Idolon

by Mark Budz

  He had seen it coming. He hadn't been blind. He had done what he could, his only regret was that it hadn't been enough. He should have been stronger.

  _______

  "What's wrong with F8?" Apphia fumed.

  "You tell me." Atherton wanted her to think for herself. He wanted her to see the truth on her own, without having it pointed out to her all the time.

  "Nothing!" Apphia stamped her foot. "Everything is a sin to you. Just because I ware something doesn't mean I'm going to act in a certain way or be exactly like whoever I'm waring."

  "We had an agreement." By allowing her to get 'skinned, he had hoped she would choose images that would bring her closer to God.

  "Other parents let their kids screen stuff. It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't turn them into bad people."

  He had caught her philmed in one of the proscribed downloads she had agreed not to ware in exchange for his permission, "Moment of F8." A passage from Romans condensed on the surface of his thoughts. " 'For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature and not the Creator.'"

  Apphia fisted her hands at her sides. "She's no different than the people you philm yourself in."

  "She's a false idol," he said. "A graven image."

  “And the people you ware aren't? Do you actually think they're going to make you a better person? Most of them were assholes."

  His face flushed. He sensed Lisbeth eavesdropping on the conversation from the living room, and her presence tempered his response. "The subject is closed," he stated.

  Apphia spat out a laugh. "It was never open."

  "That's enough, young lady." He pointed up the stairs to her room. "We'll discuss this when you've had a chance to calm down." In the meantime he'd activate the parental controls in the 'skin to prevent any further downloads.

  "You're the one having the stroke," she said, "not me."

  _______

  Finally, he saw Lisbeth's plea appear near the apex of the cross on a panel reserved for individual entreaties.

  Apphia. Fifteen years old. Missing for three months. Please pray for her safety and return home. Soon!

  The prayer rose and dissipated. A few moments later another prayer, entered by someone else in the congregation, replaced it.

  Atherton found Lisbeth's hand, bundled her fingers in his, and squeezed. "Are you okay?"

  She nodded, then swallowed, her throat muscles working. The tendons in her neck stood out, as taut as steel wires.

  "Everything will be fine," he said.

  "I know." She sighed, but remained tense. Her trust in God wasn't absolute. Not like his.

  It helped that he had a plan. God helped those who helped themselves.

  5

  "You want to tell me what's going on?" Pelayo said.

  Uri glanced up from the immersion tank he was calibrating, a look of irritation on his face. "The usual."

  In other words, don't ask, don't tell. Pelayo had signed a comprehensive liability waiver and nondisclosure agreement that was as binding as a straightjacket.

  "Any restrictions I need to know about?" Pelayo said. "Philms I should avoid, any contraindicated ware?"

  "Only one," Uri said. The skintech grinned, revealing rows of shark teeth. As far as Pelayo could tell, the implants were real. Pelayo imagined the asswipe polishing them every day. "You have to abstain."

  "From what?"

  The grin sharpened. "What do you think?"

  Pelayo frowned in disbelief. "You're kidding."

  Uri's smile slackened, going limp. "We don't want you dirty-dicking yourself."

  "You serious? No intimate contact?"

  Uri shrugged. "If you don't like it, no problem. I can always find someone else to take your place. Plenty of test subjects out there wanting to screen the latest philm."

  Pelayo sniffed. "How long are we talkin'?"

  "Six weeks, maybe longer. Depends on the results we get."

  Pelayo shook his head. Unfuckingbelievable.

  Uri spread his hands. "Those are the terms and conditions. Your choice. Take it or leave it."

  _______

  The test philm required new e-skin, not simply an upgrade to his existing ware. The old 'skin needed to be stripped off.

  "Nothing you haven't gone through before," Uri said with calculated indifference.

  Knowing what to expect didn't make the process any easier to face.

  Pelayo floated in the tank, splayed on a bed of surgical gel. Despite anesthetics, the viral aspic burned. Uri was taking his time. The air in the tank reeked of honeysuckle mixed with formaldehyde.

  "Can we get on with this?"

