Synners

by Pat Cadigan

  Fuck it all. He'd just lie here now and watch the pictures. The video show that ran endlessly in his head was coming up to where he could see it better-that, or he was going down to where it was, it didn't matter to him one way or the other. Just as long as he could see it.

  The lake, again; the lake with the stony shore. It showed up somewhere in all his videos now, and he didn't know what that meant, but he didn't question it. The pictures ran the way they would, and he was just the medium-

  – synner-

  – all right, synner, now he could believe in that word beyond its genesis as the Beater's PR device-it could have been worse, the Beater could have dragged out that old chestnut, cyberwhatsis, or whatever it was, he couldn't remember, and he didn't have to, because he was standing on the lake with the stony shore, a million-million stones worn smooth as eggs by the lapping of the water, and every stone a secret world to blossom at his touch.

  Be careful.

  A whisper that came through the music, but whether as part of it or something separate from somewhere else in his mind, he didn't know.

  He could feel the stones hard against his bare feet as he made his way unsteadily along the arc of the shore. The sun was high overhead, falling hard on the water like a demand.

  Be careful.

  He was teetering on one foot, and the sun was demanding that the lake do something, allow something of it…

  The stones shifted beneath him, and he felt himself twisting around as he lost his balance. Sky and ground seemed to nod and sway, and he went down, under the glaring demand of the sun.

  Water touched his fingertips in a feather-kiss, and his hand closed around a stone.

  Be careful. Can you cast this stone?

  He brought the stone up close to his face. It was almost bone white, pockmarked and shot through with spidery veins of silver gray. The texture shifted in his sight, and the hard, demanding sun struck a tiny, white-hot spark in it. On the lake a ripple broke the mirror-smooth surface and sent an echoing spark, briefly blinding him. Or was it still the stone he was looking at, or both stone and lake at once…?

  The texture of the stone shifted again; something seemed to part, like water, like veils, and he was looking into the stone, his sight traveling toward the heart of the secret-

  The surface of the lake rippled again; more flashes of light, brighter, to the point of pain, hot needles driving into his head, needles the size of spears, needles of light and oh God if that was what this stone meant, he wanted to get out, get out get away get away

  Be… careful…

  And then he was out, floating away more weightless than weightless, consisting of less than the empty space between his dreams, as if everything that was himself had been distilled down to one pure thought.

  It felt right; it felt more than right, something he'd been meant to do all his life.

  The bone white was a bed; he was looking down at himself lying in it, and the sight was receding like a tiny image at the wrong end of the telescope.

  Stop.

  The movement stopped, and he had a sense of waiting.

  Rippling on the lake disturbed the air, and he felt how the air pressed up, parted around him; the movement of the kid in the next bedroom turning fitfully in his own bed, tangled in the sheets and in a situation of his own making.

  Jones, the kid had said at one point. Aloud? Had to be, he remembered the kid babbling to him when they'd been alone once. Jones. Jones was dead. No, Jones wasn't dead. No, Jones was dead, but only sometimes. Schrodinger's Jones. What was Schrodinger's Jones? Putting cats in boxes with vials of poison gas; strange habit. No stranger than Schrodinger's video, though, the one he kept making over and over because he couldn't seem to get it right, and it wouldn't leave him alone until he did, and the Beater couldn't understand, which was why he was on this deal with Galen and Joslin. That was supposed to fix Schrodinger's video. Maybe it would also do something about Schrodinger's dick, which he also suffered with from time to time. It was a stone-home Schrodinger world, when you came right down to it.

  He could feel the stone against his hands, the smooth-rough surface surrounding him as he surrounded it, but his body was still far, far away, sprawled on the bed like a cast-off exo. On the bed, floating on the lake, ripples striking sparks all around, secret world in the stone, and no mark to point the way home-

  There was a stranger on the stony shore, turning slowly, turning slowly to him, turning like the seasons, like the moon, and he was afraid to see what face the stranger would show him this time, what face, what face, turning from the darkness, what face face

  Gina. Relief shuddered through him. This time, Gina. It was like seeing her clearly for the first time in a long time, as if he'd been looking at her through layers and layers of veils or fog or something. Twenty years would build up a lot of layers. He had almost forgotten she was beautiful to him.

