“Far from you.”
Alexander picked Lazy up, perhaps to get some empathy out of her, but even seeing him holding the neopet she gave him as a gift did nothing to sway her display of indifference.
“Don't leave me… listen!” he said in growing desperation, petting Lazy's head. “You won't believe me, after everything we've been through? Think for a second. Why would I do this?”
“Because you feel powerful and almighty and you can't get enough of it, that's why,” Nicola said coldly from the doorstep. “You wanted a taste of everything, all the fucking world had to offer, to feel like a conquering man again. I guess I wasn't enough. God, why do I deserve this? Now I'm the poor woman who was cheated on. You CREEP!” she screamed and left.
Alexander remained frozen. Who could have made up this story? He had already spoken with everyone in his close circle to explain the video was fake, but they were all wary. And more interviews started rolling in, exotic beauties with names like Kasia, Emily and Zoe. Like Lara, they all told tales of perverted and allegedly violent sex with Alexander. He watched and could not believe it was happening to him. He ignored all incoming thoughts, including his father's. Something in him was unable to communicate with the man. Not yet.
The girls who turned on Alexander told every raunchy detail of the carnal nights they supposedly spent with him. They painted him as a man who loved to fuck, from the front and the back, to show off his cock. They said he made them drink to the point of losing consciousness. In short, Alexander was made out to be a pedophile and a sex maniac. His big prosthetic penis was celebrated in countless macro images, shared around with red investigative circles drawn around it and accompanying proof of authenticity. They had everything: pictures, video clips, audio recordings, location tracking logs showing Alexander in the same place with the girls – all one big fake.
The humiliated Alexander read graphic detail: “He liked to turn me around and put a leash on me, like a slave,” said Zoe. “I went along with it. Why not? I'm not one to refuse.”
Kasia added fuel to the fire: “He showed interest in me and asked a lot of questions, but I discovered a racist, someone who actually wanted to deny the right to vote from carnivores, and to make everyone with an income lower than the top twenty percent pay more tax to help pay for the Neverminds. He told me rich people shouldn't pay more because they already gave enough to society, and the worst was when he said that only rich people and admasadors should receive life prolonging medical treatment. I thought it was outrageous, but I didn't say anything, I guess I was shocked.”
Alexander took it all in. Those motherfuckers, he thought. They take the person who fights for Neverminds’ rights, who wants to pass laws in favor of the lower ten percent, who wants to have life prolonging treatment covered by health care for everyone – and turn him into a scapegoat, and I don't even know who they are.
He imagined the Social Order Service were already monitoring his brain frequency. It was high profile pedophilia, after all. They didn't need to arrest him, there was no point in that: his thoughts were in temporary quarantine, and he couldn't contact anyone but his legal agent.
He was finding out the hard way that people didn't care about the truth. Everything that seemed real was real enough to them, and that included planted digital forgeries that could cause irreparable damage. Was the show credible? It didn't even matter.
When the shaming echoes grew by increment from tens to hundreds and from hundreds to hundreds of thousands, Alexander broke and decided he might need help after all.
“Whom do I suspect?” he thoughtmitted Martin Schuller, the best legal agent he knew. “Maybe those in the People's Council who support deportation. Maybe Minds itself… how can I know?”
“I need names. We have to go through everything with a magnifying glass, if you want the truth to come out. But I need to know that you didn't have sex with anyone but Nicola at that time.”
“I swear I didn't, and she doesn't believe me. Maybe you could talk to her? Explain?”
“I'll take care of it. It's important that people see her supporting you. She needs to be here with you, holding your hand. If you have her by your side, you'll have an easier time to sway the public. In the meantime, try to relax. Being stressed won't help you. Try using the Re-Minds, remember your better moments, take your mind off of it.”
Alexander wanted to remember better days, but could not. He was staring at the wall and waiting for his investigators. When they came, he answered every question and left nothing out, knowing that every slight tone and color in his voice was monitored to detect if what he was saying was true. At the same time, the police were investigating the girls and trying to corroborate their testimonies. These digital figments managed to fool the brain police with fake user profiles and online activity logs that looked authentic. They answered every question put to them on live holographic interviews intelligently, and said nothing that might bring their credibility into question. The way they dug him deeper into the hole with everything they said suggested they must have been given access to Alexander's confidential thoughts.
His legal agent finally secured authorization for him to Mind link with a third party. It would be his father.
“Alex, what have you done?!” Andre Cage the Third thoughtmitted.
“Dad,” he answered after dwelling on it for a while, “they made it up. Can you imagine me doing something like that?”
“They call it 'Dick Gate,' Alex… Dick Gate! My own son!”
“It's the media looking to make headlines. Don't believe the hype.”
“At the beginning, when you burned, I thought I’d lost you,” Alexander Sr. continued, ignoring his son. “When you went through rehab and moved on with your life, I was proud of you. There you were, getting the fame you deserved. And now some surprise you're giving me.”
“But I don't know anything about them! They're lying! I made plenty of enemies with the Neverminds legislation. How exactly do those girls and I come together?”
