Genesis 2.0

by Collin Piprell

  "Charming," Ellie says, making a face.

  Now he also has Sky's attention, and he continues. "That's right. As you can imagine, one thing and another was going through my mind. And one of these things was I'd heard the Americans and the Soviets, both of 'em, had spy satellites that could read a cigarette pack way down there on the ground."

  "I'm guessing this was 1975," Sky says.

  "Close enough," Leary says. "So now I had this picture in my head of these guys sitting around in the Kremlin wisecracking about Eskimo‐dog sandwiches. Mind you I still took care of business, even with Tuktu and the Russkie generals and all." He takes another sip of whiskey. "Darn it," he says, and now he makes a face.

  "My point is this," he concludes. "I feel for the Kid under present circumstances."

  "Hey," Ellie says to Sky.

  "Yes?"

  "Do you suppose any of those old satellite images ever found their way into the Lode?"

  "Hang on, now!"

  Sky laughs. "Way ahead of you, Ellie. I looked everywhere, but sorry to say there is nothing. Probably lost in the early Troubles, back before IndraNet."

  "Gosh," Leary says.

  "Though I did find some other stuff. See here? Saigon 1971. Vietnam War days. Taken with a film camera, believe it or not. Somebody thought these shots were worth stashing for posterity. And could be they were right. Look at this."

  Leary makes a grab for the handful of prints, too late.

  "Dear, dear Leary," Ellie says. "What are we going to do with you? You've told me, more than once, you'd never been with three women at the same time."

  "Darn it. I never …Let's see that. That's two women. Look. One of them's only the waitress. Anyway, that was long before I met you. Besides which, we were at friggin' war."

  "My God, you're blushing! My own darling scendent Leary, blushing."

  "And I was probably a bit drunk."

  •

  "Okay," Sky says. "That's enough for now. Yes."

  The video images shudder and disappear.

  "There's nothing we can do for them under the circumstances." She gets up and tugs her skirt down, straightens her stockings.

  "What?" says Ellie. "What are you talking about? Fifty ways they could die in the next hour, and you want to switch off and walk away?"

  "Yes. I explained the risks to Cisco before he returned to mondoland."

  "You said we could try to help," Leary says.

  "What do you suggest we do?"

  "One more thing." Leary's hands reflexively ball themselves into fists, never mind he's never hit a woman in his one‐hundred‐twelve years of hard living and isn't about to start now, never mind this particular woman is nothing but a qubital mask projected by a machine, not to mention a pain in the neck. "We've got to talk about those darned posits. What the heck is all that about, and can't you keep them away from our gate? This is our friggin' world. Ellie's and mine."

  But Sky is gone.

  •

  She doesn't even have the grace to leave by way of the portal under the stairs. One minute she's examining her nails and making reassuring noises, the next she vanishes.

  Jackie Gleason is back, still waving a fist at Alice. Ellie thumbs the remote, trying to find the Cisco and Dee Zu channel, no matter how qubital it might be. She's swearing, Leary assumes at Sky, and, finally, crying. She hurls the remote to the teak floor, where it shatters, however temporarily.

  Leary pulls her back to the sofa and holds her. "Don't fret," he says. "We've got the Kid backed up. Remember that. We're not about to lose our boy again."

  "What about Dee Zu?"

  For that question, Leary has no answer. And though he felt uncomfortable about spying on the kids while they were busy getting to know each other again, he also wishes he could see what was happening in mondoland right now.

  despatch from hell ~ video night in harry's hat

  Look at them go. To be young again, eh? Really young and wet. This is prime‐time porno. At least if you're into meat‐and‐potatoes sex, which as it happens I am just now.

  Leary and Ellie are hosting this nice video night. Of course good old Brian remains persona non grata in the Leary household. But never mind. Sky, this evening's program‐meister, is streaming the action to my TV upstairs here at Boon Doc's. And I can watch it just as well inside my deke as I can on the other side of the mirror, so I'm able to write these notes as I watch. While Noi does her thing under the table. Whoo‐ee. Just what the doctor ordered. Given the circumstances and all.

