The Song of Synth

by Seb Doubinsky

  He had tried the Napoleonic wars. The Egyptian Campaign. Impressive. He had been in the French artillery. A massacre, they had performed. Thrilling. Camels blown to pieces. Quite a show.

  He had been killed very fast, though. Short lived fun.

  Still, the uniforms had been fabulous. Not to mention the Pyramids and the Sphinx, in the distance.

  When he finally spotted her, she was sitting on a bench, right by the entrance to the subway. The most beautiful cars passed her but she didn’t seem to notice, although he did.

  She had chosen an eighteenth century dress.

  It almost matched his nineteenth century English naval officer suit.

  She waved as she spotted him, but didn’t stand up.

  “Hello there, Gloria!” he said. “Wonderful weather tonight.”

  She smiled as he sat next to her.

  “At least we can’t feel the drops. That’s a plus.”

  “That’s Erewhon®.”

  He studied her face. She had cut her black hair short and her blue eyes wore no makeup. She looked strangely calm and beautiful.

  Gloria. His only serious flirt in five years. Only virtual, of course, but it made things easier. The masks were a protection against lies. The avoidance of eye contact. The queasiness in the bottom of the stomach. The phone numbers erased in the contact list. What do you do for a living? Are you Cash or Credit? Do you love children? Nothing like that with Gloria. She was a wonderful reminder of his loneliness. He had often asked Synth to recreate her in various erotic fantasies. Her avatar had the perfect body. Neither too fat or too thin. It was very realistic actually, quite different from most of the Barbie dolls you could see strolling around. He had himself chosen a Mulatto avatar, with green eyes. Why? Why not? She had never commented on that. And why should she? She was Gloria. She didn’t care. That’s why he liked her.

  They sat next to each other, in silence, their shoulders slightly touching. Thanks to Synth he could feel her warmth through the fabric.

  If I could only read thoughts. With Synth, maybe. He tried. Saw only code lines. Jumbled. Meaningless, like a madman’s alphabet.

  “So,” he finally said. “What do you want to do? A movie? They’re showing Elric at the Kino.”

  From the way she shook her head, Markus knew something was wrong. She wasn’t the usual Gloria, although he was his usual sorry self.

  “We won’t be seeing each other any more, Orlando.”

  The news took time to connect, because Synth was screening for bad emotions. Suddenly he could feel the heavy cold raindrops on his shoulders. Suddenly he remembered he was sitting naked in front of his computer.

  “How do you mean?” he asked, looking at her sad face.

  “I’m getting married,” she said, not looking at him.

  Synth scrambled to protect him. Markus denied.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” he said, as much to himself as to her.

  She didn’t move, didn’t look at him.

  Markus was really freezing now.

  “Why?” he finally asked, feeling stupid.

  “My fiancé—he wants me all to himself. I told him about this place, about you. It wasn’t a good idea.”

  “This sounds like the start of a nineteenth century melodrama, Gloria.”

  She didn’t answer, instead her pixels floated around as if propelled by a strange wind.

  “I’m going to miss our conversations,” he said, thinking he would be missing much more than that.

  “I don’t want to stop coming here, but I have to. I have no choice. Maybe after the marriage and all, I can come back. Maybe he’ll understand. But he’s very conservative. You know the type.”

  Markus didn’t, but nodded all the same.

  The whole situation seemed completely ridiculous—two cartoon characters saying goodbye to each other—but it hurt all the same. He remembered all the good times their avatars had shared and Synth began to overlay memories like in a beautiful film. The conversations. The movies. The walks in Erewhon®’s parks and open spaces. It was corny, but right now corniness was perfect. A refuge. A good way to keep from crying like a moron.

  Gloria stood up and abruptly disappeared. It was the first time she had ever left without a goodbye, a kiss or a wave of the hand. Markus stared at the depressingly real emptiness of the virtual bench.

  *

  The night welcomed him again. It wasn’t surprised. It was accustomed to his routines by now.

  I must find a refuge. My heart needs a golden cradle. Its crown has been tipped and I need to repair my orb.