  "Patience," Uri cooed. He blinked, parsing a new internal readout. "We don't want any mistakes."

  Pelayo shivered as the burn grew cold. Son of a bitch...

  "Okay." Uri straightened.

  At the same time, Pelayo felt himself sink. Gel oozed up around his mouth, nose, and eyes— swallowing him whole. Like amber encasing an insect, it cut off his breath, sealing it in the moist coffin of his body...

  _______

  He came awake suddenly, flat on his back on the sponge pad at the bottom of the tank. The surgical gel was draining away like bathtub water, taking with it flakes of peeled yellow dopant and the crimson threads of severed synthapse connections. Leaving behind the cellophane-smooth gray of virgin e-skin. Under the translucent membrane he could see his own naked skin, pallid and puckered, bleached of all color to provide as plain a background as possible for the philm images that would eventually pixilate and texture the 'skin.

  He gagged in air. Choked on raw oxygen, then jackknifed into a sitting position, veils of gel clinging to his arms and legs like tattered cloth. An acid bead of saliva dribbled down his chin as cinegraphic images appeared on the membrane, blurry at first, then slowly sharpening.

  "... fuck outta here," he said, the words sputtering out, frothy and bilious.

  "Take it easy," Uri said, bending over the tank, his gaze drilling down like the lenses of a microscope. "Everything's fine. All we got to do now is download the philm and you'll be good to go."

  The grin was back, mocking, carnivorous.

  _______

  The 'skin came with a soot-gray suit, the creases in the pant legs origami-sharp, a white silk shirt, and red silk tie. While he slipped on graphene-covered dress shoes, Uri brought him the jacket and overcoat.

  "They part of the ware?" he asked.

  Uri nodded. "No different from the 'skin. You got menu options for fabric type, color, and pattern. Same for the shirt, shoes, and tie."

  "Simage capability?" Pelayo asked. In addition to philm, most new 'skin—even street jobs—included a tightly woven mesh of nanotrodes that mapped the topology and kinetic movement of the 'skin to generate a simulated image for use online.

  "Fully integrated," Uri said. "You can even pick and choose which 'skin options you want to cast. That it?"

  "All I can think of, for now."

  "There may be a couple of updates," Uri said, "last-minute wrinkles we're in the process of ironing out. If that happens, you need to come in as soon as you get the call. Same day. Is that clear?"

  Pelayo gave a pro forma nod. "I hear ya." Same old Uri, keeping him on a tight leash so he could yank his chain.

  _______

  On the surface, the philm was conservative, an uninspired adaptation of 1940s or 1950s film noir. A bleak grayscale pseudoself sporting a knife-edged mustache and black, slicked-back hair. The face of an analog wristwatch was stenciled on his left wrist, mechanically resolute gears grinding out seconds, minutes, hours.

  Inside was different. He couldn't put his finger on it, the feeling. Some odd acid-etched pattern of raw tics and urges. Too new yet to make their wishes known. That would come in time, a sense of direction, of place, in the world... the main reason people wore philm in the first place. Belonging. It made them part of a cast, a global cinematic tribe with shared interests and values.

  It
was always a little disconcerting at first. The jagged uncertainty and wrenched dislocation that ranie with new philm and undebugged 'skin.

  Pelayo stepped from IBT's front lobby onto the sidewalk and accessed the public datalib with a quick mental command. Half a second later the spectral voice of a datician tickled his earfeed. "How may I assist you?"

  "What can you tell me about the source material for the philm I'm currently waring?" he said. In the past, source images had been a good indicator of the market IBT was aiming for and what he could expect from the philm.

  "One moment, please." A nearby mask, an Italianate muse, drifted down to look at him. "It's a composite," the datician said. "The persona doesn't appear to be drawn from one single film, but several."

  "Such as?"

  "Spencer Tracy in Fury. Orson Welles in The Lady from Shanghai. Burt Lancaster in Elmer Gantry. There may be others."

  Pelayo had never heard of any of them. He squinted at the downloaded images projected on his retinas. "I don't get it."

  "Explain, please?"

