Harsh Oases

by Paul Di Filippo

  “No, no, I’m all set, Bib. Thank you so much for all you’ve done. You been—you been sweeter to me than mama’s ice tea.”

  “Waal, Amy, you done reminded me of my own little princess, so warn’t no way in God’s creation I could let you be disappointed. You take care now, y’hear, on the rest of your trip. Faithland’s a mighty safe place for the most part, but there’s always folks out there looking to score.”

  Stripped of the truck’s passenger suit, wearing her backpack, Amy stood on the sidewalk outside the bus terminal, waving goodbye to the Dixie Belle.

  So much for all the horrible things the Agnosticans liked to say about the Faithlanders. Amy felt confirmed in her decision to leave the elite enclave into which she had been born.

  She looked around now at the streets of the first Faithland city she had ever visited, expecting to see immense differences from home. Truth to tell, however, many of the same franchises occupied various storefronts, although a few names were new to her. She wondered if JENNA’S PEIGNOIRS was equivalent to VICTORIA’S SECRET.

  It would’ve been nice to explore a little, but Nashville beckoned.

  The ticket to Nashville took almost fifty of Amy’s euros, which she exchanged for forty dollars at an ATM in the terminal. She even had a few dollars left over for breakfast at the terminal café.

  A few hours later, Amy was on her bus, heading east. She had taken what appeared to be the seat with possibly the most congenial companion: an Asian woman not much older than Amy herself. Although conventionally pretty, the woman had chosen to downplay her looks with a lack of makeup, severe hairstyle and drab clothing.

  After a dozen miles of mutual silence, the woman turned to Amy and introduced herself in a perky manner.

  “Hi, there, my name’s Cindy Lou Hu.”

  The woman’s English was excellent, but accented. After Amy volunteered her own name, she asked, “Are you from, like, another country?”

  “Yes, of course. Shanghai, China. I’m here to visit Brother Ray’s Gospel Mission in Nashville.”

  “Huh?”

  Cindy Lou explained that her family had been evangelical Christians for two generations, ever since adopting the creed from American missionaries. Now she was returning to the source of her faith for instruction in spreading the gospel even further.

  “Faith is one of your country’s last, best exports. No one sells religion abroad like Faithland. Brother Ray and his peers are everywhere around the world. They might assign me to Latin America or Africa or Mongolia even. It all depends. Wherever I can do the most good bringing the word of Jesus to unbelievers. Are you a believer, Amy?”

  Amy began to squirm. This kind of conversation was never encountered in Agnostica. “Uh, well, I guess I’m kind of a, um, secular humanist.”

  Cindy Lou’s smile did not waver, but definitely acquired a steely gleam. “Oh, you must read some of these tracts I happen to have with me. Right now. And then we’ll talk about them. We’ve got tons of time.”

  Fifteen hours later, as the bus pulled into Nashville, Amy’s brain felt as if it had been extracted, pureed and reinserted into her skull. She was convinced that the friendly “dialogue” on Jesus and all matters Biblical that Cindy Lou had subjected her to was a form of torture banned by the Geneva Convention.

  Still, Amy had not crumbled. She managed to refuse Cindy Lou’s repeated importunings to stay at Brother Ray’s mission. And engaging in a mass baptism was definitely ruled out. So as the two women parted around midnight outside the Nashville terminal, Amy was finally left extensively on her own, for the first time since she had escaped from New Austin.

  The first thing she did was find cheap lodgings with her ViewMaster. In the Ikea capsule hotel on Commerce, not far from the Cumberland River, Amy gratefully rested her head on her thin pillow the size of a handkerchief—a Snooli, according to its label—knowing that she was only a short distance away from all the famous musical sites she had come so far to see.

  And perhaps close in time as well to a career in music.

  The next morning Amy was up early, eager to see all the attractions that Nashville had to offer. Surely by nightfall she would have connected through some magical serendipity with the forces that would transform her life and allow her musical talent to blossom.