  Alcohol whispered through the neon signs. Familiar notes, like a distant melody, a flute in the mountains. He couldn’t stay home. He hadn’t felt so alone in a long, long time. In a country far, far away. Synth produced mirages of distant cities. Markus wanted sunshine. He got Samarqand, with its beautiful golden walls. The vision was so striking he had to stop and contemplate the majestic glass buildings reflecting the sun in every direction.

  Samarqand.

  The Evil Empire, along with Ur, Persepolis, Palenque and Shanghai City.

  He wondered why Synth had chosen Samarqand for him. It came from deep down inside him, no doubt. Subconscious fears and desires, all rolled into one. Perfect image. Or was it a metaphor? With Synth it was impossible to know. Always the obscure poet.

  Samarqand.

  He stayed a while longer, trying to think what he would have done if this hadn’t been a mirage. Walked into the city, visited the famous Temudjin mausoleum, drank mint tea. A subtle warm and sweet taste filled his mouth, drowning his tongue in saliva.

  Tourism.

  Not for him, any more. The ankle bracelet weighed nothing but pressed down his life like a sixteen ton safe. Mobility: the radius of Viborg City. Period.

  What period?

  What period would you like to live in?

  Synth, the eternal joker.

  Markus stopped at the corner of Himmerlandsgade. Gloria’s virtual face continued to haunt him. In love with an avatar. How ridiculous. But the last ten years had been tough, emotionally. Karen had never contacted him and he had been unable to locate her.

  Markus quickly realized it was hard to date wearing a security anklet. Most girls distrusted him immediately, especially when he wouldn’t tell them why he was wearing it. He couldn’t. He had signed papers. Couldn’t disclose his job either. Otherwise, he would go back to jail for life. That was what you got for hacking into military satellites. Especially during a war. He was lucky not to have been condemned to death. That’s what his lawyer had told him, after the trial. Markus hadn’t thought about that. And he was sure neither Ole or Nick had. Youth. Bad craziness. Idiocy. Politics. Blindfold.

  Metal Thunder Operation.

  Hacking into war satellites, to render them useless.

  It made the Potemkin Crew famous overnight.

  It was also the beginning of their hell. The five satellites had self-destructed. Billions of dollars vaporized. Man-made supernova. Synth stirred at the reference, illuminating the sky.

  He still didn’t know how the police had tracked him down. Karen screaming in the bathroom. It had only taken them a few days . . .

  Then they’d had their psychological fun with him and when they told him Karen would get the same treatment, as an “accessory to plotting against the state,” he had given the others’ names. As simple as that.

  An accessory. Indeed. She hated computers. She considered them socially dangerous and emotionally disturbing. Her father had been a programmer for some high-tech corporation. A cold, distant man who only warmed up when he talked about zeroes and ones. Never a kiss or a hug. Only his back visible in his study, his back turned on his wife and daughter, his face eaten by the screen. His death was a relief. Stupid aneurism of the brain. Of course? Of course. Wires of the body gone bad. Karen’s mother put the computer into the garbage can, to the dismay of the corporation. Apparently he had been working on ground-breaking projects and they wanted th
e hard-disk. They even offered money. Her mother told them to go to hell or go search the city’s garbage dump. Ground-breaking, maybe. Heart-breaking, that was for sure. So Karen hated computers. But she loved him anyway. And he’d put her through this ordeal—because of computers. Again.

  Now he was free—working for Sørensen under an assumed name—and the others were in jail for the next thirty years.

  A traitor, just like in any classic story.

  Congratulations, you’ve been added as a character.

  Markus closed his eyes in self-disgust and shivered in the cold night. He buried his hands in the pockets of his vest, opened his eyes again and moved on. Neon billboards decorated the streets, announcing Christmas. Viborg City would thrive soon, all wrapped up in shimmering paper.

  Another reason to feel lonely.

