Iris

by William Barton

  . . . she dropped out of the circuit, smirking somehow within. Why did they do it? People took from the wires something that was readily available in the real world. Why bother? Especially considering that they were powerless to affect the outcome, could only feel and not do ... yes, for a certain kind of person, perhaps that was a reason in itself. A spark flared ugly red nearby and she drove swiftly toward it, rescuing superheroine . . .

  ... a woman lay in the strong, gentle arms of her

  Annenian lover and suddenly screamed. The dark, hawk-faced man began to melt LSD-style, flesh, then muscles, then bone dribbling away, eyes flattening and trickling down onto her breasts, dripping to the carpet from erect, sensitive nipples. She screamed and strong hands suddenly burst through the wall and slapped him back together. The woman sighed and resumed her kissing, tasting the man's sweet tongue. . . .

  Behind the walls of pseudoreality, Ariane finished patching the damned thing and sailed off, feeling smug. Have to alert the Assembly monitor about that one. The foolish program was interactive enough to accumulate errata after a few hundred uses and disturb the paying customers. Most 'net works were stable, could only do a few prescribed action-sequence choices forking from predefined nexi, but they were getting more complex, better, as those who controlled the 'net relaxed the rules, more assured of their technology. This only made her job more difficult, since many of the sequences were assembled by free-lancers, and bugs proliferated.

  Another spark, cool blue, and she peeked at it briefly. . . .

  . . . The man stood before a huge, formally garbed audience. He was handsome, and young for his heavy responsibility, and seemed well liked by the people he served. "Ask not what your country . . ." he began, in rich, mellow tones, directly contravening two centuries of political ideal . . .

  . . . and she dropped away. Historical dramas were even less to her taste than sexy romances. Well, everybody to their own preferences.

  *End Circuit-run* said the Assembly monitor, and she dropped back to the real world, shift ended. Ah, the heady life of a practical engineer! She pulled the induction leads from her scalp and, nodding to her PM replacement at the monitor boards, went home through the bright, living streets of the Arcology.

  Brendan was there as usual, waiting in her room in preference to his own. They lay together in the semidarkness and she felt his ears on her thighs, the sharp rasp of his whiskers scratching at her pudenda. His tongue sent flashes of delight expanding awayfrom her groin and she felt pity for the people whose experiences were delineated by 'net-borne pornography. She ran her fingers through his hair, feeling the brain-taps embedded in his skull, and rocked her hips to the rhythms of his real-world face. Somehow, dimly, I know, she thought. Where is the satisfaction of having an imaginary creature do this for me? I might as well have a robot. . . . But a real man . . . Ah . . . The strength of it clutched at her and an orgasm began its explosive course. She sighed and held his head fast, pushing against his now still face until it was over. He crawled up her body and entered her. She stroked his sweaty back and waited patiently for him to finish.

  They were back, reeling from a paroxysm of memories. The thers had not moved, nothing had changed, yet it seemed a little darker, colder, as if a season closer to midwinter had enveloped them.

  "OK, who's next?" asked Tem gruffly.

  John looked hard at Demogorgon. "Are we powerless to keep these . . . memories from engulfing us?

  Is it our program or"—he gestured at the distant castle—"its?"

  "I think I know what's happening," said the Arab. "We're being strengthened, united. It must be a continuation of the process begun among us before; you weren't with us, John, but the GAM is trying to

  ... help us become whole. These shared memories are part of that."

  Tem, still waiting to be submerged into another memory chain, spoke tentatively. "On the other hand, Centrum might be stealing these experiences as it did Brendan's. I'm pretty sure that if it was the Artifact doing this we would know. Shit. I don't know. Who's for stopping this, right now? It can be done." No one spoke.

  "All right," said Demogorgon. "We go on."

