by Kirton, Bill
He picked up his mug, looked around and began to make his way to Victoria’s table. On the way, he picked up a magazine from the rack.
‘Is this seat free?’ he asked.
‘Help yourself,’ said Victoria.
Syd sat down and put the magazine face up on the table. On its cover there was a picture of a typically gorgeous avatar, her lips half-open and a speech bubble coming out of them with the words ‘God, you sound so sexy’ inside it. It was an old issue, heralding the proposed development of voice activation. As Misty sipped at her smoothie and Syd opened the magazine, Victoria looked anxiously at Xylophone. She’d heard the intake of breath as he’d seen the cover and she knew how he felt about the imminent implementation of the voice activation program. There was the same buzz of conversation around them but their table was strangely silent. Joe could feel the beginning of a tension there.
It broke when Misty said, ‘I’m not sure I like the idea of speech activation’.
It was Xylophone’s cue. His front legs went up to his face and his body began to heave as he was racked with sobs. Tears began to stream between his claws and Victoria reached over and stroked the scales of his neck.
‘Ssssh, baby,’ she said. ‘It’s OK. We won’t use it. We’ll stick to our keyboards.’
Xylophone pushed her hand away.
‘It’s no good,’ he typed. ‘I’ll lose all my credibility. They’ll expect me to roar and growl in a deep bass. It’s not fair.’
And he got up and stumbled out into the street.
‘Poor baby,’ said Victoria, starting on her second cup. ‘I’ve spoken to him on Skype and it’s true, he’ll be a laughing stock if he has to use speech.’
‘Why?’ asked Syd.
Victoria sighed.
‘An accident with a scythe when he was a boy,’ she said. ‘He’s impotent – but worse than that, he has a falsetto voice.’
‘God, I’m sorry,’ said Syd. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘Of course you didn’t,’ said Victoria. ‘He’ll be OK.’
Misty sighed and adjusted the strip of gossamer over her slim little thighs.
‘I think this speech thing will cause difficulties for others, too,’ she said.
Victoria and Syd looked at her. She caught their gaze, took another sip of her strawberry smoothie, then lowered her pretty eyes.
‘Me, for example,’ she said.
‘You? Why?’ asked Victoria.
‘I’m an NFL quarterback,’ said Misty.
Joe looked at the fragile little creature and felt guilty. On the one hand he’d given this person the chance to leave his heavy, hulking body and float lazily through the AD air, enjoying the sensation of near transparency. But on the other, those delicate features would soon be articulating the sounds made by a 210 lb man from Trenton, New Jersey. The incongruity would be devastating for him and others alike. Joe needed to do some more thinking. He typed ‘Gotta go. Bye folks.’
His words tumbled amongst all the other lines of the dialogues going on in the shop as they all hurried their way across the screen. He made Ross get up and walk out into the street as he began to think about voice synthesiser technologies. Finding a way to change pitch and frequency was the easy bit, so maybe residents could choose their voices, altos could be baritones, men could be women. Technically, the problem wasn’t insoluble. The difficulty, as ever, lay with people and Joe wasn’t sure there was a way of reconciling the quarterback and Misty Mist.
17 unholy matrimony
One of the things that voice activation did when it was eventually rolled out was to remove the advantages that had been enjoyed by the more articulate residents. With people able to gabble whatever nonsense came into their heads, exchanges between them began to sound as dull as those of everyday reality. It was easy, when concealed behind a keyboard, to structure phrases, use words such as transcendental and euphoric but they didn’t trip easily off the tongue and could sound embarrassing or pretentious when spoken in earnest. The change had truly profound effects on many relationships. That of Siro and Octi, however, was transformed in a rather surprising way.
