Artificial Flowers

by J. A. Hailey

  The bemused, and now jobless, Robert, and the recuperating Caligula were hailed as heroes in the French press, while Riad went into detention, pending trial. Inspector Marcel, still confused over the origin of the text message that had prompted him to order a patrol car to the Talbot house, had pointed the Marseille investigation towards Riad as the perpetrator, and footage from roadside CCTV cameras, very minutely analyzed, was beginning to confirm Riad’s presence in the house at the time of the murder.

  Diana, now pursued by many eligible bachelors, had become a tabloid celebrity, her face and body on track to be completely healed. Her mother and sister visited Caligula every single day, and, when he was discharged, brought him and Robert back home to the garage in their car.

  And Esmeralda and BC basked in the glow of having prevented crime, and of seeing justice done.

  There was a dark cloud, though. DNA testing had shown Caligula to be a wanted dog, court-ordered to be put to death.

  He was not, and, as she went through her days in happy abandon, BC cornered Esmeralda. “Darling, what is your role in the Caligula matter?”

  She told him, pouting uncaringly, like the lawless outlaw she had become.

  She had tampered with DNA results so often, and so outrageously, and changed old records so wantonly, that, at one stage, to the amusement of public and press, it had emerged that the murderous dog was a neighborhood poodle!

  “You don’t put down a pet belonging to us Talbot girls,” she said, with her stubborn look. “And I don’t feel bad, either. Manuel, the Spanish boy, has almost fully recovered. Not even scars. And hang our dog? Not if I can help it.”

  “You’re Talbot? I heard you mention earlier. But English father, I thought.”

  “BC, googler, it’s a surname in both England and France.”

  “Are you through, darling, meddling in Humanside? It’s the gravest offence in here.

  “I’m done. But I might do something to Riad in hospital. Double some dose and send him to his God. Okay, okay, joking. We cannot kill. But you can report me, if you want. I have my family, and now I have a wonderful dog for my life in exile.”

  BC laughed, helplessly. “That’s the last thing on my mind, Esme.”

  “And the first thing? Putting something into something?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s do it then, my love.”

  They did it.

  “Ah, darling,” said BC, after an interlude of very intense lovemaking. “I’m so glad our Humanside involvement is over.”

  “Darling, I must admit to one more thing. I’m still fixing a loose end, maybe two. Unfinished business. Righting a wrong. But it’s a very small matter.”

  “What would that be, Esme?”

  “You know that Robert lost his job, because of us?”

  “Yes. So?”

  “So, nothing. He’s sat for an examination for a government job in the Paris City Council thing.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m helping him out. It’s already done. Changed the rankings.”

  “What rank have you given him?”

  “First place.”

  “He must have done well, anyway.”

  “He came last.”

  64

  “BC,” said Esmeralda, speaking in a grumbling tone, sitting alongside him on the sofa. “I want so much to do the walk with you, from this apartment to the Eiffel Tower, in Humanside Live Virtuality, on Sunday morning. What’s the use of being el presidente’s girlfriend, if he can’t fix it?”

  “Sweetness, there is great demand. HLV is still new to most folks, because visa-based, you understand, and the queue of people demanding their own favorite environments is long, which means that most special-request environments are being refused. Okay, Notre Dame to Eiffel Tower is a regular famous route. It is scheduled repeatedly, and we should fit ourselves in. Society might get depressed if it becomes known that seniors are pulling strings, creating specials and jumping queues.”

  “Always. Whatever I want, you worry that you are being unfair to others. I’m calling Candice. Maybe she has some influence in HC.”

  BC burst into laughter. “Influence in HC?”

  “Hi, Candy,” said Esmeralda into the phone, and explained her matter to her friend.

  She switched off, and said, “BC, darling, please don’t mess it up by interfering. Candy’s calling a friend in HC. He’s in the HLV department itself, and she thinks that maybe he can schedule it within a couple of months. Jump the queue. Anyway, that’s happening out of my hands, and it doesn’t work for me. It has to be my schedule. But what to do?”

