by Jack Dann
Anderson finally repaid me. Whoever was killing off avatars by the cartload was actually destroying his stock and trade. The virus was now sweeping the city’s avatars and people were pulling out in droves. Hundreds of customers had opted out of reality, too, leading to scathing media attacks on SpaceScape Productions. Anderson’s business was going bust fast. He wanted the hacker caught and quick. Hence the prototype of his new series.
‘Have fun, Angel,’ Jerry said with a smirk. He never did get it, the loser.
I studied the package and set up a plan to bring down the Avatar Butcher, as the media had so garishly labelled him.
I emailed Anok with an idea to assuage her fears of our affair being made public. We’d set up in Jerry Anderson’s frontier town, Lovago, already the world’s largest alternative universe. Every brand name corporation from Nike through to Ford and Hooters had set up shop there — a metropolis of cash-driven nirvana. It was bandied about that the government now made more tax dollars from the metaverse than it did in meat-space. And that’s in spite of only receiving an estimated ten per cent of its dues. Would I be a cynic to say it was no wonder the governments wanted to stop this mass serial killer from continuing his or her spree? It was costing them big time.
Using the new interslicks we’d simply be superior to our neighbours, but it’d only appear as though we were slumming rich dudes with huge graphics cards. With pseudonyms we could live our parallel lives in anonymity and without fear of getting caught providing we were careful. No, I didn’t tell Anok about my ulterior reason for continuing our affair in Lovago. I tried to. I hinted of dark things beyond my control that might make her mad. I told her I’d never seen her seething, that it would be a sight to behold.
Her reply marginally eased my conscience:
Hmmm … me when I’m mad. Not a pretty sight, I suspect. It’s only in books and movies that ugliness is supposed to look attractive. I hate feeling angry, and I feel ugly and corroded. I can’t imagine you will ever see that side of me. Especially given that in a funny (not amusing but quirky) way our lives keep us apart from that. We don’t have enough time to waste being mad. Any doubts will be seriously soothed, skin to skin, avatar to avatar. It makes no difference — I can’t wait to be in your arms.
I love u
A xx
And that’s how the love-nest came to be. I downloaded the software — the Bureau has the latest high-volume graphics channels on the market, and terabytes of volatile memory to assimilate tactile stimulation inputs from one’s partner.
All the while I marvelled at Anderson’s invention. He was set to become a demigod and bring down governments. No one need ever leave their house and interact with others again — a social inertia if ever there was one. It’d be a lot safer in the sex sector. One never knows what you might pick up if more than electrons and photons flow between bodies. And Anderson’s avatars were more human cells than avatar blocks — viral-proof.
I bought a wad of andos — virtual currency that doesn’t exist in meat-space. At the going rate, 200 ando dollars equalled one ‘real’ dollar.
Anok and I soon moved into a condo. Whenever she was touring we stayed the night in Lovago, had breakfast, went to work. At nights I’d call out the proverbial, ‘Hi, Honey, I’m home.’ It was a cry that became ritual. We rarely ventured out into the city, colourful though it was with its frilly-maned dragons with Bambi eyes, Gandalf-inspired wizards, hissing vampires and other loops. People who construct this virtual stuff are high on image quality but low on imagination.
Lovago was just our little niche of the metaverse in which we were a happily married couple. Ostensibly, that is. Like the bug-chasers of yesteryear before a cure for AIDS was discovered, I laid Anok and me out like virtual bait.
Things started unravelling when I found a blonde hair in the shower plughole. My first thought was that it was a leftover from the previous tenants. But we’d been here a month now, and no way could that hair have remained stuck there. The detective in me took over briefly. A computer-generated DNA analysis on the follicle cells would tell me exactly which avatar the hair belonged to. I figured I was being paranoid and let it drop. You do things like that when you’re in love. I didn’t want to know if she was having an affair in our home. I knew I could never compete with her husband — but another woman? I sent her an email about this part of our relationship and in passing said I hoped to have her hooked for a long time to which she replied:
Hooked and landed. As for Frank, he’s a social cripple and puts everyone’s back up, curdling them like month-old milk. There are many times when he feels like a big anvil around my neck, a dragging weight that slows me and makes everything heavier and harder. But I can’t be bothered dwelling on it, because he is never going to change and if I give him a blast about it, he’ll sink into a morass of despair and go lie on his bed in funereal gloom. That might be worse than the slackness.