  The first place she intended to visit after breakfast was Music Row, the district where all the famous recording studios thrived. Here had so many of her favorite songs been digitized. The sidewalks practically gleamed golden with glory in Amy’s mind.

  But when Amy arrived at Music Row, she quickly found the district to be a hollow recreation of what she had envisioned, a series of museums and shops without any professional musicians around at all. Only fatuous tour guides and sullen gift-shop cashiers afforded any connection to the fabulous heritage of Nashville.

  A few simple inquiries soon revealed that Music Row had been obsoleted about ten years ago, by the ultimate perfection of home-recording software and the changed nature of music distribution. Music Row was now distributed unevenly across all of Faithland, in a thousand garages and bedrooms, of tract houses and mansions alike.

  Saddened but still hopeful after touring the simulated remnants of the district, Amy decided to treat herself to some barbecue. She found a place called Hog Heaven on 27th Street and walked the long blocks there. But the meal disagreed with her. Tennessee barbecue, it turned out, wasn’t anything like New Austin’s. Weird sauces, weird coleslaw, weird beans, weird cornbread.

  But even this disappointing repast failed to dim Amy’s excitement at the thought of what awaited her tonight. The Grand Ole Opry was performing in the historic Ryman auditorium, and she had snagged a cheap ticket with her ViewMaster.

  Amy spent the remainder of the afternoon strolling around the clean and pretty city. She listened to the locals talk, working on her own accent Despite a few letdowns, Amy felt sure she would still settle here. There must be a club scene through which she could meet like-minded fans and aspiring artists.

  A brief nap back in her hotel room refreshed her for the Opry.

  At the theater, Amy debated buying some snacks to serve in lieu of supper. But her money was rapidly dwindling, and she held out despite the grumblings of her stomach.

  Inside, Amy settled into her seat, full of anticipation. Even the snickers of some nearby girls her own age—who apparently had nothing better to do than make fun of Amy’s outfit—failed to quash her fervor.

  But with the very first act, her faith evaporated, and she knew she was in for heartache.

  None of these performers were familiar to her. Favoring the old-time classic singers, Amy had not kept up with the latest voices and faces. Still, she could have become emotionally invested in their songs if they hadn’t been all tarted up with synthetic sounds and pop arrangements. Where was the soul and heart of a Willie Nelson or Hank Williams III? Nowhere, it was obvious by intermission.

  Amy didn’t even stay for the rest of the show, but instead trudged downheartedly back to her hotel, where she deluged Mr. Taxes with a monsoon of tears.

  In the morning, Amy realized she had one last place to go that would reaffirm her connection with this city, would justify her arduous trip here, would inspire her future course.

  The Country Music Hall of Fame.

  With a lighter step, Amy hurried down to the corner of Demonbreun and 5th, arriving just as the museum opened.

  She went immediately to the Gretchen Wilson exhibit.

  Gretchen, Amy knew, had retired five years ago, after a long and fruitful career. But perhaps the exhibit would contain updated information about her current whereabouts (surely Gretchen still called Nashville home). Or perhaps—hope sprang eternal—there would be notice of a comeback tour.

  At the Gretchen Wilson display, Amy synced her ViewMaster with the kiosk there and brought up onto her screen all the information the Country Music Hall of Fame had to offer on her heroine. The digital guide’s voice came through her earbuds.

&n
bsp; “Since retiring from the road, Gretchen Wilson has invested much of her wealth in Batchelder Bioengineering and now resides in New

  Austin where she can more closely monitor her business affairs “

  Amy found herself out on the sidewalk without any memory of having exited the museum. For a long time she just stood rooted to the spot as foot traffic surged around her. Then she turned toward her hotel to reclaim her pack and check out.

  As she walked, she punched up some Johnny Cash.