  She had the greatest color of skin, all her own, a gift of nature, though he'd seen the same shade in various dye-joints around town, tagged "Wild Forest Hardwood." She'd never been much of a peacock type, it never seemed that important lo her, she had other stuff to do. Dreadlocks pretty much took care of themselves, he guessed; they spilled down her forehead, past her ears, onto her shoulders, down her back in fluid, thickly graceful lines. Strong features, extraordinary eyes. No one else in the world looked like her, better now than twenty years ago when she'd first appeared with her laptop and a homemade simulation, crazy to make videos. Not more than sixteen or seventeen then, couldn't have been, but he didn't know. All this time and he'd never gotten around to saying, How old are you?

  She knew how old he was. He could see it in her face, still turning through the light and her gaze sweeping across him, she knew how old he was, she knew-She knew.

  That was in her face as well, and he could see it clearly now, what he had not seen at the time when he had been standing on the courthouse steps while Galen and Joslin danced around the kid (because they didn't know), trying to draw him into the rhythm and the pattern, meaning to strangle him with it, while he stood there and watched, and the sight that had passed into him without his noticing and buried itself in his brain showed itself to him now, the shadow in the deeper shadows, watching from hiding. Some stray little bit of light had found her and ignited itself in her eyes. Now he saw the glint he had not seen then, felt the way her breathing had sent ripples across the lake.

  Gina, I'm sorry.

  And she was turning from him, and he saw himself again sprawled on the shifting texture of the bed and knew that it was time to go back. If he was going back.

  This was the part of Schrodinger's video that he could never be sure of. Every other time he had gone back, but this might be the time he didn't, this time.

  Be careful.

  Teetering, about to fall, he could fall either way-

  He was lying facedown on the floor, one cheek pressed against the carpet and the afterimages of bright sparks fading in his vision. The fingers of his left hand were curled clawlike around a piece of air the shape of a good-sized stone.

  Weird stone fucking shit, he thought, using the bed to help himself up. Have some fucking stone-home crazy dreams and then fall out of bed. With a fucking Purge headache, too. Christ, if they ever did that to him again, he'd take a walk and keep walking, over hill, over dale, over the fucking ocean, he didn't care if they had the stone-home Secret of the Universe in a chocolate candy-fucking-coating, no more fucking Purge, the-fucking-end.

  He found his clothes wadded up in a fat, overstuffed chair and dressed slowly, smoothing away the wrinkles with his hand and wondering if he should be concerned about a change of underwear. Diversifications was a pretty detox/safe-sex kind of outfit. If it hadn't been for Joslin's big-deal project, he was pretty sure Diversifications wouldn't have wanted any part of him, or Gina either.

  The memory of Gina was like a physical blow. It caught him off balance with one leg in his pants. He staggered across the room, and for a moment
he saw the stony shore in the velour smooth of the carpet before he fell sideways onto the bed.

  He lay with the breath knocked out of him, more by surprise than by the fall. She had been there, and he'd been too toxed to register the sight of her then, but his brain had saved her for later, for the lake with the stony shore.

  Sitting up, he pushed the pants down his leg with his other foot, stamped them into a wad, and tossed them over on the chair again. "Did it wrong," he muttered. He had to be carefu about that these days, doing things wrong, because wheneve he did, he found himself toppling over onto that shore of egg-smooth stones again, and sometimes it took him a long time to find his way back to where he'd been. And that was different from just going there on his own for Schrodinger's video, because-

  But he couldn't say why, really. Except maybe it was just better to jump than to be pushed, the way it was better to burn out than to fade away.

  And that was something of the lake with the stony shore, too. One of the multitude of secret worlds there could show him the way out, but the deal with Galen and Joslin was also a way out, and a surer thing. Or so the Beater had convinced him, when the deal was done.

