MOM

by Collin Piprell

  •

  He drops smack into the middle of the hotel room. Sky's gone. A note is taped to the mirror above a bureau of drawers: “And you want to meet face2face. Could a wet rendezvous ever compare to that? I do not think so.”

  Cisco's console is there at hand. It looks like a panel of switches for the ceiling fan and old‐fashioned electric lights and whatnot. Sky has a zany streak, staging from a World as retro as this one. Cisco flicks a big red toggle. Abruptly, with the sense of having been away only an instant, at the same time knowing he's been away an eon, he feels himself drop again as if through a hole in space‐time two meters above his cradle. But in reality he'd never left in the first place. He neutralizes the suspension field and steps out to see Smoke watching him, motionless, frozen gray light poised by the doorway to Cisco's living room.

  Cisco shakes his head and stretches. What a trip. Cutting‐edge worlding. Beyond the edge. Maximum rez plus. Especially the sex. In fact Cisco doesn't see how she managed it. Never mind Cisco is an alpha Worlds UnLtd test pilot. “Taking the Worlds to their limits, making them better, safer places for you.” Giving the mallsters maximum kick, maximum distraction. Trying to ensure they don't destroy their minds in the process.

  Sky had simply appeared in one of Cisco's test Worlds. Three cycles ago. And today, all the more unaccountably for its being a Monday, Cisco came to, with her, in a World—or Worlds—with no memory of how he had gotten there. Who is this woman? That question vies with others. Where had he been before the waterbed, for example, and why had he been so angry? And how could he so readily yield control?

  Fluid as mercury, Smoke moves to his side and then freezes again.

  What would Leary say about this little indiscretion? This peccadillo that could get Cisco totally offed, marooned in this apartment for the rest of his life.

  Cisco's HIID is working again. Strange. He asks his Doll for a pot of green tea and a peanut butter and banana sandwich. Big surprise—she gives him the sandwich without further ado. He moves to the living room and says, “Tank,” whereupon the wall opposite his window shimmers and gains depth to reveal Eddie Eight, pumped up and glistening with oil.

  “Hey, man.” Eddie holds something up. “Look at this.”

  Cisco looks.

  Behind him, still as death, Smoke looks too.

  Chronicle

  C'mere, boy. Relax, okay?

  Look at Rexy. Whining and scratching away at the portal just like he wants out. First off, he doesn't eat anything, so he doesn't need to go walkies. And he doesn't need the exercise. This may sound stupid, but for the past couple of cycles it's like he's been trying to tell me something. Something to do with Outside. I know he's only a machine, an “organic simulacrum,” like the ads used to say, an “infinitely transmutable nanobot assembly.” But I swear he senses something's wrong. He sits and stares at the north wall and whines. How do you figure that?

  Gosh, Rexy. What's got into you, anyway?

  Talking pets. Twenty years ago people started cloning pets. Sure, it was sad when Fluffy kicked the bucket, but all you had to do was take a clone off the shelf and start the house training all over. Before long there was a move to do the same with babies, routinely banking a few clones as insurance. Clones often developed along much the same lines as the original, or so the argument went, especially when the kid was very young, and this could ease the pain of loss no end. Then the GR worlds came along, and you could simulate anything mondoland had to offer, and you didn't even have to wait for the clone to grow up.

  Joy has a new 'pet. This one looks and acts like a genuine Lhasa Apso. I know because Nance, my first wife, Singaporean Chinese she was, had one way back when. A shaggy little dustmop of a dog. You couldn't tell which end was which till one barked or the other farted. But no problem; the mutt was always doing either one or the other. I never did care for that animal too much. Of course robopets don't fart, generally speaking. You could add it to the specs if you wanted, though I can't imagine why anyone would want to. Except, I guess, if you're going to have a Lhasa Apso, you might as well go the whole route.

  Joy calls her dog Toot, and she talks to it. A lot of people, back when there were a lot of these items left, specified speech circuits when they ordered pets. Can you imagine? Nance used to talk to her Lhasa Apso, that's true, but it never did answer. Real dogs didn't talk. They didn't have to—big eyes looking at you, tails wagging away—they communicated just fine.

  Isn't that right, Rexy?