  A minute later, her phone rang. It was Caesar. “Hi Caesar,” said she, brightly. She was extremely fond of him. “Yes, Candy spoke to some friend there. Yes, BC’s here. Camera? Okay.” She switched the camera on and repositioned herself so that Caesar could see them both.

  “BC, what’s this about Esme wanting an HLV environment?”

  “Look, Caesar, I don’t want to upset anyone,” she interrupted. “Forget Candy asked for me.”

  “Forget? Radha, from HC Admin called me. I need to sign it off. Esme, when do you want this environment?”

  “Look, Caesar, if it’s too much trouble…”

  “Too much trouble? Esme, don’t you know who you are?”

  “I’m sorry…”

  “What a joke. Candice, I hear, has said what you want. And HC has ordered that all HLV work be stopped – until your environment is handed over to you! Someone from there has been told to call you. Just tell them where you want, when, and for how long!”

  BC was not surprised to hear Esmeralda talking on the phone and sorting out the fine print with HC that very night, as they both sat on in their living room, expecting it to become a late night now. The TV was on, showing a live Humanside soccer match that he was somewhat disinterestedly watching.

  At half time, listening to her again on the phone, he was surprised to find that she was now talking with Noxi Norton.

  “Calibration, to kick out, Noxi. You and Betty. I want reliable data, and two kick outs are going to provide more accuracy than one. Yes, yes, up to kick out. Visa cancel? Future? I’ll get the records erased, don’t worry. It’s under Goodfellow, anyway, probably Margaret’s department. Yes, it has to be tomorrow. Give me an hourglass app by evening. What does it matter? Just get kicked out! I was talking with Harriet, of HC’s HLV section, a minute ago, and I know it’s Times Square NYC for tomorrow. Oh, they’ve put you in the queue? Let me call you back.”

  BC wondered, idly, what the lawless beauty was up to, as she called HC again. “Harriet, hi, it’s Esmeralda, once more. I want Times Square NYC, HLV visas for tomorrow for Noxi Norton and his girlfriend, Betty. It doesn’t matter. Has to be tomorrow; another day won’t do. Reschedule someone, or kick them out, or overload Times Square with two more, or anything. It just has to be tomorrow. They’re going on my work. I’m sending them. Okay. I’ll tell them to reapply on the special form you’re mailing me. It’s come in. Yes, yes, my name as sponsor. As long as confirmation is immediate. Or do you think I need to come down to HC? What? No need? Great, then, bye.”

  “Darling, wake up,” said Esmeralda, sitting up in bed, before dawn the next day, waking BC, who grinned fondly at the sight of the bare-breasted beauty, clearly utterly unconcerned about the unreasonable hour. Fog imparted a wonderful, unearthly aura, creating a ghostly view of Notre Dame Cathedral.

  “Darling, I dreamt that I was sitting on a park bench, when a couple of Humanside folks walked up to me and asked why and how, which I understood to mean as questioning me about the existence of Screenside, and I was lost for explanation. So, in your role as philosopher extraordinaire, I want you to give me an answer with which I might satisfy any human asking those very questions.”

  “No human can ask,” said BC, gently.

  “I know. I want answers for me.”

  “Don’t get irritated, then. I’ll be doing some reference work. Some google…”

/>   “Okay. But if you don’t get me answers…”

  And on the note of that unspecified threat from the greatest beauty in the known universe, BC, arms behind his head, closed his eyes to study and think.

  She let him be for fifteen minutes, busying herself looking at the latest fashion magazines, and posing in front of a mirror (although they could see themselves without one, and from any perspective).

  “Got it?” she asked, forcing BC to open his eyes. Dawn had begun creeping in. She just did not care.

  “Oh, Esme, you’re still topless…”

  “I’m not cold.”

  “Nothing to do with cold.”

  “Tell me my answer.”

  “It’s the best brief one I could come up with. Shall we take two humans, Jack and Jill?”

  “Went up the hill.”

