Genesis 2.0

by Collin Piprell

  "Cannot."

  They come behind him and around the other side of the car, squaring off along the edge of the sidewalk. Leary feels himself in the presence of something new under the Aeolian sun. Something truly alien. What is it they want? Or, maybe, what does it want?

  Leary is trying to make sense of the babble of voices when the taxi finally edges ahead in traffic. The centipede clump of posits tries to edge along with it, but the sidewalk is too crammed with vendors and other pedestrians.

  This Bangkok that isn't any Bangkok that ever really was is transforming itself before his very eyes. What's going on?

  •

  Those networks of multi‐tiered skywalks spanning mega‐mall canyons, for example, didn't appear till the turn of the third decade of the twenty‐first century. But here they stand, all aswarm with crowds of posits inauthentically regimented in lanes of pedestrian traffic.

  Then one of the skywalks begins to vanish right before his eyes. Leary's first thought is that it's collapsing under the weight of posits. But no. This is something different. What it looks like from a distance, gobs of posits are dangling from the higher skywalk and dropping to the next even as the higher one disintegrates. More like it's evaporating. One minute it's there, the next it isn't. But there's no wreckage, no heaps of mangled posits, only a greater pressure of posits on this skywalk, which abruptly goes the way of the first. And so the serial collapse proceeds till, couple of minutes later, just one skywalk remains. It stands about ten meters off street level, dollops of posit jam oozing off to merge with the crowds at street level. At the same time the giant malls have themselves been shrinking, extruding more posit jam from doors and first‐floor windows.

  Another quick fix. Editorial revisions are coming faster than he can find fault with what he's seeing. But whatever it is they're constructing, this isn't the Bangkok of old.

  The traffic begins moving again. They pass the dog in its sandwich‐board pup tent with its strange intelligence, and once more it looks at Leary.

  And now the posits, avid zombies, have found him again.

  how to drive in Bangkok

  "C'mon. Let's move it."

  "Traffic bad."

  "Well, yeah. This isn't friggin' Toronto; it's Bangkok."

  "Chai, chai. Bangkok. Much traffic."

  "Gosh. If you don't know how to drive, let me do it."

  The driver accelerates after the truck, yet fails to make the yellow light. He stops the car as a swarm of motorbikes, no longer bottled up on the cross‐street, scramble through the intersection in front of them in a screaming cloud of exhaust.

  Other motorcyclists are already wending through the stalled car traffic behind to gather around and in front. Leary opens his window a crack to better appreciate the rich bouquet of hydrocarbons. He tells himself to relax. Then, first looking back to check there's no motorbike coming up fast, he says to heck with that, opens the door and steps out.

  "Where you go?" The driver is about as agitated as wallpaper ever gets, which is to say not very.

  Leary doesn't answer. He walks around the front of the taxi, the wallpaper motorcyclists indifferent to his plan, and yanks the driver's door open. "Out," he says.

  "You not ..."

  Leary grabs the guy and drags him out on the road. Then he whirls at the approach of something coming up from behind.

  "Look!"

  They bear down on him like a herd of zombie crackheads.

  "Look, it's Leary."

  "Leary!"

  Moving faster than most one‐hundred‐and‐twelve‐year‐olds, he slides behind the wheel, slams the door shut and locks it just ahead of a gang of posits that press up against the window. One of them sprawls across the hood to gape through the windshield. Leary guns the engine a couple of times and shifts into low gear, looks both ways as the light changes, and floors it. He avoids a latecomer motorbike in mid‐intersection and speeds off toward the jam of vehicles standing at the next light. Then, well short of it, horn blaring and headlights flashing, he swerves into the oncoming lane, losing the hitchhiker, and makes a screeching left turn to enter a narrow side street. A narrow one‐way side street that he's pretty sure used to be two‐way.

  "Gosh," Leary says, wondering whether this is a glitch in the Aeolia program or merely a failure of memory on his part. He performs a jerky, stop‐and‐start slalom through oncoming tuk‐tuks and cars, scattering pedestrians to either side. He stops the car in the middle of the street, gets out, and leaves it where it is. The wallpaper drivers don't know what to make of all this, though some posits are clearly unhappy. Leary, on the other hand, is impressed with himself; he hasn't driven a car in more years than he can remember.

