The Portal of the Beast

by J. A. Hailey

  #4. There must be times when some beings cannot escape from a ‘death situation’. It is a humanside adventure, and humans do die. You won’t. But your trip gets instantly terminated. If you are a habitual offender, POP punishes; otherwise, POP will be lenient, but your trip ends - a ruined trip.

  So, no stupidity. No walking into cars. No walking through walls.

  “You two will not be able to walk through walls and do other virtual-type things,” explained Margaret. “But you could let any number of cars drive over you, because nothing really will happen to you, except for punishment by the guardian. So you’ll have to behave like a mortal human in humanside.

  “Now, here are some rules about commuting and travel. You may not be virtuals, but you will be given options to move like virtuals do. Better be careful to not violate the guidelines, especially for local area movement.

  “And yes, you are going to be allowed to own motor vehicles, boats and airplanes, although boats and airplanes are uncommon, even for screenside beings. Needs licensing; training and tests, ha, ha.”

  INTER-CITY & DISTANCE TRAVEL vs. LOCAL AREA MOVEMENT

  Near-instant movement in virtual form is permitted for long distance/inter-city travel, but virtual movement is not recommended for local area movement.

  Living on Main Street, like every resident of your city or town, with stores and entertainment facilities also on that same Main Street, it is important, in order to create bustling, hospitable and friendly environments, that you walk to visit friends or to go to stores, bars and places of recreation.

  Regular virtual movement in local areas, when caught by guardian programs, may lead to a sentence of confinement in your residence in your city or town (under the accusation of non-contribution to its social life), after a fair hearing at your local HC. Appeal is possible, and will be heard by the Lawmakers. If confined, guardian programs will oversee your confinement for the duration of the sentence.

  “There are no restrictions on your movements within screenside, and you may go out on safari-like trips, perhaps with virtual friends. Of course there is no restriction on you going alone. You might encounter wild beasts, which will be predisposed to attack you. The little trogfer has infiltrated everywhere, and you might even get chased and bitten by one in central Park.

  “They are small nasties, which you can lift and bash on hard objects to decode them, which means make them vanish.

  “But I don’t know what you might do to escape if ever caught by a ligon. Its jaws are huge, and escaping is impossible. We, virtuals, abandon physicality to get out; it is allowed. But what you humans, digital beings, might do to escape will be something that we’ll have to figure out.”

  “It’ll probably have to be a guardian program,” said Goodfellow. “That’s the way to protect them, as they are not ever going to be able to use the techniques of virtuals. Something will have to look after them and guard them. We’ll mention it to the seniors.”

  16

  As the two virtuals and two digitals wandered slowly around the borders of Central Park, a very cute white goat trotted up to them and gave Sagan a gentle butt on his upper thigh.

  “What’s this?” asked Gales, in surprise. “Wild beast attack?”

  Margaret laughed. “Well, actually, he is in the process, we think, of becoming screenside’s first city-dwelling, wild animal.

  “Come here.” She called the goat to her and made a good fuss over him, petting and kissing him on his head. “This is Djali, Esmeralda’s pet goat, and screenside’s greatest trogfer decoding addict. Central Park is a good place to find trogfers, and he likes to hang around inside, and butt the ones he finds.

  “He goes home to Esme occasionally, and follows right behind her whenever he spots her walking on the road, but otherwise he is a very independent animal, friends with all dogs and cats in the residential part of New York, which is this part. He also has a welcome into absolutely any apartment or house, if he needs to get out of sun, rain or snow.

  “No one wants to set up a surveillance camera in a residential building, and of course never inside an apartment itself, but this goat knows about knocking on doors to ask for entry, and there’s a suspicion that he also knows how to open doors, when it looks like no one’s in.

  “There, he is leaving us, probably to go back into the Park.

  “Let’s check out apartments for you. Unless you want to spend the night on the streets.”

  “That could be a guardian matter,” said Goodfellow.

  “Not allowed to spend nights on streets?” asked Gales.

  “Absolutely allowed,” answered Goodfellow. “But it’s probably not allowed to spend a night on the street - by reason of being homeless.”

  “I’d like to live on Long Island, same as in humanside,” said Sagan.

  “I’m checking our records in HC,” said Margaret. “Nope. There is no residence support on Long Island; no structure.”

  “I thought CONTINUATOR created the whole world in replica,” said Gales.

  “Yes, Long Island exists, in replica. Want to go there and have a look?”

  “Virtual instant transport, conducted by you, with us as baggage?” joked Sagan.

  “That’s one way,” giggled Margaret. “But we could drive across.”

  “Where is the car?”

  “I’ll rent it. Patel’s rent-a-car business is just across the road, behind that building.”

  “Rent a car? How will you pay?”

  “I have no money, Patrick. I won’t pay.”

  “You’ll pay later, I guess.”

  “No, Patrick. I’ll never pay.”

  “Misuse your power? Default?”

  “Of course not. There’ll be no bill.”

