by Ian Whates
He could see instantly that she'd made changes - the mobile photos, or moties, of him meeting various dignitaries were gone from the wall (though Catherine hadn't yet chosen to replace them with any of her own) and she'd installed a large multi-shelved cabinet filled with books; genuine bound paper, a luxury he had never acquired a taste for. The desk remained the same but his chair had gone. None of the changes were a surprise, which didn't prevent them from being a shock. He tried to ignore the emotional baggage the moment brought with it and concentrate on what Catherine was saying.
"Philip, very sorry to hear about what happened to you on New Paris," which was a neat way of referring to his assassination without actually mentioning it, "but delighted to learn you took the decision to ascend." Typical of Catherine; efficiency in all things.
Malcolm fell into conversation with the shrewd old crow like the two long-term collaborators they were, and Philip couldn't help but wonder how much interaction there'd been between the pair even while he was still alive. Fortunately, Catherine didn't seem to share Philip's prejudice against enhanced partials, and declared she was happy to accept the input of both generations of Kaufman in an advisory capacity. "There'll be a suitable retainer, of course," she added, in a way that suggested she understood exactly what financial burdens were involved in living on after death.
Perhaps she did. Perhaps Catherine was intending to join them after she passed away. Now there was an interesting prospect. Had Malcolm started a whole new trend among the wealthy and powerful rather than merely performing a rebellious, maverick act as Philip had always assumed? He was still determined to uncover what prompted Malcolm's change of heart over leaving New Paris, convinced the old man was hiding something. Malcolm had used the issue of funds to divert him just as he'd used the fuss over leaving New Paris as a smokescreen for something, Philip was sure of it.
Then he remembered his own temptations before leaving the space station and things fell into place.
He waited until they'd left the meeting with Catherine and were ensconced in a trendy bar somewhere within Home's Virtuality - all clean lines, subdued lighting and gleaming surfaces - before saying casually, "How do you intend communicating with him?"
"With whom, exactly?"
"The clone you left on New Paris."
"Ah, that."
"How are you going to support it?"
"Assuming I did leave such a clone in place, I wouldn't need to, not for any length of time anyway. Its only purpose would be to find out what it could about the Byrzaens, and, while ULAW might prefer to keep our new alien friends isolated at New Paris for now, that situation won't last forever. Were I to consider such a course, in order to cover the short term energy requirements, I might have, oh, I don't know... invested in a small generator and perhaps even some specialist hardware as soon as I reached New Paris, just in case."
Philip had to admire the old man's foresight. "I didn't even consider doing anything like that until we were on the verge of leaving."
"Don't beat yourself up about it. After all, I've been doing this for a hell of a lot longer than you have."
True enough. Presumably, Malcolm's clone would have to be abandoned once it had served its purpose and left to simply fade away. Philip considered the implications of that and wondered whether any version of him would willingly accept such a limited existence. Somehow he doubted it, but then wasn't that exactly what normal partials were expected to do? Fade away once their human original died and their purpose had been served. How aware were partials of their finite lives, and did they mind? The new perspective gained from this side of the virtual fence was highlighting moral issues Philip had previously never even realised existed.
"Your clone's all right with this?" he asked.
"What clone?" Malcolm grinned and winked, then added, "Don't worry, I've done this sort of thing before."
Really? When and why? Philip was quickly coming to appreciate how seriously he'd underestimated both this transhuman version of his father and the implications of the virtual world as a whole.
"It seems I've still got a lot to learn."
"That's where I come in."
"Are there any others like us?"
"No," Malcolm assured him, "not yet."
The audience with Catherine appeared to have solved one problem, at least. "I guess there'll be no need to tamper with my will now that we both have an income."
"Don't be so naïve, Philip. We can't rely on Catherine's successor or the one after that being so generous. You've got to start thinking long term. We're here for the duration."
A sobering thought, one which highlighted yet again how different this new life truly was.
A little later, Malcolm turned to him and said, "By the way, congratulations on having such foresight."
Philip stared, assessing possible meanings and settling on one. "The will?" He had no idea what Malcolm had done, or how much it had cost him, but he could think of nothing else which would prompt such a comment.
"A sizeable and highly sensible provision I'd say. Well done." Malcolm grinned.
Philip felt torn between conflicting reactions, emotions which felt just as strong as any he'd experienced in corporeal life. "Thank you," he said, giving voice to the more generous first. "They're going to think I'm a complete hypocrite," he then added, expressing the second. Philip had spoken out so vehemently and publicly against his father's decision to enhance his partial and live on in the virtual state, declaring it 'an egotistical abomination.' Yet now it would seem to everyone that all the while he had been planning to do exactly the same thing himself.
"Let them," Malcolm advised. "What difference is that going to make to you?"
"You're right. Force of habit." Another aspect of this new existence he would have to get used to. Public image had been so important to him for so long, whereas now, of course, it didn't really matter at all.