  •

  Back in the malls, human contact was like decaffeinated coffee. Or GR whiskey. The basics were there. The fine tuning was not.

  Face2face human contact was taboo. Teleps could hang out in their holotanks or Worlds UnLtd. But that was like sucking nipples through a nightgown. Like bonking with double rubbers. (Probably you have no idea what I'm talking about here.) It was worse than that. Reading the non‐verbal stuff through so many extra levels of self‐representation, you never knew in any given case which self you were looking at. Half the time even the self‐presenters didn't know who they were, or what they were trying to say.

  Didn't matter. Nobody had much to say anyhow. Mostly it was, like, how hi‐rez were the latest fashions. Fashions in bodmods, costumes, and music. Fashions in ideas, in sex. Brand me. New improved me. Me, me, me. Meet the "me du jour." Too cool, eh? Burbling with big news about the latest stir‐fry they just had their Dolls prepare, or about some exciting new adventure the Worlds cooked up for them.

  Though generally nobody talked much about the Worlds. Probably embarrassed to say what they'd been doing there. Embarrassed to say how little they'd really been up to, more like it. Mallsters liked to stick to the pre‐fabs, the shoot‐'em‐ups and car chases, maybe customizing the paint job on their Lamborghini in Slumlord Godfather or upping the number of enemy troops in Delta Force Slamdown. Mallsters liked to lie around a spring meadow in Tyrolean Tension Buster; and what do you talk about there, I watched some daisies grow? Got a bunch of ants in my pants? Mallsters liked to talk about how good their latest sex was, but no one cares how good somebody else's sex is. Might as well broadcast details of their last dump.

  But here's the thing. Why I'm off and away on this particular rant, the latest news bulletin from Hell. The way things are going in Aeolia, soon it may well be even worse here.

  Meanwhile, what our heroes are doing down there in mondoland? Those are real games. No‐limit stakes. No rewind, no undo. No backups, for fucksake, except for Cisco. They're playing for keeps.

  •

  Why is Sky letting me watch? Probably wants to keep me up‐to‐date. A dose of network news, Aeolia‐style. Or maybe she just wants to impress me with her handy‐dandy sat system, the same one that had zero luck finding me. At least till she let slip her mallster heroes to vector in on me. Our innocents abroad. Cisco, Dee Zu, and Leary. And Ellie. What a surprise that was. Wow.

  Cherchez la femme. And no need to say more. Though I will anyway.

  All I wanted was a reasonably fleshed‐out Ellie, the primo object of my depraved fantasies in a version amenable to my every command. And what do I get? I lode the data Cisco carried from ESUSA, all the way from the other side of the planet, together with the stuff Leary had plus what I'd stashed from the time I held her and Cisco in my lair. That was right up till the time she blew her sweet ass all over my lab. So I lode it all together, give it a blast of juice, and what happens? Shazam, and fuck me gently. We get a fully loded, autonomous bitch who wouldn't give me the time of day, much less a Chinese basket job. The next thing my wet carcass is lying there under tons of limestone and this scendent me comes to rest here in Hell. Never trust a dame. Especially one you're infatuated with. In fact, that's the basic lesson: Never get infatuated with a dame.

  •

  Just look at those youngsters go. Straight‐up meat‐and‐potatoes wet sex, rare as rare can be.

  Call it an invasion of privacy if you like, and you're welcome
to call me a voyeur. What do I care? Privacy is as extinct as good cigars, and has been for many years. Unless of course you're me.

  •

  Whoa. Sky's sat system is delivering great resolution. For what do I spy with my little eye?

  My eye. Hee, hee. My eye‐yaiyai.

  Shut up, Sweetie. You nimrod. But just look there. In all that large land largely cleansed of homo saps and their cognates—overlooking the monkeyswarms, ha‐ha—what do I spy, here? Yet one more young person, and not a GameBoy, I'm thinking. A stealthy young bugger we've nevertheless camera‐trapped all the way from orbit.

  Who is he? And what's his interest in our heroes down there on the ground?

  company comes calling

  Dee Zu continues to straddle him, and they sit there and watch their various ways. Eventually, she whispers, "I'm going to get up now. You do the same. Slowly, slowly does it. Just as if there's no problem at all."

