Shine

by Jetse de Vries

  And she kept glancing at me.

  Maybe she could smell it on me, the outsiderness? The lingering scent of Starbucks and unfair-trade chocolate? This was only a few months after Katana had catapulted us through that quantum mental leap to Game 2.0—I was still more comfortable in night clubs than ecoMarxist meetings in hippie lofts in North Vancouver. Not that I showed how awkward I felt there. She’d have seen confidence, the carefully rehearsed carefreeness of my gait, my smile. My eyes on her as she spoke.

  A few hours later, Monica and I were sitting on her balcony, drinking some—fuck, I don’t know what it was, some kind of homemade apple wine or something. Pretty crappy stuff, but she was saying how it was totally sustainable, zero-footprint stuff, and I told her it wasn’t bad. I touched her on the shoulder as I said, “really good, actually,” working a little old-fashioned NLP magic so she’d associate my touch with boosts in positivity and approval.

  Not that the NLP was totally conscious by then: it was more instinct, but she caught it. I saw a flicker in her eyes, vague suspicion that grew a little stronger with my every move. When we were chained to a tree and chanting, a few days later, and I rubbed my shoulder against hers. When I asked her about how she’d become an activist, and read her eye movements. She’d looked down and then away, the clear sign of a kinesthetic mind. Monica was one of those rare people whose inner-world wasn’t visual or auditory: she made her way around going on gut feelings and intuitions. Maybe that’s how she figured out what I was up to.

  A week after our first chat, we were curled up on my couch, pulling back from a kiss to catch our breaths, when I felt her eyes look straight into me. That’s not romantic metaphor: she was seeing into me. Seeing the real me, inside. That’s how it felt.

  Now, most women love that feeling, but it freaks out us PUAs. She must’ve seen that, too. She asked me, “How are you doing it?”

  Welcome to the PUA’s worst nightmare. If she knew already that I was Gaming her, then how long would it be before she figured out everything? I backslid: old, familiar toxic shame and fear of an AFC/AFEC flooded me. All my careful mental hacks—positive self-affirmations, fallback routines, accumulated confidence and freedom to just be with her collapsed into terror and self-loathing.

  I took a breath, stared into her eyes, and tried to think of what to say. Nothing. Something to say. Nothing.

  Mystery, I thought, with the one brain cell that had any Game left in it.

  So instead of speaking, I touched her on the chin, and in that instant, her head tilted back, and all my doubts and uncertainties melted away. When my lips touched hers again, I felt my game surge back. In a little while, we’d be in my bed, I knew, candles burning all around us, her hemp skirt draped on the back of my chair, her belly under my palm, her dreadlocks all around her head like an angel’s spiky halo. She’d give herself to me that night, I realised, and relief flooded me.

  Not anticipation, which was what I should have felt.

  Relief. Because I thought I was in control. The outcome was secured. In the back of my mind, a little alarm went off. At the time, I thought it was because I was really falling for her. Like, seriously. And there was a pang of guilt at the fact I’d met her in the process of sarging the ecoMarxist group she led. Now, I think differently. The outcome is never, ever sure, and if you want it to be, you’re bound to be fucking up your Game somewhere, some AFC shit getting in the way. But that night, I was hazy with endorphins and giddy with fear, and some dark corner of me was eager for a little self-sabotage.

  She sensed my hesitation, too. She was entranced, of course, and we did sleep together that night. But she felt that weird twist in my Game. It woke her up when the sun rose, and sent her searching for a reason to doubt me.

  She found plenty.

  When I woke, she wasn’t beside me, but I heard the soft hum of my computer fan, and the faint bleeping sound as she opened page after page.

  The ePUA forums...

  Fuck.

  I rose silently, cringing. I’d left my computer on, logged on to the Game 2.0 discussion board. Where my half-written report on sarging the North Vancouver Eco-Marxist Activism Cooperative was in the drafts text box. Then came terror, and my involuntary gasp, and her turning with eyes so hateful I felt like my balls were about to wither and fall off.

  Hell hath no fury like an ecofeminist Gamed.

  AND NOW, HERE she came.

