by Jeff Edwards
“You may find this hard to believe,” I said, “but not everything in the world is about sex.”
Tommy waved in the general direction of the odd triangular chip lying on his workbench. “Maybe not,” he said. “But from what I understand, something like seventy-percent of the street market for SCAPE technology is geared toward porn. When we plug that chip in, you might find yourself piloting a suborbital shuttle through the ionosphere, or crossing blades with a world class fencing master. No way to find out until we hit the play button. I’m just saying there’s a better than even chance that you’re going to find yourself humping some B-grade porn starlet in a bathtub full of microlube. Assuming, of course, that you’re male.”
“What does that mean?”
“Just what it sounds like,” Tommy said. “SCAPE is about capturing and reliving sensory experiences—either your own, or someone else’s. For the duration of the recording, you’re basically going to inhabit the body of the POV subject.”
“P-O-V? As in point of view?” I was familiar with the term, but I had never heard it used in this particular context.
Tommy tapped a series of soft keys on the faceplate of the SCAPE deck. “Right. Point of view. The person who made the recording. Whose experiences are encoded on the chip.”
“So, I could be about to relive something that was originally experienced by a woman?”
Tommy shrugged without looking up. “Given the gender distribution of the human species, the odds are about fifty-fifty that you’re going to find out how it feels to own a vagina.”
I tried to wrap my head around the idea. “I think this is getting way too weird for me.”
“I’m with you on that,” Tommy said. “This is exactly what I don’t like about SCAPE. Nearly everything you can do with it tends to up the freaky quotient by a factor of ten.”
I eyed the triangular chip. “I’m not sure I’m ready to know what’s on that thing.”
Tommy rummaged around in the laminated plastic box that the SCAPE deck had been packed in, and retrieved a second triangular chip, emblazoned with the iridescent green logo of the unit’s manufacturer. “Here we have your basic marketing demo. Three minutes of carefully polished experiential recordings, designed to give consumers a preview of what this technology can deliver. And if it makes you feel any better, I deliberately selected a demo with only male POVs, so you won’t have to deal with gender displacement issues your first time out of the box.”
“I appreciate that,” I said.
Tommy held up the demo chip and looked me in the eye. “Are you ready to do this?”
I swallowed. I wasn’t ready. The more I heard about SCAPE, the less I liked about the whole damned thing. But I needed to know what was on the chip that LAPD had found in Leanda Forsyth’s apartment. Maybe it was related to her disappearance, and maybe not. Short of asking (or paying) someone else to check it out for me—which struck me as a cowardly way to do business—there was really only one way to find out.
My eyes were drawn to the demo chip in Tommy’s hand. That one should be easy enough. It was designed to attract customers, not to scare them off, so the content had to be fairly innocuous.
I swallowed again. “Go.”
Tommy fed the chip into the loading slot on the side of the SCAPE unit. A couple of seconds later, the background of the touch panel winked from blue to green.
I gave Tommy a final nod, and he reached for the play tab.
There is no sense of transition at all.
In a fraction of a heartbeat, Tommy Mailo’s workshop is gone.
I am several hundred meters above a moonlit ocean, strapped into the skeletal framework of a microlight glider, cruising through a star-filled sky. The gossamer wings of my craft ripple delicately in the thermal currents rising from the sea.
The night breeze is warm against my cheeks, and it still carries a faint tang of salt as my inhalations draw air past the membranes of my nose filters. I’ve never piloted any kind of glider before. Never even seen one up close, but it’s clear that I am an expert, utterly in my element. The body I inhabit is unfamiliar in its shape and dimensions, but somehow it is unmistakably mine. Every flex of muscle and stretch of tendon is mine. I own this strange flesh.
My outstretched arms pull back to my sides, decreasing the lift surfaces of my wings, and sending me into a steepening dive toward the pounding waves below. The gentle whisper of air past my ears grows to a whistle, and then a roar.
I drop like an express elevator, my stomach fluttering with the kinesthetic disorientation that accompanies a prolonged fall. Adrenaline flooding my bloodstream, I plummet toward the roiling darkness of the ocean.
The waves rush toward me with incredible speed. There is no time to avert the crash that is coming. No time… No time…
I am only fractional seconds from impact when my arms shoot out, spreading the wings of the microlight. The carbon laminate skeleton groans under the sudden increase in tension, and the muscles of my back and shoulders strain against the inexorable force of gravity.
I pull level less than two meters above the waves, and then inertia and increased lift send me spiraling back into the air.
My heart hammers in my chest. I climb toward a sky of black velvet, burning with the blue-hot diamonds of constellations. Every fiber of my body is awake, alive, and aware, in a manner that I’ve never experienced before.
And then, with another instantaneous shift, the glider is gone.
The night sky has vanished, replaced by fierce sunlight, reflected off of dirty white sand. I am in a semi-reclined position, wrapped in the bubble-shaped cockpit of a rocket sled.
The hand grips of the steering yoke fit my fingers perfectly, as though molded for me. It’s another unfamiliar body. Shorter this time, more compact, and lacking the lean grace of my glider-pilot self.