  “But it’s a business, isn’t it? The coffee made me wonder. Just assumed that your credit is good, and that your bills are collecting in some central bank of records, for you to settle in due course.”

  “That’s silly. There are no bills. And how, and for what? I have no money to pay today, and I will have no money to pay any day.”

  “But why are those people doing business, then?” argued Sagan. “Why be busy providing goods and services, and spend time attending to their so-called businesses? They have to make a profit; they have to earn.”

  “Patrick,” said Margaret, suddenly looking superior. “It’s a major difference in concept, but I am sure you will be able to bend your mind around it.

  “Business, in humanside, is certainly the delivery of goods and services, and it certainly involves a person’s time. There is so much work to do, and such tough routines to follow, and it is all conducted for profit.

  ““Business, in screenside, is also just as certainly the delivery of goods and services, and it absolutely certainly involves a person’s time. There is also so much work to do, and such tough routines to follow. No difference in the conduct of business between humanside and screenside.

  “Just bend your mind around this one concept that defines the difference.

  “In screenside, business is conducted for no profit!”

  “In fact,” added Goodfellow, “HC has tens of thousands of pending applications from people who want to operate businesses.”

  Patel was clearly running himself ragged, and business was so good that his girlfriend, Aarti, had been drafted in to help.

  “Oh, Miss Margaret,” she enthused. “Take this top-of-the-range Mercedes. It is brand-new, just been out once, and I have myself, only today, completely vacuumed the interior and polished the exterior. Here is the paperwork; please sign these delivery documents.

  “Off you go, and if we are not here when you return the car, please leave it parked in our slots on that side road. The slots are marked, so it should be no difficulty knowing where to park, and though we have many cars out at the moment, parking slots outnumber cars. And, Miss Margaret, we have a pending application in HC, to be the very first Rent-a-Car to offer sports cars like
Ferraris and Lamborghinis. Our application may be now on your desk. If it is, please look favorably into our request.”

  “I have seen it and already approved it,” said Margaret. “The paperwork must be at the delivery desk. If any problem, come to my office.”

  As they drove away, checking maps on their phones, for the route into Long Island, Sagan, sticking to his guns, argued. “Working insanely; driving themselves crazy. Guys, this is charity, not business.”

  Margaret snorted derisively and shut him up. “Patrick, handing over a brand-new, top-of-the-line Mercedes to me, is charity in no world at all.”

  With almost zero motorized traffic or pedestrians on screenside’s non-Main Street roads, they were soon in Long Island. On verifying that screenside’s maps and CONTINUATOR-provided landscapes and routes were exactly the same as in humanside, Sagan and Gales had switched off their maps, and had guided the drive by using their knowledge of the real world, to lead them to what was Sagan’s house in humanside.

  “There it is!” he exclaimed. “And it’s exactly the same. Let’s go in.”

  “Patrick, there is no in,” said Margaret. “This is CONTINUATOR provided, and it is scenery, nothing more. Yes, if you walked up to it, you would be able to confirm that the walls are made of brick and mortar, and the door of wood. And that the windows have glass, obviously.

  “Because CONTINUATOR creates according to the information it can see via cameras, there is only outside, and nothing inside, except maybe space. Yes, you can break down the door and smash the window glass, but, boy, will you be in for very heavy punishment by the guardian program?

  “Why? Because what we see now is how it is in the human world right now, and if you go breaking things down, the guardian could interpret it as an attempt to alter landscape features that should not be altered.

  “The way to do that without exciting any guardian is simple,” chuckled Goodfellow. “Go physically, as humans in humanside, to your house, and smash and break whatever it is you want to see smashed and broken in here. Because CONTINUATOR will consider such visible exterior damage to be long-term, if not permanent, it will update those features instantaneously.”

  In due course, they returned to Manhattan, and sat in the car while Margaret showed them apartment designs, proposing that they go for something quite basic to start with, while asking them to choose a city.

  “Choose your addresses carefully,” she advised. “Because it enters city-planning RV records, and gets interlinked with macro details of the city, it is a bit more difficult to change later, although far from impossible. Regarding apartment design and size, you can change whenever you want, so going for the standard style straight away, as you have done, is a good idea, and later when you’ve been visiting friends, you can decide if something else suits you better. Wait for those couple of weeks too, before you decide on having a pet or not having a pet.

  Sagan and Gales both opted to take up permanent residence in New York, which was easily screenside’s most populated city, with about a third of the total virtual population living in it. And that, in turn, had automatically made it screenside’s most vibrant and fun city.

  Now, after food and drink had entered their lives, even if restricted to HLV, screenside entrepreneurs had come up with amazing ideas to integrate virtuality and physicality seamlessly. With most bars, cafes and restaurants of screenside already practically mirror images of the equivalent humanside ones, it had become a standard trick to have a party going on in the screenside RV version, and then transferring it completely to the humanside version in HLV - with no one having to move anywhere!