  The thers were tethered a little distance away, snatching clawfuls of feathery blue and roan grass that had grown just for them, and the people sat around a little campfire, toasting shish kebab and marshmallows, talking. No further flashbackshad interrupted the smooth flow of the program, and they had begun almost to enjoy the prospects for adventure before them. They discussed options, having Demo materialize a skimmer for them to simply fly to their encounter with the Centrum, but he pointed out that the more he interfered with its operation the less the interface program could do to determine the scenarios under which the contact would take place. It knew what was best for them. They hoped. . . . There had been little enough conversation on this adventure thus far and now their speech was, perforce, desultory. Axie said, "It's ironic, but I never have felt as close to anyone as I do to all of you, now. We seem like a particularly lucky people." It was happy-sounding, but they could sense nothing from her.

  "Adversity always brings people together," said Harmon.

  "No, it's more than that," said Beth. "We are being continually presented with the most forceful evidence that we are the same . . . literally, the same. Where DR enhanced differences, incompatibilities .

  . . this is so different."

  "Don't get carried away," said Tem, pulling a kebab out of the fire. "I don't think we should trust all of our feelings while under the influence of the program. After all, it can synthesize feelings as easily as anything else."

  "Oh?" said Vana haughtily. "And just what should we trust if not our emotions?"

  "She's right, Tem," said Ariane. "We can't lose faith in ourselves." The Selenite looked apologetic, sucking at a piece of onion. "That's not what I meant." Axie regarded the bearded man. "We've come a long way in a short time, Temujin. It's only right that there should be some skepticism." She reached past the fire and patted him on the shoulder. "But words, even here, are stilted. They ring hollow in my own ears. Believe me when I say—"

  "Shut up!" Demogorgon loomed up, more impressive now than even his Arhos persona. He pointed into the distance: a group of pinpoints, lights like burning ashes from a fire, floated at an unknowable distance against the blue of the sky, arrayed at random above the castle. Thus far the world hadseemed a personal thing, their own to explore. Now, suddenly, the first sign of a power other than theirs was revealed.

  "What are those?" asked Ariane, and they could all feel a keying up of interiors, as their nerves began to wind tight.

  Krzakwa stood up, gripping his missile weapon. "I don't know and can't guess," he said, "but I think we should assume they are enemy hostiles."

  Demogorgon drew his sword, a deadly metallic whisper.

  "Can they really kill us?" That was from Vana.

  The Selenite shrugged. "No way to tell. I think we ought to behave as if they can." He sighted in the device, carefully twirling little verniers, peering into a tiny plasma screen that contained an enlarged image of the approaching things. They were blurred and indistinct, twinkling slightly from the intervening atmosphere.

  He punched up the preheat and armed his warhead, an em-field generator with coils set to discharge. He breathed out in a soft sigh and hit the lock-on switch, then held himself still. He pushed the launch button.

  A roar of sound disturbed their world, rolling thunder with nothing to echo from, and a splash of reddish-orange flame wreathed Tem for a moment. It hurled away, first a flaming rocket, then a bright fleck at the head of a narrow, misty contrail. The targets did nothing to disperse and the missile ' buried itself in their midst.

  There was a moment of ringing silence, a bright flash that turned the sky pink and made them all flinch. An expanding ball of yellow fire shot with violet made the sky brassy and, for a moment, everything was very still. A roar. A shock wave, an air front tugging at their costumes. The world came back to normal wi
th an impossible suddenness. There were fewer of the pinpoints, a hole in their formation, but still they were there.

  They expanded, growing before their eyes as if from small to large rather than far to near. They moved with a speed that should have generated a sonic shock cone but did not. The things were silent. Tem cursed and, throwing down his missile projector, drew a sword. Someone made a strange halfwhine in the background, perhaps all of them, perhaps no one.

  The things were upon them, nightmarishly resolvable.

  The vanguard thing approached, bearing in on them swiftly. It was a balloon with a horrid face, red eyes hate-glaring, half its substance open with a black, tooth-fringed mouth. It seemed to chuckle as it flew. Hungry. Hungry, it said to them.