  Both memory and program now serve him well, and he hightails it down a couple of motorbike‐width sub‐lanes, straight‐arming a few too‐chummy posits along the way. He pops out onto the middle of Soi Awol. The last time he was here, in Brian's Worlds UnLtd rendition, just two of the bars, Boon Doc's and Shaky Jake's, showed any resolution to speak of.

  The street is packed with tourists. That in itself says things aren't what they used to be back in late twentieth‐century mondoland. But it goes beyond that. The way these rubberneckers have organized themselves into roughly two‐way lanes of traffic, you'd think they were from Singapore or maybe Switzerland, though they're only from Aeolia and don't know any better.

  Not only that, more than half the crowd have cell phones slapped upside their heads, or wires dangling from their ears, and their lips are moving. Leary can't remember for sure, but he knows there's something wrong with this scene. It wasn't until well into the first decade of the twenty‐first century that you got the lunatic effect on this scale, with people everywhere in chirpy conversation with themselves. Of course it soon got even worse, when the hardware started creeping up inside people.

  "Leary!"

  "It's Leary."

  A few of the cellphone zombies break ranks.

  "Hey, Leary."

  "Wait!"

  "Stop."

  Within seconds, twenty or thirty reanimated posits are converging on him. Applying just enough force and no more, Leary makes it to Boon Doc's. A sign scrawled in purple marker pen hangs on the shuttered window: CLOSED.

  "Gosh‐darn it," Leary bellows, and hammers on the door with his fist, shrugging off a couple of posits who paw at him from behind.

  threesomes and foursomes

  If we kick this world, it kicks back, and that's the world we live in, the only one we've got.

  – Poppy

  generated realities are better

  A pack of GameBoys in pursuit, Cisco runs barefoot across the stones and thorny detritus. It hurts. He'd cancel gravity, or at least specify shoes, but this isn't a World. Mondoland is a pain in the ass. Give him generated realities any day.

  A spear rakes his right thigh and skitters along the ground ahead of him to thunk up against a rock. Another passes overhead as he lunges forward to stoop and grab the first one, which he uses to deflect a third missile as he stands and turns. Blood pours down his leg. Whatever. It's really his feet that bother him.

  The spectators have broken cover to emerge onto stage center. They want to play too, and now they're right behind him.

  "Pooying."

  "Ying."

  "Is gur. Yung. Nai gur."

  "Goo' gur."

  Their chatter almost sounds like English.

  No one is trying to spear Dee Zu. And, no matter how elusive a target Cisco is proving, she has the GameBoys in a very good mood indeed. Collectively, in fact, they're in the mood for love, given the sharp metal sticks and whatnot that bob along in front of them as they advance. One of them, only a boy yet old enough to bob with the best of them, grins the way young boys do.

  Their attention pointedly favors Dee Zu, and this blinds them to how fast the bleeding on Cisco's leg slows to a stop. He scans the terrain as he runs, looking for potential weapons, escape routes. Anything. It's too far to where they exit
ed the cave. Plus, he suspects that was the source of this latest crop of GameBoys.

  •

  Dee Zu has stopped. Jesus Christ. She's turning back to stand her ground. Her wet version is no different from its worlding counterpart. Overlooking its basic mortality.

  Mentally, Cisco gropes for his worlding console. But this is no World. Mondoland calls for mondo fixes.

  not a world

  "Go," Cisco shouts at her. "Run!"

  He throws the expropriated spear at the lead attacker, nearly gets him. He lunges off to one side, hollering sing‐songy gibberish as he goes. "Yingedy‐dingedy, friggedy‐dock." Giving the GameBoys the finger, he adds, "You morons." Then he takes to cavorting with dick in hand, yanking it at them and going "Bang, bang!" Showing their attackers his bum, he gives them the finger again over his shoulder.

  Some part of this performance finally irks the GameBoys, because they leave off leering at Dee Zu to focus on Dancing Boy, who—launching himself toward them and then retreating, fists at his sides, chin offered mockingly in their direction—goes into a prancing OmniStrike parody.

