Cole Perriman's Terminal Games

by Wim Coleman

  Who can remember? Who cares?

  She clicked on the figure. All the other figures disappeared, and hers was abruptly decked out in a lumpy, shiny, and anything-but-erotic space suit. Even the figure’s face was invisible behind the tinted visor. The sound of slow, heavy breathing came over the computer speaker—more asthmatic than sexual. Marianne maneuvered the figure toward the “airlock”—a formidable-looking sliding door seemingly made of stainless steel. The figure then pushed a button. A harsh, squawking siren went off, and a red light flashed an urgent announcement:

  “PRESSURIZING.”

  Then the door rumbled open with a raspy, hydraulic hiss to reveal a chrome-encrusted corridor leading to another door. Marianne guided her lumbering figure into the airlock, and a subsequent hiss and slam indicated that the sliding door had closed behind her. Another red sign flashed:

  “DISROBE, PLEASE.”

  Marianne struck a command, and the shiny pieces came flying off like one of those breakaway suits they used in the movies. Pieces of space suit rattled around the airlock a bit, then mysteriously vanished, leaving the female figure naked again, facing away from Marianne.

  The sign flashed again:

  “THANK YOU. YOU MAY ENTER THE CHAMBER NOW.”

  Then came another hiss as the second door slid open, revealing a large, spherical chamber in which sixteen or so naked figures were languidly, indolently floating through the slightly foggy atmosphere. Marianne gave her figure one last little nudge. The figure slipped through the door and drifted weightlessly among her fellow interstellar hedonists.

  Airborne at last!

  Marianne let her figure sail passively among the others for a moment while she scanned the Weightless Chamber’s other occupants. Most of the figures were unattached, isolated, reaching and groping for carnal companionship. But there were several midair couplings going on—copulating figures thrashing about in various states of frenzy and excitement. Nothing unconventional was going on—the program did not permit anything but straightforward heterosexual intercourse. But Marianne was sure that this was not due to any prudery on the part of the programmer. The software still had its limitations, that was all.

  Just wait for the next upgrade.

  In the meantime, the couples didn’t have to do anything particularly original in order to appear exotic. They were doing it in midair, after all. And the sex was completely egalitarian here—no “erotic handicaps” as there were elsewhere in the Pleasure Dome, forcing participants to be dominant or submissive, aggressive or passive. It was a world of complete consensuality and simultaneous orgasms.

  A carnal utopia if ever there was one.

  All the unattached figures—male or female—seemed absolutely limber and relaxed. There was not the slightest feeling of tension or unease in the whole environment. The women’s limbs stretched in all directions with luxurious flexibility. When the women turned profile, they revealed starkly erect nipples. The males had natural-looking, uncaricatured erections—except for the recently uncoupled few whose cocks remained flaccid for a few moments while recharging took place. The sphere was filled with a cacophony of sighing and moaning and gasping breaths—a loop of sound that ran over and over again regardless of what any of the figures were doing.

  Marianne’s figure began to drift inertly toward one of the couples.

  That won’t do. No cutting in allowed on this dance floor.

  The point of the game was to find an unattached partner, and that would take a bit of maneuvering. Figures in the Weightless Chamber did not drift about in a purely random way. In the absence of normal gravity, each male or female exerted its own gravitational pull. To move in the vicinity of another body meant to be drawn toward that body.

  Marianne used her mouse to propel her figure toward an unattached male, apparently of African descent, looking spry and spread-eagled and eager for action. Now all she could do was wait and see what happened. If the two figures met each other perfectly face on, they would intertwine and begin to copulate. If they struck at ever-so-slightly the wrong angle, they would deflect away from one another and probably bounce off the sphere’s elegantly padded walls.

  Marianne held her breath as she watched. But the magic didn’t happen this time. Her figure struck the dusky male a little too much to the left, and she went spinning away toward the wall. She bounced off the wall, curled spontaneously into a ball shape, and did several forward rolls through the foggy air. Then her limbs unfolded welcomingly as she drifted among the others again.

  Marianne exhaled, a little surprised to notice that her heart had started beating faster. Was it possible that she was really getting an erotic kick from this? She didn’t think so, but perhaps she was without quite realizing it.