  Demogorgon drew his magic pistol and fired. He stood before them like a mythopoeic hero, legs widespread, body tall and muscular, gripping a sword in one hand and a gun in the other. Glittering pink and purple rays reached out to touch the creature as it roared in for a quick kill, white cartoon sparkles writhing around its spherical flesh. It stopped dead, the world a motionless frame in isolation, then exploded. Thin black threads rained down and the world was in motion again. A score of the things swooped down on the thers, mouths gaping in starving shark grins. Teeth sank together and bones crunched, legs writhed, dark blood covered the ground in spatters. The animals bleated in agony, scrambling, and were gone, sucked to bloated, happy interiors. Axie glared and her diadem threw a red ray outward. The nearest monster screamed an echoing cry and soared upward. It burst into tawny flames and staggered against the sky, then fell, trailing a long plume of greasy smoke. There was an explosion at some distance.

  More of the things circled and came in at them.

  Toothy leers in tight V formation darkened their view. John and Beth stood side by side, guns held two-handed in a crouching stance. They pulled triggers in unison and sheets of transparent fire lanced out. Creatures were riven. Harmon and Vana knelt back to back with them, shooting their old-style guns and barely coping with their exaggerated recoils. Their guns roared, throwing explosive charges away in gouts of fire and smoke. Punctured, the creatures burst apart and threads rained down like long black snow. Ariane's beam flailed about, an indigo whip trailing destruction. More of thethings came swooping in, ten to replace each one downed. There was an endless supply of them, it seemed. Temujin Krzakwa stood alone, dispatching the ones that penetrated their shield of modern fire. He whirled his broadbladed sword in figure eights, closing with the demons and slicing so many that he was covered with the ropy, gray gore that they discharged. As he fought, a kind of magnificent numbness came over him. He was going to heaven, he was already there.

  Then, without warning, the sword slipped out of his grasp and went flying. Fear lanced at him, and he wanted to hide. Self-born images of the crystalline teeth shearing though his flesh, breaking his bones. A final agony knifing inward as his bowels were torn asunder. He looked and one of the things bobbed against him, for all the world like a toy balloon; there was a red halo around it and it was gone. More disappeared in red coruscation, and Aksinia smiled and gave him a little salute. His sword came back to him hilt first on a rosy ray. He smiled back and resumed his slashing.

  Something like Chopin's funeral march sonata began to play. There were too many of them! They were becoming a single entity in the circuits of Centrum, their program the defining factor of Bright Illimit. We will be eaten alive! Querulous despair assailed them all, flooding them with a common source of feeling and a unity of thought. Will we really die? Can we? Hopes of a real haven in abundance, waking up on Ocypete in their real bodies, mission failed.

  But even if we can escape, thought Demo, Brendan is still in here, his discharge real, his entrapment impenetrable. And if we can't, we will be added to him, in unity with the dark thing that lives forever. . . . A dull sound of tearing flannel alerted them.

  A giant anteater tongue flashed crimson from the heavens, licked up the monsters all at once, flickering bloodily before them, and was gone. A feeling of joy, a smirking satiation briefly filled the space about them. They stood alone again, quiescent, sweating.

  "What was that?" asked Harmon.

  "Evolution unveiled," said Tem, sheathing his sword, swaying with tightly closed eyes. Vana slumped to the ground and saw the demon entrails subliming into nonexistence precisely as had neon regolith. "They ate our thers," she said. The place where the campfire had been was wiped clean. Demogorgon put his weapons away and stood tall and still. Clasping hand to shoulder, he made his motion again, and thought his command thoughts. Nothing happened.

  "We've lost something," he said.

  And, suddenly, they were elsewhere. . . .

  Vana Berenguer and Ariane Methol ran along the roof of Tupamaro Arcology, flying a kite. This part of the building was almost a mile high and had an immense park of many acres on its roof. There was deep soil here, supporting grass and trees and little streams, fields of flowers and little ponds. There were many people, children and poets, and there was a lot of laughter. The sky was pale blue, supporting a herd of fleecy clouds that kept pace with each other against the background of the sun. A sense of universal summer pervaded their insensate feelings.