  "The purpose of the philm. Why come out with an obscure composite?" Normally, philms had a distinct, readily identifiable character or brand name, like Scandalicious, F8, or Marilyn Monroe.

  "Most composite images try to integrate a number of thematically or symbolically related tropes," the datician said.

  "Maybe," Pelayo allowed. Something was going on. Whatever it was, it didn't fit into the normal prerelease pattern. Who would download the philm if there was no recognizable lifestyle, pseudoself, or ideology people could identify with and plug into?

  Lagrante, Pelayo thought. He might have some ideas. If not, he'd know someone who did or could find out.

  A face in front of him morphed into the newest downloadable image of F8. At the same time, the philm manifested on half a dozen other faces in the surrounding crowd as the autoupdate kicked in, instantiating in every cast member who'd preordered the latest release.

  "Slavation is near."

  Pelayo's head snapped around. The TV stood a few meters away, under the pink awning of a flower kiosk philmed in yellow polka dots and blue daisies.

  "Great," he muttered. Just what he needed. He loosened the razor wire on the inside of his belt in case things got nasty. It wouldn't be the first time a philmhead had come after him, hoping to rip a copy of whatever new ware he was testing.

  Pelayo started across the street, saw that the cluster of TVs hadn't moved, and veered onto Pacific Avenue, hoping to lose himself in the crowd.

  He walked quickly, passing art galleries, clothing stores, cafés, and gift shops philmed in cheerful wa-tercolors. Two blocks later, reflected in the oblique window of a fajizza bar and grill, he spotted the TV doggedly trailing after him, a featureless shadow only partly dissolved by the sunlight.

  6

  The homeless shelter in Santa Cruz had once been an elementary school, back when kidsattended class in person. Even though those days were long past, the widehalls of the three-story building still reverberated with the sporadic outbursts of children... loud, violent squalls that ended as quickly as they began. The elderly residents were worse; their moans drooled endlessly into the night.

  Because Nadice was pregnant, she had been assigned a semiprivate cubicle in a second-floor classroom. The cubicle contained a futon that folded into a couch, a collapsible cardboard table, and stackable white plastic trays in which to store her belongings. She shared the classroom with an aged woman who snored when asleep and wheezed when awake. A sun-faded alphabet clung to the walls near the ceiling, Cheshire As, Bs, and Cs stenciled on the ancient plaster. Instead of whiteboards and chalkboards, several Vurtronic screens hung from the earthquake-cracked walls. One was tuned to time- lapse cloud formations. Another followed flocks of migrating birds under the hygienic white glare of the LED track lights. The room's only nonvirtual window faced east and overlooked the ruined tarmac of a fenced playground.

  "You can stay a week," one of the social workers who volunteered at the shelter had said when she first arrived. "I'm afraid that's the best I can do. After that..." Her voice trailed off, vaguely apologetic.

  The woman's face was pinched, but resolute. Nadice wondered what government regulation lay behind the one-week limit, but didn't argue. "I should be able to find a new place by then," she said. A week was better than nothing.

  They sat in a cubicle in a first-floor classroom that had been subdivided into work spaces using recycled sound-absorbent partitions. The tatty fabric on the privacy screens was programmable, and appeared to be networked. All of the screens displayed the same Chinese restaurant motif of golden dragons, verdant, mist-shrouded mountains, and generic pink blossoms.

  "Do you have a job?" the social worker asked.

  Nadice peeled her gaze from a white crane balanced on one leg in concentric rings of pond water. "I worked for Atherton, Lagos. But I quit after they transferred me here."

  "They wanted you to give up the baby for adoption?"

  Nadice shook her head. "Abortion."

  The social worker grimaced in sympathy, then nodded. It was an all-too-familiar story. The woman rephilmed the palm of her hand, activating a compact d-splay. "You were employed by them in what capacity?"

  "Housekeeping."

  Information populated the d-splay. "Contract work?"

  Nadice nodded. "Five-year indentured." More text scrolled.

  "How much time left?"

  Nadice forced her gaze from the d-splay. "One year, seven months."

  Give or take. She had stopped counting the days and hours. It made the time slow to an agonizing crawl.