  She remembered going to a hard core X-rated movie one night with Evan—at Evan’s insistence, naturally. She had giggled through much of it, and Evan kept a slightly embarrassed silence. During the drive home, both she and Evan swore to have been utterly unaffected by the movie. But the minute they set foot back in their apartment, they were mauling and unclothing one another ravenously. In less than an hour, they had doubled their already extensive repertoire of sexual techniques.

  Marianne hastily shoved the episode from her mind and concentrated on the game at hand. Her figure had started to ricochet slowly and gently off several others. These harmless collisions seemed to imbue the figures with a kind of rubbery, almost sensual softness.

  All this activity had a strong kinesthetic effect. The feeling of movement and suspension was truly palpable. It took Marianne back to her days on the high school synchronized swim team—except that this “water” allowed greater freedom, greater movement than any swimming pool could. It never forced you in a particular direction.

  Now her figure and another female began to orbit each other slowly. Marianne marveled at the programmer’s ability to suggest reciprocal gravitation.

  For every action there is an equal and apposite reaction. Isaac Newton would love this.

  But a problem quickly arose. The other female in the dual orbit was her figure’s exact double, and after they’d rounded each other a couple times, Marianne had no idea which was which. The operator of the other figure was undoubtedly just as confused. Then Marianne figured that all she had to do was to move her figure one way or the other; whichever figure moved had to be hers. She used her mouse to jolt her figure gently to the right. But the other figure reciprocated, and the dual orbit simply reversed directions.

  Uncanny! The other operator must have tried the same thing!

  It was a bit like two people encountering one another in a narrow passageway, each of them trying to step out of the other’s way but winding up stepping in the same direction. But in real life, two such people did not lose track of who was who.

  Marianne’s next tactic was to let the orbit continue until the other operator broke it. But her counterpart apparently had the same idea this time, too, and the orbit continued for several long seconds. Marianne decided to wait it out. Soon, one of the figures broke out of the orbit and Marianne then knew that hers was the figure still spinning in its original path.

  Now Marianne propelled her figure toward a blue-toned Asiatic-looking fellow, and she quickly sensed that their contact was going to click. Sure enough, their bodies met and connected. Marianne lost all control of the action. She could only sit and watch as the two figures wrapped themselves more and more tightly together, the female’s legs winding serpent-like around the male’s.

  The animation was remarkable, with shifting highlight and shadow falling perfectly across their constantly moving limbs. Marianne guessed that each possible pairing of puppets offered a separate animation sequence, so one could come to the Weightless Chamber many times and still feel that one was watching a fresh, spontaneous sex act.

  It went on for a surprisingly long time. T
he figures thrust pelvis against pelvis, slowly at first but then more rapidly, and ran their hands all over each other. They craned their necks and arched their backs in simulated passion, and the female’s long hair floated freely everywhere. Their accelerating movements sent them spinning and whirling through the sphere like a wayward, slowly rotating gyroscope. They slowly careened against other bodies and the walls, bouncing helter-skelter. Their mouths dropped open in unheard outcries. Their very silence amid the random erotic sounds was highly evocative. A series of climactic spasms brought the episode to an end.

  Marianne suddenly felt just a shade warmer.

  Is something wrong with the thermostat in this place?

  Now she had to make a decision. The two figures could remain locked together in pleasant afterglow, or they could disconnect and float elsewhere. If they continued their embrace, it had to be a mutual decision. It only took one of the operators to break out of it.

  Marianne felt tired now, and the day’s discouragements had pretty well left her mind. The Weightless Chamber had served its purpose, and she felt pretty sure she could go to sleep. She gently tugged her figure out of the embrace. The blue man’s arms reached yearningly after the departing female. The other operator had wanted to sustain a moment of simple affection, but Marianne had broken it. Marianne felt a pang of sadness when she realized what had happened.

  Remember, it’s just a cartoon. Maybe he—or she—will have better luck next time.

  Marianne struck a command, and the airlock doors appeared. The doors opened noisily, and the naked puppet vanished into them.

