by Kirton, Bill
* * *
For Anna Barnes-Willoughby, on the other hand, what drew her to AD was its potential for excitement. The moment she heard about it, she knew that she had to try it. In life, she’d followed, almost religiously, the career trajectory that her parents, teachers and community had sketched out for her. She’d never yet taken a drug other than alcohol and even then, her use of it had been discreet, sparing and always correct. She lived in a detached, four-bedroomed house in Surrey. Her husband, a lawyer with a major bank, worked long hours, and her son and daughter were at a private school and only came home at weekends, so she had lots of spare time during the day.
Lunches with friends, hair appointments, shopping and cooking and, of course, her Pilates classes filled some of the hours but the creative urge that she’d been suppressing since her late teens continued to grow and become more urgent.
‘You mean you get to make and dress your own … what did you call it? … avatar?’ she said to Helen, who’d told her about these new virtual worlds.
‘Yes,’ said Helen. ‘Mine’s a nun.’
‘Oh, that’s so sweet,’ said Anna, although she was surprised at the revelation since there was much talk at their Readers’ Group of Helen’s many extra-marital affairs.
Helen laughed.
‘Not really,’ she said. ‘It keeps most of the men away, so I can choose the ones I want to spend time with. The minute I find one, my habit comes off and I’m in skin-tight pink lycra which shows everything.’
‘Helen,’ said Anna, both shocked and excited by her words.
‘But that’s the point,’ said Helen. ‘You can be like that there. Anything goes. I’ve had better sex there than I’ve ever had with Don.’
Don was her husband, the non-executive director of six engineering companies and a well-known local rugby player. Anna found him loud, rude and generally unpleasant. But then, all men seemed perverse to her – wrapped up in their own worlds, incapable of understanding the delicacies and refinements that life could offer.
They talked some more about Helen’s experiences as a nun, but Anna was eager to get home and try this wonderland for herself. She made an excuse about having an appointment with her manicurist, then drove home, checked that the phone was in answer mode, and settled at the computer.
The moment she was asked whether she wanted her avatar to be male or female and was presented with a standard, characterless female form, her mind leapt over thirty years back into her past and she was with her first Barbie doll again. She’d been crazy about them. She bought them in all their forms, had boxes full of outfits, herds of ponies, and the pink carriages to go with them, houses, furniture, tea-sets, ball gowns, jodhpurs, swimsuits; Anna was the archetypal Barbie girl.
And now, once more, she was being given the chance to slough off the cares of being a respectable wife, mother and member of a fine middle class community, and play with dolls.
She noticed other avatars, male and female, coming and going around her but, for days and days, she ignored them all and lost herself in refining her avatar’s appearance, buying clothes and accessories and animations that let her walk and pose like the stars she admired so much in ‘Hello’ magazine. The fact that Beebie (her avatar) could do such things made her so much more satisfying than dear Barbie had ever been. Anna could launch her creation onto dance floors, into beach parties, shops and clubs and she looked like and was much closer to a real person than Barbie could ever be.
It was the fulfilment of a dream. Inside the woman who’d become a wife and mother, the girl who’d dreamed with her dolls still existed, as full of fancies as ever, and convinced that this was a world in which the transcendence she craved would be possible.
To begin with she WAS Barbie – or rather, Beebie. In the same way that she saw other residents BEING their dreams – cats, dogs, teddy bears, dragons – it was so wonderful. All these people had rediscovered a childhood passion and were free to revisit it and indulge themselves in developing it further – sometimes to astonishing extremes.
One day, after she’d groomed her pony, taken her shower and was looking through the ‘Wardrobe’ box in her personal files to decide what to wear, the thought of Ken crept into her mind once more. It had happened before but the idea that, with the magic available in this world, a relationship with Ken could go so much further than it ever had in reality, had caused her to shake the thought from her mind.