See you tonight, my love.
A xxoo
Till I received that email I’d kept the blonde hair in an airtight crime scene bag. I flushed it, bag and all, down the waste disposal.
A week passed and we continued on as before. We craved one another so much that my meat-space partner became worried that I was working too much. Only by staying away from home could I visit Anok at our condo. For her part, she accepted more and more interstate and international bookings. We were pretty much in Lovago 24/7.
But doubt rides hard when spurred. I searched our condo with a thoroughness best reserved for work. I found Cherry Blossom lipstick — Anok always wore PlumVamp. I found more blonde hairs in her hairbrush. And the final proof of her adultery was on the phone. I hit re-dial. A man’s voicemail answered. ‘Hey babe, Hans here.’ I didn’t really listen to the message, but it was personal, as though only Anok had his number. I know he said, ‘Can’t wait to catch up at the condo.’ It appeared she was having at least two affairs — one male, one female.
Can someone be a double-adulterer? Who was I to condemn Anok for cheating on me when both she and I were cheating on our partners? I wrestled with the conundrum. Were our avatars really cheating? If you watched a movie about adultery did you partake of it yourself? If your avatar committed adultery, was that any worse for you than watching a movie about it? I’d put men away for years for enjoying the thrill of date-rapes and murders in virtual realities. But it was the avatars doing the pillaging, not those enjoying the experience. Can adultery, or rape, even, exist in the metaverse? Cyber-bullying was the basis for today’s harsh virtual legislations. But was the whole concept basically flawed? The foundation of everything I’d ever worked towards was suddenly cracking up.
One part of me wanted to sell up, clear out. Cut Anok and her lover/s out of the picture forever. Another part of me wanted my dream to last for however long it could, warts and all. Then I realised all this stuff wasn’t about me. It was about the job. I was on stake-out duty. Business first, pleasure second. It wasn’t until I had this figured out that I knew I was getting somewhere with the case.
So I let it rest. Nonetheless, doubt gnawed away at me like a cancer.
Anok and I met in meat-space during the Canberra Literary Festival. Real life sex is marginally better than the metaverse variety. You can’t beat the smell of sex, and that is one sense the metaverse hasn’t replicated yet: smell. Anderson boasted to me that he was within a whisker of solving that problem.
The moment I arrived back at the office I went straight ‘home’. My suspicions that Anok had been cheating on me were allayed after our weekend encounter. But a nagging thought drove me to give the condo a thorough check.
I wasn’t really surprised when I found a man’s handkerchief with an H embroidered on it in the bed. It confirmed a suspicion that I’d been harbouring for a week. Back at the office, I phoned Anok via a secure line on her cell. It was late. But it was serious. I told her the whole sordid duplicitous story.
The next night we had a row at the condo.
‘So what do
you call this?’ I demanded, throwing the lipstick, brush and the handkerchief on the bed. ‘And who’s Hans?’
‘Angel … don’t do this. I don’t know how these things got here. They’re not mine. Of course they’re not.’ She looked about the room. ‘Maybe Frank —’ but the words died on her mouth. No way could Frank navigate the metaverse. His skills lay strictly out at sea and his own dark space.
‘Get out, Anok,’ I said. ‘I’m selling the place.’
She nodded slowly, as though understanding. ‘Okay, Angel. Do what you have to do. You always do.’
She snatched her bag and with head bowed she went to the door. She paused there, and I had hoped to see her turn and at least acknowledge me. But she didn’t. The door opened, and that was that.