  "You're telling me there's a problem."

  She nuzzles the hollow of his shoulder, the uninjured one, and says, "Thirty‐five or forty meters directly behind you. People. Four of them, I think, watching from cover. They don't know I've spotted them."

  Dee Zu unlocks her ankles and brings her legs around to where she can get to her feet, tottering a bit, toes not as back to normal as she claims.

  As she gets up, Cisco slips out of her and also rises to his feet. "Don't look now," he whispers, "but there's someone else fifty meters away at four o'clock. He's hiding near the top of a low rise, probably independent of the others."

  They monitor both the lone intruder and the others without appearing to look.

  fools, drunkards & knievels

  Except for the catchbags, Son is naked.

  Without his blur mantle he feels exposed, vulnerable, even though here inside Eden, out of the dust, a mantle would be worse than useless. At least he isn't as twitchy as he was at first, trying to look every which way at the same time, which is not watching, only classic prey behavior. But now he finds his focus. He squats lower, peering through leafy twigs he pulls off a nearby bush. They stab at him with tiny thorns, warning of other dangers that might lurk in this exotic environment.

  Whatever. Of the past two days' watching, this has been the best. Once when he was little, Son watched Poppy and Auntie having sex. He was reading in his private fort, a construction of crates and cartons in the back storeroom where they kept books and canned fruit locked up against Gran‐Gran's predations. He heard the lock turn, but he kept on with his reading, paying no mind till he started hearing funny noises. He peered around the edge of a crate and saw the two of them together, Auntie on the bottom. At that moment she turned her head toward Son and their eyes met. She shook her head at him and said nothing. He stayed hidden, thinking about other times he found the larder locked when he tried to get in. He had trouble meeting Poppy's gaze for some time after that. And he found it hard to look at Auntie, until she took him aside and explained how what she and Poppy had been doing, no matter what it looked like, was one way adults showed their affection for one another.

  Now, as Son watches, lust contends with sorrow. But what's past is past, and he has to deal with what's at hand.

  A ratswarm hovers on the slope just northwest of the lovers. You have to admire these two, though whether they're very brave or only stupid, he doesn't know. Right out there in the open, as though they haven't a care in the world. Never mind if you don't take great care, maybe even more in this new‐model world beyond the ken, you're soon dead.

  Who are these people? They can't be Survivalists, not with their contempt for the basics of survival. And they don't look like GameBoys. Son checks back due north of his hide to where, between the rocky outcrop and a bush, four others have been watching the action. Almost certainly these are GameBoys.

  •

  The lovers pull away from each other. They have also picked up on the GameBoys. Despite some problem with her left foot, the woman is up in a heartbeat and standing steady. A heartbeat later, the man stands a meter away from her. They head toward the ratswarm, which, at this distance, shimmers as the rats debate the issue of whether to attack or retreat. They opt for retreat. Now the two people move more quickly, strong and sure of stride. The GameBoys appear over the ridge. No longer worried about hiding, they hurry down the hillside. A long, ropy plant wraps itself around one attacker's ankle and he plunges headfirst, cursing, down the slope.

  The two lovers, meanwhile, are clearly looking for weapons. Once, the woman glances toward Son's position before putting her head close and saying something to the man; a few moments later, the man sneaks a look Son‐wards, and then looks around in every direction except this one. Son had the feeling, even earlier, that the woman, at least, was aware of his presence up here. Maybe they're Survivalists after all. Very horny Survivalists.

  Poppy sometimes said that God looked after drunkards and fools, and that was the only reason Son was still alive, sitting at the table there in the Bunker wolfing down way more than his share of food. These people aren't drunk, so Poppy would conclude they're fools. Though they are still alive, despite the fact that woman ran right through a Boogoo war complicated by a fusillade of godbolts to get into Eden. It was like she was chasing after that man. And why had he gone in there in the first place?

  It's a miracle they're still alive. At least so far. But Gran‐Gran's god is plain bushwa, so what other higher powers could be looking after them?

