The Cybergypsies

by Indra Sinha

  Within the shadow of the ship

  I watched their rich attire:

  Blue glossy green, and velvet black,

  They coiled and swam; and every track

  Was a flash of golden fire.

  I discover, on one of the hundreds of websites devoted to this tiny diploid organism, a DNA sequence isolated from a single of its estimated 17,800 genes.

  Gene: sra-1

  Isolation Name: AH6.4

  Expressed in: SPD/SPV (males only)

  5’ primer: att aat tcc GCA TGC gtg cgt cat gca aag acg ag

  3’ primer: att tga gcG GAT CCt gcg ctg gtt atg ttg gac at

  Restriction Sites: SphI, BamHI

  Expression Vector: TU#62

  Promoter Sequence: 3531 bp

  Luna’s peculiar genius translates the deoxyribonucleic babble to the assembler code needed to make the bodies of cyber-animals. I nearly said ‘human assembler code’, but one should never make that mistake with Luna.

  The full Luna

  ‘I am not human. I refuse to live in the real world. It is true that I, Luna, am operated by a human being with a body. But that human is not me, and its body is not mine. Luna is Luna, and my home is here. In the Vortex.’

  ‘A refugee from reality,’ I quote to her. ‘That’s what Lilith keeps telling me.’

  ‘I am not a refugee,’ says Luna. ‘I am not like Lily. Lily comes here, but she is just as much at home in what she calls the face2face world. She comes and goes as she pleases. She is strong. She seeks her own pleasure. I am not at all like that.’

  ‘Oh but you are strong,’ I tell her. ‘You’re terrifying. I remember when I first met you, how scared I was.’

  Today we’re strolling in Kubla Khan’s pleasure gardens. Ahead is a huge curving dome, an edifice of glittering crystal, near which a jet of spumy water shoots intermittently into the air. Luna stoops to pick a pink lily, growing on a long stem with grasslike leaves.

  ‘You haven’t told me what became of Calypso. Presumably she was still around when you came back?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I never saw her again. She’d dropped out. But there was a reason. A very shocking reason. I found it out by chance. Do you want to hear it?’

  ‘Do you need to ask?’

  ‘Remember I said that people’s stories don’t end until they die? Well, sometimes death isn’t an ending. It was summer. I was with Eve in the garden . . .’

  Droid

  One Sunday afternoon Eve and I are in the garden when a woman totters into view. Fiftyish, short fair curls, airtight jeans.

  ‘I’m looking for Bear. Are you him? Goody. Heard lots about you. Our neighbour asked us to drop this off to you, since we were down this way. It’s heavy love, you’ll have to help.’

  In a carton is my old Eff One, the one I lent to Clare.

  There’s no note, but Clare has even returned the floppy disk with Graeme’s Ripper program on it. The F1 looks obsolete. It’s already part of the palaeohistory of the net. Out of nostalgia, I slide in the floppy and watch the archaic interface open up. Ripper is still on the disk. Probably she never used it. But there are many new files: edwin, tom, droid, jeeps, cabbalist, scott, chorley, lance, morgan, gary. Among them is one called bear. Bear consists of two letters she had written me, but not sent. The first hopes I feel better and echoes the ‘soulmate’ theme of our ill-starred lunch. The other, dated a few weeks later, accuses me of faking illness in order to humiliate her. All the rest are letters men have written her, some fawning, others explicitly sexual. All are carefully catalogued. (She keeps her affairs in order.) A little interlinear reading and some simple finger-maths shows that Calypso must have been sleeping, or conducting amours of some intimacy, simultaneously with at least six Shades players. But the file, droid, is rather different.

  Cally darling,

  ‘Your smile lights up the darkness of my heart.’ What amazing things you say. I’m sitting here at work thinking of you and can’t get a damn thing done... One thing. Better be careful using the a/c, at least for a while. My boss queried the last bill...

  Cally darling,

  Sorry to ask, bnt don’t use the account any more. I am in shit. I had to own up that I used it to play games, but swore I’ve stopped, so please don’t use it, everything shows up on the log. I read your emails over and over. Can’t wait for when we can see each other.