She was used to sitting stiff-legged Kens and Barbies at picnic tables or in the dining rooms of plastic mansions, holding tiny cups and glasses to their lips. The thought that Beebie might actually be embraced by a Ken equivalent was at first unseemly; she was the embodiment of purity, a perpetual virgin. Even when her brother had crucified one of her Kens on the trunk of a cherry tree when she was nine, the realities of the harsh world in which they lived had still not sullied her dreams.
But now, her living Barbie could … make love. The temptation was strong but Anna quickly rationalised it, decided that it was, after all, only virtual experiences she’d have, and they couldn’t impact on her real marriage. And she began planning how she might find someone worthy of Beebie.
It went without saying that his name had to be Ken. She typed it into the search facility and was delighted, if rather taken aback, to discover that there were over a hundred. Now that she’d decided on this course of action, she was too eager to progress with it to bother reading all their details, so she selected some at random and, in the end, chose one who hadn’t bothered to write anything at all. Her decision was based solely on the fact that he’d joined on the same day that she had. After several deep breaths and a secret smile at how fast her heart was beating, she sent him a personal message.
She’d thought he wouldn’t be there, so she was surprised to get an answer right away. With no time to work out a strategy, she dashed off something close to the truth – her Barbie craze, the attraction of his name, the fact that she hadn’t yet made many friends because she’d been too busy getting Beebie just right – and she was thrilled when he seemed to understand her and suggest that he’d been using AD in exactly the same way.
In the end he suggested they should meet and Anna, more and more excited that Beebie would be getting together with her Ken, agreed, saying only that they should leave it until the following day, to give her time to think through what she wanted and what they might do. Ken gave her a location marker for a street in Paris near the Eiffel Tower and they said their goodbyes.
That night, after a meal of roast chicken with green beans and garlic, she allowed her husband to have the usual perfunctory sex then lay unable to sleep. The next day was endless as she crawled slowly towards the time of Beebie’s appointment with Ken. At last, she logged on and tried on outfit after outfit as she waited for three o’clock to arrive. The second it did, she typed in the location co-ordinates and sat back as Beebie flashed and sparkled her way through the skies to the rendez-vous.
She looked around. Yes, there was the Eiffel Tower, and the streets were lined with boutiques and cafes with tables on the pavements outside them. But there were no other people yet. Her street was empty save for a blue, low-slung Corvette coupé. She turned through 360 degrees just to check, and it was only when she fixed on the car again that she noticed the number plate: KEN 1. She smiled and moved towards it.
‘Hi,’ said Ken, without getting out. ‘God, you’re gorgeous.’
The passenger door of the car swung open and Beebie stooped to get in. Then Anna paused. There was no driver.
‘Where are you?’ said Beebie.
‘LOL,’ said Ken. ‘I’m here. You’re climbing into me.’
Beebie stood and stepped back.
‘I told you,’ said Ken. ‘I’ve spent as much time on my avatar as you have on yours. I’m a 430 horse power, 6.2 litre LS3, with a V8 aluminium-block engine, short-throw six-speed manual transmission, and split-spoke silver-painted aluminium wheels.’
‘You’re a car,’ said Anna.
Anna was relieved, then Ken went on.
‘I’ve got a 6 cylinder, 245 hp Porsche Boxster with 273 Nm maximum torque at 4,600 - 6,000 rpm and a compression ratio of 11.0:1. There’s also a 4.2 litre Jaguar XK Convertible, a Toyota Avensis with sequential automatic transmission, a flat four overhead valve 1486 cc Jowett Javelin with twin Zenith carburettors …’
As his words continued to jump onto the screen, Anna turned Beebie round and began to walk her away down the boulevard. Beebie’s hips swung with the same exotic insolence, but Anna was ready to cry. Why were men always such a disappointment? She sat back in her chair as Beebie continued her stroll and Ken’s words still trailed across the screen.
‘OK, HOW ABOUT A CITROEN DS WITH A PRESSURISED NITROGEN SUSPENSION SPHERE AND BUTTERFLY VALVE CARBURETTOR?’
