by Jeff Edwards
“My associate is not entertained by your cleverness,” the voice said. “The very next time you give an evasive answer to one of our questions, he will demonstrate his displeasure by neutering you without benefit of anesthesia. Then, if you continue to be recalcitrant, he will perform additional impromptu surgeries of a more drastic nature. Do you understand, Mr. Stalin?”
The room held the silhouettes of three or four other men, but none of them spoke. Although I knew nothing about these people, I was instantly and utterly certain that they were not bluffing. At my first false move, they would carry out their threats and more.
When I nodded, I could feel the tug of electrodes and other devices at my scalp, as various sensor arrays shifted with the movement of my head. “Yes,” I said. “I understand.”
“Good,” the voice said. “Then let us continue under more pleasant circumstances.
I’m back on the twilit beach, my virtual body still seated on cool sand, cigarette dangling from my lips.
The ersatz moon is just as luminous as before, the waves just as darkly sinuous, but this created world has lost its ambiance of genial banality. This no longer feels like a game.
“We chose this venue,” the voice says, “in the hopes of keeping this interview as civilized as possible. Please don’t force us to move it back into reality, where things will become much less civilized.”
I take an absent draw from the Marlboro, and discover that my virtual hand is shaking. Is this some manifestation of my body’s neural reactions in the real world? Or is it an artifact of the MINDSCAPE software—an anticipation of what my physiological response to danger should be? I don’t know, and it probably doesn’t matter.
I stub the cigarette out in the sand.
“Let’s return to my questions,” the voice says. “And if you happen to think of some cleverly phrased answer that will help you avoid the truth, I advise you to respond to the intent of each question, rather than my precise wording.”
I nod.
“Please begin by telling me what you did with the Nambu automatic.”
I don’t hesitate. “I left it with Vivien Forsyth.”
“From your earlier response, I assume that you don’t classify Ms. Forsyth as a friend.”
“We were friendly,” I say, “but I’m not sure that we actually qualify as friends. She was my client.”
“I notice that you use the past-tense,” the voice says. “I assume this is not an accident.”
“No, it’s not an accident. I quit the Forsyth case shortly before you snatched me from the shuttle terminal. That’s why I was flying home. Or trying to fly home.”
“I see,” the voice says. “You were investigating the disappearance of Ms. Forsyth’s daughter?”
I hesitate, not wanting to divulge information about an ex-client, but it’s not exactly a secret that I’ve been looking into the Leanda Forsyth thing.
I nod. “Yes.”
“Why did you leave the case?”
I hesitate again, not because this is sensitive information, but because I want to answer as honestly as possible. I’m very much aware that somewhere back in reality, the edge of a razor sharp blade is perilously close to the flesh of my favorite body. “That’s difficult to answer simply,” I say finally.
The voice carries a shadow of its formerly threatening tone. “How so?”
I sigh. “Because there is the answer that I want to believe. And there is the answer that I suspect may be true. I don’t like that one as much, but I can’t avoid considering it. So I’m not sure how your lie detector is going to react to any answer I give.”
“Give me both answers,” the voice says. “Let me to worry about the machine’s reactions.”
I reach for the Marlboro pack and pull out another cigarette. My hands have not stopped trembling.
“I’d like to believe that I quit because my client lost her ability to objectively evaluate incoming leads, and because her clouded judgment was causing her to distrust my handling of the case. That’s the reason I gave myself, anyway.”
“I understand,” the voice says. “And the other reason? The one you don’t care for?”
I light the cigarette and take a drag. The second Marlboro is a smooth as the first one.
I exhale the smoke slowly. “Because my feelings were hurt. And because I didn’t like the fact that she was trying to control the direction of my investigation.”
“Ms. Forsyth was, in a sense, your employer,” the voice says. “She was paying you—quite handsomely I believe—to carry out her wishes. Shouldn’t that have given her a certain entitlement to influence your actions?”
I take another hit off the Marlboro. “Maybe,” I say.
I sigh again. “Okay… Yes. I guess I didn’t like the loss of control. I don’t work by committee.”
The voice’s next question comes out of left field. “How is Akimura Jiro connected to your investigation?”
The name doesn’t sound at all familiar. “Who?”
“Akimura Jiro. In English, you would put the surname at the end. Jiro Akimura.”
The name still doesn’t ring a bell. I shake my head. “I have no idea who you’re talking about.”
The voice raps out two quick bursts of Japanese. “Machine wa kare ga shinjitsu o itte iru koto o kakunin shite imasu. Kono chiisai tenno no koto wa nanimo shitte imasen.”