  He remembered why he was out. Depression. Looking for a friend in this indifferent city. He thought about Dr. Sojo, but he’d already seen him today and he didn’t want to make the man suspicious. He knew how paranoid Dr. Sojo was—and with reason. Markus thought about the pills hidden in a legit medicine bottle.

  A friend. Could he be so desperate?

  Yes.

  Yes, he certainly could.

  Then Synth helped him. It showed him a beautiful library, with hundreds of books crammed onto shelves. The sun shone through a glass roof, like a golden waterfall. The library looked ancient or middle European. Old men peered closely at titles—the leathery skin of their noses merging with leather spines—or leafed through books silently, half-hidden in the shadows.

  That was why he loved Synth so much. It could really find the perfect image hidden deep in the subconscious and help you understand things from a different perspective.

  Yes, books were definitely friends. Like music. But he needed the weight of a good book in his hands now. Right now. He wasn’t far away from Books and Wonders, the cultural superstore, but he knew what downloads they had in stock. More precisely, he knew what they didn’t have.

  They only carried bestsellers and classics with the academic seal of approval, not real literature.

  No freaky, accidental, strangely assembled narrations.

  Only well groomed stories, to please the majority of readers.

  Not the stuff he liked, in any case.

  Viborg City cared for its citizens. They shouldn’t read n’importe quoi.

  Some days Markus was tempted to throw away his PersoReader—he hadn’t downloaded a single good book in years. Books and Wonders and its rival, Beautiful Pages carried the same titles. Exactly. Democracy at its best. The only difference was the title being promoted that month.

  The Academy of Writers thought it fair and their monthly checks and royalties supported that belief. After all, to become a life member of the Academy, you had to have sold at least ten thousand books—and ten thousand readers couldn’t be wrong.

  It was the same for music and art, with only subtle variations for their trades.

  Viborg City was very proud of its commitment to supporting the arts. After all, in Babylon and Petersburg, artists starved. In Samarqand, they were killed, or so the media said—it was difficult to know the truth about the enemy.

  Here they were published and protected.

  Many writers and artists actually immigrated to Viborg City because of this situation. Little did they know about the inescapable “ten thousand readers” condition.

  As a consequence just as many of them emigrated from Viborg City for the very same reason.

  *

  The Forgotten Shelf Bookstore was empty, as usual. After all, it was only ten o’clock and most of the aficionados only came in after eleven. A strong smell of mint tea pervaded the shop. It reminded him of a Zoran Zivcovic novel. The place was a chaos of books piled up in apparent randomness, their dusty covers shining bleakly under a single 60 watt light bulb.

  Real books.

  Not digital downloads to your personal reader, with nothing tangible or real about them.

  Not ten virtual pages generously given as bait, killing your eyes as you try to read.

  No, genuine pages to actually skim through.

  Amazing.

  Markus heard a shuffling sound and Carlo, the owner, appeared from a back room, holding a steaming mug decorated with black and white photograph of a twenty year old Thomas Pynchon.

  “Hello! What can I do for you today?” Carlo asked, blowing softly over the hot surface of his drink.

  Carlo was a short and bulky man in his late forties, with a face that could be anything from Armenian to Italian, Jewish, Spanish, Portuguese or even Maltese—or a mixture of all the above. He never smiled, although his eyes did squint with glee once in a while. Tonight he wore a shapeless red sweater, large velveteen pants over torn slippers and he had covered his shaven head with a black, SAS commando woolen cap.

  “Nothing much. I need a book.”

  “Don’t we all? But so few know it.”

  “Anything you can recommend?”

  Markus noticed a hardback standing like a roof on Carlo’s desk, next to the credit card machine.

  “What are you reading yourself?”

  Carlo’s eyes darted towards his desk and he sniffed noisily.

  “A strange book. A novel sort of. Hard to figure out. The Gardens of Babylon. Published in Petersburg, illegal in Babylon. That’s a first edition, signed of course.”

  “Would I like it?”

  Carlo’s eyes glared into his, squinting.

  “You would love it. Or hate it. But it’s expensive. And I haven’t finished it yet.”

  “So that settles it, I guess?”

