Avalon

by Rusty Coats

  He told me about the suits he'd built, stuff he didn't show Marrs. New designs in tactile delivery and illusionary motion made his old suits look like grope gloves. Now he used synthetics once dismissed by Avalon's suitmakers as being too weak to support the thousands of dioxide bubbles needed to simulate handshakes and hand jobs.

  At first I didn't believe him. Of the Construction crews, Tactile most of all had to abide by the laws of physics; interwoven fabric can only hold so much weight before it hemorrhages. The suits were heavy; empty, they weighed two hundred pounds. That's why we strapped them to fiber-optic bungees and locked them inside Lucite beakers.Monk sensed I was humoring him. He shuffled behind the transport station, rummaged in the dark and returned with a body stocking as thin as pantyhose.

  "There's the prototype, ya pagan!" he shouted, and tossed it in my lap. "Four pounds total, another two pounds for the hood -- mostly for diagnostics circuitry. I moved the input jack to the neck, but I'm not happy with it there. Gets in the way."

  "And the pack?" I looked for a zipper and found none. The suit was elastic, no cinches or buckles. And the gloves were molded into the shape of a grasp -- smart, since most motions in Avalon consisted of grasping, from doors to lovers. The suit seemed to breathe in my hands. Older suits -- the ones they still manufactured in Ensenada -- had the exterior of burlap. This suit felt like silk.

  Monk smiled with pride. "The pack’s in the fabric. It's a silicon weave, with integrated circuits embedded in the latticework of the suit. You run the ROM through a palmtop and hardwire the neck jack to a Mensa. Just plug 'er in and go, boy."

  "How?"

  He tapped his temple. "I'm always thinkin'. One day I'm on nets, looking for some studies on hydroponics, because my lettuce is yellow and spongy, Jack. It’s --"

  "Monk."

  "So I came across the radiation studies from Cairo. Background, foreground -- about an eighth of the world is too hot to touch, and some powerful folks are getting itchy. They could give two shits for what's left of Asia, but they want those oil fields. But how do they contain it? It's gonna be hot for another fifty centuries. How?"

  I could not stop touching the suit. The waist tapered naturally then flowed into two legs. The groin area was smooth, inside and out, unlike the brothel suits, which came with either male or female attachments. The interwoven ankles merged with boots that boasted tough soles. It reminded me of the thermal underwear we wore in Idaho.

  "What do they use?"

  He pointed at the black fabric. "That stuff. The vault is non-porous hardrock a few meters thick, but this stuff goes on outside it, like a skin." He slapped his right knee. "That's what they said in the environmental report, Jack. 'Like a skin.'"

  Monk ordered six hundred bolts of the stuff, posing as a geology professor for a defunct university, and the company never checked Monk’s alias. Once he had the fabric, Monk built a tuxedo glove and went for a stroll in Avalon.

  "Not only did it work," he said, "the sensations were more realistic as the old dioxide systems. Quicker, too. I could give ya a demonstration."

  I glanced up. "Yeah?"

  "Yeah," he said. "But that would mean immersion."

  He let it dangle with the hook of his eyebrow, and I felt an ache in my stomach, an ache to try on this suit and fly. When Monk shared our WPA dorm, Gretchen and I became his guinea pigs by default. We'd ditch class and visit him in Tactile, where he’d strap us into his newest prototype to check for flaws -- usually by tickling us. He'd stand six yards away, scratching the air with a data glove as we giggled.

  But I didn't feel ticklish anymore.

  I handed him the suit. Monk scowled. "Probably just as well. I ain't ironed out all the bugs yet. But this suit --" He glanced over my shoulder. "Your hat's ringin'."

  At first I didn't hear it -- the fedora’s alarm chip was going bad, like everything else on the old hat -- but then I did, faint and meek, like a sick kitten.

  I trotted to the hall tree, shoved the hat over my temples. The bleating stopped as the visor came online, showing me the old test pattern. After I spoke my code into the filament mike, the visor blinked static and came back with a view of Arabian Nights.

  Next to the tent entrance to Avalon's pedophile club, a blue circle captured a familiar anomaly. The visor dashboard winked a simple message: Trap Status: Active

  The ghost was loose in Avalon.