  They ran, and the diamond shape of paper grew away from them on its downward-bulging, white string stem. It was dark green, with a red, grinning face against the sky. They stood still, panting, and watched it fly. "Good day for it," said Ariane, holding the roll of filament. "Just enough wind." Vana nodded and watched it grow tiny, falling into an invisible distance. The string tautened, rising into the sky and disappearing long before it reached the kite, which seemed to float unsupported, far away yet held to them by some sort of inanimate loyalty. She felt the sweat trickling between her breasts, felt the delicate skin of her nipples engorged, rubbing against the inside of her halter. She stood closer to Ariane, touching flesh with her in little taps of breathing movement. The space inside her shorts seemed steaming, moistened by the exertion and rubbings of the run. She exhaled, a long breath, and relaxed. She dropped to the grass, sitting cross-legged.

  Nothing to say, nothing to think, nothing to reason about, she smiled brightly at the land and sky and clouds. Light and shadow played on Ariane's skin, outlining her strong, delicate muscles. She was nice to look at. She stretched, arching her back, and, standing again, twirled about, letting impressions of the parkscape flood in upon her. She stood still and watched a group of small girls playing jump rope nearby, saying loud rhymes in Spanish to each other and giggling when one faltered of fell rolling to the grass. She whacked Ariane on the buttocks, eliciting a yip of surprise, and ran away. She ran away across the park to the edge of the roof, up a flight of stairs to the top of the wall, and fled along a chain-link fence, looking down at the blue and gold of her world. She grinned as she ran, breathing freely, sweating all over herself and her clothes, limbs swinging in an animal freedom, lubricated by the juices of an unthinking aliveness. She ran on and on until darkness fell down the sky and then went home to a man and more muscular thrusting in the dark and light. Images without form dazzled her consciousness and time stretched on to eternity.

  Seven Red Anchorelles awoke to himself with a startled pheromonic cry: I still live?

  His body still seemed real, the same hard-squid shape and form that had always, it seemed, existed, but he had memories. Life in the ship in the shadows of a Starseeder ghost. Life and work and the end. The last despairing moments as Centrum soaked in his oil flooded over him: death in Unity, his oil dispersed and turned to the irrevocable electronic incantations of the immortal brain that controlled his life. Why am I here? And how?

  He looked about him. Row on row of sleeping Seedees were stacked against the sky, awaiting the command to awaken. This was not supposed to be possible. They were all gone forever, he knew that. Somehow, they were all to live again, subjected to some kind of mysterious resurrection process, brought to life again in the complexes of an eternal circuitry. How?
He thought about it, his renewed oil, if such itwas, coursing with excitement. Obviously, something new had been added to the dark equations of reality.

  Centrum began to speak within him, a thing it had never been able to do before. A curious double entity tracked along its voice, a different being, writ large with it, a new, unconscious dominance in the old being.

  You have work to perform, it said, its voice echoic in nature, two thought-tracks merging with his consciousness in a strange, intractable fashion. Centrum seemed angry with itself, almost schizoidal. Mother Ocean has been invaded by a disease. The product of the Grand Design has gone wrong. Things must be rectified. The invaders must be repelled.

  Sent away?

  No. We must have all that is within them. There is a greater cosmos waiting without and we must have a way of dealing with it. Absorb them all. I will reach out and take what is theirs into myself. I must be supreme once again.

  7red wondered at the meaning of it all, but the voice of God said, Go thou! and he went. He sailed away from the massed, sleeping ranks of all the beings that ever lived, the first scout of his renewed kind, to be in the proud vanguard of an unending, everlasting horde. He should have been overjoyed, but a shadow of unhappiness followed him, troubling the smooth flow of his liquid thoughts. What was wrong? He pondered as he flew, marveling at the changes in his world. Something had gone wrong. . . . No, he realized. Something had always been wrong. He merged with a waiting work vacuole and fled into the limpid depths of the blue sky, staring hard through its enhanced senses. Something was happening ahead, and he squinted to see what it was, eager to discover the form of the invaders. The sense of wrongness left him disquieted. He had no reason to live again, but here he was. Something had happened to Centrum. What?