by Cadigan, Pat
Taliaferro clicked off without replying. Konstantin turned to Guilfoyle Pleshette, who was yawning hugely and noisily. ‘Like I told you before,’ the manager said between the end of one yawn and the beginning of the next, ‘he came in alone, and if he talked to anybody besides me or Mezzer, I didn’t notice.’
‘Yes, I remember. What I was going to ask was, do you do much AR?’
‘Sure,’ Pleshette said, surprised. ‘The employee discount here’s great.’
‘You spend much time in post-Apocalyptic Noo Yawk Sitty?’
Now the manager shrugged and looked almost coy. ‘I guess I been known to. You gotta scan rated zones because when you get a virgin in, you have to be able to talk about what you know when they ask you about this zone and that zone. I say that’s the difference between a quality business and a ditch.’
Konstantin nodded absently. Once a place became too popular, no one would admit to wanting to go there, even in AR. ‘And Body Sativa? Do you know about her?’
‘Everybody knows about her, but not as many really seen her as say so.’ Pleshette sounded wary again, as if she thought Konstantin were trying to trap her into admitting something.
‘But you have. Haven’t you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Okay.’ Konstantin hesitated. ‘Think you could introduce me?’
‘Of course not.’ Pleshette drew back, offended.
‘I didn’t think so, but it was worth a try.’
‘Hey, what you got to understand here is that anyone who knows Body and drags along every prole that wants to see her won’t know her for too long.’
‘I guess I can understand that. Suppose I go in and find her myself?’
Pleshette stared at her. ‘You think you’re that good right out of the box?’
‘Well, one of your employees offered me some secret insider icons. Whatever those are.’
The manager straightened up, thrusting her head forward. ‘Is that so? Who made this great offer?’
‘The bored one. Mezzer.’
‘Oh, him.’ Pleshette tossed her head. ‘You can find his so-called secret insider icons in the index of any on-line guidebook. I got stuff you can really get around with.’
Konstantin smiled tiredly. ‘Ah, but will you loan any to me?’
The funny little face looked doubtful. ‘What’re you gonna do with them if I do?’
Konstantin shrugged. ‘All I want to do is find this Body Sativa and ask her some questions.’
‘What kinda questions?’ the night manager asked suspiciously.
Now Konstantin felt as if she had fallen through a rabbit hole in time that had sent her back to the beginning of the situation, which she would have to explain all over again. ‘Questions having to do with the kid who died here tonight – Shantih Love, Tomoyuki Iguchi, whichever you knew him as.’
‘I told you, I didn’t know him as anybody,’ said Pleshette, looking at Konstantin as if she were an idiot. Konstantin felt like screaming. ‘And there’s no guarantee that Body Sativa did, either. But if that’s all you really want to do – I mean, all – I can load some stuff for you. But you got to promise me, you won’t misuse any of it.’
‘Misuse it how?’ Konstantin asked.
‘Poaching.’
Konstantin had to take a breath. ‘And what exactly would poaching entail?’
‘Getting stuff you’re not entitled to get, and taking credit for stuff you didn’t do or didn’t know. Shit like that.’
‘Getting stuff? In AR?’ Konstantin felt lost.
‘Yeah. Stuff in AR. In the Sitty. Everyone who goes in regular’s got stuff in AR.’ The night manager folded her arms again. ‘What kinda stuff you think I got out here? This nothing job? I got to put up with blowfish like Miles Mank, I live in a hive over on Sepulveda. But in the Sitty, I got stuff. I got a good place for myself, I’m in the game with the name and the fame. I even got myself a few passwords. I put in plenty of time and sweat to get all that and I don’t want it just slipped out from under me when I’m not there to defend it.’ The funny little face puckered unhappily. ‘You got stuff out here, you don’t need to go poachin’ my stuff in there. You see what I mean?’
Konstantin saw; it sent a wave of profound melancholy through her. ‘All I want to do is contact Body Sativa if I can,’ she said kindly. ‘I don’t want anything else. Really.’