  Monk led me to a steel-lined closet and looted his artifacts for a Recaro cockpit chair. We found it behind a rack of second-generation VR helmets and data gloves. The Recaro's red fabric was torn viciously, a scar Monk blamed on rats.

  I pulled out the chair. It had a lightweight resin base and low-function panels, designed for reporters and ambassadors who wanted a virtual bus-ride through Avalon. While I wiped off the dust, Monk limped up the ramp he’d built to give him optimum height at the control panel. I smiled. Monk adapted. Always had.

  He reconfigured the system to accept postcard/tourist presence rather than full immersion, which amounted to disabling more than half of the ports.

  "Some controls are gonna be sluggish, if not downright broken." The panel hissed at him and he beat his palm on the riveted hood until it stopped. "So go easy."

  I spanked the dust off with my handkerchief. "The trap locks him in Van Meter's office. He can't run, so all I need is to pivot and pan."

  "Good." He tapped a strand of code and hit the Execute key. He glanced up at me. "I'd feel better if ya used a suit, Jack. I can guarantee my suits."

  I scrubbed harder on the chair. "No."

  He didn't push it. "All right, so ya leave the toggles alone on the joystick. The ones on your left -- there should be twelve switches on the touchpad. Right?"

  The arm curved into a panel of toggles. "Yeah."

  "Use the top three and leave the rest alone. Left moves ya backward, right moves ya forward and the middle makes ya stop." He adjusted an analog dial and stood back. The panel hummed a resonant baritone that climbed the musical scale. When it reached tenor, a liquid-crystal window lit up aquamarine blue: Armed.

  Monk joined me on the stage, aligned the chair with the beaker cables and unplugged the booth's umbilical feed. He pulled it to the Recaro, flipped open the panel and inserted the cable. The chair sputtered sparks, catching fire to the fabric. Monk disconnected the cable and kicked out the tiny flames, dabbed the connection rods with saliva and plunged them into the panel again. After a few seconds, the sputtering stopped and the chair, like the half-moon control panel, began to hum.

  "Not bad," he told himself. "Not bad at all."

  He pulled himself up by my lapels until he stood eye-level; if both legs were the same length, Monk would stand over six feet. He grabbed the fedora off my head, turned it upside down and poked at the lining. Then he peeled open the headband and inspected the filament cables and yanked on the mike. He scowled at the patch I'd done on the visor, flicked the transparency and tossed the hat back at me.

  "Lemme find ya some cheaters," he grumbled.

  I doffed the hat, adjusted its slope and said: "No thanks. This will work fine."

  "Jack, ya really --" he started, then gave up. "Never mind. Just sit down."

  He shuffled behind the panel. I sat down and let my hands fall into the contoured arm rests. The joystick felt cold and wet and I drew my hand away, disgusted, until I realized that my hands -- not the chair -- were clammy.

  "Ain't nervous, are ya?" His face lit up like a Christmas tree from the panel lights.

  I swallowed chalk and said: "Just do it."

  I folded down torn visor, stared at the Trap Status: Active icon and pressed my back against the ripped cushions. Monk placed one hand on the panel and one in the air. The one in the air showed five fingers, then four, then three.

  "Kiss her hello for me, Jack."

  And then the room exploded, glacier blue.

  AVALON VII: Dragon’s Lai r

  Light.

  Thought become energy and energy become data, matt
er to energy to digital matter. The globe’s computers roared a binary symphony like glossolalia at a Sons of David tent rally, echoing down the world's fiber-optic caverns, unfiltered and pure. My retinas burned as I breached the point of transition, a virtual barrier we called the Leap.

  I yanked the joystick and sank into the Recaro's ripped fabric. My pupils shrank to pinholes, digital whiteout, and then Monk appeared in the blue-white firestorm.

  "Jack! Let go of that stick!" His face bobbed in a small portal carved out of the blizzard. "You're skimmin' the surface! I can't plug ya in unless ya turn loose!"

  My hand loosened on the joystick, easing it back to center. As I did, the glare faded and the binary roar subsided and Monk said, “Good. Attaboy. Good.”

