some players complained that they wanted to be able to switch back and forth to an array of differently configured surrogates — larger and more powerful I would assume. But I was happy with what vr hardware and brain physiology allowed. It gave me my body as it would have existed had my legs never been pulverized and were it possible to remain age t
wenty, perfectly toned, and completely fresh. The challenge was not to forget to work on the stuff technology couldn’t cover. Tonight the extra strain kept me focussed. I needed that if I were to face an opponent.
Mr. Callahan called up a dozen members of the class and matched them up with partners. He skipped me. I sat twitching as my colleagues were set free to test their skills, as I wanted to do.
Or rather as I had to do, even if I came away as unhappy and defeated as before.
The first group sat down. Mr. Callahan looked straight at me. My heart rate sped up. To my frustration he selected a combination of sparring partners that left me out.
And so it went. He called up a total of seven rounds of players. Some of my buddies got to spar three or four times. Aside from me, the only students he left out were the ones he always left out, chiefly those players who were by nature or philosophy opposed to the active combat portion of the discipline. The rabbits, the jerk from Oakland called them.
“Time to close class,” the grandmaster said. It was over. He hadn’t given me an opportunity to prove myself. I’d been relegated to the list of those who required special handling. He might as well have hung up one of those blue and white placards you see all the time on the best parking places.
I logged off the instant we finished the closing ceremony.
“How was class?” Dad asked as I rumbled across the hallway to the bathroom.
“Chickenshit,” I said.
o0o
Though attending the next workout gave me as much pleasure as eating sawdust, I came. Again, Callahan didn’t allow me to spar. Nor did he the next few times.
I could’ve gone elsewhere to train. The Sacramento-based martial arts virtuality where I’d started out years before would have been delighted to take me back. But I’d practiced with the best. Accepting anything else would have been another kind of surrender.