  Rexy, here, can wag and gawk with the best of 'em. Looks exactly like a red setter. Scary, how real he is. Once in a while I think he's a tad too smart, mind you, even if he doesn't talk. You look at him and you get the idea, at times, that all sorts of things are going on behind those eyes. And many of 'em are nothing like what dogs used to think about.

  Smoke and Mirrors

  We've got more realities than you can shake a stick at, including one that nobody dares acknowledge.

  —Eddie Eight

  Monday

  Cisco drops out of nowhere and no‐time, still raging from something that made him angry. In a dream it had been Monday, and he was in his apartment talking to someone. Eddie Eight. In the holotank. “Look at this,” Eddie Eight had said. “Check it out.” Cisco wasn't able to see what Eddie was holding. Or he can't remember now. He thrums with fury, and he hurts all over. He explores the socket of a missing incisor with his tongue. It feels as though he also has a broken knuckle in his right hand. He can feel the medibots tingling as they begin to fix it.

  There's the usual disorientation. The kludginess. Gravity is oppressive outside the Worlds, and Cisco resists the impulse to cancel it. Anyway, he isn't coming out of a World. It's Monday and the Worlds are closed, at least to anyone but Sky. This is mondoland, ESUSA, where his powers don't extend to nullifying gravity.

  Cisco has emerged from dark oblivion like a coma. He touches his face where it stings, and his finger comes away wet with blood. He goes into his bathroom to examine himself in the digiscreen over the handbasin. None of the tiredness shows in the screen. A squareish face with regular features gazes back at him. Blue eyes, a firm mouth set straight and uncompromising, head shaved clean. The digiscreen shows nothing but the old scar running from cheekbone past corner of mouth to chin. No fresh wound. No missing tooth. No locket. He can't see his locket in the mirror, but it's there when he looks down, the only tangible link with his missing childhood. It's smeared with blood. Musing, he rinses it between forefinger and thumb.

  Cisco is tired. Plagued by apprehension. He pushes against his eyeballs with thumb and forefinger, and his optic nerves project the familiar lightshow. He touches the scars on his face, checks his locket. “I am Cisco Smith,” he tells himself. But it isn't enough. He turns to his screen.

  “Request Lode access. ID confirmation.” He hates this, feeling like a standard mallster. “Confirm ID.”

  Specify target ID.

  “Cisco Smith. Citizen ZEZQ112.”

  Cisco Smith requests ID confirmation for Cisco Smith. Confirm.

  “That's right.”

  Cisco Smith, asker, identical with Cisco Smith, target.

  MOM can display what Leary describes as bureaucratic stupidity refined to an unbelievable degree. A principled refusal to learn from experience. Mallsters are perpetually suffering identity crises, always asking MOM for reassurance. For an alpha test pilot, however, this is an embarrassment, so why can't she just get on with it? “We've been through this before,” Cisco says.

  You request self‐confirmation of ID, target Citizen ZEZQ112?

  “You've got it,” Cisco replies. He smiles hugely to belie the edge in his voice. Happy‐happy. See?

  Look directly into the screen, eyes open for three seconds.

  Cisco looks and he smiles and he feels like a horse's butt, again as Leary might put it. The screen begins to scroll:

  Status: Full Citizen ZEZQ112, ESUSA Mall.

  Name: Cisco Smith.

  Sex: ma
le.

  Age: 22 years.

  Height: 189 cm.

  Weight: 85 kilos.

  Distinguishing marks: single 7‐centimeter crescent scar, left side of face; refuses cosmetic reconstruction.

  Birthdate: AD 2035.

  Birthplace: ESSEA (nursery). Parents: n∕a.

  Siblings: n/a.

  Occupation: Worlds UnLtd operational maintenance and assessment. Position: Alpha 2 ranked.

  Affiliations: OmniStrike Premier League (Rank 1); Monday Reading Group(second‐generation member).

  Awards: First Place, Speed Journalism, ESUSA Southwest Sector Community College (2050); Junior Pan‐Malls Champion 4D Game‐Master (2050, 2051); Silver Cup, OmniStrike Seventh Dan Finals (2055, 2056, 2057).

  Recreational Worlds of choice: OmniStrike IX (consultant‐designer member); ZenDoozy (level three).

  Standard primary telep alters: n/a (WYSIWYG).

  Sexual orientation: egalitarian omnitech hetero.

