“I’ve forgotten all the Latin I ever knew.” Becca tossed her hair, forced a laugh. “So what do you do nowadays?”
“Mostly I’m a conduit for data. The University has been using me as a research spider, which I don’t mind doing, because it passes the time. Except that I take up a lot more memory than any real search spider, and don’t do that much better a job. And the information I find doesn’t have much to do with me — it’s all about the real world. The world I can’t touch.” The metal tree bled color.
“Mostly,” he said, “I’ve just been waiting for Dad to die. And now it’s happened.”
There was a moment of silence before Becca spoke. “You know that Dad had himself scanned before he went.”
“Oh yeah. I knew.”
“He set up some kind of weird foundation that I’m not part of, with his patents and programs and so on, and his money and some other people’s.”
“He’d better not turn up here.”
Becca shook her head. “He won’t. Not without your permission, anyway. Because I’m in charge here. You—your program—it’s not a part of the foundation. Dad couldn’t get it all, because the University has an interest, and so does the family.” There was a moment of silence. “And I’m the family now.”
“So you…inherited me,” Jamie said. Cold scorn dripped from his words.
“That’s right,” Becca said. She squatted down amid the rubble, rested her forearms on her knees.
“What do you want me to do, Digit? What can I do to make it better for you?”
“No one ever asked me that,” Jamie said.
There was another long silence.
“Shut it off,” Jamie said. “Close the file. Erase it.”
Becca swallowed hard. Tears shimmered in her eyes. “Are you sure?” she asked.
“Yes. I’m sure.”
“And if they ever perfect the clone thing? If we could make you…” She took a breath. “A person?”
“No. It’s too late. It’s…not something I can want anymore.”
Becca stood. Ran a hand through her hair. “I wish you could meet my daughter,” she said. “Her name is Christy. She’s a real beauty.”
“You can bring her,” Jamie said.
Becca shook her head. “This place would scare her. She’s only three. I’d only bring her if we could have…”
“The old environment,” Jamie finished. “Pandaland. Mister Jeepers. Whirlikin Country.”
Becca forced a smile. “Those were happy days,” she said. “They really were. I was jealous of you, I know, but when I look back at that time…” She wiped tears with the back of her hand. “It was the best.”
“Virtual environments are nice places to visit, I guess,” Jamie said. “But you don’t want to live in one. Not forever.” Becca looked down at her feet, planted amid rubble.
“Well,” she said. “If you’re sure about what you want.”
“I am.”
She looked up at the metal form, raised a hand. “Goodbye, Jamie,” she said.
“Goodbye,” he said.
She faded from the world.
And in time, the world and the tree faded, too.
Hand in hand, Daddy and Jamie walked to Whirlikin Country. Jamie had never seen the Whirlikins before, and he laughed and laughed as the Whirlikins spun beneath their orange sky.
The sound of a bell rang over the green hills. “Time for dinner, Jamie,” Daddy said.
Jamie waved goodbye to the Whirlikins, and he and Daddy walked briskly over the fresh green grass toward home.
“Are you happy, Jamie?” Daddy asked.
“Yes, Daddy!” Jamie nodded. “I only wish Momma and Becky could be here with us.”
“They’ll be here soon.”
When, he thought, they can get the simulations working properly.
Because this time, he thought, there would be no mistakes. The foundation he’d set up before he died had finally purchased the University’s interest in Jamie’s program — they funded some scholarships, that was all it finally took. There was no one in the Computer Department who had an interest anymore.
Jamie had been loaded from an old backup—there was no point in using the corrupt file that Jamie had become, the one that had turned itself into a tree, for heaven’s sake.
The old world was up and running, with a few improvements. The foundation had bought their own computer — an old one, so it wasn’t too expensive — that would run the environment full time. Some other children might be scanned, to give Jamie some playmates and peer socialization.
This time it would work, Daddy thought. Because this time, Daddy was a program too, and he was going to be here every minute, making sure that the environment was correct and that everything went exactly according to plan. That he and Jamie and everyone else had a normal family life, perfect and shining and safe.
And if the clone program ever worked out, they would come into the real world again. And if downloading into clones was never perfected, then they would stay here.
There was nothing wrong with the virtual environment. It was a good place.
Just like normal family life. Only forever.
And when this worked out, the foundation’s backers — fine people, even if they did have some strange religious ideas — would have their own environments up and running. With churches, angels, and perhaps even the presence of God…
“Look!” Daddy said, pointing. “It’s Mister Jeepers!”
Mister Jeepers flew off the rooftop and spun happy spirals in the air as he swooped toward Jamie. Jamie dropped Daddy’s hand and ran laughing to greet his friend.
“Jamie’s home!” Mister Jeepers cried. “Jamie’s home at last!”