Siro’s creator, Dexter Malloy, sat in his bedroom in Arkansas, watching a big spider crawl up the wall near his pillow. A cricket was hopping about on the floor and there was so much crap lying about that it seemed like a cyclone had just passed through. Octi, and her creator Sarah, had brought an exotic dimension into his life. Sarah was English. Lived in a place near Oxford. They’d met at a newcomers’ BBQ when they both joined AD and their own worlds were so far apart that each had been fascinated by the other. The first time Octi had dragged him onto some action hooks in the Games Park Siro had been hesitant and Dexter had been unable to perform. Since then, he’d been swallowed up time and time again by her sexual enthusiasm and looked forward to driving home from his job at the store to spend his evening and her night indulging in the sort of gymnastics that would have crippled him if he tried them in reality.
When AD opened its speech activation programme, those gymnastics came close to kamikaze events. His accent reminded her of the men in her favourite movies and hers, with its long vowel sounds, gave him an instantaneous erection. To him, it was a miracle that he’d found her and, terrified that she’d go off with someone else in AD, he asked her to marry him.
‘I don’t mind,’ she’d said, and he immediately translocated to a place that sold jewellery and bought the most expensive engagement ring in the store.
When he’d given it to her and luxuriated in some of her inventive caresses for a while, they walked into the garden and stood by the ornamental pond with its fountain.
‘Well, where shall we go for the ceremony?’ he asked. ‘Medieval castle? Undersea cave? Empire State ‘Building? Great Barrier Reef?’
He stopped, looking nervously at Octi, waiting for an answer. Octi clucked into her ‘head on one side, hands behind back, sweetly submissive’ pose.
‘Fuck knows,’ she said. ‘You choose.’
He knew she’d say that. One of the attractions about her was the contrast between her sublime accent and the obscenity of so many of the words she uttered. She always made him choose, too. In one way it was flattering: she was indicating that he was the boss, that she’d follow and be happy with whatever choice he made. In another, it meant he always had to take responsibility if the place or the event turned out to be crap.
But this time it was serious, crucial even. Dexter was rough, from the wrong side of the tracks and, in order to keep her, he’d always suppressed his often abrasive manner and tried to convey an aura of patience and gentility (not that he could have identified it as such). Now, he had to get the location right. There was only the one chance. If he blew it, she’d smile and pretend to be understanding but he knew that, when the honeymoon started, instead of the usual frenzied sex, with biting, scratching and lumps of hair pulled out by the roots and screams of ‘You’re fucking sensational’, she’d lie back and let him crawl over her as she made comments about how pretty the bridesmaids had looked or how self-important the best man had seemed.
‘How about a Karaoke bar?’ he said.
She looked at him and gave him the finger.
There was a silence.
‘OK … er … Notre Dame in Paris.’
She shook her head.
‘No churches. We make our vows to one another, not to some bastard who causes floods and starves African kids.’
Siro laughed. ‘There you go agin,’ he said, ‘mixin up Our Saviour and Red Loth. Red don’t do none o’ that. Red’s cool.’
It was the closest Siro ever got to a theological utterance. It earned him a second finger from Octi.
‘OK, not Notre Dame then,’ said Siro, ‘but how about Paris?’
She thought for a moment.
‘The ceremony’s still in English, right?’ she said.
He nodded.
‘And we don’t have to drink that crap the French call wine. We can still have a good sweet Californian
Chardonnay?’
‘Whatever you want, hun,’ he said.
‘How about the Louvre?’
She shrugged.
‘OK, baby,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and git it organised. See y’all tomorrow.’
‘Whatever,’ said Octi. ‘I’m mud wrestling tonight.’
She’d won several prizes already. Opponents were usually laughing so much at her refined accent that she could easily take them out with a quick hitch-kick to the groin or a double-footer in the breasts or throat.
Dexter didn’t know if people ever got married in the Louvre but, now that he’d heard that English accent, he was even more desperate to make her his own private property. He looked up the place, found a name and sent a personal message.
‘Kin folks git wed in the Louvre?’ he wrote.
To his surprise, the answer was immediate.
‘Qu’est-ce que vous désirez?’
Shit, the guy was French. There was no call for French in Kansas and Dexter had left school at fifteen anyways. But he’d heard French people speak. He tapped frantically at the keyboard.