“They have solid evidence, pictures of that thing of yours, the prosthetic. I don't know how they put all that together! You want to tell me they're all lying? This has gone too far, a disgrace. You bring shame to your lineage. We’ve been impeccable for generations! Even your mother can't bring herself to deal with you now. We want nothing to do with this affair. You should’ve given it a second thought before you had your fun with Lara, Kasia and Zara, whatever you call your whores. What goes on in your bed is not only your own private concern. You carry the name of the Cage family, for crying out loud!”
“I can't believe you’d take the words of some sluts over your own son!”
“This thoughtmission is over. Goodbye,” his father said and shut him out of mind.
***
The deed was done. Alexander was disowned by his father and disinherited from the family estate, estimated to be worth billions of Unis. In the meantime, the investigation continued while the outgoing thoughts injunction had been lifted by a decree that put him under mind police control. The investigators obtained detailed records of all thoughtmissions between Alexander and the girls. He could not fathom how it was accomplished, but what dawned on him then was the crucial understanding that Minds was a potential tool for forging reality on an unprecedented scale; it was a devious and dangerous platform that could generate far reaching perceptual fraud. If it could happen to him, it must have also happened to others. Despite this pessimistic knowledge, he tried to turn things slightly in his favor by giving a community interview to Great Minds, the network's leading thought magazine.
When the session started, magazine editor, Daniel Prize, tuned into the public brain frequency and silenced all the bustling thoughts.
“Hello, Alexander.”
“Alex,” he corrected.
“With us on the frequency, we have Alex Cage, one of our most prolific admasadors, and a hero who saved the red-panda-cat of one Solly Grey, the founder this great network, Minds. Cage lost his arm
s and legs, but won world glory and a set of prosthetics. He, of all people, now finds himself involved in an intricate sex scandal. Alex, there's a mountain of evidence stacked against you. So what do you have for us - a denial?”
Alexander started explaining that the whole thing never happened, but found that other thoughts were being broadcast out of his control.
“The fancy of some pretty sluts,” he said, and was shocked by his own words.
“Ah, yes, they really are pretty,” Daniel replied with obvious discomfort.
“Whores, or whatever you care to call them. It all started with me being dumb enough to jump into a fire and save a fat old cat, who was a second from croaking anyway, with the idea that I could make something out of this life. I turned into a hero, but Solly couldn't care less about me burning. My father was only proud of me because now I was a popular meat kebab. And one more thing about that cat, Pandy, who, by the way, was the cause of the whole thing. That piece-of-shit fur ball clawed me and knocked me back into the fire. Nicola only slept with me because I they made me a hero, and I went along with it. And about the goddamn whores, I didn't fuck any of them!”
“Alex, who could have framed you?”
“Uh... take your pick? I'm starting to think Solly Grey looks good for it.”
“What? The founder of the network? The man whose cat you rescued?”
“Him, yes. I'm sorry, I don't know what's going on.”
“Let's go back to the scandal. Who is Lara?”
“I don't know. I had perfect Dream Sex with Nicola, every way you can have it. I won't sit here and tell you that I never switched her face and body with seventeen year old chicks – wait, - sixteen possibly, but still. At the end of the day, Nicola got some decent dicking. But she left me, the bitch, and I’d like to end with a few statements.”
“Go ahead,” thoughtmitted Daniel, shocked by the stuff he was getting.
“Solly Grey's mind control is a menace to society! They control us, what we think… our thoughts are being commercialized, we’re being brainwashed! As far as I'm concerned, they’re the ones who made up all these false accusations. We’re steadily heading for disaster. All our thoughts are kept on record. A day will come when it will all turn on us, and by then we'll be buried under.”
“Ah... thank you, Alex Cage, and a pleasant day to everyone!”
Distraught, Alexander immediately connected with Daniel on a private channel and asked him to delete the interview. “Daniel, what was that? I was thoughtmitting something else...”
“But those are your thoughts, aren't they? We can't roll it back now. The whole world was listening. What do you want to delete? Who's your saboteur? The cat? Your party members, Solly Grey, the girls? They're all guilty liars and you're the only one thinking the truth? Kind of hard swallow, isn't it?”
The man who had become the laughing stock of the network paced his living room and looked at the window, having a hard time breathing. It was the same old story, it all played out perfectly. He touched his prosthetic arm to his chest and felt growing pressure. He was one against the world, and every moment passing made it clearer.
He sat down, his head between artificial arms. More than anything else, he wanted to punch his fist through the window; he felt no pain anyway.
***
Silver clouds decorated the city. Blessed rains fell, and the stormy winds joined Lazy to wake Alexander earlier than his custom. He opened his eyes, stroked her for a while and slid his hand over to the Minds control panel on the wall, which offered him a calorie-free slice of rich cake that evaporated after swallowing
[19] . It came with shake particles that, once inside the mouth, transformed into a vitamin rich fruit shake, made entirely from new fruit – strawberry crossed with banana, lemon crossed with orange, grapes crossed with cherries. The price for these new varieties was astronomical, but Alexander relished these small pleasures. They were all he had left. The order was sent for the Dream Maker to prepare, and he took the time to hustle one of his close friends at the council for some news.