  One of them snaps his arm forward to launch a spear. Cisco leaps high enough, legs every which way and hands cupped over his parts, that it passes under him, a tour de force perhaps better left to a World. Cisco spins upon landing, dodging spears to left and to right. "Run!" he yells again.

  •

  Dee Zu's toes still have her hobbling, and she's supposed to sprint barefoot over broken ground, not to mention leave Cisco to face this pack of assholes all on his own? Not likely. These guys are easily distracted, besides which they fail to see her as a real threat. Which is handy. But they clearly intend to kill Cisco. Something she prefers they don't do.

  Cisco steps into the attack. Lunging inside a spear thrust, he smacks the spearman open‐handed with the back of his hand, putting his whole body into it, temporarily blinding him; he swings his palm back to rupture the fellow's eardrum and bring him to his knees, sightless and moaning in pain.

  This is no World, no mere game. Dee Zu sucks down a shuddering breath and stills herself. She spins in from the other side and goes for a GameBoy as he starts to swing something at Cisco. Her straight lead punch, hook kick, piston kick combination drops him without further ado, his head twisted at an unnatural angle. A rear piston kick cripples another attacker behind her to the left. She poleaxes the biggest one of them all, who has advanced front on; he rests briefly on his knees before slumping to one side.

  This is easy. Compared to OmniStrike World, it's almost boring. Except the stakes are higher. People didn't die back in the Worlds, not if Dee Zu and Cisco did their jobs as test pilots.

  Now it's the boy. With sure economy of movement, she breaks his neck, feels a stab of sorrow at the dying of his grin as the club drops from his fingers. Barely conscious of her not yet fully reconstructed foot, she invades the circle of three who surround Cisco. Forget face2face, much less belly2belly. For now, it's nothing but back2back. Make war, not love. In the Worlds, sometimes, they practiced tandem combat against anywhere from two to ten sophisticated ebee attackers. What they're looking at here is child's play.

  Or so she tells herself, and she sets about killing her share of the remaining GameBoys.

  •

  She surveys the field of battle, steadies her breathing. Sees that Cisco is fine.

  Where are these GameBoys coming from? And how is it the boy was so young? What about the anti‐Madonna virus—have these creatures been breeding?

  She must have subvocalized, because the Lode takes it for a serious question. "No data," her WalkAbout says.

  No help. Still, it's a comforting reminder that worlds other than this one remain.

  despatch from hell ~ popeyes on spinach

  Your headline du jour:

  BARE‐NAKED BABE

  BAREHANDEDLY KILLS BUNCH OF ASPIRING RAPISTS.

  Nice.

  Here I sit in Harry's Hat checking on a few things while a lesser version of myself is downstairs in the bar waiting for Dinky Toy to let Leary in.

  Sitting here and sitting there, I fall into a multitasking mood and check out my extension of Boon Doc's TV screen, a direct feed to mondoland the lovely Sky has allowed me, thinking maybe we'll get treated to Wet Sex II: The Sequel while we wait.

  But no. We've had the sex; now it's time for some violence. To tell the truth I'm into rape scenes, a nice combination of sex and violence, though you could argue rape isn't really sex. Yeah, well. Chances of rape are looking slim. Just look at the way our heroes, two Popeyes high on spinach, are weed‐whacking these GameBoys.

  "I yam what I yam, 'cause that's all what I yam."

  "Shut up, Sweetie." I have to put up with this shit even in Harry's Hat?

  "I'm Popeye the Sailor Man. Hee, hee!"

  "Enough, okay?"

  "Toot, toot!"

  "Fuck."

  And, of course, we find this extra element of suspense. For who is this other young lad, a third wheel hiding there in the bushes, and what role, if any, is he likely to play in events?

  reserves

  Lunge forward. Punch–jab, kick. Lunge–retreat.

  His OmniStrike instincts take him where he has to be, and he does what he has to do. At the same time, always a Worlds test pilot, he monitors proceedings. That backward lunge off his front foot, for example, was too leaden. Wanting to lighten up on gravity, he wastes milliseconds in seeking a GR console that isn't there. Luckily, his opponents are more inept than that.

  Meanwhile, unmantled scavengers of various species circle the battlefield, waiting to help with the clean‐up. The pigs present an especially evil prospect.