‘Ze Louvre. Ze wedding. Possible?’
The next message brought despair.
‘Je ne comprends rien de ce que tu dis, espèce de con. Vas te faire foutre.’
He logged off. He’d have to risk it. The wedding would go ahead without asking anyone’s permission. Hell, they weren’t going to have French police patrolling the place in search of stray brides and grooms. Anyway, with Octi, it was unlikely that anyone would realise it was a wedding. It would depend on her mood. Most of the time she was her own dangerous, raven-haired avatar but sometimes she logged on as a turtle or a boa constrictor, and sex was either asphyxiating or very difficult. The snake was fine but he still hadn’t been able to find the location of a turtle’s genitalia.
He needn’t have worried. On the day, she dropped into the assembled guests in a cloud of dazzling white chiffon, looking more beautiful than he’d ever seen her. She was quiet, truly demure and stood with her eyes lowered, looking for all the world as if she was the virgin bride of every man’s fantasy. The official in charge called them forward to make their vows. They stood holding hands, facing one another, and everyone hushed.
Octi was the first to speak. Her voice was soft, her accent more English than ever, bell-like and singing with a child’s simplicity.
‘Siro, my darling Siro,’ she said. ‘I have loved, honoured and respected you since I first saw you. The days we have spent together have been bright with innocence and love and I can think of no better way to spend the rest of my life than being loved and protected by someone as strong and powerful as you. I love your body, your wit, your intelligence and everything about you. I give my maidenhead, my body, my soul and my whole self to you and promise to be a tender loving wife for as long as you want me by your side.’
The members of the congregation looked at one another. Who the hell was this speaking? They knew her. They’d seen her wrestle. They’d heard her describe how she’d tied Siro to a tree in their garden and fucked him until he cried.
Dexter listened to her words with his mouth gaping, bewitched by her beauty but confused by what she said. He’d spent hours with a dictionary, a thesaurus and a poetry book writing vows full of expressions such as ‘the gossamer bliss of ethereal passion’ and ‘accession to an infinite dimension of ineffable grace’ but he, too, had expected his bride to use her turtle voice, or spit out words like ‘forearm smash’ or ‘half-nelson’.
He pushed aside the print-out on the desk beside his keyboard and, obscurely aware that he had to surprise her too, he cleared his throat and Siro began to make his vows.
‘Fuck a duck,’ he said. ‘Ain’t that the bestest speechifyin’ y’all ever heard? Woohee. Ah gits me a chick that’s a combination o’ Dolly Parton and … well … Dolly Parton. Tits like melons, ass like Jennifer Lopez. Come on, baby. Fuck the reception, let’s go git our asses laid.’
Octi held out her hand meekly. Siro took it, and the two of them vanished as they clicked their ‘Translocate Home’ options. The crowd dispersed, wondering what the hell had happened and deciding that there were perhaps two names that might usefully be removed from their personal buddies’ lists.
At home, in their garden, Siro was taking off his clothes.
‘That was some speech,’ he said.
‘So was yours,’ said Octi.
Siro shrugged and flicked his hand at her to indicate that she should undress. Obediently, she did so and stood naked before him.
‘OK, get the ropes and stand by that tree,’ he said.
As Octi leaned back against the harsh bark and he began to bind her to it, Sarah and Dexter both knew that theirs was a true union. When they’d had to type their thoughts to one another, their hesitancy and their frequent typos had acted as filters which had obscured parts of themselves. The words on the screen had been passive, characterless, the same. They’d been unable to articulate who they really were. Using their voices had released them from those constraints; the combination of Sarah’s mellifluous accent and lyrical phrasing was as exciting to Dexter as his own drawled profanities were to her. They now felt the real magic of AD, which brought together backgrounds, cultures and people who would never have met in the real world. They’d come to their wedding as discrete individuals but, in that transcendent moment as they exchanged their vows, their beings had fused. They’d become part of a different, but single being.