Sterling to Kessel, 2.7 April 1987:
“Cyberpunk’s carcass, now flopping under the beaks and jaws of the vultures and hyenas, will soon settle gently into the total artistic decomposition of the invertebrates and fungi…
“Perhaps the movement’s common denominators were simply too easy to trash. Outside the tiny circle of originators, no one seems to have taken its ideals seriously enough to write a major novel in the cyberpunk vein; they seem more interested in dressing up of standards with a gloss of c-word tropes…
Sometimes I feel that if we could get our hands around the neck of whatever it was that made us this way, we’d really have it made. Sure, there’s the rage, and It, whatever It is, should indeed pay a terrible price for making us like this… If we were really able to get hold of Whatever-It-Is, we ought to be able to talk intelligibly, at least to our contemporaries, in our own voices, and be heard and understood, and even, possibly, appreciated. I don’t know what that kind of fiction would look like, but it would be the ‘native literature of a post-industrial society,’ and it would look right, and feel natural, and we’d be happy with it.”
Kessel to Sterling, 8 May 1987:
“I’ve come to feel that wasn’t such a bad fate, to acknowledge that all our ladders start there, in our mundane existence… You talk about just this with your understanding of the rage at the mundane world that lurks behind all our futures, be they brightly painted or grimly sketched…. ‘Shouldn’t somebody pay an awful price for making you that way?’ Exactly. But…pure rage, although it will take you to places that are worth going to and that few have the courage to visit, is not a good long-term engine. There have got to be other engines.”
The Dog Said Bow-Wow
Michael Swanwick
It seems clear to us that Michael Swanwick is not only a PCP writer, but that he was publishing stories back in the ‘80s that might well have qualified him for the roster of original cyberpunks. In addition, he was also the most astute chronicler of the cyberpunk-humanist dustup. But Swanwick has always been one of science fiction’s most slippery writers; labels just will not stick to him. Or to the story that follows, a romp featuring two scam artists in a future that pushes cyberpunk to the edge of absurdity and yet maintains its skewed extrapolative rigor. At
one time the phrase “comic cyberpunk” might have seemed an oxymoron. Not anymore.
THE DOG LOOKED like he had just stepped out of a children’s book. There must have been a hundred physical adaptations required to allow him to walk upright. The pelvis, of course, had been entirely reshaped. The feet alone would have needed dozens of changes. He had knees, and knees were tricky.
To say nothing of the neurological enhancements.
But what Darger found himself most fascinated by was the creature’s costume. His suit fit him perfectly, with a slit in the back for the tail, and—again—a hundred invisible adaptations that caused it to hang on his body in a way that looked perfectly natural.
“You must have an extraordinary tailor,” Darger said.
The dog shifted his cane from one paw to the other, so they could shake, and in the least affected manner imaginable replied, “That is a common observation, sir.”
“You’re from the States?” It was a safe assumption, given where they stood — on the docks—and that the schooner Yankee Dreamer had sailed up the Thames with the morning tide. Darger had seen its bubble sails over the rooftops, like so many rainbows. “Have you found lodgings yet?”
“Indeed I am, and no I have not. If you could recommend a tavern of the cleaner sort?”
“No need for that. I would be only too happy to put you up for a few days in my own rooms.” And, lowering his voice, Darger said, “I have a business proposition to put to you.”
“Then lead on, sir, and I shall follow you with a right good will.”
The dog’s name was Sir Blackthorpe Ravenscairn de Plus Precieux, but “Call me Sir Plus,” he said with a self-denigrating smile, and “Surplus” he was ever after.
Surplus was, as Darger had at first glance suspected and by conversation confirmed, a bit of a rogue — something more than mischievous and less than a cut-throat. A dog, in fine, after Darger’s own heart.
Over drinks in a public house, Darger displayed his box and explained his intentions for it. Surplus warily touched the intricately carved teak housing, and then drew away from it. “You outline an intriguing scheme, Master Darger—”
“Please. Call me Aubrey.”
“Aubrey, then. Yet here we have a delicate point. How shall we divide up the…ah, spoils of this enterprise? I hesitate to mention this, but many a promising partnership has foundered on precisely such shoals.”
Darger unscrewed the salt cellar and poured its contents onto the table. With his dagger, he drew a fine line down the middle of the heap. “I divide — you choose. Or the other way around, if you please. From self-interest, you’ll not find a grain’s difference between the two.”
“Excellent!” cried Surplus and, dropping a pinch of salt in his beer, drank to the bargain.
It was raining when they left for Buckingham Labyrinth. Darger stared out the carriage window at the drear streets and worn buildings gliding by and sighed. “Poor, weary old London! History is a grinding-wheel that has been applied too many a time to thy face.”
“It is also,” Surplus reminded him, “to be the making of our fortunes. Raise your eyes to the Labyrinth, sir, with its soaring towers and bright surfaces rising above these shops and flats like a crystal mountain rearing up out of a ramshackle wooden sea, and be comforted.”
“That is fine advice,” Darger agreed. “But it cannot comfort a lover of cities, nor one of a melancholic turn of mind.”
“Pah!” cried Surplus, and said no more until they arrived at their destination.
At the portal into Buckingham, the sergeant-interface strode forward as they stepped down from the carriage. He blinked at the sight of Surplus, but said only, “Papers?”
Surplus presented the man with his passport and the credentials Darger had spent the morning forging, then added with a negligent wave of his paw, “And this is my autistic.”