  It may be better to burn out than to fade away, Mark, but It's best of all not to do either. And you know you're burning out. Don't you?

  Yes, I do, old pal, and how tactful of you to say so. I should have told you when it happened that you had a hand in it as much as anything else, maybe more. You put your ax away too soon, my man; when you closed up your synthesizer for the final time, I heard the lid closing on my coffin as well.

  "Woo," he said, and blew out a short breath that might have been a laugh directed at himself. Then he stretched out facedown on the floor and got up again to walk carefully to the chair where his clothes were. And this time it was the right number of steps in the right way according to the music playing in his head. He dressed without any more problems.

  The living room was tastefully luxurious, and empty. Over on a desk near the windows, a monitor was flashing his name. But he had to wait for a while, until the program director cued something up with a matching rhythm before he could go to it and press the message-waiting button on the control panel built into the desktop.

  Thank you for your help in court, the screen told him. It was not absolutely vital in terms of legal procedure that you appear before the judge with us, but it did strengthen our case beyond question. Hope you rested comfortably. Press the printout button for a hardcopy map of the building and the areas that directly concern you. The hallway to your left as you face this screen leads to the elevator. Manny Rivera.

  That was it? A Purge detox and not even a fancy French breakfast? What a bunch of cheap-asses.

  H e was reaching for the map sticking out of the printout slot when he felt the difference in the air.

  The kid was standing in the doorway, dressed only in a pair of colorless jockey shorts that had passed the stage of true wearability. Kindred soul, secret words or not.

  "Visual Mark," the kid said.

  He shrugged.

  "I've seen a lot of your stuff. I always wondered what your real name was."

  Mark gave a short laugh. "Who fucking knows? I lost track of that a while ago." Not quite true; some of the stuff he'd toxed out on in the past had had some bizarre lasting effects, but he could remember his real name, if he tried. Mostly, the effort was incompatible with the sound track.

  "Yah," the kid said. "Well." He stared distractedly at a spot on the carpet about midway between them.

  "Listen, guy-" Mark made a move toward him and stopped. It wasn't like he could help. The kid had said the secret words, and that had locked things up. He shook his head. "Guy, it's a stone-home Schrodinger world." He stuffed the map in his shirt pocket and headed for the elevator.

  9

  "So, then," said Dinshaw, pushing a hand through her frizzy red-gold hair, "after it's all approved and ready to go into the pipe, Manny comes back with just one more tiny little fix.' "

  Over the civilized din in the Common Room, Dinshaw was holding forth to a less-than-rapt audience gathered more by inertia than choice around the circular table, a scenario more or less duplicated all around the room at the other tables, among the rest of the employees of the Advertising and Entertainment Division.

  Gabe tried to give Dinshaw a semblance of attention, since he was sitting right next to her. He'd spent the morning tracking down headhunters in New Orleans with Marly and Caritha, and he was feeling alternately energized and drained. Marly and Caritha had blind-selected a voodoo track, and he had almost been crucified on a cypress tree. The authenticity may have been dubious, but the excitement had been real. Relatively. It seemed more real than Dinshaw's slightly nasal, slightly hoarse complaint, anyway.

  Across from him LeBlanc was keeping one eye and ear on the six-screen dataline in the wall behind him, occasionally tabbing the remote in the center of the table, switching between What's Entertainment?, Dear Mrs. Troubles, and The Slurs, Crystals, and You Show. Next to her, Shuet was methodically breaking pieces off some unidentifiable snack food and tucking them into his mouth, the designer-sculpted jaws moving in a deliberate way, as if he were counting his chews. On LeBlanc's other side, Silkwood was also watching the dataline, his wide, wholesome face looking alternately anxious and hungry. LeBlanc nudged him. "How's the diet going? Should we switch to food porn?"

  "No, thank you," he said primly. "The weight is coming off, I'm fine. I haven't watched food porn since I got my buttons."

  "That's what you call them?" LeBlanc was amused.