  The social worker frowned. The red and white horizontal bands on her face twisted as she focused on Nadice's cataract-dull 'skin. The alternating red and white lines were a classic Rudi Gernreich, popular in Africa. "Have you been"—the woman pursed her mouth—"naturalized?"

  A tactful way of inquiring if Nadice had been issued a work authorization permit or officially applied for asylum.

  "Not yet." Nadice picked at a dry burr of skin on her lower lip. "My manager said that they couldn't file the application until the baby was..." Her lip stung. Nadice tasted blood and pressed the burr back into place.

  "I see." The social worker moistened her own lips. "What about the father? Where is he?"

  "Lagos."

  "Is he going to come after you? Cause trouble?"

  "No."

  The social worker's eyes narrowed, skeptical. "You're sure?"

  "Yes."

  Because there was no father. But she couldn't say that, no one would believe her. Sometimes she didn't believe it herself.

  "Is anyone else going to come looking for you?" the social worker said. "Besides domestic security, I mean."

  "I don't think so."

  "No family? Friends?"

  "No," she lied. If Atherton Resorts ever found out about her grandmother, the company would use the old woman to get to Nadice or garnish her for what Nadice still owed on her contract.

  The social worker checked the d-splay on her palm, glanced up. "Anything else I should know about? Medical problems. Drug use. Like that."

  Nadice shook her head. No way the social worker would take her in if she knew Nadice was working as a mule, smuggling illegal ware. Ditto the salesperson at the cinematique. She would never have given Nadice the antitoxin: too high-risk—at least until the ware was delivered and she was clean. And maybe not even then. Nadice couldn't take the chance. It was a gamble, waiting to take the antitoxin, but it was better than not having it at all. Or a safe place to stay.

  "All right." The social worker stood and the d-splay went blank, replaced by her Rudi Gernreich philm. "Try to get some rest. I'll make some calls, see what we can do."

  The crumbling blacktop outside of the window was guarded by netless, doddering basketball hoops. The skeletal remains of a jungle gym, swing set, and slide haunted a sandbox off to the side, the salt-bitten metal little more than cobwebby threads of rust. When she c
losed her eyes, she could picture the kids that had once played there, laughing and yelling, boiling over with excitement. She could almost imagine herself with them, plugged into a different past, a different life.

  A few hours after the social worker talked to her, she was visited by Sister Giselle. The nun, philmed after a character in an old television program, wore a habit with a goofy cornette. Nadice couldn't recall which program, only that it had been revived a few years back. There were times Nadice wished she could fly like the nun in the sitcom. Have the wind pick her up and never put her down.

  "I don't want to be deported," Nadice told Sister Giselle. "I can't go back." That much, at least, was true.

  The nun sucked on uneven, tea-stained teeth. "I know someone who might be able to help."

  Nadice gripped one of the nun's hands. "Thank you." The bones felt thin and frail under her smooth, unwrinkled 'skin.

  It had been a mistake to let Mateus talk her into smuggling for him. But she had been desperate, willing to do anything. Or almost anything.

  She checked the time. Not quite three. Plenty of time until her six o'clock parley with him.

  _______

  She'd met Mateus in Lagos, a month after he'd been hired by the resort. He seemed nice enough at the time. Polite, respectful. He didn't try to feel her up. Not like some of her shift managers.

  He worked security. She wasn't sure if the philm he wore—something he called H-town crunk, whatever that meant—was part of the job or not. He looked like he'd done time in a supermax, philmed head to toe in badass prison tattoos. The black line art didn't sing or dance or do anything except radiate attitude. His muscles bulged with crucifixes, rose petals that dripped blood, twisted strands of barbed wire and fiery skulls that laughed with predictable scorn.

  "I can get you out," he whispered to her one night, a week when she was working graveyard. "Treal."

  His word for true and real.

  "Anyplace you wanna go," he promised. Then, as if in answer to her unspoken question, "All I got to do is arrange for a transfer. Knowmsayin?"

  They stood in a laundry room, where she was recycling used linen, the hum of a big commercial UV sterilizer muffling their words.