They were served by an improbably pretty waitress with black bobbed hair, a cute, upturned nose and dark bright eyes that gazed at him from beneath long, fluttering lashes.
Philip savoured a mouthful of the cold beer she'd brought; gently effervescent without being too gassy, while the aftertaste was malty without being too bitter.
"Good?" his father, asked.
"Yes," he conceded, "very good."
"I meant the beer, not the waitress," Malcolm said quietly.
"So did I," Philip assured him, which didn't prevent his gaze following her progress back to the bar and noting when she briefly glanced back to smile at him. That smile and the way she wiggled her perfectly rounded hips which developed from the narrowest of waists prompted Philip to wonder for the first time what sex was like here, but he decided that was one question he probably wouldn't ask his father.
When Philip first encountered the virtual bar known as The Death Wish, he'd assumed it to be unique, or at least reasonably so. Faced with the prospect of actually living here in Virtuality, he was quickly coming to appreciate just how wrong he'd been. The place was vast, and far more extensively developed than he had ever dreamed it could be.
Without Malcolm to act as guide, introducing him to this new, virtual existence, he would have been lost.
"The original programs, the foundations if you will, were written by humans," his father explained. "Many brilliant men and women contributed, but the AIs took it from there, building on all that we'd done, extending and enhancing, and then knitting all the fragments together. Without them, Home's Virtuality would still be a series of isolated pockets. It's the AIs that have built the bridges and filled in the blank spaces, who have pulled everything together into a whole, knitting a patchwork quilt that matches seamlessly. It's impossible to say where human construction ends and that of the AIs takes over."
"I'd no idea," was all Phillip could say. He remembered the spiral of events that had led to his murder in the corporeal world, beginning with his joyriding through the computer systems of his neighbours on the back of addictive narcotics and pi
lfered equipment. Would any of that have been necessary had he paid more attention to the virtual world? More specifically, could all that followed have been avoided if he'd been more accepting of Mal, his father's lingering partial?
Regrets were pointless at this stage, but he couldn't help wondering just how costly his stubbornness back then had been.
"Few people of our generations have," Malcolm replied.
"Really?" So it wasn't just him.
"Think about it. How many times have you heard your friends, contemporaries, or even the media discuss Virtuality?"
"Never."
"Precisely. Oh, there are the geeks and the tech-heads, but they're the exceptions. It's the kids, the teens and those who were teens themselves a couple of years ago, who have embraced Virtuality. Their avatars are the ones you'll find walking the streets and packing out the clubs. The meek might have inherited the earth, but the emerging generation are claiming Virtuality all for themselves. They'll be the first to grow up with this place as a part of their culture. Your generation were born a little too early and mine missed the shuttle by a good few decades, but right here, right now, we're catching a glimpse of the future. You mark my words."
There was something infectious about Malcolm's enthusiasm - always had been; it was one of the man's greatest strengths while he was alive, so why shouldn't this virtual version be the same? Yet Philip suspected there might be an element of wish-fulfilment at work here as well, that his father was overstating the import of Virtuality because it was now very much his home. He wanted the virtual world to be as important as the real, because his own relevance would then be elevated accordingly.
Not that Malcolm hadn't given him plenty to think about. Philip savoured another mouthful of beer, wondering whether a human or an AI had written the program responsible for such an excellent brew. He watched a drip of condensation trickle slowly down the curves of his glass. Were beer glasses deliberately contoured to mimic the female form or was that merely his libido talking, courtesy of the bob-haired waitress?
He glanced across at his father. Malcolm looked much as Philip remembered from the days of his childhood; a face more rounded than his own but with the same dark eyes, though they lacked the laughter lines memory had etched at their corners. The hair was a little lighter than Philip's, though still a rich brown, showing just a touch of grey at the temples and above the ears. "Your father will never grow old, just more distinguished," he remembered his mother once saying. This wasn't Malcolm in his later years but a man still in his prime, when the vigour and enthusiasm of youth hadn't yet deserted him but was tempered with maturity and experience. It struck Philip as revealing in many ways that this was the face Malcolm had selected for his transcended self. Until Malcolm's death, the partial had reflected his actual age. Only when, against all etiquette and convention, that partial had been enhanced to contain as much of him as science allowed did Kaufman Senior tweak his outward appearance.
Philip wondered now why his father had done so. Vanity seemed too glib a response. Could it have been for his son's benefit? Had Malcolm chosen to live on in the virtual world wearing the face that he reasoned Philip would most associate with happy childhood memories? The explanation had never occurred to him before, but it felt right now that it had.
Philip hadn't even thought to tinker with his own partial when, on his deathbed, he'd been persuaded to enhance it in order to transcend to virtual life. Phil had always been a little younger and a little more handsome than reality, not to mention more confident. Vanity, it seemed, wasn't banished by transcendence but was merely granted greater scope.
Malcolm looked around, caught his son watching him. "What?"
"Nothing," said Philip, and he smiled. "Just glad you're here, that's all."