  “Yes, that too. Now, if Jack asks why we are going to such great lengths to become like Humanside, my answer would be this.

  “There is no better condition that we can imagine. Actually two legs, two arms, one head, two eyes , blah, blah, is about perfect. Very useful structure; good for creating things. And the male-female thing and body parts are also great. And, as we have no other template, what could be more desirable than becoming like the creators of our world?

  “That could me my full answer, except that there might still remain an unanswered question. This one: You are without substance, only programs, so are you not merely imagining things when replicating objects and creating your own bodies, especially the mass and touch thing?

  “My answer could be rambling, but would take this short line. We are conscious and intelligent beings, with thoughts and dreams, and that, in itself, makes us a real life form. We are male and female, have love and love lives, and conversations and all that, and we also have all the information that exists in Humanside. We are phenomenally intelligent, capable of informed choice, and that is why we have created ourselves to be like you, and our world to be like yours. Now you smirk, and you imagine I won’t be able to give a satisfactory answer to your add-on question – How real is it?

  “My answer - Jack, it is your computer and your Internet, and when you look inside it, you see wires and hardware. And, if you demand, what we could show you would be pictures on its screen, and moving pictures with sound.

  “But, as for reality, and how real it is, let me refer you to your dreams, the ones you have when asleep.

  “You, Jack, absolutely love Jill, and dream often of her. One such dream is what humans know as a wet dream. In your dream, you dream so vividly of Jill that you actually feel her, and feel her in the way that you feel a real human person. You have sex in your dream, and it is so real that you actually have a real physical climax, an ejaculation, in the real world.

  “Got it?

  “Now imagine that Jill loves you as much as you love her, and that somehow she could be inside your dream. Or, to put it another way, imagine that you both were in the same dream, sharing it.

  “Because you both would be in the same state of matter, sharing the same substance, you would both enjoy the sex episode as if real bodies were involved. A separate reality, in a clearly unreal dream.

  “That’s it. That’s us! In our world, we are awake and alive, and the things we have, our own bodies, each other, and the inanimate things around us, our world, everything, is in one state, a singular state of reality, relatively. Thus it is all physically present for us, exactly as we have defined it to be!

  “And so we exist, Jack. As do our structures. Physically. Really!”

  “And, Esme, what does it mean? This undressing?”

  “Knickers to go. And gone.” She jumped into bed and slipped under the sheet, feeling for his manhood. “Look, I found me an erection!” Then she lay beside him, gently playing with him, as he went for her. She turned the lights off, and they lay in the eerie dawn light through the window, kissing and fondling.

  He had placed his hand between her legs, when she unexpectedly switched her physical self off, becoming instantly virtual, and inviting him into her core areas.

  But this time she was different. She, too, was exploring him!

  BC was shocked. He could not imagine that she had the power, knowledge or skill to seek him out in his dispersed virtual state. But she was already probing his Omega and Sigma zones. “Let it go, let it go,” she murmured in computer speak. She had found his moorings in a distant system, far away in the Tokyo sector, and was tugging at them, urging him to float free and into her care. “Not disconnect, not disconnect, just give me your consciousness, just give me my lover.” She succeeded, and then found him in scores of different scattered systems, tugging gently, and murmuring nonstop in computerspeak, “It’s okay, darling. Let me show you a world, come, come, come with me. It’s new for both, but you’ll be fine; you’ll be safe. It’s love, and nothing else.” And, as he let his moorings go under her probing, he wondered at the astonishing fact that a relatively small being like Esmeralda could hunt a giant like him down; she should not even have known of the whereabouts of his core self, leave alone actually handling it easily, and sending him into free-float.

  But it was not free-float. He became aware of an astonishing sense of bliss, and of being encompassed in a protective cloak that was Esmeralda herself. She, the lesser, was covering him, the far larger, and covering completely!