12 settling down
It had been a chastening experience for Anna, but the magic of the Barbie-Ken story never fades, and she quickly convinced herself that her car-Ken had been an aberration. This time, when she called up the list of Kens again, she made sure she read the information they’d given about themselves – either as avatars or in their normal lives. When she read that one Ken was, in fact, Karl Andersson, a forty-two year old geologist in Iceland, who liked reading, cycling, hill walking, log fires and sunsets, she felt a stirring of interest, especially as he was also unmarried. The details he hadn’t given were that he still lived with his mother, he’d had girl friends but was too shy to risk commitment or even to get much beyond kissing them, and that AD was his preferred reality.
He turned out to be a regular male avatar without the pushiness of most and Anna was so sweet and gentle in her dealings with him that he even agreed to reshape his avatar to resemble the original Ken, (with shorter hair and no stupid grin). They built a house together, bought clothes, furniture, even a car (which Ken let her choose). For Karl, the interest shown by Anna was a totally new experience and he was determined not to hold back. He bought so many action hooks – for eating breakfast together, gardening, cooking, dancing and even kissing quite passionately – that he began to take an interest in the programs which produced the animations. His research was purposeful as he accessed the instructions, pulled them apart and saw how the movements were captured and regenerated in the computer. In the end, he thought ‘I can do this’.
His idea was to create hooks which would help him to mark the special nature of his relationship with Anna/Beebie by taking it into areas not available to others. There were already almost unlimited actions couples could perform, from the most innocent through progressively more frantic sexual variations to scarcely imaginable perversions. But Karl’s dreams were nothing like as extravagant. He sought instead the unique comforts that came with gentle domestic routines, the very things that were missing from the existence of a virgin approaching middle age who still lived with his mum.
Gradually, he introduced Beebie to evenings spent toasting marshmallows, sitting almost motionless watching TV with only the occasional glance and smile passing between them as they enjoyed the programmes, or washing up together in total silence. Whenever he clicked on his ‘mowing the lawn’ hook, Beebie would automatically stand up, get out the ironing board and start pressing shirts. If he sent her shopping, his own avatar would go with her and stand around in the shops fidgeting and looking at his watch more and more frequently. For Karl, the comforting automatism of an intensely normal couple was highly satisfying.
Anna, on the other hand, soon tired of it. At first, the fact that Beebie and Ken were so demonstrably a couple was cute. They really were doing the things she’d done with her own Ken and Barbie way back. But the silences became oppressive and the distance between Beebie and Ken began to grow.
‘This is fine, honey,’ Beebie said to Ken one day. ‘But it’s not going anywhere.’
‘Where would you want it to go?’ asked Ken.
Beebie had no answer.
‘I don’t know, but it’s too calm, too perfect. We need something to remind us just how perfect it is.’
This didn’t make much sense to Karl. Anna tried explaining it to him.
‘You’re so sweet, we belong together, but it’s all on the one level.’
‘It’s a level I love, my darling,’ said Karl.
‘I know, sweetie, but … but … well, think of how nice it’d be if we ever had to make up.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Well, if we had a quarrel …’
Ken laughed. Beebie went on.
‘… No, really. Just a tiny spat. Then we’d feel sad at the rift, we’d want to be back to where we were again, and the making up would be so sweet.’
Karl still didn’t understand, but the fear of losing Anna’s love set him thinking.
Over the next few days, Anna occasionally saw that Karl was online but, apart from walking in, giving Beebie a quick kiss on the cheek, then leaving again, Ken made little attempt at contact. He spent all the time in his shed in the garden. She began to wonder whether Karl had misunderstood her and was drawing back.
She got her answer eight days after the original conversation about making up. Beebie was sitting in the lounge, flicking through a fashion magazine when Ken walked in, kissed her on the cheek and set two action hooks, just labelled ‘him’ and ‘her’ on the coffee table.
‘What’s this, honey?’ Beebie asked.
‘A surprise, baby,’ said Ken.
‘Oh you’re such a tease. Give me a clue. Pleeeeaaase.’ The last word was drawn out on the screen, making it into the equivalent of a babyish pout.