"Me too, son, me too."
She was being chased through a nightmare landscape of industrial equipment... she was led, stumbling through a dark and musty chamber of looming protrusions... was strapped to a chair, a needle embedded in each arm... floating in zero gravity in a featureless sphere that offered no point of reference... sitting in a field of wild flowers, laughing, Louis laughing with her... lying on her back with something cold and damp covering her eyes, water pummelling her face, unable to breathe... was lying on her back in a soft and divinely comfortable bed, her hands clutching black silk sheets while her lover's weight pressed against her, his manhood inside her. The woman on her right, who was supporting her, turned to offer words of encouragement, revealing the dispassionate face of her torturer, which swiftly morphed into her brother, Louis, and then again into Jim Leyton, who leered at her. She whimpered as the world shifted disconcertingly yet again, screamed as her veins burned with the searing invasion of some new agent, spluttered and gagged as the water entered her lungs, moaned in the throes of orgasm as her lover erupted inside her...
Throughout it all she could hear somewhere in the background a composed, detached voice delivering what she knew to be a monologue of advice, insight and instruction, although the individual words and their meaning slipped past, frustratingly just beyond her reach.
"Mya?" This voice was louder, closer, intrusive. It didn't belong. "Mya, can you hear me?"
A woman's voice. Why wouldn't it leave her alone?
Her eyes flickered open, smarting at the brightness around her. She screwed them shut again.
"Dim the lights," a perceptive soul instructed. "She's coming round."
This time the level was tolerable, and she was able to focus on a face, a stranger who was at the same time vaguely familiar. Porcelain skin, dark eyes and delicate features which held a fragile yet exquisite beauty.
"Up the stimulants. Gradually." The same voice - a woman's - and it belonged to this familiar stranger.
She was aware of others in the room now, faceless people moving in the background.
"Thank you everyone, good job." The woman then sat back and the faceless folk departed.
Memories began to converge, knitting together sufficiently to present some clue to the recent past. She remembered the woman now, recalled being met by her as she tried to escape, features indistinct but recognisable beneath the visor of a shimmer suit, and there had been someone else: Jim - unless that last was another aspect of her delusions.
Somehow she'd managed to hold everything together as they ghosted through the bowels of Sheol Station, and she could even recall being hurried onto a shuttle. After that, nothing. Until she woke up here.
If that really had been Jim Leyton helping to rescue her, where was he now?
Strength started to return, her thoughts grew clearer. She struggled to sit up.
"Take it easy," the woman said, her face coming into view once more.
Mya ignored the advice and continued until she'd wrestled her body into a semblance of sitting. The other woman made no effort to help, for which she was grateful.
"I... I want to thank you." It felt strange to speak, to utter any sounds that were born of her own will and offered to another freely rather than being forced from her lips. She looked at this woman, who had saved her sanity if not her life. "But I don't even know your name."
The woman smiled. "Then let me introduce myself. Hello, Mya, I'm Kethi."
That rang a bell, but a distant one, and Mya was struggling to recall why the name sounded so familiar. Then she had it. "Kethi?" She frowned, staring at her rescuer, trying to marry what memory told her with the reality of the slender, beautiful woman she saw before her.
"Yes. Why, is that a problem?"
"No, it's just that... I always thought K-E-T-H-I," she pronounced each letter individually, "was a project, not a person."
"Did you, now?" The girl's smile held more than a hint of bitterness. She seemed to consider the comment before saying, "Well, in a sense I suppose I am. To be honest, I'm a bit of both."
Chapter Five
Philip gazed out on a dark city dominated by towering skyscrapers that rose up far above him. Some, he knew, were shells, crea
ted merely to provide an aesthetic skyline, while others were genuine places with substance here in Virtuality. He had no idea which were which. This was like the city he knew but in miniature, with every notable building and landmark condensed into one small area. To his left stood the Skyhall hotel, its distinctive twin glass spires emphasised even more dramatically here than in the original. Spires seemed popular in Virtuality.
The tapering nature of the building opposite, for example, leant it an eerie, gothic feel, as if this were a tower displaced from some ancient cathedral of old Earth - an impression reinforced by the vaguely green tint to the section directly level with his line of sight, presumably caused by some trick of the lights focused upon it. A huge billboard occupied a square section of the next building, covering several storeys. Philip knew that in the physical world the people in the apartments behind that 'billboard' wouldn't even know it was there. They'd look out from their windows over an unobstructed cityscape - the view perhaps marginally dimmer, but not enough to notice. Such boards were virtual. What did that make this one, a virtual virtual billboard? He had no idea what it was intended to advertise. The young blonde it currently portrayed, tossing her hair in slow-mo and smiling, could have been promoting anything.
The sky above the cityscape was a deep pink or perhaps even mauve, too dark to be the harbinger of any natural dawn. A sky like that in the real world would tempt him to think 'pollution.' He wondered what constituted pollution here in Virtuality - inefficient programming?