I’m about to ask him to repeat it in English, when I realize that he isn’t talking to me. He has accidentally let part of his conversation in the real world bleed over into the pseudo-world of the SCAPE construct.
It’s nearly a minute before the voice speaks to me again. His tone is confused rather than angry. “This is the question we have brought you here to ask; your connection to Akimura Jiro. But the Magic Mirror confirms that your ignorance is genuine. You have truly never heard of this man…”
“Not that I can remember.”
There’s another prolonged silence. I assume that a conference is taking place back in reality.
After several minutes, a window of video opens in midair about a meter in front of my face. Not a vid screen, but like a rectangle cut from the very fabric of the evening gloom.
I try to move toward it, change my angle of view to catch sight of the edges, because I’m somehow convinced that the rectangle exists in only two dimensions. Width, and height, with no depth whatsoever.
My theory remains unproven, as the window shifts in perfect synchronization with my movements. No matter how I move or where I turn my head, it remains directly in front of my face, about a meter from my nose.
“I’m going to show you an image,” the voice says.
The picture of a man appears in the rectangle, like an old flat photo pasted against the surface of the twilight.
Unlike the earlier name, the face is familiar. I remember the refined Asian features from my encounter in the tram terminal. This is the aristocratic man I saw in the company of Arm-twister.
“Ah,” the voice says. “We see from your recognition index that you are familiar with Jiro-san’s face, even if you don’t know his name.”
“I’ve seen him,” I admit. “But I’ve never met the man, and I have no idea who he is.”
“There was a minor equivocation index on your last phrase,” the voice says. “Are you attempting to be clever again, Mr. Stalin?”
“No,” I say quickly. “I really don’t know who this man is, but…”
“But what?”
“I saw him in the company of a man that I do know something about. A thug. Muscle-boy type. So maybe your Jiro Akimura runs around with the same bunch of lowlifes I’ve been playing tag with.”
“Give me a name, please. For the man you saw with Jiro-san.”
“I don’t know his real name,” I say. “I call him ‘Arm-twister,’ because that’s what he was doing when we met. Trying to twist my arm out of the socket.”
I search my memory. “I think he’s traveling under a fake name. Soro, or Sori, or somet
hing like that.”
“Could it be Kai Sora?”
“That sounds right.”
The image in the video window is replaced by the face of Arm-twister. “Is this the man?”
I nod. “That’s him. Your man Jiro was tagging along with this guy.”
“I’m quite certain that it was the other way around,” the voice says. “Jiro-san does not—as you say—’tag along.’ He leads. Others follow.”
“I’ll have to take your word for that. As I told you, I don’t know the man.”
The video window vanishes like a soap bubble.
“This is most puzzling,” the voice says. “I must ask you to make yourself comfortable, Mr. Stalin. I need to confer with my associates. It seems likely that you will be here for a while.”
“Wait!” I say. “Just a second…”
But I’m talking to myself. The voice is gone.
I’m alone on the fake beach, with a fake moon, a fake ocean, and a pack of fake cigarettes.
CHAPTER 28
It’s impossible to measure the passage of time. I have no watch, no phone, and no clues by which to judge elapsed duration. I try counting seconds in my head, but the monotony of the exercise begins to lull my brain into a stupor.
After three more cigarettes, I pick a random direction and walk along the beach for what must be at least a couple of hours. The waves continue their ceaseless incursions against the sand, always reaching roughly the same height on the shore. The tide is neither coming in, nor going out, and the moon never moves from its appointed position in the sky.
There will be no sunrise. No tomorrow. No change in the conditions of my canned environment.
No matter how far I walk, the beach never ends. When I look over my shoulder, I can see the double-line of my footprints trailing off into the darkness. Otherwise, there’s no sign that I’m moving at all.
I’ve been hoping to reach the geographic limit of the simulation, but there doesn’t seem to be one. Possibly the terrain is created by some pattern-driven code loop that will keep generating new shoreline for as long as I care to keep walking. If that’s the case, I can trudge along for weeks. Months. Years.
Which makes this little digital paradise into a highly effective prison. My captors can hold me here indefinitely. I can’t tunnel under a wall, climb over a fence, or smuggle myself out in the laundry cart. I can’t even bribe a guard.
Then again, there might be limits after all. My real body is out there somewhere. Without food and water, it will eventually begin to die. Unless they plan to kill me, they’ll have to let me out before long, even if only to feed me.
But I quickly recognize this as wishful thinking. Anyone with even rudimentary medical training could hook my body up for intravenous feeding and hydration. Hell, doctors knew how to keep coma victims alive for decades, even back in the twentieth-century. If my captors want me here, it won’t take much effort to keep my body going.