  Musical preferences: drizadrone; 20th‐century R&B.

  Dietary preferences: peanut butter and banana sandwiches; simsoy hotdogs with yellow mustard and chopped onions.

  That's him. Nothing changed, beyond his Omnistrike ranking. How did he get to be number one? He's still only number two, unless he has bumped Lars King without realizing it. It's odd to find this sort of glitch in the Lode.

  Otherwise the report is interesting mostly for the information that's missing.

  And he doesn't feel any more certain, any better about himself.

  Enter passcode for further information.

  Cisco subvocalizes his code. The screen goes blank as his HIID kicks in. His WalkAbout HIID, a special privilege for alpha pilots, gives him full twentyfourseven mondoland Lode access. Leary, who doesn't qualify but uses the standard model while in the Worlds, says reading an HIID is like catching sight of a rear‐view mirror in the periphery of your vision. Cisco thinks of it more as looking askance at something in the dark, where you have to look to one side of it to see it clearly.

  Confidential report for Citizen ZEZQ112 follows:

  Bio‐modifications: special beta version AllWorlds WalkAbout; heads‐up real‐time augmented reality with real‐world Lode access (awarded 2048).

  Psychoneurotherapeutic surgical adjustments: n∕a Current happiness quotient (HQ): 4.1

  Five‐cycle average HQ: 4.9.

  Current connectivity quotient (CQ): 8.0 Five‐cycle average CQ: 7.2.

  Enough, already. This is him. Nothing new, beyond evidence of flagging spirits.

  He recognizes himself. For whatever that's worth. He's reassured, he supposes.

  Although, as usual, the important questions go unanswered. And Eddie Eight claims that the “n/a” refers to both “not applicable” and “not available,” which allows for any amount of fudging on MOM's part.

  The screen flashes:

  Citizen ZEZQ112. Attend to HIID message.

  Cisco looks askance to see the scroll.

  Borderline HQ pathology. Advisory: Citizen ZEZQ112 should volunteer for therapy. Alternative: diversify diet; explore new recreational activities.

  Possible evidence of delusional state. Citizen ZEZQ112 is referred to the main body of his ID report: 'Information on sibling unavailable; such data irrelevant.' Please confirm: putative sibling a construct.

  The first item is of concern. The second is merely unaccountable. That same message has accompanied every ID check he has ever requested. Cisco can't remember when the Lode first decided he didn't have a sister. But his HIID has deleted Sissie from his personal inventory. And all his requests for amendment have been disregarded. Worse than that, MOM is accusing him of psychoneuroaberration. No matter how intelligent many mallsters believe her to be, as Leary says, MOM is basically a government official.

  Confirmed, Cisco subvocalizes. Putative sibling is a construct. Whatever makes you happy, he almost adds, but thinks better of it.

  •

  Cisco is looking out his window. Not really seeing, just looking. Within seconds a dust storm comes up, and Cisco stares into a dimensionless void. He turns back to his apartment, contaminated by a foreboding that involves more than the superorganism outside or the sea rising in the distance. More than the gray skies and bleak prospects Outside. The mall is closing in on him while he himself is threatened with implosion.

  “Wait!” Eddie Eight is in the tank. “Look. Look at this.”

  Cisco empties his holotank without a glance in Eddie Eight's direction. Then he blanks both port and screen. He stands there staring into the gray depths of the dead screen. A face begins to form, a ghost. The man in the moon. The Buddha's face in a turnip. Cisco has never seen a turnip. Not a real one. He leans forward and stares harder, tries to resolve the ghost as a reflection of his own face. But it disappears. Qubital figment or mere progeny of his own imagination? “We are all of us qubital figments,” says the golden oldie graffito.

  Unconsciously, he's been gripping his locket nearly hard enough to draw blood.

  Now he opens it. The woman is smiling. Why? If only he could figure out her moods, her three faces. He believes this portrait might offer a key to his own real identity.

  Chronicle

  Cisco the Kid. They called him the Tiger Woods of 4D gaming. That was back when he was fifteen years old. By the time he was eighteen he was the Michael Jordan of worlding. “An uncanny sense of place and relationship,” etc., etc. “An unfailing sense of self and location in relation to his existential context.” Whatever the heck that means. And here he's suffering an identity crisis. But he's gotta handle it. It's part of what's happening, even if we can't tell him what's happening. Not yet.

