Slabscape : Reset

by S. Spencer Baker

  ‘Ah ha!’ said the voice triumphantly, with a synthesised laugh. ‘Looks like Pundechan Media is keen to protect its assets too.’

  Three black balls floated toward him and hovered in a triangle formation around the base of his penis. Dielle looked down in alarm and covered himself.

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘No need for concern, this will not hurt. I’m not going to remove the device, merely temporarily disable it. The value of knowledge is in direct proportion to its level of concealment, no?’

  A device? He felt violated. When did Kiki put a device in my dick? he thought, realising that she had had ample opportunity. There was a sharp snapping sound and an intense localised vibration which brought a temporary smile back to his face.

  ‘Thanks, I guess,’ said Dielle.

  ‘All part of the service. Tea?’

  As the balls floated back to the machine, they passed a delicate china cup on a gravplate.

  ‘Thanks. I’m fine. I just had . . . ’

  ‘Drink it!’

  Dielle was unsettled. It may have been because he was alone, isolated from the protective arms of Sis, standing naked on a glowing orange floor, surrounded by humming machines that were bristling with sensors, probes and vicious-looking razor-edged wires while being humiliated by a sinister, disembodied voice. Or it may have been the tea. That was it. Tea. Disgusting stuff. He had never liked it.

  ‘I don’t actually like tea. Sorry. Do you have any coffee?’

  ‘Drink it, you moron! It isn’t dicing tea anyway; it’s a cocktail of psychoactive drugs, capillary dilators and neuron markers necessary for the proper installation of your stim unit.’

  ‘Oh, right. In that case.’ He sipped the warm liquid. It was delicious.

  ‘Exit via the transvex to your right.’ A wall panel glowed blue. ‘There are some sanitised clothes waiting for you in the privacy bubble which will take you to a new location. Do not try to contact Sis while you are in transit. Understood?’

  ‘OK, no problem.’

  ‘Why are you not moving?’

  Not exactly service with a smile, thought Dielle.

  The smile he sought was on the face of Mary-Belle Krischanssonson who was waiting for him in the privacy field on the other side of the vex. She was still wearing her Jenny’s uniform and handed him a chamoist one-piece. Dielle was immediately pleased to see her.

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ said the voice which, being modified by Mary-Belle’s vocal chords, seemed even more unnerving to Dielle. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

  ‘Bella? Are you The Man?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. This individual is acting as a live-thru. She has a stim unit identical to the one you will be getting and she hires out her body for those of us who choose to experience other sides of the existential plane. You will be able to hire her as well if you like, should you wish to experiment with being a woman without going through all the tedious physical changes. I can personally recommend this one, she is strong and healthy and has superbly tuned pleasure receptors. I did the installation myself.’

  ‘You mean I can inhabit another person’s body?’

  ‘Not exactly. The stim unit stimulates your brain in a mirror of another person’s real experience, or more often, a recording. Normally, the originator is in control of their actions and has the option to transmit selected sensory data while retaining their memories. But a live-thru relinquishes most higher functions to the hirer and will have no memory at all of what they have done during the occupancy.’

  ‘Sounds pretty risky for her.’

  ‘Yes it is. Extraordinarily risky. Which is why Sis usually monitors the proceedings to ensure nothing gets out of hand.’

  ‘Usually?’

  ‘Well not in this instance, naturally.’

  Dielle thought about that for a moment. Bella must be either very trusting of this person or very stupid. Or maybe very scared.

  ‘Can I ask . . . ?’

  ‘No you can’t. We’ve arrived. Get out.’

  Dielle walked into a room that looked similar to the one he’d just left, but this one was far bigger and had a round patch of red Soffen, large enough for them both to stretch out on, set into the centre of the floor. Mary-Belle stepped out of her heels, strode into the circle and held her hands out to him. The Soffen was warm to his bare feet.

  A long, narrow platform floated out between them. On it was a handful of shiny, complicated-looking instruments, the largest of which was something Dielle recognised from his encounter with PT. Mary-Belle picked it up and the spider came to life.

  ‘Don’t be alarmed and keep still,’ said the voice through Mary-Belle as it clamped itself firmly on Dielle’s skull.