  On some level Cisco remains attuned to the variety of potential threats, but first things first. He rides the flow, focused by a single imperative: Dee Zu must not come to harm.

  He lunges again, and again, into his counter‐attacks. Kick, kick, spin. Back kick; spin and lunge forward, lunge back; spin, slap, and elbow chop. GameBoy down to this side; step inside spear‐thrust and cripple opponent to that side. Kick to the back of an earlier victim's head, just as insurance. Drop, roll and kick up under spear‐thrust at the next attacker's crotch.

  It's all routine. He and Dee Zu keep gravitating to one another, standing back2back within one another's orbit, each watching the other's blind side. Attack–retreat–attack–attack–retreat. Cut and chop. Dee Zu is taking down her fair share of GameBoys. One casualty on the ground in front of her shows signs of recovery; she steps in to crush his throat. This isn't a game; these people are really dying. But it's either kill as though they are in a game, or die in the GameBoys' stead.

  Two attackers remain active. But not for long, programmed as they are by preconceptions of what their weapons are good for, thus telegraphing their moves. Dee Zu slips inside one guy's hammer‐blow, thrusting her left arm up against his, kneeing him in the groin, grabbing the back of his head and yanking it down as she brings the same knee up into his face. Cisco does a quick three‐sixty recce before turning back to admire Dee Zu's technique. She strikes a pose that begs the remaining antagonist to stab her. So he tries, oblivious to the fact she's already wound up for a killing counterattack. She's good. Nearly the best.

  "'Run?'" she says. Her crooked grin invites more belly2belly as soon as they finish the back2back. "As if."

  Then half a dozen more GameBoys arrive on the scene. Their coordinated deployment suggests their dead comrades' unfortunate experiences have taught them caution.

  This isn't good.

  aerial support

  "Run."

  A voice erupts inside Cisco's head, not the Lode's usual drone.

  "Give me thirty meters of clearance. Now!"

  He almost hears her add, "Trust me." And he decides he must.

  "This way," he screams at Dee Zu. "Run!"

  This time she does, not a second too soon. A barrage of white‐hot beams explode against naked soil and rock. Cisco yells at her to keep running, but she st
ops to look back. Their pursuers have also stopped, looking all around though mostly at the sky, maybe in superstitious dread. Then the satrays find their range. They weave a tight pattern, leaving nothing of the GameBoys, once the vapors blow off, except cinders and a lingering stench of burnt meat.

  "Ai‐yah," Dee Zu says. "How did you do that?"

  "Didn't you hear it?"

  "Hear what?"

  "Sky."

  "She told you to get clear?"

  "Yeah."

  "Wow."

  "Yeah."

  "While she was at it, did she happen to mention you were an idiot?"

  "Come again?"

  "Such an idiot."

  "You wanted to get fried?"

  "Not the satrays. The bare‐assed dance to spring."

  "Hey. I needed to draw those GameBoys off you."

  "So bulletproof. So much wind for brains. My God."

  "Relax. I know what I'm doing." This isn't strictly true, of course, but he means to reassure.

  "All the I‐have‐a‐dick‐and‐you‐don't stuff, this is the new Cisco? You scared the crap out of me."

  They take turns leaning into one another, standing one‐legged as they pull thorns and things out of their feet. They show each other their bloody fingers and laugh.

  Cisco's fists and feet are much softer than their Worlds counterparts were. They're abuzz with medibot repair crews attending to damaged knuckle joints and tendons, to tears and cuts in the soles of his feet.

  connections

  "Holy shit," Son says.

  So much for his plan to stop talking to himself. But never before has he witnessed such an interesting turn of events. These folk are connected big time. They link—how, he has no idea—to whoever has a finger on the godbolt trigger. This is the kind of connection Gran‐Gran ascribed only to the most God‐fearing. And talk about marksmanship. Those bolts fried the GameBoys, didn't even singe the others.

  Meanwhile, Son himself is burning up. He fishes the last two antibiotic tablets out of his bag, chokes them down dry. Never mind the use‐by date passed fifteen years ago, they were sealed; they should be okay.

  "Then why am I getting worse?" He says this out loud.