  Darling Calypso,

  You must stop using the a/c immediately. It’s not my personal account, it’s the company’s and they’ve stopped me from using it. I don’t have direct access any more (sneaked into John’s office to send this), so if you use the a/c, it means they will know I gave the p/w to someone outside and my goose will be well and truly cooked.

  Dearest Calypso,

  I call you and I get the bloody answer machine. Sorry to nag on about the account again, but it’s a crisis, seems another big bill’s come in. I’ve said I know eff-all about this one. If by any chance you *might* have used the id by mistake, please delete it right now from your pooter, to make sure it can’t happen again. Please give me an email when you get this, haven’t heard anything from you for ages.

  Dear Calypso,

  It’s happened and I’ve got one hour to clear my desk. So why am I in John’s office writing this? You don’t reply. You don’t answer your phone. The latest bill is even higher than the last one. They are saying I must repay all the money. Cally, it was three thousand fucking quid. Losing the job is bad, but not as bad as thinking that you would shaft me so badly. No, it can’t be. Just say I’m wrong. Only you can. My darling forgive these unworthy suspicions. I can’t think straight. I haven’t told them about you. For pity’s sake get in touch, or I will go crazy.

  Clinically catalogued, coldly filed in date order. All that’s missing is blood-coloured ribbon.

  Luna waning

  The woman is a nonpareil!’ says Luna. ‘How stupid men are! So she quit Shades because of a guilty conscience?’

  ‘No. I did not know the end of the story, until months later on a multi-user game somewhere in the States I bumped into Detritus who used to work for British Telecom. Calypso’s name came up. Not long before Micronet went supernova, Detritus investigated a complaint. A firm in Plymouth said its account was being hacked. The company was baffled, because three months earlier it had sacked an employee who’d confessed to running up the huge bills.’

  ‘Oh don’t tell me. Droid was so desperate to see her that he kept using the account? He must have been crazy. But then all men seem to be crazy about Calypso. She must be very special.’

  I think of Calypso’s dark hair on milky skin, her deep green eyes. ‘Yes, I’m afraid she is. But it wasn’t Droid. It couldn’t have been – and this is why the firm was so upset – because a week after they sacked him, he emptied a bottle of sleeping pills.’

  Luna is silent, presumably appalled.

  ‘The first thing they did was check the logs. They found that more than three months after Droid’s death, the hacker was still using his account to play Shades. Had never missed a single day. The record showed a steady flow of calls, some lasting hours. Of course, they didn’t know who had made them. So Detritus brought in a thing called a data-analyser which decodes data transmissions. Then they just sat and waited for the hacker to log in again.’

  ‘Is it possible?’ Luna asks me (as I had asked Detritus), ‘that Calypso didn’t know what had happened to Droid?’

  ‘Again no, not a chance. I’ll tell you why. As soon as the hacker called, the data-analyser got to work. It decoded the zeros and ones passing along the telephone line and Detritus and Co. found themselves eavesdropping a conversation of a rather intimate sort. In one week, they monitored dozens of similar chats. Detritus had half a dozen typed up as evidence. He said what upset him most, made him want to wring her bloody neck, was the way she kept on about the terrible tragedy that had happened to Droid.’

  ‘They were certain it was her?’

  ‘Who else? They t
raced the calls to her house. Detritus went round and confronted her. She was terrified. She was forced to repay the company. Not much good to Droid. The really chilling thing for me was realising that when I was in her house and she was gazing at me with huge eyes, talking about soulmates, that poor guy was already dead.’

  ‘Bear, I’m sorry. I’m laughing, but not because I find it funny. The story you have told me is depraved. I am not used to hearing about people more corrupt than me.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Luna.’

  ‘You don’t know me,’ she says. Luna’s change of mood is like a sudden drop in temperature.

  ‘Bear, I’m going to say something important. You won’t be able to take it seriously. You’ll say “Luna is mad”. What I’m going to tell you sounds paranoid and melodramatic. It’s a warning. Bear, if you spend too much time in cyberreality you will lose your soul.’

  Unprepared I may be, melodramatic this certainly is, and I have no idea what she means, but I will certainly listen. No-one I know, not even Lilith, has gone so deeply into roleplaying.