  Carlo nodded and carefully placed his mug on a pile of books.

  “What mood are you in?” he asked Markus, making his way carefully between the waist-high paperback skyscrapers that crowded the little shop.

  “Heartbroken.”

  “Then it’s either Maggie Cassidy, if you want to feel profoundly and intelligently miserable or Quiet Days in Clichy if you want to pull out of it.”

  Markus thought for a minute, letting Synth decide. The store turned into a Paris street, with cobblestones reflecting the sunshine. A woman was standing at the corner, clenching her coat around her in the cold April weather. Carlo was there, watching her while he opened his store.

  Markus walked up to her.

  She was not as young as he had first thought, her long face bore the marks of a hard life. Black half-circles shadowed her cheeks right under her beautiful brown eyes, making her cherry-red mouth look even more appealing. Her black hair was bobbed, and slightly disheveled, as if she had hurried out of her home.

  “C’est combien?” he asked in French. How much?

  She looked at him and flashed a weary smile. Her teeth were yellow, but regular and her breath smelled slightly of wine.

  “Cent francs la gâterie, deux cents francs le plat du jour.” One hundred for a snack, two hundred for the whole dish.

  Markus felt the bills in his pocket. Gloria’s face hung in front of him like a ghost.

  “I want to pull out of it,” he told Carlo.

  Carlo handed him the book.

  Three. Region

  Markus sat in his comfortable office-chair, gazing vacantly beyond the computer screen, his brain paralyzed with images.

  Karen.

  Memories came back like pictures falling out of frames. Why was he suddenly thinking of her? Why had she risen from the icy waters of the Styx like a resurrected Ophelia?

  Karen screaming in the bathroom.

  He’d tried to leave her out of the hacking operation, out of the Potemkin Crew’s secret business. But she was his girlfriend, after all and, of course, she’d met Ole and Nick. She’d heard them conspire in half-voices. Hell, they shared a one bedroom flat! So sorry for her now. So sorry about the bathroom, the pain, all that.

  He focused on the screen and the lists beside the keyboard. New assignments: Hacking suspects, credit card frauds, peer-to-peer site us
ers. He had a dirty job to get done.

  But Karen walked in and sat next to him.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, sounding genuinely interested.

  That was what was so great about her. Her interest.

  She had loved him.

  He looked at her and shrugged.

  “Work.”

  That was what he had always answered.

  “You don’t want to elaborate?”

  She was wearing a tight black t-shirt and white panties. Just like that day. He could see the fine hairs on her thighs shining under the neon light. She crossed her legs and leaned against him to look at the screen. Her body was warm and reassuring. They were in their old one-room, kitchen, shower-toilet, low-rent apartment. A feeling of security. He wondered for a second if Synth was building all this, then laughed.

  Who else?

  Karen put her hand on his shoulder, caressing him absent-mindedly.

  “It’s a list of numbers,” she said. “With letters mixed in. Is it a program?”

  Such familiar words.

  She hated computers, but she loved him.

  He nodded and shook his head.

  “Sort of. It’s a tracking program.”

  He looked at her. Her beautiful eyes widened in surprise.

  “A tracking program? Who are you tracking?”

  “A hacker.”

  The word had a metallic ring in his mouth. He noticed it as he spoke. Apparently, so had she.

  “A hacker? I thought you were one yourself.”

  The office materialized briefly. He pushed Synth a little further and the old apartment surfaced again.

  “Well, yes. I was. You know that now. But . . .”

  She was still looking at him, her lips pursed, waiting for him to go on. Her heavy breasts fought against the black fabric of her t-shirt, he wanted to fondle them but the burning in his eyes made him stop. No need to go insane. Not right now, anyway. He knew what would happen with Synth if his mind strayed into erotic reverie. That was the curse of Synth: turning good things into unbearably good things.

  “But what?”

  Typical Karen. Would not let go.

  “What?” she insisted.

  There was a knock on the door and Markus jumped. He turned off Synth as much as he could and took a deep breath. The knocking resumed, louder this time.