  Who are these gods?

  heavenly hosts

  The posits are swarming, or schooling or something.

  – Leary

  urban sprawl

  "Thank you, Lek," Ellie says, ever polite even with wallpaper maids.

  Ellie and Leary sit side by side on the loveseat out in the front yard, swinging gently back and forth on what Leary's folks used to call a glider. Lek has just presented them with a tray of coffee and assorted kanom, snacks both sweet and savory. Lek had been like a second mother to Cisco. Until Brian took him.

  But right now, Leary prefers to minimize the wallpaper elements of their world. "Go ahead and take the rest of the day off, okay?" he tells her.

  "Khop khun kaa," Lek says. "Thank you." She smiles shyly and pours the coffee before heading off back to the house, her butt interestingly alive in its flowery sarong, something Leary notices only because, after all, how could he not? He listens to her sandals slap through grass nearly tall enough to need mowing. The imagined smell of a freshmown lawn lifts his spirits a notch further.

  At the same time he's saddened at the knowledge they can never resurrect the real Lek, her actual scendent, that is, which is meant to be as close to real as darnit. He knows this Lek will go straight to her room. Though it's an open question in Leary's mind what it means to say that a qubital wallpaper element of the Aeolian Bangkok World program has gone to its room. In two minutes, if he goes to her door, he'll hear a Thai TV soap opera. If he knocks, he'll hear Lek disembark her creaky bed, turn the TV volume down and shuffle into flip‐flops before she comes to see what he wants. That's it. Her entire day‐off repertoire. That's all this simple ebee does, and there's nowhere else for her to go except maybe out into the lane to get stuff from the vendors. Even that would only be for color. They don't have to shop that way, besides which the new rule is never to open the compound gate unless it's absolutely necessary.

  Ellie is reading a book from the Lode, a morphoriffing David Foster Wallace classic. She's been buried in the thing since shortly after they ascended to Aeolia, with no end in sight. "Lucky we're immortal," she tells Leary and plows back in. For his part, Leary just sits and enjoys the fact that Ellie is here beside him.

  Actually, he's also trying to ignore the uproar on the other side of the compound wall. Never mind this is their world and they're supposed to be able to specify how it works, the posit hordes refuse to go away. If anything, the situation is getting worse.

  •

  The living room phone is ringing, an insistent j
angle. Leary specified the telephone, a way‐retro rotary dialer model in clunky black Bakelite. "That'll be Sky," he says, getting up to go inside.

  He wonders what she needs now. Whatever it is, maybe it'll give him bargaining power, because she'll get no help from him till she does something about the posits.

  "Yo, Sky," he says right away, figuring he'll show her she isn't the only one who knows everything.

  "Leary, old buddy. Guess who."

  "Brian."

  "None other."

  "Enjoying your spell in Paradise?"

  "What the heck do you want?"

  "Straight to business, eh? Not even a 'howdy, how're they hanging' for an old buddy?"

  "What do you want?"

  "You've rebuilt your old place on Sukhumvit Road, correct?"

  "You know that." In passing, Leary looks down and notes a redial button where these old phones never had redial buttons or any other button either. Where had that come from? At times the Aeolia program applies a technological "progress" function that thinks it knows better than you.

  "How much of the city have you reconstructed?"

  "Couple of hundred meters down the lane, no more."

  "Okay, here's what you do. Take a walk out toward Sukhumvit and see how far you get. Hail a taxi."

  "I told you, we don't have that much of the city."

  "I know what you told me. Just do what I say. Find a driver who'll take you to Boon Doc's, and I'll buy the drinks."

  "You know what you can do with your drinks, 'old buddy.'"

  "Don't be like that. We have to talk."

  "What about?"

  "About your boy Cisco. Harglehargle." Ebees can't have rotten bronchial tubes; the scendent Brian must laugh that way out of habit. "And about the future of the world."

  •

  "I'm going out for a bit," Leary tells Ellie.

  "Out where?"

  "I just want to take a look around."

  "Want me to come along?"

  "No, no. Brian has something up his sleeve, and I want to see what it is. Go ahead and read your book."