Ken smiled then Karl clicked on the hooks. They both disappeared – the ‘him’ into Ken and, simultaneously, the ‘her’ into Beebie.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, stop being such a fucking baby,’ said Ken.
To Anna’s amazement, Beebie threw the magazine down, stood up and yelled ‘Me? What about you, asshole? Bringing even more shit into the house and expecting me to be impressed. Loser.’
‘Yeah, I feel like a loser, stuck with a frigid bitch like you,’ yelled Ken.
In Surrey, Anna felt the heat in her blushing cheeks. She’d never said such things before, and even though Beebie was pacing about saying them now, they were nothing to do with Anna. In Reykjavík, however, Karl had a broad grin on his face and his mother called up to ask what he was laughing at.
‘Nothing, mother,’ he called back as he watched Ken grab Beebie by the arms and hold her so that he was staring straight into her eyes, their faces inches apart.
‘Day after day I sit here listening to the shit you speak,’ he snarled. ‘Crap about dresses, broken nails, the wrong coloured lipsticks. Shit, shit and more shit. You make me puke.’
Beebie tried unsuccessfully to break free.
‘Let me go, you bastard,’ she screamed. ‘If you weren’t such a pathetic asshole we’d be doing more interesting things, living a little, instead of being stuck in this shitty house.’
‘When have you ever done anything interesting?’ said Ken, shaking her. ‘You’re just a fucking clothes horse, an empty-headed bimbo with tits for brains.’
‘Huh, any brains you ever had disappeared the minute your balls dropped,’ yelled Beebie.
And so it went on, their insults getting richer and richer as the program Karl had written chose from the extensive list he’d sourced from the Mammoth Book of Domestic Repartee. There were some silences as Ken stared out of the window and Beebie dabbed her eyes with a hankie but mostly, they yelled about each other’s inadequacies, irritating personal habits, sexual shortcomings and dubious parentage. Anna learned words she’d never heard or seen before and Karl’s English got better and better, although he’d need to be careful to choose the contexts in which he could use the new vocabulary.
At last, he pulled his keyboard towards him and typed ‘Oh darling. I’m so sorry. Forgive me.’
Noth
ing happened. The only words that appeared on the screen came from Beebie.
‘You couldn’t satisfy a mouse with what you’ve got.’
‘Huh, its bloody droppings would have more sex appeal than you do,’ shouted Ken.
Karl smiled but nonetheless felt a little anxiety. He’d forgotten to override the program before trying to repossess Ken. He pulled down the general AD menu and clicked on ‘animation override’ before starting to type again.
‘Oh baby, I’m so, so sorry,’ he wrote.
‘Fuck off, dickhead,’ yelled Beebie.
‘Bull dyke bitch,’ shouted Ken.
Karl’s anxiety grew. He clicked on the override again and again but the two avatars continued to circle one another and hurl obscenities. Then the horrible truth dawned. The override was designed for legitimate, in-house animations. His own didn’t have the key they needed to engage with it. He’d just assumed they would and so he hadn’t bothered to create hooks for the making up afterwards. Until he did, Ken and Beebie would continue this dance of mutual vilification.
He logged off and began working on the new programs, hoping they would have the power to counteract the highly effective quarrelling hooks. Each day he logged on and found Ken and Beebie still at it, tireless in their search for and discovery of new slurs and abuses. In order to test his making up efforts, he created two new avatars and set them quarrelling. He tried prototype after prototype on them and at last managed to design one powerful enough to make them stop and respond to his normal commands again. He tried it several times, then logged on and took the new hooks into the lounge.
He ignored the calls of ‘Pygmy-dick’ and ‘Pustule’ from Beebie and ‘Rancid whore’ and ‘Shagnasty cow’ from Ken, and clicked on the hooks. They vanished as before and an uncanny stillness fell.
Hesitatingly, he typed ‘Darling?’
There was a long pause before Beebie’s words appeared.
‘What happened?’ she said.