  *

  safir>howdu lke to be in shobiz baby?

  awgy>huh?

  safir>u hrd me. howdu lke to cm out of that shll of urs and face the wrld? u’d be a hit i cn tell u.

  Renee pressed the command for synthetic laughter and Sapphire complied with her usual gloating chuckle. She had lured Auggie into a “booth” by design. Here there could be no interruptions from other Auggie fans, and nobody could hear what they were saying to one another.

  “I can’t believe you talked me into this,” Renee whispered to Sapphire. “Didn’t I say I wanted to go cold turkey?”

  Renee’s resolve had broken the minute she had tried to go to sleep. It felt convenient, now, to blame Sapphire, who did seem rather willful at times. A lot of self-recrimination would only hurt Renee’s concentration, and she had to stay focused. She couldn’t let Auggie sweep her off to the Pleasure Dome or the casino or some other Insomnimania game room.

  Anything might happen in one of those places.

  And indeed, it had sometimes seemed as though anything did happen. On one or two occasions, Renee seemed to have fallen asleep in front of the computer while continuing to operate Sapphire. She had only a sketchy memory of what had actually transpired, particularly when she was prowling the maze with Auggie.

  We’ll have none of that tonight. She was resolved to keep Sapphire firmly in character—meaning under control.

  Sapphire and Auggie were nestled in pixel-simulated upholstery across a pixel-simulated Formica table sipping on pixel-simulated drinks. Comic-book-style word balloons, invisible to the other patrons, enclosed each bit of their dialogue. Renee reminded herself to make sure Sapphire savored this strawberry daiquiri very slowly. Mixed drinks at Ernie’s cost more than she’d be willing to spend in a real bar. Whenever one logged into Ernie’s, one’s tab was automatically drawn off one’s credit card. And there was a two-drink minimum.

  Sapphire was Renee’s image of a social climber from the Bronx who had long since succeeded in destroying the emotional well-being of four full-grown children (all financially successful professionals), emasculating her husband of thirty-two years (a used car salesman), and imprinting a brood of grandchildren with primal guilt trips. By Sapphire’s reckoning, this constituted having lived a rich, full life. Now she was loose in the infoworld, gathering and dispersing gossip, generally living it up and enjoying her retirement. Or so Renee imagined—and imagination was all that mattered in Ernie’s Bar.

  As Renee manipulated Sapphire’s image by striking the command key in various combinations with other keys, Sapphire indulged in her chronic nervous mannerism of fingering her ruby necklace as she leaned across the table toward Auggie. Sapphire was sipping her drink, revealing a gratuitous quantity of pudgy cleavage. Renee typed in Sapphire’s next line of dialogue, and a rectangular word balloon expanded to fit the increasing verbiage. As the dialogue balloons appeared, Renee read both Auggie’s and Sapphire’s words aloud. Somehow the conversation seemed more real that way.

  safir>awgy hunny lissn to your deah frnd safir. doncha think its maby time u shd think abt goin public?

  awgy>whassat? going pubic?

  safir>o awgy u scamp. u r trooooly bad. u no what i meeeeen.

  Tricky territory. But she was determined to draw Auggie out—and ultimately to get him on the air. She chuckled to herself. Imagine getting an entity who only existed on a computer screen to go audio—and face a big, big audience. A telephone interview would do it. Auggie’s anonymity could he preserved even while she tried to get him to reveal as much possible about himself.

  Her racing thoughts hesitated a moment at the idea of revealing that Sapphire was actually the alter of L.A.’s hottest talk radio host. Did Renee actually want to meet somebody whose nighttime hobby was creating computer simulations of real-life killings?

  Oh, but it got to be worth the risk. “Auggie, the Computerized Snuff Room Virtuoso”—a virtual entity “live” on real life radio—the latest thing in performance art. It would be a ratings hit! And in a town like L.A., who knew what kind of doors it might open up for Auggie, too—or whoever this character really was? He might be the next Max Headroom—and longer lasting. Someday he’ll thank me for it.

  In the meantime, Auggie sat with his elbow on the table, his chin resting on his raggedy-gloved hand, sipping at a pint of Irish stout, tilting his head quizzically in a manner reminiscent of Jack Benny. He made no reply to Sapphire’s last remark.