I put in two more visits before everything fell neatly into place.
There was a knock on the door. It was the security guard. She was cutting edge perfection in a uniform so neatly ironed the creases looked sharp as razorblades. An obsessive-compulsive then. A lean woman, she was quite attractive in a harsh way. Something predatory in her manner reminded me of a dozen psychos I’d put away over the years. I buzzed with adrenalin.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m Sheila. Security. I heard you guys arguing the other night.’ She winced with heartfelt commiseration. ‘Saw the “For Sale” sign up.’ She looked beyond me, into the lounge room. ‘Thought I’d pop over.’ Then hopefully, ‘You might need a shoulder to cry on.’
Like a cyber-rebound, I smiled pitifully, lips trembling. If I could have squeezed out a tear I would have. But I almost over-played it. Sheila froze for a moment. Like maybe a human would when confronted by another human so perfect that it couldn’t be real. Like meeting an angel in meat-space.
A professional, she recovered. From behind her back she drew a bottle of merlot. ‘The best ando dollars can buy.’
I stood back from the door. ‘Sure, come in.’ When she entered I locked the door.
She turned, a smile touching the corners of her cherry blossom lips. ‘Do you lock in all your female visitors?’ She had already scanned the condo for the firewall — the only obvious means by which our avatars had not succumbed to her virus. We shouldn’t exist, yet we did. The virus had wiped out two thirds of Lovago’s populace in the last month. Now she needed to get up close and personal. Decipher how to crack our immunity codes. An insatiable hunger I knew she could never quench, could never resist. If we were immune to the virus she needed to know why to combat it. A challenge to match that of the Mac virus that knocked out three quarters of the smug Mac users whose catchcry was once: ‘I don’t get viruses. I have a Mac’
She unscrewed the top of the wine bottle. Raised it in salute. ‘Glasses? You should toast. You’re a free man.’
Without saying a word I undid the top five buttons of my blouse. I’d been waiting for this moment for two whole days.
The avatar’s eyes dropped to my cleavage. ‘So you’re a woman.’ Her smile evaporated as her earlier suspicion dawned large on her. ‘What is this?’
Anok used her key to open the door. Only now her avatar was a lithe beauty dressed in a jet black neoprene bodysuit. She’d needed to log in under a pseudonym to avoid the real Sheila’s detection. Several Lovago officials fanned out from behind her and flanked Sheila.
‘There’s been some mistake,’ Sheila began.
‘Yours,’ I said. ‘Spreading viruses across the metaverse is an international offence.’ I looked at my watch. A meaningless gesture here in the metaverse of course, but old habits die hard. ‘Right now there’s a bruiser called Burbank knocking on your door in meat-space. I suggest you answer it before the FFC kicks it in.’
‘You can’t prove a thing!’ Sheila hissed. She started laughing then morphed, losing layer upon layer of blocks till there was nothing there.
A self-destruct virus. Clever. But not clever enough. Burbank would be reading the hacker his or her rights by now.
I showed the officials to the door and thanked them with the bottle of merlot. Then I held Anok at arm’s distance. ‘Why, if it isn’t Cathy Willow from Willow’s Game.’
‘On loan from jerry.’ She undid the rest of my buttons and unclipped my bra with practised ease. With fingertip softness she pushed me backwards onto the bed. ‘We need to talk about you setting us up,’ she said. ‘But not right now,’ she purred …
AFTERWORD
‘Lure’ follows ‘Wired Dreaming’, a story published in Dreaming Down-Under. It’s not often that I get a chance to record my forecasts for the future. That the predictions here will occur there is little doubt in my mind — it’s more a matter of when. I couldn’t resist the dig regarding Mac users, having sparred with many over the years, defending my reliable PC with religious zeal. Who, I wonder, will take up the challenge and take that second bite from the apple …
— Paul Collins
<
EMPIRE
SIMON BROWN
SIMON BROWN’s stories have been published in Australia, the US, England, Japan, Russia, and Poland. Some of his stories can be found in the collections Cannibals of the Fine Light and Troy. He began writing science fiction novels such as Privateer and Winter, but has turned his hand to high fantasy with the Keys of Power trilogy (Inheritance, Fire and Sword, and Sovereign) and the Chronicles of Kydan series (Born of Empire, Rival Son, and Empire’s Daughter).