So I really am stuck here until they decide to let me out. That might happen ten seconds from now, or fifty years from now, when my withered body finally decides that it’s had enough.
I turn around and start the other way, following my own footprints back down the beach.
I’m half expecting the trail to run out quickly, to discover that the SCAPE construct hasn’t bothered to keep track of details as trivial as hours-old footprints. But the trail continues into the distance. The environment hasn’t forgotten them, or reabsorbed them into its memory matrix to free up processing resources.
Three Marlboros later, I come to the end of my own trail. The scuff marks of my earlier sit down are still visible, along with the two cigarette butts I left in the sand.
I’m back to where I started, and I’m still nowhere.
I’ve been through nearly a half pack of cigarettes, which is close to what I usually go through in a day.
Has it actually been that long? It must have been. But in all those however many hours, I haven’t felt the first pang of hunger, or a single twinge of thirst. For that matter, I haven’t felt any signs of nicotine cravings.
I’m not blazing through the Marlboros because of my dependency. I’m smoking because that’s what I do. The habit isn’t just biochemical. Cigarettes have long-since become ingrained in my persona. They’re part of my interface with the universe.
So, by my Marlboro clock, I’ve spent roughly a day in this non-place.
The voice hasn’t returned, and he’s had plenty of time to powwow with his buddies. I have a sudden certainty that he’s not coming back. That he and his unknown partners have decided that this is the perfect place to keep me safely out of their collective hair.
David Stalin in a bottle. Detective under glass. Not going anywhere. Ever.
I think back to my discussions with Tommy Mailo, when he had first introduced me to the concept of SCAPE technology. He hadn’t mentioned anything like this. We had talked only about recordings of sensory experiences. Nothing about software-generated sensory environments. Nothing about the possibility of being trapped in self-contained SCAPE constructs.
I sit back down in the sand, settling into my old spot, and thumping another Marlboro out of the pack. My supply is dwindling. Maybe when the last one is gone, the pack will magically refill itself. Or maybe the SCAPE software will automatically spawn a convenience store just down the beach, where I’ll be able to buy more cigarettes. Or maybe I’ll just be out of fucking cigarettes, and out of fucking luck.
If that happens, I’ll have to take drastic measures.
The idea makes me smile.
I fritter away a couple of minutes conjuring up imaginary scenarios in which I meditate about the nature of sensory perception until my thoughts become somehow attuned to the SCAPE software. The fantasy is appealing—my mind fusing with the algorithms, intertwining seamlessly with the binary code stream, to become the god of this moonlit world of endless beach.
That sounds much better. It’s a lot more entertaining to imagine myself as a godlike digital entity, than as a poor hapless bastard who isn’t going anywhere.
Of course if I had godlike digital abilities, I could override the SCAPE signals to my sensory cortex, and take back command of my brain and body.
And that thought causes a tiny echo in my subconscious.
I remember a snippet from my conversation with Tommy. Something about how certain people can learn to exercise voluntary muscle control under SCAPE stimulus.
What had he said? Most people don’t ever get the hang of it, but a few SCAPE users have figured out the trick.
Okay. Fine. If there’s a trick to it, I can learn. Apparently I’m going to have plenty of time on my hands.
CHAPTER 29
My body is lost in space and time. It’s out there somewhere. I can remember what it looks like. I can remember what it feels like. I can remember the taste of my mouth, and that little twinge I get beneath my left shoulder blade when I push myself too hard. But I’ve lost track of the thread that ties my consciousness to my flesh. After a lifetime of having my muscles respond instantly to my commands, I simply cannot connect.
There’s a way to do this. There has to be. Stroke victims manage it. They teach their brains to reclaim damaged neural pathways, or to make new pathways. I’m fairly certain that people with cybernetic limbs and implants have to go through the same general process. The human nervous system is not designed to interface with artificial hardware. The brain has to find connections, or build them.
So I know that this is doable. I just don’t know how to begin.
Stroke victims and people with implants have resources to draw on. Therapists to coach them, guide them through special exercises—physical and mental. There are therapeutic robots, purpose-built software, and doubtless many other aids that I’ve never heard of.
I have none of these things. I don’t know any of the techniques, and there is no one to guide me.
I spend about an hour trying to reach out through the ether with my thoug
hts, and reestablish contact with my right hand. But the hand is too far away. I can’t find it.
The gulf that separates me from my flesh is too wide to bridge.
It gradually dawns on me that this last thought may be the root of my continuing disconnect. I’ve been allowing myself to think of the SCAPE construct as another place, as though I’d been spirited away to an artificial world in some unimaginably remote location.
But it isn’t remote. And the construct I’ve been inhabiting isn’t another world. It isn’t even another place.