  Lucifer stalked toward the keyboard.

  “Shooo!” hissed Renee loudly. Lucifer had an uncanny knack for pressing the wrong keys when he strayed near the computer. On one occasion, he’d managed to delete an entire file. On another, he successfully logged Renee off Insomnimania at an extremely inappropriate moment in the Weightless Chamber.

  Renee vigorously brushed Lucifer off her desk. She sat waiting, trying to decide what to say next. But the clown was talking again.

  awgy>do u no hw mportnt u r 2 me safir? we r a hol wurld al bi rselvs. a univers. we cn be 1 tgether. Ths hol act’s immutably decreed. Twus rehersed by thee and me a billiun yeers before insomnimania ever wus.

  Renee shivered slightly. Between crude jokes, Auggie sometimes spoke fleetingly of profound secrets and the powers of fate—brief, incongruous bursts of intimacy and eloquence that always disturbed her a little. And now he was quoting something again. What was it? She wished her knowledge of literature were better.

  The clown said nothing more. He seemed to grow larger, to fill more of her vision. An animator’s trick? As aware as she was of the techniques being used, she shrank back from the intensity projected through her computer monitor. She took a breath and began to type again.

  safir>awgy hunny safir nos a litl seeeeeecret abt u.

  Auggie made no reply, but wiggled his fingers and eyebrows at Sapphire in the lecherous mode of a burlesque comic. Gone was the daunting air he had assumed the moment before. Now he was fully a clown again.

  safir>safir nos wher u get ideas for thos wunnerful snuffs of urs.

  Auggie was motionless. He still made no reply. Slowly and cautiously, Renee continued to type.

  safir>u get them frm reeeeeeel lif dont u?

  Still silent, Auggie made an exquisitely slow and exaggerated shrug
, proclaiming with nonverbal ingenuousness, “I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Oh, he’s a virtuoso. Renee typed some more.

  safir>awgy sweethart u can pla this dnky tavern or that lil snuff room for the rest of ur days—but who d’u think ure rechin? 100 a show r maybe 2? doncha think u dezerv bettah? doncha evah think abot goin for the bucks n glory? now lissn to safir awgy—ive gotta frnd hoos gotta frnd hoos gotta frnd hoo cld get u gobs—n i dooo meeeeeen gobs of media hype n exposhuh. shd u hppn 2 be intrstd.

  Auggie remained motionless and silent. Renee began to get a little nervous. The last thing she wanted was to trigger one of Auggie’s tantrums. The smiling clown often became furious over one trivial matter or another. Once he had criticized Sapphire’s penchant for strawberry daiquiris, insisting that she should drink stout instead. When Sapphire demurred, Auggie had angrily scrawled the word “bitch” across the screen and disappeared. Another time he criticized her hair color, insisting that lavender would be preferable to orange. Again Sapphire disagreed, and again Auggie cried “bitch” and vanished. Auggie had dumped poor Sapphire in such a peremptory manner a half dozen times now.

  Simply to vanish from Ernie’s Bar—or indeed, from any room in Insomnimania—was considered the height of discourtesy. Your alter was expected to walk away and exit properly from even the most confrontational situations. Making your alter vanish was cheating, pure and simple. It broke the delicate reality of cyberspace.

  But Auggie was notoriously uncouth and prima donna-ish. Just like most celebrities. She wanted to keep him on the hook just this once—long enough to set up some kind of arrangement with him. Then Auggie spoke again.

  awgy>mr. 0 reely likes u. mr. 0 wunts to c u agin. rite now.

  Oh, not this again. Renee groaned. She remembered last week’s wretched episode when she had dressed up as “Blue Angel,” a scantily clad cabaret singer, and Auggie had transformed himself into an amorphous, faceless character named “Mr. Zero.” The two of them had retired to the Tunnel of Love, and their rompings there had left Renee distinctly queasy. Half asleep at her desk at home with Lucifer purring in her lap, Renee had almost felt an eerily tactile embrace of pixel limbs. She often enjoyed the Weightless Chamber, but the Tunnel of Love was much too furtive for her taste—and Mr. Zero was unmistakably weird. She typed again.