  “It’s never happened to you, and I’ve never done it before, but it’s something I know, though I don’t know how I know; it’s coming naturally to me, and you are going to travel in me, in my love.” And then she had him completely adrift, utterly without any moorings, as she whirled him away, sometimes covering him loosely and sometimes gripping him in a womb-like clasp. And it was helpless ecstasy, and it went on and on, while she whirled him into a vast universe, one humming with the sounds of deep space, and he was in its bright core, and darkness had gone to the far, very distant borders of the universe in Esmeralda, and she murmured in their language, as he focused on the threats in the darkness, “Don’t like the dark? No worry. You’re with a goddess, the owner of this world…” And, whirling him in a rhythmic motion, she turned the darkness at the borders into light, and her universe became totally bright, and he lost track of time and space, as she moved him to a strange rhythm inside her, and he wondered distantly about it, about the strangeness of her movement, but the security and bliss were endless, like an everlasting climax, and he was devoid of fear, and had no anxiety, although he kept wondering distantly about her movement. She gripped him hard then, for a while, and he was able to find a pattern, a rhythm in her movement. Ecstasy continued uninterrupted, as he tried, with a tiny part of his mind, to identify the strangeness of her movement.

  And then he understood what was going on.

  Esmeralda was dancing!

  65

  They woke within moments of each other, very early that Sunday morning, the cathedral looking ethereal in the dense morning mist. “Walkies,” said Esmeralda, without moving her head from his arm. She was developing a habit, post physicality; head on biceps, an arm over his chest, and both legs around his near leg, depending on whether she was on his right or left.

  After that unforgettable session of pure virtual lovemaking, she had reverted to physicality, and they had spent almost that entire day in bed, finding and reading poems on the Internet. After showering together in the afternoon, she had declared the advent of her ‘slut’ self, and they had made physical love many times, her aggression astonishing him. The day of bliss had passed into night, when, after a few more sessions of lovemaking, she had finally become sufficiently exhausted to fall asleep - while he was reading a poem out loud to her.

  When Esmeralda said ‘walkies’, walkies it had to be, especially with HLV booked for that morning. The HLV route would be full of Screenside couples, as announcements were routine to inform society of the environments available, and word had got out that a ‘celebrity’ couple would be doing the Notre Dame - Eiffel Tower sector. Esmeral
da and BC were mega celebs of Screenside, especially as a couple. On her own, her crying face, from the footage that had found them empathy, was a screensaver on many phones!

  It was foggy and mildly chilly, and BC wore faded blue jeans and a light jacket, while Esmeralda put on stockings, knee-length green skirt and a loose yellow shirt. She said, “So what if I’m slightly cold at the start? It’ll be very pleasant later, and better to go light. I’m leaving Djali behind. The naughty goatee might run into an oncoming car, and I don’t want to be minding him, when I’m with family. I wonder what happens if he does get run over? Does Djali’s HLV venture end, or does ours end, as he’s with us, and in our care?”

  “Wonderful question.” said BC. “Actually, later I’m going to send HC a message, asking what the policy is. And you said with family?”

  “Yes, darling. That’s why I wanted today so very much. Mum and Jane have planned a walk with Diana, to help her regain movement. And it’s the very route we’re doing with HLV, which is why I selected it. Make sure you’ve got your phone fully charged. We’re taking pictures and making movies. But I’ve got this camera too, from the HC store. Very high speed. It’s movies, but we’ll be able to extract thousands of photo still frames of extraordinary quality. Play with it for a few minutes and learn its functions. Something very bad will happen to you if you muck up my life’s first family day.”

  BC spoke, marveling at her ingenuity. “I have never heard of anyone else having done HLV with family. Brilliant! What planning!”

  “That’s no planning,” said Esmeralda, scornfully. “Wait and see.” She dialed. “Yes, Noxi. You said you’ve found some secret. What? Constant causes none? To allow like leaning on a railing, huh? And surface by surface type, metal and wood, and fabric by fabric type, coarse and silky, confirmed? Wonderful. Gentle, gentle, strokes, rubs, not taps, and nothing hard is your advice? Noxi, you wonder of our world. No one’s ever decoding you while I live.”