The sergeant-interface glanced once at Darger, and forgot about him completely. Darger had the gift, priceless to one in his profession, of a face so nondescript that once someone looked away, it disappeared from that person’s consciousness forever. “This way, sir. The officer of protocol will want to examine these himself.”
A dwarf savant was produced to lead them through the outer circle of the Labyrinth. They passed by ladies in bioluminescent gowns and gentlemen with boots and gloves cut from leathers cloned from their own skin. Both women and men were extravagantly bejeweled—for the ostentatious display of wealth was yet again in fashion — and the halls were lushly clad and pillared in marble, porphyry, and jasper. Yet Darger could not help noticing how worn the carpets were, how chipped and sooted the oil lamps. His sharp eye espied the remains of an antique electrical system, and traces as well of telephone lines and fiber optic cables from an age when those technologies were yet workable.
These last he viewed with particular pleasure.
The dwarf savant stopped before a heavy black door carved over with gilt griffins, locomotives, and fleurs-de-lis. “This is a door,” he said. “The wood is ebony. Its binomial is Diospyros ebenum. It was harvested in Serendip. The gilding is of gold. Gold has an atomic weight of 197.2.”
He knocked on the door and opened it.
The officer of protocol was a dark-browed man of imposing mass. He did not stand for them. “I am Lord Coherence-Hamilton, and this—” he indicated the slender, clear-eyed woman who stood beside him—“is my sister, Pamela.”
Surplus bowed deeply to the Lady, who dimpled and dipped a slight curtsey in return.
The protocol officer quickly scanned the credentials. “Explain these fraudulent papers, sirrah. The Demesne of Western Vermont! Damn me if I have ever heard of such a place.”
“Then you have missed much,” Surplus said haughtily. “It is true we are a young nation, created only seventy-five years ago during the Partition of New England. But there is much of note to commend our fair land. The glorious beauty of Lake Champlain. The gene-mills of Winooski, that ancient seat of learning the Universitas Viridis Montis of Burlington, the Technarchaeological Institute of—” He stopped. “We have much to be proud of, sir, and nothing of which to be ashamed.”
The bearlike official glared suspiciously at him, then said, “What brings you to London? Why do you desire an audience with the queen?”
“My mission and destination lie in Russia. However, England being on my itinerary and I a diplomat, I was charged to extend the compliments of my nation to your monarch.” Surplus did not quite shrug. “There is no more to it than that. In three days I shall be in France, and you will have forgotten about me completely.”
Scornfully, the officer tossed the credentials to the savant, who glanced at and politely returned them to Surplus. The small fellow sat down at a little desk scaled to his own size and swiftly made out a copy. “Your papers will be taken to Whitechapel and examined there. If everything goes well — which I doubt — and there’s an opening — not likely—you’ll be presented to the queen sometime between a week and ten days hence.”
“Ten days! Sir, I am on a very strict schedule!”
“Then you wish to withdraw your petition?”
Surplus hesitated. “I…I shall have to think on’t, sir.”
Lady Pamela watched coolly as the dwarf savant led them away.
The room they were shown to had massively framed mirrors and oil paintings dark with age upon the walls, and a generous log fire in the hearth. When their small guide had gone, Darger carefully locked and bolted the door. Then he tossed the box onto the bed, and bounced down alongside it. Lying flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling, he said, “The Lady Pamela is a strikingly beautiful woman. I’ll be damned if she’s not.”
Ignoring him, Surplus locked paws behind his back, and proceeded to pace up and down the room. He was full of nervous energy. At last, he expostulated, “This is a deep game you have gotten me into, Darger! Lord Coherence-Hamilton suspects us of all manner of blackguardry —”
“Well, and what of that?”
“I repeat myself: We have not even begun our play yet, and he suspects us already! I trust neither him nor his genetically remade dwarf.”
“You are in no position to be displaying such vulgar prejudice.”
“I am not bigoted about the creature, Darger, I fear him! Once let suspicion of us into that macroencephalic head of his, and he will worry at it until he has found out our every secret.”
“Get a grip on yourself, Surplus! Be a man! We are in this too deep already to back out. Questions would be asked, and investigations made.”
“I am anything but a man, thank God,” Surplus replied. “Still, you are right. In for a penny, in for a pound. For now, I might as well sleep. Get off the bed. You can have the hearth-rug.”
“I! The rug!”
“I am groggy of mornings. Were someone to knock, and I to unthinkingly open the door, it would hardly do to have you found sharing a bed with your master.”
The next day, Surplus returned to the Office of Protocol to declare that he was authorized to wait as long as two weeks for an audience with the queen, though not a day more.
“You have received new orders from your government?” Lord Coherence-Hamilton asked suspiciously. “I hardly see how.”
“I have searched my conscience, and reflected on certain subtleties of phrasing in my original instructions,” Surplus said. “That is all.”
He emerged from the office to discover Lady Pamela waiting outside. When she offered to show him the Labyrinth, he agreed happily to her plan. Followed by Darger, they strolled inward, first to witness the changing of the guard in the forecourt vestibule, before the great pillared wall that was the front of Buckingham Palace before it was swallowed up in the expansion of architecture during the mad, glorious years of Utopia. Following which, they proceeded toward the viewer’s gallery above the chamber of state.
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