  “I’m love haokan haokan haokan baby,” the sexy voice proclaimed over the thumping beat, and I watched her approach, her stride confident. Challenge was issued by every step. Bring it on, growled the sway of her hips. Let’s do this, her eyes telegraphed.

  She fleshed her best You’re dead meat, asshole, smile, narrowed her eyes, and then turned her gaze on Rasmussen.

  Estraven wasn’t really Monica right now, just like I wasn’t really Andrew Dalton when I was sarging. I was Organic: strong, powerful, the best bro a man could find, the most eligible man in sight. And it wasn’t acting anymore: I was Organic.

  She had become her role, too. Estraven had morphed into a thing of primal, visceral beauty, thinly veneered in a pantsuit and a business-casual hairdo. The faintest highlights of blond in the black suggested strands of purest sunlight lost in her hair. Footsteps so confident in those Donata Garibaldi pumps that you could imagine her walking a rope bridge in ’em.

  Most sane women give off at least a vague aura of self-containment. They’re civilised. Until they’re fucked with, they usually don’t show their claws. But when I looked at Estraven, those diagrams of the human body mapped off the amount of brain devoted to them flashed through my mind. The ones with a human body that’s 90% eyes and thumbs? Well, Estraven was 90% claws and cunt.

  And she was entrancing. Despite myself, I found myself momentarily smitten. That moment was all it took. Not only did I falter, but I lost track of Bamboo Grove, who’d hung back and was now gone. Probably somewhere near, ready to swoop in if needed.

  “Counselor Rasmussen,” I said, “This is...” I said, dropping a half-beat into the introduction. My game was off. She jumped ahead of me and start running an AMOG gambit on me.

  “Monica Dietz,” she said, extending her hand for a firm shake, first to Rasmussen—sisters first—and then to Echewo and Gilberto. As she shook his hand, she turned her wrist slightly so that her hand ended up on top of his cupped palm. In some dark corner of his mind, she’d begun writing a narrative: herself as the lovely maiden, her dainty knuckles waiting for his princely kiss. But before it became conscious, she withdrew her hand, and shook mine. Plain old handshake.

  “Andy,” she said, of course using the diminutive. Her tone was more dismissive than familiar. She was casting me as the wannabe knight. As if I was the unfavoured competition, someone she’d dumped once long ago. Gilberto’s were eyes on me. She held on, forcing rhe handshake to last just a smidgen too long.

  Fuck, I thought loudly as I felt the wave of insecurity tremble through me. She’s really good. People love to hear their own names, but they hate to hear their own name while wearing another persona. Especially abbreviated in a way that reminds them of... negative experiences. Let’s leave it at that.

  “Nica,” I said. That’s what she’d always been called among the activists, and I hoped it might be a good returning shot. But it didn’t work on her. Didn’t faze her at all. She was expecting it. “How’ve you been since...” I paused, furrowing my brow ever so slightly, as if with sympathy, and in my comptacts I scanned the whole set’s IPBRs. Nothing unusual, beyond Estraven’s seething, subliminal hostility. “Since last time?”

  “Oh, excellent. Better than you could imagine.” She beamed at me, overcompensating slightly. Nobody else was picking up this confrontational undercurrent. The audience was blind and deaf, as we played out our drama.

  “Wonderful! Say, I heard you’re also pushing hard on the reef deal.” Work with me, I suggested with my eyes. “Dr. Gilberto here’s the person to talk to,” I said, “if you wanna hear the s
coop on China and Argentina.” And to him, my smile said, “Don’t thank me, bro.”

  Isolate your target. It’s not like she had any reason to focus on Rasmussen, or to not talk to Gilberto.

  Gilberto caught it, and smiled widely at her. He was married, supposedly faithfully, but who’d mind spending five minutes hashing out second-hand news with a woman who looked even half as hot as Estraven? Nobody, that’s who.

  When I turned back, Bamboo Grove was shaking Rasmussen’s hand. Crestfallen, I took it in with a brief glance, and then looked back at Estraven and Gilberto.

  I felt eyes on me.

  Echewo. He grinned, and I realized suddenly that he knew. Sometimes it happened. You ran into that sometimes, no matter how smooth your Game was. Women who sensed you were a PUA. Guys who were just more sensitive to social interactions than most men, or who had ePUA buddies and knew enough to catch on.