“Maybe you should take a vacation?” his friend suggested.
“You take a vacation!” he shouted and slammed the thought channel.
Days passed, and Alexander could feel how he was being elegantly cast aside. He didn't hear anything explicit from any of his friends or acquaintances, but time and again he was not being invited to council sessions, as if by mistake, until he realized it was intentional. They were trying to shut him out. They all offered him their excuses, until he was finally summoned to a virtual hearing with the People's Council, where no one said anything and let the secretary on duty have the floor.
“Alex, we’re gathered here today to discuss your case. Look, we're not judging you. You went through a lot, a tragedy and all, and we really don't want to stick our heads into your personal business, but the council had taken a major hit. It's a wide ranging public image problem. We can’t carry on like this, especially when you're still facing serious allegations. Pedophilia is no laughing matter. Some of us are parents, and it doesn't sit well with the values this council represents. Again, we’re not here to judge.”
“That's exactly what you’re doing now - judging me before I’ve even stepped into a courtroom!”
“The damage is done. How can we show our faces in public while supporting you? The council comes before anything else.”
“Bullshit! You can support me, because it's all lies! Delusional figments of a sick mind, who knows, maybe one of your own!”
“Look, Alex, we decided on issuing an immediate referendum to see how many people wish you to step down permanently as admasador. The results demand that you step down.”
“But I gave my life to lawmaking! I bled, I labored, I even shed tears for my work. You're all a disgrace. A band of ungrateful hypocrites! And the council? I did everything for this council!”
He heard some coughing, shifting in chairs, but no one stood to take his side.
“You were a wonderful member and your contribution was immense. We want the best for you, really.”
Alexander felt his heart shrink and air vacating his lungs. Politics was his life. And fuck that prosthetic cock. He would have been better off without it. A strong desire to dislocate it consumed him.
“Whores!” he shouted and slammed his head into the wall.
***
An inevitable plunge into dark thoughts followed. No light reached Alexander, even with the sun shining all through the night with the ‘day’ setting switched on. His friends shunned him, his family disowned him, and Nicola was gone. Even the legal agent Martin Schuller admitted that, “Without Nicola, it looks bad.”
He was left with nothing but the past. He put together a goodbye thoughtmission to his parents and Nicola. He kept scratching out one thought to replace with another, and took forever deciding on every punctuation mark. His prosthetic arm wiped a single tiny tear from his eye.
Father, mother, all I have is my truth. Truth was a value you raised me on, and I always carried it as a banner. You taught me that what we see is not necessarily the whole picture. You taught me to use my better judgment, and most of all to keep a healthy, doubting mind. But what happened to me left you with no doubt.
I wish you the best of health. I love you, even if you chose not to see me again. Maybe you prefer to see me as nothing, even after I made a name for myself and became famous. I got there after an excruciating rehabilitation. I struggled, I clung to life. All I ever wanted was for you to be proud of me. Now, all I am to you is a source of shame. But eventually you’ll learn it was all a lie, probably when it's too late.
Love, forever, Alex.
He prepared a separate thought for Nicola:
You couldn't see the truth even when it was right in front of you. One day you’ll learn that everything you read, and everything people thought or told you was a lie, a forgery. False accusations. One day you might realize that you made a mistake. That in my hardest moment you weren'
t there for me. I hope you find a worthy purpose to your life.
Every now and then he would turn to look at Lazy, and thought that animals also deserved better than seeing their owners defeated and humiliated. He called her, sat her on his knees, and stroked her tail while arranging his thoughts concerning her and leaving exact instructions for her care.
He finished and stood up, and with Lazy riding on his shoulder, he left the house on foot for a Dignetly
[20] center, a dreary place that served all the people who chose to end their virtual existence, or in other words – to rollback[21] .
Leaving Minds was a very costly process, and accounting for most of it was the need to separate the store of hardwired memories that accumulated on the chip from those of the organic brain. And then the memories stored on the Ghost
[22] component also had to be transferred into the brain. One needed a very good reason to go through with the procedure, and the necessary financial means to do so.
Alexander did his best to keep his eyes straight ahead at his destination, a white building in an abandoned area, and not to glance either right or left. The inside was designed to give a feeling of peace and calm. All patients were offered a bed and every possible comfort, before their components and the Minds lenses were removed to make them Neverminds, people who chose to live without a digital soul. The purpose of the place was to make their last moments as Minds as pleasant as possible, and perhaps also to remind them that digital life wasn't all that bad after all.
A white door opened, and out of a bright light emerged Angela, an agreeable hologram with a soft voice, a standard setting for mental practitioners. Her features were symmetrical, her skin snow white, and her black hair combed back. She wore a long dress, a mantle, and white gloves. Her radiant figure, floating toward him, exuded a sanctity blended with sudden infatuation.
“Hello, Alexander Cage. Please, sit down.”
He noticed the room had no chair.
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