  I tasted brass, but felt my heart start to slow. The roar became a far-off echo. Monk keyed the panel and another image emerged from the firestorm.

  "You OK?" Monk asked. I nodded at his transmitted face. "You almost flew right outta the pipe. You'da been a satellite over the city if ya hadn't turned loose."

  I muttered an apology. Monk grinned. "First time jitters are nothin' to sweat, boy."

  "I'm no first-timer."

  Monk’s laughter rattled the filaments of my fedora. "Ten years out of the saddle makes everyone a virgin, son."

  The glare burned off like a fog and a brushed-metal threshold stood before me, a high-res vault door without knobs or dials, cold and impenetrable.

  "There," Monk breathed. "There she is."

  Hundreds of doors had been built but. most were mangled when Wrecking Ball tore through the city. Rita said most remaining doors had been redesigned by the Digerati, who used the access portals as billboards for what lay on the other side -- stripteases, gladiator wars, celebrity orgies, bargains. But this one was an original, a sheet of steel that stretched to all horizons.

  I reached out to touch it. I remembered it feeling cold -- a sensation created by rapidly whisking the dioxide-bubbles in a data glove’s fingertips -- but without a suit, Merlin was unaware of my appendages. My naked fingers groped, feeling nothing. My hand returned to the joystick and I eased toward the threshold, staring at the skyline.

  AVALON.

  CITY OF WONDER, CITY OF LIGHT

  IN KNOWLEDGE, IN COMMUNITY

  IN HOPE

  "Jack?"

  I reached under the fedora and rubbed my eyes, but the image remained, burned there like a brand. When it started to fade my eyes flew open, needing reassurance that it had once existed, that we had nearly pulled it off, that something remained. And it was there. Just a door. The United Nations, Sons of David and Neuromantics had turned Avalon into a shameful footnote in our digital history. The Digerati had turned it into a freak show for the desperate. But here was this door, and there was the emerald panorama of skyscrapers, and there was our promise. And they had survived.

  "Jack, I've gotta shoot Van Meter's code or Merlin will pull your plug."

  I blinked away the sting and said, "Take me where I need to go, Monk."

  Monk's window began to Doppler on the fedora visor. "Comin' up."

  Monk slotted the access code Van Meter provided and the door pulsed like a giant heart, then flashed a firestorm again. My head jerked, but I left the joystick alone, and the flash only lasted a few seconds, long enough for Merlin to transmit my binary POV from the door to Van Meter's virtual office.

  Van Meter's office constructed itself from the Flux -- an endless floe of binary data as hostile as the Moon. The small orb of consciousness Merlin accepted as Jack Denys arrived in oblivion before the walls went up. Pivoting the orb, I watched the miracle of digital creation. It took less than two seconds.

  First came the grid, a neon cobweb separating the room from the void. The walls and floors came in waves as Creation scrolled down from the ceiling, a rolling pin that pulsed down the grid, leaving a flawless wall of aquamarine glass that rose twenty meters and sloped to a domed ceiling. Then came the furniture: black-leather chairs and a birdseye maple desk, a Telepresence screen to monitor his investments and a brass birdcage holding a green-and-orange African parakeet. The bird greeted his creation by squawking: "Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ."

  The pins made one last diagnostic scroll, then brought up the city lights beyond the terrarium walls. Avalon emerged.

  From his crystal helm, Van Meter could survey the entire virtual city, from the Plaza of Light to the storming Flux at the edge of town. Van Meter had commandeered the penthouse of the Hall of Nations during Prohibition’s first tumultuous months, prime real estate in a building shaped like a glass mushroom and rising sixty stories above the Avenue of Intellectual Pioneers. The Hall of Nations stood near the hub of Avalon; the Library and Plaza were at the center, with five spokes stretching away from it. The wheel had only one side; digital architect Jann Turnquist envisioned the other 180 degrees of Avalon for the city's second phase. But that never arrived.

  I keyed the joystick and moved forward, feeling motion as the Recaro tipped on its hydraulic pedestal. I moved within a meter of the penthouse window and stared.