He lives on the NSW south coast with his wife and two children.
In this deft and stylish evocation of H. G. Wells, Brown tells the story of how the world was really saved…
‘You know, little brother,’ Isaac said, looking out the window of their tiny room, ‘you can see the stars. When we first came to London there was so much fog that you could not even see the tops of buildings. I can even see Mars.’
‘Is it really red?’ Leonard asked, joining Isaac and leaning out on the sill.
‘Yes. Small and red.’ Isaac pointed it out.
‘I can’t see it.’
‘There, next to the really bright white one. That’s Jupiter.’
Leonard’s face fell.
‘What’s wrong?’ Isaac asked.
‘Mama told me the brightest star was pop, all the way up in heaven, looking down on us.’
Isaac nodded. ‘Well, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it is poppa.’
Leonard shook his head. ‘No. You are always right, Isaac. It is Jupiter if you say so. And I can see Mars, too.’
‘I am always right, eh? Even about Machines?’
Leonard snorted. ‘You are never right about Machines.’
Isaac checked the song sheet in his hand, trying to memorise all the lyrics, and started singing. Leonard joined him for the last few lines, and they knew how sweet they sounded. Some things in their lives were right, at least some of the time. When they stopped they looked at each other with something like pride, and almost with one mind turned to look out the window again, to see the stars and planets. And eventually they looked down to see spread out before them the yellow lights of reborn London, and beyond the city the high wall that kept them in, and beyond that the red landscape that was the domain of the Martians, their hunting grounds and their nursery.
History made Erin Kay go to Happy Rest, an antiseptic flat-roofed hospice in the middle of irrigated gardens near Phoenix.
She rolled up not expecting anything, but hoping Howard Finkel’s signature would have some influence. The registrar umm-ed and ah-ed when Erin gave her the authority. She spoke softly into the intercom and the day manager appeared; he phoned the contact number beneath Howard Finkel’s almost illegible scribble. He spoke a few words, nodded silently to himself and put down the phone.
‘It’s fine,’ he told the registrar, and walked away without having said a word to Erin.
The registrar pointed down a corridor. ‘Third door on the left. Room 12. Poor dear’s not long for this world. He used to be a singer or something, did you know?’
‘So I’ve heard,’ Erin said, a
nd made sure she retrieved the authority, figuring she might need it again.
She knocked on the door to Room 12. She heard a reply but could not make out the words. She risked opening the door wide enough for her to peek inside.
‘Zac Feelgood?’
He was looking straight at her. Brown eyes that seemed too young for the pale dying face they peered from. He was sitting in a wheelchair, wrapped in an old checkered bathrobe. Thin grey hair was combed back over his head, ending in uneven tips above a silver cravat. His hands tightly gripped the chair’s wheels as if he was afraid they would suddenly fall off.
‘I said I was busy,’ he said in a wheeze. Spittle flecked his lips and Erin felt queasy.
‘My name’s Erin Kay, Mr Feelgood.’ She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. ‘Your son Howard said I could visit you.’
‘That was good of him, considering he never visits himself. The little spiv. I should have given Dot my name. My real name. Her kids visit all the time. Good kids. But he was the only legitimate one left, so he gets everything.’ Feelgood’s mouth curled, showing a full set of yellowing teeth. ‘You one of his lawyers? What the fuck do you want? More papers to sign?’
‘I’m an historian, Mr Feelgood, not a lawyer.’
‘Don’t call me Feelgood,’ he said curtly.
‘Pardon?’ For a second Erin had the horrible thought that she had knocked on the wrong door.