But again, it is mine. I am this person, the driver of this insanely fast machine as it screams across the salt flats at nearly twice the speed of sound.
My veins don’t merely pulse with adrenaline. They thrum with it. Bathe in it. Surge with it. Man and machine heterodyning under the twin rocket burns of liquid hydrogen fuel and epinephrine.
My teeth vibrate. My vision is blurred, my brain barely able to process the world shrieking past the curved thermoplastic windows of my cockpit.
Nothing is this fast. Nothing can be this fast. But something is…
Coming up on my left, I catch sight of it. The sleek red teardrop form of another rocket sled. Closing by increments. Gaining a few meters every second.
This isn’t just a speed run. It’s a race.
I squeeze the pistol grip control yoke, activating reactive surfaces under my fingertips. The pitch of the rocket motors climbs an octave and my helmet snaps back into the contoured recess of my headrest. The acceleration shoves me into the seat webbing, and my vision narrows to a cone as the g-forces stack up.
Another instantaneous shift, and I am on stage, staring past bright lights into a writhing-thundering crowd of onlookers. The instrument in my hands is some unfathomable hybrid of keyboard and guitar.
I feel the sweat in the small of my back as I leap, and gyrate, and pound the instrument into melodic chaos.
With every pulsing-shuddering note, a strobe of laser light shoots from the string matrix of my unnamed instrument, striking prismatic mirrors that hang from the overhead of the stadium, sending semi-hypnogogic illusions to caper and strut above the heads of the adoring fans.
My fingers dance across the keys, and my voice rises to meet the music in perfect counterpoint. Behind me, my band carries the bottom end, their rhythm, and melodies, and laser images supporting and enhancing the flavor of my own masterful performance.
This is my stage. This is my crowd. The women in the audience want to sleep with me. The men want to be me. I am a god, and this is the temple where my subjects have come to worship.
My very soul is singing. I feel the climax of the song hurtling toward me like an ava
lanche, or an orgasm. I am on fire tonight. This is my moment in history. The absolute pinnacle of my existence.
My hand shoots upward, the gleaming alloy pick held tight between my fingers. My wrist arcs down for the final chord, and an exultant tsunami of sound blasts from a thousand speakers. It blends seamlessly with the ecstatic shouts of the crowd.
I feel my lips drawn back into a grin of purest satisfaction and enjoyment. My knees are weak with the giddiness of the post-adrenaline rush. I raise my arms in triumph…
The shift occurs without transition. It is over. All of it. The glider. The rocket sled. The concert. And I am back in Tommy Mailo’s shop, sitting on a stool near his cluttered workbench.
My hands trembled slightly as I pulled the cranial rig from my head. I sat there for a few seconds, my brain trying to analyze and file the memories of what had just happened.
Tommy cleared his throat softly. “Uh… How was it?”
I blinked several times. “Intense.”
“Was it real? I mean, did it feel real?”
I nodded slowly. “It was real all right. I can’t believe how real it was.”
Tommy ejected the demo chip. “That’s the hook,” he said. “This technology is going to spread like a virus as soon as the price point falls into the consumer range. It’s the ultimate in vicarious living. Our old buddy, John Q. Public, can wine and dine with top-shelf celebrities, play zero-g football in front of a million screaming fans, or get a blowjob from a supermodel, all without leaving the comfort of his couch.”
I looked down at the cranial rig in my hand. Now that I’d had a taste of what SCAPE technology was like, I was even less eager to play the chip from Leanda Forsyth’s apartment.
“Technical question,” I said. “What happens if I plug into that chip and find myself in the middle of something ugly? Is there an escape key? Something I can do to abort the playback?”
“Well, you could reach up and pull the rig off your head,” Tommy said. “That’s quick and direct, but it might not be as easy as it sounds.”
“Why not?”
“Because the SCAPE signals override the legitimate synaptic impulses from your nerves and muscles. Your brain interprets the recorded experiences as actual inputs from the real world. As far as your sensory cortex is concerned, your muscles are already busy riding a wind racer, or cooking an omelet, or throwing a roundhouse kick. Supposedly, it takes a bit of practice to exercise voluntary muscle control while your brain is engaged in parsing a SCAPE recording.”
“Can you be a bit more specific than that? How much is a ‘bit’ of practice? Ten minutes? Ten weeks? Or ten years?”
Tommy shrugged. “That seems to vary from user to user. The manufacturers want us to believe that anyone can figure out the trick in a few tries. But from what I’m hearing, most people don’t ever get the hang of it.”
“How do you know all this?” I asked. “I thought you weren’t into this kind of tech.”
Tommy gave me a sideways smile. “I read the owner’s manual for your unit. And I nosed around on the web before you came over. I figured you wouldn’t want to fly completely blind, so I did a little research.”
“I appreciate that,” I said. “Don’t forget to include it on your bill.”
He grinned. “Will do.”
I raised the cranial set to my head, and settled it in place. “Okay, let’s assume that Plan A is not an option. What’s our Plan B? How do I punch out of the recording if it turns out to be something nasty?”