Pleshette held her gaze for a long moment and then shrugged her bony shoulders. ‘Yeah, well, you know, it’s not like I can’t tell the difference between in there and out here, it’s not like I think I can put it all in the bank or anything. But I put a lot of time in. I spent some big sums doin’ it. If I give it all away, then I got nothing. It was all for nothing. See?’
Konstantin nodded, wondering if this was the sort of thing a person might kill for. It was beginning to sound that way.
Guilfoyle Pleshette found a clean hotsuit in Konstantin’s size and helped her put it on, giving her a flurry of instructions in her little cartoony voice. Konstantin felt silly, even though she knew this was really like any other information-gathering operation, except it was more like using the telephone. Unless what happened to the kid happened to her, she thought uneasily.
Tim Mezzer made good on his promise to supply icons and loaded the file into the headmount for her. ‘All you have to do is ask for your icon cat,’ he said, sounding just a little less bored. ‘And if you’re not sure which icon to try, ask for advice.’
Konstantin was mystified. ‘Who am I supposed to ask?’
‘The icons,’ he said, looking at her as if she should have known this. ‘They all have their own help files attached. But I gotta tell you, they’re all pretty idiosyncratic there. You know how it is. What some people call help.’
Konstantin thought of the filing system back at headquarters and nearly backed out. After Pleshette loaded her own information, she took Konstantin to one of the deluxe cubicles – deluxe because it was half again as large as the one where the kid had died, and included an easy chair. She helped Konstantin get comfortable in it, fastened the straps just tightly enough to keep her from falling if she got overly energetic, and fitted her headmount for her. Konstantin tried to thank her, but the headmount muffled her too well. She felt more than heard the woman leave the room. Fear rippled through her briefly but intensely; anyone could come in and do anything to you while you were immobilized with your head as good as buried, and you’d never know it until too late. If then.
The screen lit up with a control panel graphic. She turned on the log, which was an independent operation with only an on-off access, so she’d have her own record that, if necessary, she could prove had not been tampered with. Funny, she thought, how the first thing anyone had to do with taped evidence was prove that it hadn’t been toasted.
The control panel graphic disappeared and the screen showed her the configuration menu. She made her choices – sighting graphic and help line on request – while the ’suit warmed up. This was a full coverage ’suit, she realized, suddenly uncomfortable with the idea. She hadn’t given that any thought ahead of time and it was too late to do anything about it now. Besides, in a place like this, they were probably all full-coverage ’suits. Full-coverage would be the big attraction. As if to confirm her thoughts, a hotsuit ad replaced the configuration menu.
Because if you’re not going to feel it all over, murmured a congenial female voice while a hotsuit, transparent to show all the sensors, revolved on the screen, why bother? Which, Konstantin thought, wasn’t such an unreasonable question.
The headmounted monitor adjusted the fine-tuning for her focal length by showing her the standard introduction in block letters on a background of shifting colors. Konstantin sighed impatiently. So much introductory material with the meter running – she could see the clock icon tagging along at the upper edge of her peripheral vision on the right side. You probably couldn’t go broke operating a video service, she thought, unless you tried real, real hard.
The sign c
ame up so suddenly that it took a second to register on her, and even then she wasn’t sure right away whether she was really seeing it, or imagining it. Seeing in AR felt strangely too close to thinking.
WELCOME TO THE LAND OF ANYTHING GOES
Here There Are No Rules
Everything Is Permitted
Uh-huh, thought Konstantin. The words faded out; more faded in.
You can choose to be totally anonymous
You can tell the whole truth about yourself
You can tell only lies
The word lies lingered as the others disappeared, flashing on and off in different colors before it evaporated.
No real crime is possible In Here. If you do something Out There as a result of events In Here, you are on your own. In the event of your persona’s virtual death, you can request to be directed to central stores, where you can identify with another. The time used in choosing a new persona or performing any reference or maintenance task is not free, though a reduced rate may be available through your parlor operator, or through special promotions. Consult the rate file in your personal area for more information.