  ‘Oh, I’m not worried. I know it doesn’t hurt.’

  ‘No. You’ve only had a basic neural interface installed so far. This is a maximum-option stim unit designed to interface with every sensory brain receptor, autonomic system and motor neuron channel you have.’ She stepped back and gave him a pouting air kiss. ‘It hurts like hell.’

  Dielle screamed as a torrent of pain flooded his body. He felt as though he had been simultaneously dipped in molten lava, irradiated by a thermo-nuclear explosion, had all his teeth, nails and hair wrenched out and then had burning spikes driven into his eyes, ears, throat and testicles. He collapsed in agony. He had pain in parts of his body he hadn’t even known existed. Then, just as suddenly as the torture had started, it stopped and everything turned to pleasure. Intense pleasure. Too much pleasure. Painful pleasure. His brain lit up as every nerve ending told him it was being sucked by an angel. He simultaneously ejaculated, sneezed, belched and farted.

  He snorted. Then started giggling. Then he broke into uncontrollable laughter. He rolled around on the floor gasping for breath, unable to stop laughing until he was exhausted. Mary-Belle watched him patiently.

  ‘That,’ said Dielle, panting, ‘was the most amazing experience I have ever had!’

  ‘Yes it was. Now calm down. We need to finish the installation with some calibration and fine tuning.’

  ‘How do we do that?’

  ‘Well in your case, we’ll be needing one of these,’ said Mary-Belle, taking off her dress.

  Dielle looked at her naked body, unable to stifle his natural reaction until he realised what was about to happen.

  ‘But you’re a guy! I can’t do that knowing there’s a guy in the driving seat.’

  ‘You really are a fucking primitive, aren’t you?’ said the man. Mary-Belle switched to her natural voice. ‘And if it makes any difference, I am of neither sex and haven’t been so restricted for over three hundred of your Earth years. I am, also, an expert. Now lie down and let’s get this over with.’

  The floor below them yielded to their combined weight and moved to support every part of their now naked bodies. During the calibration, Dielle felt as though he was constantly phasing in and out of reality. Perhaps it was the psychoactive drugs The Man had told him were in the tea, but on several occasions he was sure he was actually inside Mary-Belle’s body, looking out at himself, experiencing the event from her perspective. He had no idea how long it lasted. He lost track of time and his own extremities while his body experienced pleasure sensations that sequentially tracked every contour of his anatomy. He entered a dream-like state in which he couldn’t tell where he ended and she started. This was like having sex in multiple dimensions. It was by far and away the best sex he had ever had. Eventually, neither his brain nor his body could take any more. He passed out.

  He awoke lying face up on the hissing lawn, feeling warm, happy and a little sore. He gazed dreamily at the clear blue, cloudless sky. Things seemed bigger in a way that he couldn’t put his finger on.

  [:This is your encrypted subchannel. Do not acknowledge. It is separate from SlabWide Integrated System. While your brain was in theta, it was trained to differentiate this channel from standard system calls:]

  Dielle understood. The thoughts had a different flavour.


  [:You will be made aware of any person in your vicinity who is on this channel via an :ID: interrupt. Any attempt to disclose this channel’s existence to someone who is not already on this channel will result in instant and irrevocable disconnection. Do not be confused about this. Everyone knows sub-legal channels exist but everyone also knows that if anyone says they are on one, they aren’t. Acknowledge:]

  {:Acknowledged:} That’s all I need, he thought: another voice in my head.

  [[•]]

  Argh!{[Accept]}

  [[‘Darling! Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick! Sis tells me you dropped off system almost three hours ago.’]]

  Er, thought Dielle, er . . . er . . . er . . .

  {:Where the hell have I been?:}

  [:You have been learning to play keys with Fingerz Marley in an UpSide offline Strip privacy room:]

  He told her.

  [[‘You’ve had a stim unit fitted without consulting me?’]] She sounded upset. Very upset. The kind of upset you can hear in someone’s voice when they are struggling to pretend that they are not upset, which makes it clear that they are very, very upset. Dielle didn’t need a memory to understand this, he just had to listen to his instincts. His instincts told him to get the hell home.