  The skyline hadn’t changed since the last days of Construction. The half-wheel remained dotted with unfinished skyscrapers -- the Labor Hall and International Trade buildings in Commerce Square looked like icicles ravaged by rock salt, their offices exposed to Avalon's breathless sky. At the edge of the first spoke stood the unfinished Parthenon, where WPA brats had gone for midair swordfights in the Olympic corridors. To its left was Avalon University, its naked girders winking like open sores. And at the center stood the pearl of the Library. Our Library.

  But while its skeleton was similar, Avalon’s skin had changed. Gone were the muted hues of granite and limestone, the clarity of Vitrolite and stainless steel. Now the city blared neon facades, enticing passersby with bootleg lust. Midnight Erotica, Lusty Luthor's and Arabian Knights flashed their prices: Half-off on Tuesdays, Second-fly free on Thursday; Saturdays -- Anything Goes! Sparta, with a grainy cartoon of the last kill, advertised an upcoming bloodsport on what once was the University's supercollider. From Van Meter's penthouse, the city looked as if a missile of glow-paint had exploded, showering Avalon with colors as toxic as the South China Sea.

  Monk was right. She was a painted whore.

  I turned away from the city. "Merlin," I told the A.I., "access trap status window."

  I hovered over Van Meter's desk, craving a smoke as Merlin loaded the program. Finally, a grid-map of the city appeared in my visor, just below my left cheek.

  The ghost triggered the trap at Arabian Knights, where he'd been mysteriously unable to enter. From there -- maybe thinking Van Meter was remodeling his pedophile brothel -- the ghost traveled to Roddy Benedikt's bondage club, Chains. Still no luck.

  His waltz through the red-light district looked like hopscotch. My trap had detected one strand of code in the ghost's dampening field, an echo mechanism in his gauze. When he tried a door, the trap sealed the hatch. It had woven so tightly behind him that if he wanted to pull a Hansel-and-Gretel, he'd find the breadcrumbs had turned to quicksand. He could only move forward. Toward me.

  I waited behind Van Meter's desk, watching the door. Jenny’s surveillance systems were online, ready to document the collar for posterity. The African parakeet told me to screw myself. I told him to do the same.

  The grid showed his last stop, Scintillation. But this time, instead of sealing off the voyeur's club, the door seemed to open as the trap keyed its secondary program. He had no time to react as the trap sealed off his escape with a wall of code and catapulted him across the city.

  And into Van Meter's office.

  My visor winked: TRAP STATUS: LOCKDOWN. The ghost was in the room and couldn't escape, even though my eyes saw an empty office, foul mouthed bird aside.

  The dashboard showed a floor plan of Jenny's office. Above it was a map of the ghost's progress through Avalon, a connect-the-dots trail that ended at Scintillation then leapfrogged here. That part was self-
explanatory; it was the record I planned to give Van Meter when he wanted to verify that I’d bagged the right ghost.

  But the floor plan wasn't so clear. It showed the anomaly in two places, then four, then eight, as if the ghost were replicating. Surrounding me.

  The eight became sixteen, then thirty-two, then sixty-four. I watched, fascinated, and realized what he was trying to do. By replicating his code, he thought he could overload the trap. I smiled into the fedora visor. Most folks would have tried to run. This guy instantly put his attacker on the defensive. Smart.

  The bad news was that he'd given my trap more credit than it deserved. It wouldn't decipher. Its only function now was to strip away the room's contents, eating the code like cancer. Everything from cityscape to birdcage would be filed into the buffer, until nothing remained but the ghost. Then it would strip his cloak, line by line.

  "Nice ass," the parakeet squawked. "Nice ass."

  The visor showed more than three hundred bogies now, stacked six deep around the maple desk. The LOCKOUT window continued flashing, oblivious to the ghost's breeding, and for a moment I considered unplugging. The trap would do the rest. But I'd come to see an artist.

  I spoke to the empty room. "Congratulations."

  The room shimmered like heat on asphalt. The reply came from all directions:

  "FOR WHAT?"

  I tipped my hat, one reality away. "For writing the best gauze in Avalon."

  He answered with static. Then the dashboard told me someone was trying to trace me back to my port of entry. My encryption fed him garbage; I’d buried my trail under the data waste of yesterday's Avalon transmissions. It would take an industrial sifter to find me under all the heaving breasts and thrusting torsos.