18 feedback
There was one incident involving voice activation that did cause Joe a little anxiety when it came to light. Litigation was involved and the media jumped at the chance of dragging his company down into the mire and accusing him personally of being an accessory to crime. But the issue was quickly resolved by his sure-footed lawyers and spin doctors, and the share price was unaffected.
It happened on Mabel Morton’s birthday, August 9th. It was hot. It was always hot in Arizona but that day it was REALLY hot.
Mabel was at her computer. She was wearing thick corduroy jeans, a tee shirt, flannel overshirt and thick sweater. On her head she had a woollen cap, hugging her wavy red hair tight to her scalp and, on her hands, woollen mittens. Around her neck she’d wound a red scarf, the one Helmut had sent her from Germany.
And she needed all of it because she had the air conditioning on full blast. The woollen hat bulged strangely at the sides. She had her headset on underneath it and the hat helped to keep his voice close in her head, intimate, belonging only to her.
They were role playing again. Helmut loved role play. Whenever they logged on, he’d ask what it was like in Arizona then suggest a scenario that would take them both away from their humdrum lives and into a situation in AD that was as far from their reality as possible. One problem was that, in Arizona, it was always the same – always summer, always hot – so their contexts usually involved ice, igloos, freezing baths or polar bears. Today, they were clubbing baby seals in Canada.
‘Oooh, that one over there looks plump,’ said Helmut.
‘Which one?’ said Mabel.
‘The one with the cute black face.’
‘They’ve all got cute black faces.’
‘So they have. OK, all of them then.’
And Mabel and Helmut’s avatars wandered lazily across to the seal pups and began digging their ice picks into their skulls. The graphics were superlative – there was blood everywhere.
‘This is fun,’ said Mabel.
‘Ah, wait,’ said Helmut. ‘You’re getting that feedback again.’
‘Damn,’ said Mabel.
‘You’re moving about too much. It always happens. That jack you’re using is faulty.’
Helmut was forever telling her to buy new audio equipment. Ever since AD had introduced voice activation, they’d dispensed altogether with their keyboards. But Helmut was fussy about sound quality and the problems with Mabel’s five year old computer frequently interfered so seriously with their chat that he found it
hard to sustain the fiction of their role play.
‘Push the plug in tight,’ he said, ‘then sit very still.’
Mabel did so, sat upright in her chair and asked ‘Is that better?’
‘Yes. Good. Now don’t move.’
As their avatars continued with their merry butchering, Mabel sat rigid in her chair, oblivious to the discomfort, content that she was with her Helmut once more, sharing loving experiences.
When her avatar was skinning her sixth baby seal, Mabel thought she heard a noise in the room at the front. Strange. It was not yet noon. Her husband worked all day. And she could do nothing about it – not even lift her headset to listen properly. Next, she thought she heard the door of her room creak open. She felt the air stir and then had to exercise all her control when she heard a voice directly behind her. It said ‘Aaaaah om uuur ed’ or something like that. It was hard to hear. She just sat there, afraid to turn round in case the feedback started again and Helmut got angry.
She felt something poking into her back and again heard ‘Aaaaah om uuur ed’ – a little louder this time.
‘I don’t know who you are but I can’t turn round,’ she said.
‘What?’ said Helmut.
‘Not you darling,’ she said.
Another poke in her back, then the feel of warm metal on her neck. In the screen she saw the reflection of a man.
‘Can you come round the front?’ she said.
‘What?’ said Helmut.
‘Not you, love,’ she said.
The man moved to her side, leaned towards her and shouted, close to her ear.
‘Hands on your head.’
‘Oh, is that what you were saying?’ said Mabel, with a smile. ‘Sorry, I can’t. I’m not allowed to move. The feedback, see?’
‘What?’ said Helmut.
‘Sssshhhh, love’ she said.
‘Look, this is a gun,’ yelled the man.
‘I can’t look. I told you,’ said Mabel.
‘What?’ said Helmut.
‘Shut the fuck up, Helmut,’ said Mabel. ‘I have a situation here – and I’m handling it.’