  "The buttons that switch off the urge to overeat. Is there something sick about that to you?"

  "Hey, they're your implants. Excuse me, I mean buttons." LeBlanc shared a secret smile with Gabe.

  "… concept's perfect, clothes're perfect, every little detail down to the spear carriers, all perfect," Dinshaw was saying. "But, Manny says, the client says I'm not thinking thin enough, the viewpoint character just didn't feel like a tall, slinky model stalking through the world, she felt like, and I quote, just anybody who'd buy off the rack.' Unquote."

  Gabe nodded in automatic commiseration as LeBlanc made a sympathetic noise of disgust. "Did you tell Manny to take the test-driver and spin on him? Had to be a him, right?"

  "Of course," said Dinshaw. "TexTones employs something like nine hundred women, and they can't spare one, not one, to test-drive the spot. Instead, we get one of their paunchiest old farts, and we shoehorn him into a hotsuit, stick a header on him, turn on the simulation, and say, 'Okay, now you're this gorgeous woman, roll with it, Zeke.' "

  "Look at that," LeBlanc said, pointing at the dataline. "Damien Splader's going to do a talk show from prison. They send him up for life, and he gets his own show. Just what we need, another porn show. Prison porn. You know something like sixty-eight percent of all new programming on the dataline is some kind of porn now?"

  "Where'd you get a figure like that?" said Shuet. "News porn?"

  LeBlanc looked at him evenly. "Hey, a tabloid should know."

  "Oh, how could there be prison porn? Who would get hot looking at prison stuff?"

  "Who would get hot looking at food?" Silkwood said glumly.

  "Are you sure those implants of yours are working?" LeBlanc asked him.

  "Yes, I'm just thinking of my former bad habits." Silkwood eyed the now-empty wrapper in front of Shuet.

  "Manny starts giving me this dissertation," Dinshaw went on, "about how a really good simulation can erase barriers and differences and convince a woman she's a father or a man that he's a sexy, high-priced model showing off daywear. And if it can't, it's just not vivid and alive enough."

  "What about the companion spot?" LeBlanc asked. "Or have they gone budget-slashing cheap-assed, like Kickers, Boots of the Wild? I hope I never see another Kicker in my life."

  "Amboy's working on it, from a template lifted off mine. The program'll automatically select it for a male viewer, and it's the default for fl
atscreen format. That means I can't change mine now."

  "Sure you can," Silkwood said distantly. "Just zap a new template over to Amboy."

  "Sure I can. And the minute I do, he'll be down in Manny's office, raising hell about how is he supposed to get anything done on time when Big Bad Emily Dinshaw keeps changing everything around on him. Then Manny'll call me in and give me a lecture on how he wasn't asking for a total recompose, just a little more feeling."

  "Tell him to feel this," LeBlanc suggested.

  "Not without a hotsuit. Not even with a hotsuit."

  "That's what we need!" LeBlanc laughed. "Diversifications porn! Right? We could tell our horror stories for a cam, let the home audience know what kind of hell we go through to give them those commercials they eat up with two spoons. Sorry," she added to Silkwood. "No offense."

  "You did that deliberately, but I don't care." Silkwood gave her a lofty side-glance. "My buttons are working, all's right with the world."

  "So did Manny have any helpful advice to offer?" Shuet asked.

  "Manny's a veritable fount of helpful advice-" Gabe glanced across the room to the drink machines, idly considering another coffee, and then looked again. The skinny figure standing there searching the pockets of his jeans seemed to have congealed out of the empty air, like a special effect suddenly tossed into a particularly realistic simulation. His stringy brown hair trailed over the shoulders of his loose shirt, which had either been yellow once or was going yellow now. The jeans were almost threadbare enough to be translucent, and the shoes seemed about to give up and fall to pieces. As the man turned slightly, Gabe saw the security button attached to his shirt, a twin to his own. The guy was with the company, all right, he wasn't just a lucky wanderer who had managed not to set off any alarms.