Look, Gwen. I live in the real world. What you always told her, every time around. Horrified, you can't keep from repeating it. I live. In the real world.
She looks at you: This is the love that is supposed to improve my existence? You want me to believe what? You want me to live where?
She's right. This is no place to be caught out in.
Your hemorrhaging organs refuse to kill you. Nothing will put you out of your nausea. There is no misery strong enough to save you from consciousness. The world you live in demands that you eat again, that you recover, that your patchy, bloody fuzz grow back in.
The guards seal you off, except for your morning trip to the latrine. Even there, they rush you, cutting your allotment to six minutes, then five. They shove your meals through the cracked door in boats made of newsprint. No one bothers to come collect the leftover gristle.
Then, three weeks after your beating, when you can walk again and even do some light stretching, a present arrives. A forbidden transcript, dropped into your lap. Apology, chastisement, correction, discipline: you don't care what it means. Its thickness suffices, its mass, its heft, its length. A volume to be read no end of times. Words that can take you out of yourself. A book for those who believe in the unseen. The world-changer. The Reading. The holy Qur'an.
34
Loque sat entertaining Klarpol, in the safe haven of morning. You know that our director used to fly military aircraft?
Adie did not know. She knew nothing of importance.
Never in combat, as far as I know. He picked up the whole virtual environment bug from his exposure to it in the Air Force. One of the first generation of pilots to test out the Head's-Up gear. You know: where they project the instrument display as a graphic, right onto your visor? Man, I'd kill for a gig like that. The chrome, the leather…
The Air Force? The United States Air Force? They're into this stuff?
Loque cawed at her. What planet core are you living in? The Air Force was building simulators a decade before you were born. Before digital. Whole film-wrapped rooms that pitched and yawed as you swung the stick around.
The Air Force wants make-believe?
Everybody wants make-believe. It's the most powerful leverage over non-make-believe that you can get. By now, the Air Force must have toys that would blow our little Brownie box camera out of the skies.
But why on earth…?
Come on. Use your circuits, girlie. It's a whole lot more cost-effective to let the little gunner boys kill themselves a few times in synthetic space than to have them all baptized under real fire. Hardware is cheap; wet-ware is what runs you.
Good God. Something issued from Adie that couldn't be called a laugh. I'm working for Dr. Strangelove. Again. She closed her eyes and shook her head. One palm flew up to supplicate, then gave up and fell back to her lap. My dad was Air Force.
Did he abuse you?
Ab—? No. No. Not… in so many words. Why do you ask?
You ought to try abuse sometime. I mean, on the receiving end.
Adie looked at Loque, the eyebrow studs, the chains and bangles, the new tattoo of barbed wire that had recently sprouted around her pale biceps. Your father?
Loque flicked back her grenadine hair. It's what they do.
No. Mine was too… too absent for anything like that. He got the dagger in in other ways. I went into art just to spite him.
Sue's head rocked back and forth. Can't spite those guys. Can't fight the Air Force. Dad holds the patents on anything we might want to throw at him.
How did he end up in industry?
Fearless Leader, you mean? Freese? You get too old to zap things, they turn you out to pasture.
God help us. Retired Air Force. What does he want from me?
Nothing much. Just wants you to design a world that will wow the press corps and excite the greater purchasing public at the same time.
I'm dead meat. Nothing we might possibly design can hope to… Compared to what the public already imagines, anything we make is going to seem like an inflatable jerk-off doll.
Hmm. Sounds like a killer app. Lot of folks are looking for just that.
Help me, Sue. You're my only hope.
Content's your department, babe. I'm just a tool guy, myself.
Oy, oy. Adie gripped her head in the vise of her two hands. You're telling me that the boss was a fighter pilot, before he became himself?
Sue nodded with vigor, her nose rings flapping happily.
Do you know about Karl Ebesen? Adie asked.
What about him?
About who he was, in his former life?
Sue shrugged. We all want something from the machine.
It messes us up, Adie decided. It really screws us over, representation. You know that?
Of course it does. Whatever hasn't been totally fucked up already.
The upgraded hardware was back up and running. The bit pipes that served each wall quadrupled again in throughput. The recompiled visual development software ratcheted up its efficiency, shoveling ever more data with fewer cycle clicks. It was the old Ben Hur galley-rowing trick with the tom-toms, only with semiconductors standing in for galley slaves.
Cavern time became that much harder to come by, now that real time became real. O'Reilly was first to get up and running with a new native-code version of his price-prediction model. He showed up on the shores of society one day with a startling announcement. Within the next half a dozen months, oil is going to take a severe hit.
Rajasundaran rose to the bait. A hit? In price, you mean? Will that be up or down?
Up. Significantly.
How do you know?
This is what the numbers indicate.
Yes, yes. Rajan gave his exasperated Tamil imitation of patience. But for what reason do the numbers indicate this?
Oh. The reason? That's not a question the model is capable of answering, just yet.
Nor did any model predict the hit that O'Reilly took first. It came in a letter from Belfast, surface mail, and insufficient postage at that. It had been a long time making the crossing and sat in his letter box for a few more days before he came home from the labs long enough to check. The envelope bore Maura's handwriting, but no return address.
He set the envelope on the kitchen counter while he poured himself something to drink. Liquid carrot: a delicacy peculiar to these United States. He looked at the thing, picked it up, held it to the light, set it back down, and took another swig of root juice. Maura always used a return address.
Unless she no longer had one. Perhaps she was already on her way over. Had given up the flat on impulse, had commenced shipping everything here. Such was the way she operated, that Maura. She had a gift for living with both feet, a zeal that came free with her high coloration.