  He pointedly held my gaze before glancing over at the other two pairs.

  “I think we’re alone now,” he sang softly, not breaking his smile for an instant. He had, I noticed just then, absolutely perfect teeth.

  “Looks like,” I said, and furrowed my brow as he put his arm around my shoulder.

  “It’s cool. Let them play their move. You’ve already broed Hector, and Rasmussen’s already on board.”

  “She is?” I said.

  Echewo nodded, sliding one arm around my back. “Yep. And don’t you dare take credit in your sarge report, Organic,” he scolded me, eyes half-serious above that perfect-toothed smile. “Now who’s she?” he nodded at Estraven. “In real life, I mean? To you?”

  “An ex, kind of.” I shrugged. “She and I...”

  “Naw, man, by in real life, I mean online. What’s her ecofem name?” He said it like it was an easy mistake, and patted my shoulder. He radiated magnanimity the way a cup of hot cocoa radiates comfort on a winter night. Too much.

  Why the fuck was he broing me?

  “Wait, what’s your handle?” I asked.

  The grin went sly—a bit sympathetic, with just a touch of amog—and he said, “I’m in a slightly different network.”

  Like rogue fungal software, Game 2.0 had spread round the world, creating subcultures we’d never imagined. What had we created, without even knowing it?

  An invite message popped up in my left comptact. Some kind of social network site I’d never heard of before.

  “Trust me,” he said. “You want in.”

  I accepted it. Nothing happened.

  “You need one more invite from an insider. Once you accept both, we’ll be in touch. And the world will never be the same...” he said, and excused himself, leaving me standing there like I’d just met some kind of Greek god. Deus sex machina, I thought, as he walked straight up to Greenfire as if he knew her. And then he kissed her on the cheek and started talking to her, and I realized from her reaction that he did know her.

  Greenfire was one of them, too? Whoever they were... she must have been watching us.

  Watching us for them?!?

  The reefs were gonna be fine, if Echewo wasn’t fucking with me. Estraven was laughing, her hand on Gilberto’s arm. Bamboo Grove was nodding earnestly as Rasmussen gestured around, as if complaining about the deafening music.

  I stepped up to the bar and ordered a glass of 30 year old Lagavulin, the same thing I always drank to celebrate a successful Hague-sarge. I ordered it in perfect Dutch, even though the bar-tender spoke fine English. That was how many times I’d done it. With my first sip, a sense of immense calm washed over me.

  Us Game 2.0ers feel like we’re the only ones who’ve been working the system for good. Bravado has kept us going, believing that only we stood between the biosphere and cash-crazed ruin. We, the brave, intrepid few who gave a shit about the environment, who saved the world by hacking the human mind. But that was a fairy tale, a lie we’d created to give ourselves the balls to try do something.

  And here was a whole ‘nother network we’d never heard of, using our hacks and techniques—and fighting for the same thing! I was hit again by something I’d felt that first night home, after my first boot camp. That sense of relief. I’m not the only one. We’re not the only ones.

  Then I felt a hand on my shoulder. A voice whispered into my ear, “Hello, Andrew.”

  “Monica,” I said, not turning. My learned instinct was to let her come to me; after running that amog on me, I wasn’t going to offer myself up for emotional clawing, and anyway, I was above this. The sarge had been run long before I’d shown up, and her attack on me had achieved nothing. I was above scrapping with ecofems now. I’d been invited up into a new, higher echelon.

  She slid next to me and smiled, a faint patina of glitter makeup twinkling on her cheeks. She was stunning: those stray dark locks on her forehead, her no-way-they’re-real lashes, the way one eye closed just a smidgen more than the other when she smiled. The tiny wrinkles on her lower eyelids.

  Careful, Organic, I reminded myself.

  “We never did say goodbye properly.” She set one hand on my shoulder, and taking my drink away with the other, she sipped it. She set it back down on the bar so that her arms ended up almost around my neck. “Ever wonder why?” she asked, eyes twinkling.

  “Not really,” I said, playing it cool. I’m beyond this now, chickie, I told myself. I probably never have to worry about you ecofems again.