  ‘When I became Luna, that is to say, when Luna realised that she was an independent spirit with her own life, she also discovered that she had no soul. The human called “I” owned one, but Luna did not share it. Does one need a soul? I don’t know. Humans like Calypso seem to get along without them, but isn’t Calypso like an empty shell? No wonder she craves a soulmate. She needs a new soul because somewhere along the way, she has lost her own.’

  No, but this is too much. There is something farcical about Faustian warnings uttered in the open-eye daylight of the Vortex. But solemnity usually is edged with absurdity. I hadn’t told Luna that all the while Detritus had been telling his story on the American MUG, he was under attack (and in fact was killed) by a homicidal mountain goat. ‘Hold on, Bear,’ he’d telegraphed on being resurrected. ‘Must just pick up the bits of my body before the maggots get them.’

  Luna is shapeshifting. Grass green dress turns muddy khaki, then darkens to the black of a crow’s wing.

  She says, ‘Listen. I, the person speaking to you now am not Luna, but Lima’s human. Luna wants me to tell you that if you met me in real life, you wouldn’t look at me twice and wouldn’t want to know me. I am lonely, a bitter person. I murder myself daily. I’m a serial suicide. I come here to die, so that Luna can live. Luna lives here and here only, but she wants to be human. She would love to possess this body I detest. She wants a human soul.’

  ‘I trust you, Bear,’ says Luna a little later, ‘so I will tell you about my human. It is fifty-five. It lives alone in a flat in a quiet London square. It works for a secretive organisation in London and from time to time in America. During its US visits, I am in limbo. I have nightmares in my dark, rented corner of the human’s mind.’

  ‘This is too weird. Do you, Luna, really regard yourself as a separate person?’

  There is a drowsiness in the air, a faint, bitter tang. Turn back, cyberbeings, before it is too late.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she says, ‘quite distinct. The human likes cats. I don’t. It listens to Mozart. I prefer Debussy.’

  A bee zums past in the thick air. The land ahead seems on fire, rolling in burning waves to the horizon.

  Crescent Luna (the fields of Lethe)

  In the fields opium poppies grow. The air is heavy with their scent and in such thickness of air, dreams are almost visible. As for Luna, she’s playing out her changes: a heavy golden plait hangs over a robe of white silk embroidered with scarlet poppies.

  ‘Yes,’ says Luna, bitterly, ‘I do wish I had a real body.’

  She unlaces the robe and lets it fall (to be caught and held aloft by supple poppy stems) revealing a naked form whose every curve, hill and hollow are perfectly realised.

  ‘No, no, no,’ I say laughing, ‘please don’t try to tempt me. I am not going to make love with you.’

  ‘Why? Are you afraid that my human controller is a man?’

  ‘You are a deep soul, Luna. One could drown in you.’

  Now Luna puts off her body altogether and shows me her shapes and changes. Her limbs elongate and grow translucent, then liquefy and accumulate into a long shape, sinuous and bright, that wriggles in a lazy S, bending the poppy stalks, rolling over onto its back like a dog, its internal organs strong pulsing shapes that, before my eyes, start to expand, merge, take a harder form, resolve to the glittering torpedo of a fish that floats up into the air and swims towards me with flicks of its silver body, approaching, closing and opening its O mouth until the mouth opens wide enough to be a darkness out of which appears a man with long brown hair, purple robed, his right hand holding a mirror which he extends to me with a warm smile, the mirror growing cloudy as I look into it, a face forming in its depths, that of a dark-skinned woman, Egyptian looking, with large, penetrating kohl-smudged eyes like a painting on a mummy case, the mirror’s rim dissolving as she emerges, hiding her body in a black and grey cloak, which as I watch, begins to acquire a certain furriness and becomes a thick sable pelt, the woman transforming to a man who laughs and starts inscribing bright shapes in the air before turning into a leopard that crouches with yellow eyes beneath the shapes which hang before me, burning in the heavy air.

  The leopard fades and only the sigils remain. Then, away in the distance I notice a figure walking in the poppy fields, a woman, cowled, face hidden in the depths of the hood, a cloak wrapped around her graceful figure. With small steps, she draws gradually nearer and my heart begins that familiar thudding. My mouth is dry, my breathing heavy, the lines of fire pulse in time with my pulse which quickens as the figure glides through the poppies, her bare feet brushing aside the stems, until she is only a step away. She throws back her hood, reveals the fair hair falling to her shoulders and glint of wide green eyes. And Eve stands before me.