“The manual has two suggestions for that,” Tommy said. “First, they recommend that you only buy SCAPE recordings from licensed and reputable vendors, to ensure that you’re only exposing yourself to high-quality content. Second, they’ve included a handy timer in your SCAPE deck. You can program it to interrupt the playback at preset intervals—like thirty or forty-five seconds—so that you can evaluate a questionable recording in small slices. That doesn’t completely eliminate the possibility of unpleasant experiences, but it does limit your window of potential exposure.”
“I like the timer idea,” I said.
“So do I, with a really short period. How do you feel about twenty seconds?”
“That sounds about right.”
It took a few minutes to get the cranial repositioned and the new chip loaded into the deck. Tommy set the timer for twenty seconds, and looked to me for the thumbs-up.
I nodded.
He hit the play tab.
Instantaneous shift…
I’m walking down a hallway in what appears to be a high-end office building. The lighting is indirect, and pleasantly subdued. The silvery wood-laminate wall paneling is complimented by commercial-grade carpeting in a medium shade of gray.
My pace is leisurely, in direct contradiction of the pounding of my heart. I’m obviously psyched up for something more exciting than a stroll down an office corridor, but I have no contextual clues as to what I’ll be experiencing next.
About ten meters in front of me, two men in business suits turn left and disappear through a doorway. A quick glance behind me confirms that I am now alone in the hallway.
My left hand darts into the pocket of my jacket and comes out with a narrow cylindrical object. It is a black paint-stick.
My grip on the paint-stick feels slightly off kilter. My left little finger is missing from the second knuckle. The amputation is obviously an old injury, long since scarred over. The missing section of finger doesn’t appear to hinder my dexterity as the paint-stick is transferred deftly to my right hand.
Another glance in both directions. The hallway is still clear.
I stop, turn quickly to face the wall, and begin to write on the silvery wood-laminate in bold black letters.
FANTASCAPE 389
Dream Snatcher Presents
THE BOSS
The paint-stick goes quickly back into my left pocket, and I continue to stare at the glistening back letters for several heartbeats. I catch a whiff of evaporating ketone solvents from the rapidly drying paint.
Shift…
My first twenty seconds in the recording had elapsed. I was back in the real world, sitting on Tommy’s work stool.
Tommy looked at me for the ‘go’ signal.
There was no reason not to continue. I had little doubt that darker things were coming, but—so far—the POV subject hadn’t engaged in anything worse than a bit of office graffiti.
I gave Tommy the nod. He hit the play tab.
Shift…
I turn away from my display of paint-stick penmanship, and begin striding toward the doorway on the left, where the two businessmen went a few seconds earlier. My pace is much faster now.
I shove my way through the frosted glass doors, and I’m into a large office complex on the other side before the doors can rebound.
My heart rate is accelerating. My body is a trembling bundle of nervous tension.
A female receptionist says something to me, but I ignore her and continue walking swiftly.
As I move deeper into the complex, my eyes sweep the desks and cubicles, taking them in with a strange pseudo-familiarity. My internal ‘place’ orientation is somehow at odds with the sureness of my movements. It’s as if I have never been in this building before, but I have studied maps or models of its layout.
People are beginning to notice me. Speak to me. Move in my direction.
My brain doesn’t bother to interpret the sounds of their voices. I’m too focused on something else. Whatever it is that I have come to do.
I spot a pair of impressive wooden doors that obviously lead to an office. Not a desk, or a work area, but an actual office.
I make a beeline for the doors. As I near them, my left hand reaches for one of the doorknobs, while my right hand swings toward the small of my back.
Shift…
I was back in Tommy’s workshop again, and he was watching me for a signal.
I hesitated. I had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen next in t
he recording, and I wasn’t at all sure that I wanted to witness it. Experience it. Live it.
But damn it, I needed to know what was on the rest of the chip. I couldn’t exactly give my best effort to the case if I wasn’t willing to examine the evidence.
I gave Tommy another nod. He hit the play tab again.
Shift…
The doorknob turns in my left hand as my right hand finds the butt of the gun and pulls it from beneath the covering of my jacket.
The gun is a heavy-caliber automatic, with an extended magazine protruding below the bottom end of the grip reservoir. The weapon is up as the door rebounds on its hinges, and I can feel my nerves sizzling with fear and excitement as I move into the office.
The furnishings are several cuts above the industrial suite pieces in the common area. There are several paintings on the wall, and—under my rapid sideways glances—they don’t look like prints.
The man behind the broad oak desk is fiftyish. His suit is immaculately tailored, but his tie is loosened and the collar of his shirt is open.
He bolts to his feet as we make eye contact. He doesn’t seem to have registered the presence of the gun in my hand.
His voice is loud, but his tone conveys annoyance rather than fear. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m the little man,” I hear myself say. I speak with a trace of an accent that I can’t quite place. “Just an average worker, who’s tired of busting his balls like a slave, and getting the shitty end of the stick in return.”