  The innovation had been so far advanced that virtual friends, already in humanside as motor or mental helpers, would, by prearrangement, patronize the very same outlet in the real city.

  This coordinated simultaneous entry into public places had a very important role, and that was that physical humans, in restaurants, would already be occupying the tables at which their RV virtual friends would join them, thereby eliminating the prospect of not finding seating, or of being excessively bumped, and possibly being evicted by the guardian.

  And, when working this system, because physical presence would guarantee tables, screenside could now do primetime and rush hour, too, and not have to wait fretfully for humans to become scarce, as it was called, or to plan without any certainty.

  For sure, the virtual-managed humans would actually consume food, whereas the HLV-tourist virtuals would eat as per screenside’s regulations, but the virtual system had become so extraordinarily advanced that it was practically impossible to tell the difference.

  There was an incongruity, though. While New York was the preferred destination for HLV ventures, screenside’s seniors and their friends’ circle, because it had started with Esmeralda-Sabine and BC-Louis, were all in Paris.

  Money, of course, was no problem anywhere at all!

  Margaret, abandoning the car, used the virtuality to take the two humans to the Accommodation Department in HC, where both chose standard-layout apartments for New York.

  “We’ll go now to the HC store, and here we are; and as you can see, it is stocked with everything you could possibly want. I am also ordering standard regulation furniture for you, which you can immediately change; whenever and whatever, and as often as you want to change in that selection.

  “And there, next to us, is the clothes shop. Go in and take whatever you want.”

  “But how might we carry this huge weight back to the apartment?” asked Sagan.

  “You choose right now, and I’ll place them into your apartments.

  “Yes guys, I know. One very major matter remains pending; or those may be a number of major matters, interlinked with each other. One; how do you find your way around in this world? Two; how do you commute from place to place, or go from city to city? Three; how do you carry things?

  “It’s nothing to agonize over. Let’s set you up, and then BC and Co will visit you and give you programs to accomplish all these typical life tasks that may crop up every day, and maybe all the time.

  “I don’t know as yet what they are considering designing. It might be an install, or a series of installs, but I’m thinking it will likely be the handing over of some apps, maybe to work with your phones, or maybe in some other gadget that they might make specially for the purpose.

  And so, the two humans became neighbors on the same floor of a building in screenside’s Times Square area. They entered Sagan’s apartment first, to find that it had already been set up and was fully functional; and so it turned out with Michael’s apartment, too.

  “Marvelous!” exclaimed Sagan. “What a lovely world we’ve entered.”

  “Yes,” agreed Gales. “It would be no problem living inside here forever. Could be the happiest place in the universe. Pity they’ve placed a life cap on us.”

  “Let’s see, Mike,” said Sagan. “It might all boil down to how integrated we become with them. I mean, how much like them we become over the years. It is possible that we become truly similar, character wise, I mean, as we’ll always be different beings, and there is nothing to be done about that. Still, if we are practically indistinguishable from them when the time comes to kill us, or wipe us out or erase us, or whatever it is they want to do, it will surely look like senseless murder. We know them. They’ll never be able to carry it out.”

  “The problem, Patrick, is that there is no guarantee of what could happen one hundred years plus from now, and so we have to stay on course and make arrangements, if possible, with the gang that Grietzmann is assembling, King and crap. And I must confess that I am getting slightly addicted to rape and pedophilia.”

  Sagan laughed. “I too, Mike. I guess that’s the reason why these acts are controlled by such strict laws in all countries. When done fearlessly, as in those Arab lands, especially when organized by the rulers themselves, one can see that these crimes are among the most desirable sexual activities.

>   “Throughout history, there have been child marriages, and child brides of adults, which means pedophilia. And as for molestation and rape: it is probably the most common thing going on in the world. Let’s hope we figure out a way to live on without the controls of screenside. They’ll never tolerate such things.”

  17

  The following week was stunningly different to anything the two humans had ever known, as they began stepping out into screenside, meeting people they had never met before, and learning the ways of their new world. Of course, they were both simultaneously independently alive also, as they had always been, as humans in the physical world.

  Disconnecting from their close human relationships had not been as difficult as it might have been, primarily because both men had nothing much going on in private, intimate human life.

  Gales had had no steady girlfriend for a number of years, and Sagan had found his wife involved in a relationship with some other man, while at the same time he was also estranged from both his adult sons.

  “Bound to have happened,” said he, philosophically. “My lifestyle was one of absence from the family environment already, and ever since we got involved in screenside work, neither of us has been able to put away even one day for sure per month, for home. And thus home has evaporated.”

  “Just as well,” said Gales. “It’s good that this is happening automatically, and that we have no ties holding us back from immersing ourselves completely into screenside life. No guilt. I’ve put some money into my parents’ accounts, and I have willed my property to them; the apartment in LA.

  “I probably won’t need it if our scheme with Grietzmann succeeds. What is the use of it? If Abe sets things up as he plans to, we’ll be living in palaces, whether or not we deliver eternal life to those idiots.”