  Eve in the garden

  ‘I think you used to love me, Bear, but at some point I became just another character in your cyber dream. There is a realm called Sussex and in it there is a crooked little house in a wood, and the house stands in a clearing with an overgrown garden which is always filled with sunlight. In the centre is a circular herb garden, which you call the rose henge. Yes, the roses are climbing all around it. It looks very lovely when the sunlight is in the leaves. In the garden, weeding, a woman looks up at you and smiles. It is your own loving wife. But look what happens. Your wife becomes suddenly translucent, parts of her start to vanish. Now there are holes in the vision that is bending over the flowerbed. You can see angelica stalks where her face was. Those are petals that were her eyes. A clematis is climbing up what was her arm. Now the shining trowel is digging by itself, and the hand holding it has disappeared. What is happening? The blooms are fading and it is all turning to shadows. But, Bear, wait a minute. This is your imagination, isn’t it? You can do anything you like. The flowers quicken, the wife reappears, stooping among the marigolds. She straightens up, stretches that aching back, turns to you. But wait, it’s not your wife. It is a woman you have never seen before. Oh but she’s sexy. She comes towards you with a welcoming smile. You turn in confusion. And now you see that behind you, there is no house, and that in the distance, all the woods and the hills are strange.’

  The new Luna

  Luna is her first self again, the old lady of the tea party. She says, ‘We must leave. It is dangerous to stay here too long. The poppies get inside your head.’

  ‘Luna, why did you show me Eve?’

  ‘Call it a cruel experiment.’

  ‘Why? What reaction did you expect?’

  ‘You’re always talking about Eve, you do realise that, don’t you?’

  ‘Well, of course. She’s my wife.’

  ‘A lot of married couples spend their lives trying not to think of one another. You talk about her all the time. Eve this, Eve that. But you must like talking about her more than being with her, because you’re always here. Let’s try another experiment. Bear, complete truthfully . . . “I, blank, Eve”.’


  ‘Love? Yes I do.’

  ‘Love’s a slithery word, Bear dear. You can say the noun in an instant, but the verb takes years to pronounce.’

  ‘Are you suggesting I don’t love her?’

  ‘I am the wrong person to ask,’ says Luna sadly. ‘I have never loved anyone in my life.’

  Seeing that I don’t answer Luna puts her hand on mine and says, ‘From what you’ve told me, you are wrecking your marriage. Stop it. Junk the modem.’

  ‘Luna, when you conjured up that vision of Eve, just for a moment it seemed that she was really here.’

  ‘Bear, the Eve you tell me about – the Eve of your imagination – really is here. This is where she lives, here, with Luna, in the Vortex. I’ve got to know her well. She’s charming, intelligent, loving . . . exactly as you imagine her. As for the real Eve, she is a complete mystery to me. As I suspect she is to you.’

  Is Luna right? Do I really know her, my wife? These days I hardly see anything of Eve. I’m in London a lot of the time. I spend hours in the car. By the time I get home the kids are in bed. Eve’s usually busy, or watching television, so I tell her I have work to do and inevitably I end up here with Lilith or Luna. Or else wandering the invisible roads.

  Sea State 6

  Gurglings, bubblings, retchings, the sour reek of people’s insides: jetfoils aren’t built for comfort. Halfway across the Irish Sea, our ferry is caroming off the wave-tops like a tile skimmed from a beach. Tall swells chase each other across the surface of the sea. Some are classic wave shapes, others crude container-loads of seawater, uplifted by ocean hydraulics. Huge blue sugarloaves are pushing up on all sides, water spilling off them, spray-spouting whalebacks down whose flanks watery eels slither like the veins that writhe over the flexed biceps of bodybuilders (visions are directly related to the condition of the stomach lining). A monitor mounted above the unhappy passengers shows the boat’s position plotted against a chart of the Welsh and Irish coasts. It is probably intended to be reassuring, but since the tiny blip that represents our vessel seems, like the hour hand of a clock, hardly to move, it has the opposite effect, deepening our misery by dragging out minutes into hours, putting each particle of time under a microscope.