  Kiki was walking up to the vex when he arrived. Dielle noted, again instinctively, that she wasn’t armed. At least not in any obvious fashion. That, he felt instinctively, was a good sign.

  Unfortunately, instincts aren’t always reliable.

  ‘Who tuned it?’ she demanded, standing legs apart with her arms folded.

  ‘I dunno. Someone called The Man. Fingerz put me in touch with him but I didn’t even see him.’

  ‘I already know you’ve gone sub-legal, you cake. I mean, who was the live-thru?’ Kiki was trembling with barely-suppressed anger.

  Ah, thought Dielle. He knew that his next answer might be important. He realised that this could be a turning point in his relationship with the woman he loved. He even considered telling her the truth, but even though he was still very young and naïve, he wasn’t stupid.

  ‘I dunno. Just some woman. I can hardly remember her, it was all so sort of dreamy. I didn’t like her very much.’

  ‘Aaaarghh!’ Kiki screamed. Her hands were small shaking fists on the ends of rigid arms. ‘How could you do this to me?’

  Dielle moved toward her and tried to put his arms around her. ‘I’m sorry darling, I didn’t know what was going to happen. I thought I was just getting a type of upgrade to my eye. I didn’t even enjoy it.’

  ‘What a load of string!’

  {[~?]}

  [[Ms. Pundechan thinks you are being disingenuous in the extreme]]

  {[~?]}

  [[She just called you a liar]]

  ‘Honestly darling, she wasn’t anything compared to you.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Everyone has the time of their lives when they’re tuned in on their virgin stim. It’s when the q-sensory brain preceptors wake up for the first time. You’ll never feel like that again.’

  ‘I’m really, really sorry, I wish it could have been with you. I’m sure it would have felt so much better with you.’

  ‘With me? Are you joking?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you have any idea how many people have been bidding to be your first tune-in? Do you know how much we could have got for the sumecast alone, not to mention the stim recording of the whole event? Three hour’s worth! You crashsense cake! You have just thrown away the best part of twenty million bucks!’ She slumped down in a chair, holding her head. ‘Think Tiger. Think!’ she muttered.

  ‘What the fu . . . ?’

  ‘Shut up! Shut up! I’m in conference!’

  Dielle stared at her for a moment. Shutting up seemed like a very good idea. He needed a drink. A Rat 5. Then he needed another.

  An hour and a half later she joined him as he was catching up on the war. There was big news: the new gigaplat had failed to arrive. Incredibly, the enemy had cracked the Navy’s communications encryption protocols and established an impenetrable defensive shield in the ship’s path. News channels had wild-eyed cryptographers bickering with each other about the impossibility of breaking the codes and at least one shockcaster had accused the Unkos of espionage. Chaos and confusion reigned on the new battlefront which had advanced 100,000 klicks. Admiral Massive had even called up the home guard. Slab was buzzing as members of the Auxiliary Defence Combat Units raced home to log on and fight. One sume had a live feed of two I.P. futures traders who had switched their terminals to offensive mode and were engaged in a thrilling high-speed fire fight while their colleagues crowded round, shouting advice and cheering. Their weapons officer, a kinderfarm teacher in a zone61 nursery, took out an enemy cruiser as it momentarily flashed into visibility off their port wing. It was intense. Dielle had to lower his drink ratings so he could follow a multi-channel sume of the battle. He’d completely forgotten about his latest screw-up until he saw Kiki’s face. He cancelled the sume.

  ‘OK,’ she said, accepting the drink he offered. ‘We have a plan. I’ve arranged strict sub-rosa on everything that happens for the next few hours but, for now, it’s essential that no-one knows you already have a stim unit.’

  ‘Fingerz knows.’

  ‘His silence is already bought and paid for. He won’t publish. In fact he seemed rather keen not to have anyone know he has any connections with your sub-legal. This Man of yours must be a heavyweight Unko.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘The first thing we’re going to do is eat. I’m starving. Let’s go to Jenny’s.’

  ‘Oh! Er . . . Um.’

  Kiki strode toward a swiftly opening window. ‘Oh, and by the way, while you were getting screwed, so was I.’

  Dielle scurried after her. ‘What?’