  “Lead me gently home, father, lead me gently home …”

  Attempting to write porn or erotica is a dicey business. The turn-ons of any given individual are generally so unique or specific that the writer risks striking out entirely by presenting his own conceptions of what’s sexy—or perhaps even grossing the reader out, thus achieving the opposite of the intended result! The level of linguistic specificity that should be employed, along with matters of style, presents other minefields. Then there’s the hot-button issues (pardon the pun) of gender, politics, class, race and power struggles to contend with. My erotic novel, A Mouthful of Tongues, has provoked reactions that varied across the spectrum. One friend admitted that he read it aloud to excite his lover, and they had a rousing time. Several students at Georgia Tech, who read it as a class assignment (Professor Lisa Yaszek was either brilliant or demented to assign this) generally gave it a thumbs-down.

  So in the end, the budding pornographer can and probably should create only for himself or herself, and just pray there are readers out there who resonate.

  I’m praying, I’m praying!

  PINOCCHIA

  Chapter 1

  How it came to pass that Pinocchia was subject to malprogramming during her creation.

  Once upon a future Monday, a low-level employee of RealDoll, Inc., showed up for work high.

  Shukey Broadhead had spent the entire weekend abusing MUD. MUD was a nano-drug that put its users in actual mental communication among themselves, after wiring high-bandwidth neuro-radio circuits directly to their synapses. Users of MUD found themselves inhabiting a consensus artificial reality in which they could experience various adventures. This virtual world overlaid the real one in the user’s sensorium. Physical actions in the real world translated to analogous actions in the imaginary world. Thus, MUD users generally immured themselves during their trips, so that their non-referential physical movements, incongruous with their exterior surroundings, did not get them into trouble.

  Broadhead had indeed taken this precaution, spending the past forty-eight hours cooped up in his parents’ basement, where he had his living quarters. He had subsisted solely on a high-energy nutriceutical drink, even peeing into the empty soda bottles to avoid venturing out.

  When Monday rolled around, Broadhead believed himself to be relatively free of the influence of MUD. But of course the brain-wiring, once installed by the initial usage, was permanently established, being subsequently activated with trigger doses. And the trigger dose of the illegal drug which Broadhead had taken on Friday night had been abnormally large.

  Thus when the young man left home for the Atlanta RealDoll factory, he found himself disconcertingly subject to traces of interference on his brainscreen. The streets of the city were erratically and intermittently overlaid with the forest paths of his fantasy world, while the skyscrapers of the burg resembled castles and mountains. Average citizens became supernatural creatures.

  Broadhead almost turned around and went home. But he knew that if he missed yet another day of work, chances were good that he’d be fired. And he didn’t relish looking for another job in these tight times, or, failing that, being drafted into the War Is Peace Corps.

  So he continued cautiously to the factory, parked, biometricked into the facility, and went to his work station.

  Broadhead’s duties consisted of customized template impression on the brains of the RealDolls, one of the final stages of their creation. All he had to do was adjust the batch controls for the neurological template according to the customer’s specs and launch the tailored nanites into the spongey matrix of the RealDoll brain, where they would wire the raw paraneurons into the desired configuration.

  For the first half hour of his shift, Broadhead performed up to par, thanks to strict and dutiful concentration. He managed to ignore the alluring, disturbing counterfactual sights before his eyes and concoct the proper formulae for the templates of the first two RealDolls as they came by on the microvilli conveyor belt on the far side of a glass wall that provided sterile isolation for the product in its unfinished state.

  But then came the third RealDoll.

  Pinocchia.

  As the shapely nude form rested mindlessly, save for wetwared autonomic functions, on the temporarily non-wiggling microvilli of the conveyor, beautiful blank face to the ceiling, Broadhead’s control touchscreen was colonized by spiders. Not venomous, fanged creatures, but comic Daddy Longlegs wearing derbies and smoking stogies. Broadhead had encountered these beings before in his fantasy world, and he knew that he’d gain valuable karma points by crushing them. He began to stab his thumbs onto the imaginary bugs on the screen.

  Nothing like the resulting batch of template nanites that he randomly encoded had ever before been created.

  Broadhead’s thumb hit the LAUNCH icon.