Konstantin looked around for a speed-scroll option.
No speed-scroll option is available for this portion of your first session. State and federal law specifically declare that all users must be advised of conditions in the gaming area. By reading this, you agree that you understand the structure and accept any charges, standard and/or extra, that you will incur at your point of origin. Closing your eyes will only result in a full rescroll of the introductory material, at your own expense.
Blink rate and eye movements could reveal a great deal about a person’s thoughts, Konstantin remembered uneasily, especially when used in conjunction with vital signs.
This concludes the introductory material. The next screen will be your destination menu. Bon voyage, and good luck.
The screen that came up showed her four doors labeled Post-Apocalyptic Noo Yawk Sitty, Pre-Millennial Hong Kong, Post-Quake Ellay, and Others.
A small bright icon appeared at the bottom right corner of her visual field, a graphic of a hand twisting a doorknob. Just below it, on the status line, was the word Cue! Feeling awkward, she reached for the Noo Yawk Sitty door and saw a generic white-gloved hand moving toward the knob. As the hand touched the knob, she felt it in her own hand, the sensors delivering a sensation to the palm side of her fingers that surprised her with its intense authenticity. It was more like touching a doorknob than actually touching a doorknob.
The next moment was a flash of chaos, a maelstrom of noise and light, countless touches and textures everywhere at once, over before she could react to any of it. Under her feet, she could hear the scrape of the gritty glitz, the glitzy grit of post-Apocalyptic Noo Yawk Sitty; she could see the sparkle and glitter of it spread out before her – not Eliot’s etherized patient awaiting dissection but a refulgent feast for her reeling senses.
HINT: In case of disorientation, amp your ’suit down and wait at least thirty seconds before attempting movement. Closing your eyes could result in vertigo. This message will be repeated as necessary.
She thought she might have made some kind of relieved noise as she stared at the setting marked decrease. In a few moments, all the settings on the ’suit had been re-adjusted to a more bearable level. Whoever had had this ’suit on last, she thought, had either been extremely jaded or suffering from some kind of overall sense impairment. Both, maybe.
Now that she could perceive her surroundings without being assaulted by them, Konstantin was dismayed to find that she didn’t seem to be anywhere near where Shantih Love had died. Instead, she was standing at the edge of an open area in the midst of a crowd of tall buildings festooned with enormous neon signs of a sort that had been popular seventy or eighty years before. Except for herself, there were no people, or at least none that she could see, and no sound except for a faint hum that might have come from the signs, or from some distant machine. Or possibly even some loose connection in the headmount, she thought sourly. It would be just her luck.
The buildings were dark, showing the scars of fires, bullets, and explosions, broken-out windows gaping like empty eye-sockets, but the signs were brilliant, impossibly vivid with shifting colors that melted and morphed like living ropes of molten light. There were no words that she could make out, only symbols that fell short of meaning anything to her. Somehow, though, that made the sight all the more captivating; she felt compelled to study every line, every bend and curve of every image, and finally managed to force herself to look away.
She was still feeling half-hypnotized when she saw a silvery figure standing in one of the open doorways. At first, she thought it was someone wearing – pretending to wear, she corrected herself – a skintight bio-suit but then the figure moved forward and she saw that its skin was the same color as the clothes it wore. The figure moved closer and she had to amend her perceptions: the figure was the same color as its clothing.
‘New in town?’ it sang, approaching with careful movements.
‘Maybe,’ she said, taking a step back.
‘Oh, you’re new, all right.’ The figure, which began to look more like it was made of mercury or chrome, gestured at something behind her. Konstantin turned to look.
The sight of the completely hairless and sexless creature in the dark glass made her jump; then she cringed with embarrassment. Since she had not chosen a persona, she was wearing a place holder. Her gaze darted around as she searched for the exit icon.