  ‘By an interholo called Louie?’

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘I can’t believe you and he are the same person.’

  ‘Neither can I. I hope he wasn’t too hard on you.’

  ‘Let’s just say we re-negotiated a deal that is significantly improved for you but not so tough as to be disincentivising for me.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I guess that what you may have just thrown away on my behalf is considerably less than before we re-negotiated.’

  ‘And that’s good, right?’

  Kiki stopped. She turned to look at him and shook her head. ‘Unbelievable.’

  Mary-Belle greeted them with the same smile as always. Dielle looked closely into the eyes of the woman whose body he had recently had the pleasure of in every possible intimate detail. There was no sign, not the slightest recognition, that she was aware of their connection although he did see her eyebrow twitch just a fraction at exactly the moment he received an [:ID:] for her.

  Kiki and Mary-Belle exchanged familiar greetings before they were led to a booth which was already surrounded by an opaque privacy field. Two men were waiting for them inside. Dielle queried Sis but their identities had been embargoed.

  ‘What we are about to do is break the fifth wall,’ she told him as they sat down inside the field. ‘These are two of my most trusted employees who you will know as . . . ’ She nodded at them.

  ‘It is a real and unexpected honour,’ said the first one, smiling and putting out a hand for Dielle to shake. ‘Like, really unexpected. Just call me Jim.’

  ‘OK, Jam then,’ said the other one.

  ‘Dude, that’s not even a real name,’ said Jim. ‘Can’t you come up with something better than that?’

  ‘You’re the fucking writer. You come up with a better one,’ said Jam, who was clearly not in the sunniest of moods.

  ‘Where’s our editor?’ asked Kiki impatiently. ‘Wasn’t he supposed to come down with you two?’

  ‘He’s been sorting out the mask to cover the dropouts,’ said Jam. ‘ETA one point two.’

  ‘Editor? Writer?’ said Dielle, hopeful of further
enlightenment.

  ‘Dielle,’ said Kiki in a businesslike tone. ‘These are some of the people who work on your sumecast. Cli . . . Jam here is the executive director. He’s ultimately responsible for everything that goes out to the sumers.’

  Jam nodded at Dielle and looked sour.

  ‘In order to maintain the authenticity that is so crucial to the success of our sume, we have certain rules. One of these rules is that you never break the invisible walls. Never. One invisible wall is the fourth wall between you and the audience. You never let them know that you know they are watching – or they will lose all interest. Then the whole thing just falls apart. We will maintain the fourth wall at all costs.

  ‘The other invisible wall is the wall between you and your crew. You should never acknowledge they are there, let alone know who they are. So you need to listen to what we’re going to tell you and you need to forget completely who told it to you and why. OK?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Don’t guess. Just ask if you are unsure. From this point in, don’t assume a single thing.’

  Without warning, the strangest looking human Dielle had ever seen invaded their privacy field. He had three independently acting eyes, two huge, fan-like ears and four extra arms growing from his chest.

  ‘You’re late,’ said Kiki. ‘Your name is Ed.’

  Ed looked around as he sat down. And when Ed looked around, he really looked around.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said to a wide-eyed Dielle, sticking out a middle hand for him to shake. It looked and felt human. ‘Man I am starving! I ordered on the way down here. What’s everyone having?’

  ‘Couldn’t you have dumped the freakshow?’ said Jam, ‘You know he hasn’t seen this stuff yet.’

  ‘Yeah . . . Ed,’ said Jim, ‘We’re going to lose the surprise gag when he meets his first prosthete now.’

  ‘Fuck!’ said Ed, waving all six arms around. ‘Stick a fucking splain up my ass and I’ll re-synch the sensurround while I’m at it. I’ve been assembling an entirely believable three and half hours of mildly interesting sume while you guys have been blowing airies! I didn’t have the time to uninstall all this stuff.’ He reached up and with a squelching noise pulled his central eye out of its socket. The raw indentation left behind healed immediately to leave his remaining two eyes just a little further apart than normal. They swivelled around once and locked into synchronisation. He took a small round box out of one of his pockets. The top irised open and he carefully placed the third eye into the bioment and watched it seal. ‘There. Is that better?’