  On the far side of the glass wall, a robot arm bearing a long, impossibly thin hypodermic lance moved into position behind Pinocchia’s left ear, jabbed forward, penetrating skin, muscle and bone, and pumped its load into the Real Doll’s artificial brain.

  The conveyor restarted, carrying Pinocchia onward to the dressing, packing and shipping department.

  Broadhead’s actions indeed accrued karma points—but not as he imagined.

  For he had given Pinocchia free will, curiosity, unease and desire.

  Chapter 2

  Tom Geppi receives a much-anticipated delivery.

  Tom Geppi was a carpenter—which in this era meant that he invented novel materials, building up exotic substances for specific uses atom by atom. His passion for material sciences was all-encompassing, filling his every waking minute. He cared nothing for sports, nothing for fine cuisines, nothing for fancy cars or art or entertainment. He lived only to craft ingenious substances that would improve on the tawdry creations of Mother Nature. His dream was to eventually replace every natural surface in the world with an improved version of his own making. He had many clients who found his services very useful, and paid accordingly.

  But despite his monkish, otaku nature, Geppi had certain urges common to all mankind. His libido was healthy. But his social skills and patience for sexual courtship were nil. This disjunction between need and fulfillment troubled him, disturbing the concentration necessary for his vocation.

  He had tried shutting off his libido with nanites, but found that this interfered with his creativity, and so he abandoned the temporary wetware rewiring. He tried human prostitutes, but their unpredictable behavior disconcerted him.

  The obvious, easy, albeit expensive solution to his quandary was to buy a RealDoll.

  So he did, placing his order and resigning himself to waiting uncomfortably through the six-month gestation period of the vat-flesh android.

  A period that was now, at last, over.

  Informed by the RealDoll factory that his unit had shipped, Tom Geppi made ready to receive her.

  He had converted a room of his home in an exclusive suburb of Boston to hold the RealDoll and serve as the chamber to which he could retreat for regular, utilitarian ventings of his carnal urges.

  The chamber held a large, double-thick futon and a special chair, the latter provided by the RealDoll people as part of the purchase price. According to the online owner’s manual, that was all the furniture that was required to sustain a RealDoll. When it wasn’t on the bed, performing its duties, it would sit blankly in the chair, in quasi-sleep mode. Its nutritional and eliminative functions, identical to a human’s, would be handled by the ch
air, an adaptation of common medical tech.

  As Geppi was nervously inspecting the accoutrements of the Real-Doll’s room for the tenth time, his doorbell rang.

  The FedUps man had used a handtruck to wheel up the big grey ovoid pod to Geppi’s doorstep.

  “Where ya want her?” The florid-faced FedUps man was leering boldly, and Geppi felt ashamed and confused. There was no stigma in having a RealDoll. Hundreds of thousands had been sold. Celebrities boasted of owning them. This rude fellow had to be jealous he couldn’t afford one.

  “The room’s this way,” Geppi said, and pointed. The delivery man wheeled the pod in. He weaseled the handtruck out from under the big egg and said, “Want me to crack ’er for ya?”

  “No, you can go now.”

  “Sure. Have fun.”

  Once alone with his purchase, Geppi tremblingly unseamed the egg, which fell away in two halves that intelligently lost their rigidity, pooling like easily disposable fabric around the feet of their contents.

  The feet of the RealDoll.

  Clothed in an outfit Geppi had picked from the catalogue—the Columbina style—the RealDoll stood, still in quasi-sleep mode and supported by a temporary shipping exoskeleton.

  The doll’s hair was black as mussel-shells, and cut in a pageboy. Her heart-shaped, button-nosed face, palely complected, was rendered less-than-classically perfect by an overlarge mouth. Her eyelids were permanently tinted blue, her lips crimson.

  Her outfit consisted of a jacket secured with braided frogs and which flared out at the hips—scooped low to disclose generous breasts—and tight calf-length pants. The material of both was patterned with large diamonds, red, green and gold. White hosiery emerged from the hem of the pants, leading down to soft black shoes more like slippers than streetwear.