‘It’s not necessary to leave,’ the silvery figure said in its musical voice. Now that it was right next to her, Konstantin could see it was a sort of animated sculpture of a very tall and very young woman seemingly formed from softened platinum. Or something like it. ‘Pull down Central Stores and choose Wardrobe. Then just follow the directions.’
‘Oh. Thank you so much.’ Feeling awkward, Konstantin stuck out her hand. ‘I’m, uh, Dore. And you’re right. I’m new here.’
The silvery girl seemed unaware of her extended hand. ‘I am a pop-up-help-and-guide subroutine keyed to respond to situations and types of situations most often identified with new users of AR and/or post-Apocalyptic Noo Yawk Sitty. I am also available on request. Pull down Help and ask for Sylvia.’
Konstantin started to thank her again but the girl pointed at something behind her. She turned around and found herself standing at a shiny white counter. The words TOUCH HERE FOR ASSISTANCE faded in on its surface, going from pale pink to blood red and back to pale pink before disappearing. Konstantin gingerly put a fingertip on the spot where she estimated the middle of the O in FOR had been.
‘Help you?’ said a hard-edged male voice. The short, plump man who appeared on the other side of the counter looked as if he were answering a casting call for a play about bank tellers in 1900. The green visor on his forehead cast a shadow that it made it hard to see anything of his eyes except reflected pinpoints of light.
‘Where’s the rest of your hat?’ Konstantin asked impulsively.
‘This is an eye-shade, not a hat,’ he replied, in that same sharp, almost harsh tone. ‘Its presence connotes items and equipment available to you in AR, some at a surcharge. Do you want to see a list: of items and equipment with their corresponding surcharges? These can also be itemized on the hardcopy printout of your receipt.’
‘I don’t know. Is a persona classified as an item or as equipment?’
‘Neither. A persona is a persona. Did you have someone in particular in mind or were you planning to construct one in here? Morphing services within AR are available for a surcharge. However, there is no extra charge if you have brought your own morphing utility with you. Except, of course, for any extra time that might be consumed by the morphing process.’
Konstantin found herself yawning. So far, her big AR adventure was turning out to be even more tiresome than the reality she was used to. ‘Does anybody really do anything in here besides listen to how much everything is costin
g them?’
‘First-time users are advised to take the orientation sequence. Usually in some location easier to navigate than a post-Apocalyptic scenario.’ His harsh voice sounded as bored as she felt.
‘I want out,’ she said. ‘Out of the whole thing, I mean. Exit. End it. Good-bye. Stop. Quit. Logging off. Is that enough or do I need a fucking thesaurus utility?’
Abruptly, she was staring at a blank illuminated screen. Her ’suit was in Suspend, she saw, but still active. Words began to crawl up the screen in a steady scroll.
Your time in your chosen AR location has been halted. Readings indicate a high level of tension and stress in a low-level situation. Generally this occurs when the user is confused or has not taken proper instruction in the use of AR. You may also be experiencing onset of an illness; you should seek the advice and, if necessary, treatment from a qualified health practitioner. It is also possible that you may be too fatigued to cope with an AR experience; if so, it is advisable that you terminate your on-line session and rest. In rare cases, AR has triggered episodes of psychomotor epilepsy or other seizure disorders in those persons who are susceptible or who may have ingested certain kinds of medications or drugs that put them at risk. Please be advised that although AR does not cause seizure disorders, it can cause the onset of symptoms of a pre-existing yet (until now) hidden disease. See your qualified health practitioner for advice and treatment. Do you wish to continue in AR, or do you wish to terminate the program and exit? Please choose one option and one option only.
She was about to tell it to terminate when she heard what sounded like a telephone ringing.
The words on the screen vanished and a new message appeared quickly, word by word. Realtime communication with you is being requested. Do you want to talk to the caller? Please answer yes or no.
‘Who is it?’ she asked automatically.
Secretarial services are extra.
‘Never mind,’ she groaned. ‘Put them on. I mean, yes.’