  People used to look themselves up on what we called the World Wide Web. They'd check every now and then to see what the world was saying about them. Generally that was nothing at all. But nowadays most mallsters check with the Lode to see if they're still who they think they are. Even more often these days, I guess, they're checking to see who they are, period. Because they don't know. They need somebody, or something, to tell them. Even the Kid. He's going through tough times. Who isn't? Still, he's been checking his loded ID more than you would want to see. And we can't answer the questions he really needs answered. Not yet.

  My Ellie—that's my second wife, and she was smart as they come—she'd say our world is a mirror that shows us who we are. We are who we see ourselves to be in the eyes of others. And how they see us, at least partly, is how we see ourselves. More or less. Whatever. The only real mirror we've got these days is MOM. The question is, can we trust her? Maybe it's all nothing but smoke and mirrors.

  Everything we see is presented to us compliments of our loving Mall Operations Manager. It makes you think. Could be we've got machines deciding what we're supposed to do, maybe even deciding who we're going to be when we do it. In the meantime, we've got more and more people falling apart. Or suffering phobias, terrified of everything from the dust to being cooped up to merely being alive. Can't handle it? You op out. Or volunteer for psychoneurotherapeutic reconstruction—PR, for short.

  Sometimes, I hear, you aren't given the choice; the medibots take care of business before you know what's what. And rumor has it the Dolls are adding anti‐anxiety drugs to our food.

  It's true that everything from my toilet to my Doll to the friggin' floor thinks it knows better than me. But something the toilet doesn't know: it's getting short‐changed. Every day I hold back a bit of grub. Jerky and hardtack. Brown rice. I've lost weight, which the toilet has noticed, but it looks like MOM and the toilet figure it's an HQ situation. Strange. You'd think my toilet would have picked up on the shortfall. Unless it thinks I've turned into a matter annihilator.

  It's funny, when you think about it. Basically, human beings were merely devices for turning food into fertilizer. Call it man's nature. But now we don't have any plants left to feed, so what use are we? Unless it's to turn simulated veggie burgers into material the Dolls can turn back into more simula
ted veggie burgers. Somehow that doesn't sound as important as feeding plants.

  Delete all that, back to where I say the toilet doesn't know everything. And delete the earlier part about not answering the Kid's questions yet.

  Monday

  “Right in the middle of the best sex I've ever had.” Joy sounds distraught. “And what happens? Lockdown. All of a sudden it's Monday. God! We just get one Monday out of the way and, bang, it's Monday all over again. What's going on?”

  In fact nobody is happy with the way things are going. Part of it is the unpredictability. You never know when it's going to suddenly become Monday. And it seems Mondays can go on as long as they like. As long as who likes? That part of it isn't clear.

  Cisco stands facing his window, back to the holotank. He kicks, straight‐legged, high enough to touch his fingertips, arms extended at seventy degrees from his shoulder. He grips his toes, leg extended straight, rises on the ball of his other foot, holds the pose, and then performs a spin though one hundred and eighty degrees as he releases the foot to twist and kick, quick as lightning, towards the figure in the tank.

  “Nice moves,” says Eddie Eight. “For someone with skinny legs.”

  This Monday is shaping up to be the Monday of all Mondays. For one thing, Dee Zu remains conspicuously absent; there's reason to believe she has found reason to believe Cisco is screwing around with another real woman. For a few other things, slowjoes are lurching around outside like the undead, Sissie's planning to op out, and Eddie Eight's in the holotank trying to get Cisco to have sex with him. Cisco badly wants to see Sky again, but he can only wait; she never appears in the tank, and he has no alternative way of contacting her. Right now Sissie is taking a break from explaining to Cisco, for the umpteenth time, why she's about to op out, and is instead engaged in a whining contest with Joy.

  “Mondays suck.”

  Cisco's kid sister. Her telep. Telepresent just now as a full, life‐size avatar. Today Sissie is bald—head, face and body. She's solid black, except for the eyes, which goggle from the centers of thick white rings. And except for the tattooed graffiti that decorate her entire body. The gossamer monokini could be a tattoo as well. Bioluminescent graffiti flash in alternating colors, one of them—Brand Me!—reiterating prominently on each breast.