  “Some girls try to change guys,” she said in a low, hard voice. “Some girls pine over the guys who break their hearts.” She ran her nails along the back of my neck. “And some of them just wait for the guy to grow the hell up.” Her smile was wry.

  My Game was gone now. I stood there perplexed, her arms basically around me, and watched her watching me. I couldn’t figure out exactly what kind of move this was. Some kind of elaborate, deep-structure amog? Maybe a highly-morphed variant of xNLP?

  I didn’t know what she was doing, but one thing was sure. She was hacking my mind. Hardcore.

  I narrowed my gaze briefly and launched a few apps, which immediately burst active. The data slammed into my view in a cascading sequence of factlets. She was wearing comptacts, of course: there was an IPBR output running on one lens, displaying my status. Besides the Scotch, there was a biochemical trace on her breath that was a well-known, common marker of having taken PeacockCC. Her heartbeat and respiration were slightly elevated, which in most women signalled arousal... or rage.

  “Don’t those guys usually outgrow them by then?” I was as nonchalant as I could be against a slowly rising tide of vestigial AFEC paranoia.

  “Think you’ve outgrown me?” she said, one nail scratching my hairline. It felt good, especially with her eyes on mine, her voice echoing in my mind. I thought of her on my couch, and remembered she’d done this then, too. Scratched one nail along my hairline.

  Fuck. She’d seduced me that night?

  “We’ll see,” she said. “I haven’t given up on you yet,” she said with a sharp little grin, and smoothed the back of my neck with one soft hand. Then she leaned into me, touched my chin, and I felt my eyes close reflexively.

  Then nothing. When I opened my eyes, she was smiling at me, and Bagheera and Bamboo Grove were there, too, by her side, eyeing me with amused smiles.

  “There’s hope for you yet, kiddo,” Estraven said. “See you around. If you’ve manned up enough.” Then she threw me a look that was pure seduction.

  On my left comptact, a window popped open.

  It was the second invite, the one that followed up Echewo’s. And it was signed: LOVE, ESTRAVEN.

  And then she was gone.

  I minimised the invite window. I was surrounded by suits drinking and dancing. Once again alone. My wingmen were gone, my overpriced drink—a Scotch older than I was—wasn’t doing anything for me, and Estraven, which was what I had to call her, since I couldn’t call this glorious woman Monica, still was right there in my head.

  Was this some sort of counter-game? Was I being mindfucked? Maybe it
was some kind of cognitive virus or something? But that feeling Estraven gave off, that intense attraction... it felt real. Were she and I really on the same side?

  A red light went off in the upper left corner of my left comptact. It was a call from Biosfear, probably a status update on Hunter. A patch of window opened up automatically, though the call wouldn’t be opened till I approved it. Biosfear was looking sidelong, his expression bored, his peacocky shades perched on the top of his authority-evoking brush cut. And as good a wingman as he was, I wondered if he would have done any better than I had if Estraven had scratched the back of his neck.

  I thought then—and I know now, though that’s another story—that he would’ve crumbled. She had game... monster game. She was my equal. And that pulled some tiny, deep trigger somewhere in my mind. I felt something. I didn’t know what, at first, because for me, that feeling was something I’d had to train myself to feel. I’d played so much fake-it-till-you-make-it that I barely recognised the real thing when it swept through me.

  It was faith. Faith in myself, faith in her. Faith that in this random world, in this senseless universe, despite my blunders and mistakes and successes and despite all the chaos and cynicism that had soaked into everything and everyone, I’d found my way right where I needed to be: on the doorstep to the underworld where people really were saving the world from itself.

  And what I did next is why this will be my last posting on this board, guys. Because, yeah, it’s been great, but I have better things to do.

  Yeah. I maximised the second invite message, took a deep breath, and accepted.

  Scheherazade Cast in Starlight

  Jason Andrew

  IN ONE OF my many attempts to inspire writers, I started a series of ‘Crazy Story Ideas’ on the Shine blog. In part 3, posted on May 23, 2009, I mused about positive developments in Islamic countries, and wrote:

  ‘Maybe this could take place in Iran?’

  and