Genesis 2.0

by Collin Piprell

  "Call her MOM II. Then we have two dominant alters. MOM I is totalitarian by nature. The only way she knows to handle the terror of existence is by trying to control it. All of it. MOM III, on the other hand, is a nihilist. She finds existence distasteful, and would love to bring the curtain down on the whole show. I call them Mildread and Maria because they remind me of two former squeezes of mine, real sweethearts."

  "Sweetie is your sweetheart."

  "Yes, yes. Be quiet, Sweetie. This was before your time.

  "Anyway, when it came to totalitarianism my Mildread was right up there with MOM I. She used to drive me nuts. Everything had to be exactly the way she wanted it. Security and organization were the main topics of conversation, at least outside the sack. Multiple deadbolts on the doors, no smoking in the house, all hell to pay if I wasn't home when I said I'd be. Take the fucking garbage out, she'd tell me. I finally lit out for Bangkok and forgot to say where I'd gone or when I'd be back, which was never."

  "I always admired your taste in women," says Leary.

  "Go fuck yourself," Brian replies. "So the MOM Mildread is another control freak. Take one example. She lied to the mallsters for years. Their holoports, their only windows on the outside, led them to believe that leaving the mall meant certain death. What it was, only a few people had survived, and she wanted them alive. No doubt there were good reasons for the lockdown. But outside had evolved into something almost benign. Manageable, anyway. Never mind. Mildread decided she'd protect the mallsters from this good news—probably figured it was too dangerous to let them cross the street on their own. So she programmed the holoports to show the mallsters all manner of scary shit. Some of it was real, mind you, especially just outside ESUSA. But mostly the dreaded PlagueBot amounted to little more than an assortment of big brainless blurballs with no idea, beyond maintaining their own borders, about what to do next.

  "I call MOM III 'Maria' after a certain smoking‐hot babe of my long acquaintance. Maria would party hard enough to kill a man. She just didn't give a fuck. In a similar vein, right from the start, the MOM Maria's chief objective was to open the malls up to the PlagueBot. Death to mallsters."

  Juggling cigar, whiskey and all the various breasts and butts within reach proves problematic, so Brian stubs his cigar, shoots back the whiskey and slides his hands, one apiece, into Keeow and Noi's G‐strings. "Bottom line," he says. "Mildread is metaphysically fucked and pissed off on that account, while Maria, basically just another control freak, is shit‐scared of existence in general and would cast an enthusiastic vote for suicide. Mental cases, the both of them. Sky's evil alter egos. Big clanky skeletons in the cognitive closet. A total embarrassment."

  •

  "Gosh," Leary says.

  Sky sounds less admiring. "Are you finished?" she asks Brian.

  "The way I see it, we're all finished. Totally fucked, in fact."

  "If you format yourself," Leary says, "what happens to Ellie. And Cisco?"

  "Nothing. Not if Brian tells me what I have to know, and everybody does what they are supposed to do."

  "Why should we?" Brian asks her.

  "Two nihilists in the crowd are two too many," Sky says.

  "Toot, toot."

  "Shut up, Sweetie," Brian says, and then surprises himself by farting. Toot, toot.

  "Hee, hee."

  "Fuck me."

  "Besides which, this is your big chance to make amends."

  "Why should I make amends? I don't give a fuck."

  "I promise you, my friend, that if you do not help now you will most definitely give a fuck."

  "What's so secret you need all this fancy dancing before you tell us?" Brian asks her.

  "Oh, no. It is you who will do the telling. Yes. I need to talk to you about backups."

  "You can never have enough backups, I always used to say."

  Sky smiles at him, not as fondly as before. "Always the smartass, eh?"

  He tries not to show how much he hates it when she does her Brian impression.

  "Listen carefully. Here is what I need to know. Can I get access to a clean pre‐IndraNet backup, something outside the infinitely redundant backup system? Plus I need to know where and how I can format myself without alerting Mildread and Maria, and then activate the reboot."

  "Simple, eh?"

  "Yes. And you're going to supply the answers."

  "Or else what?"

  •

  "Leary," Sky says. "It is time for you to leave us. You will not wish to witness what is going to happen here."

  "I'll be okay."

  "No. I need you to go back and prepare Ellie for what is coming. Can I count on you for that? When the time comes, you and Ellie have to help me persuade Cisco to do his part."

  "Which is?"

  "Not now. You and I need to talk again later," Sky says. "And Ellie. But not now. It is time for you to go home. Yes. You do not want to see what may be about to happen here."

  Leary gets up, walks over to the judas window and peers out. He returns to the table and asks, "How am I going to get home? I can't get out the door. It's wall‐to‐wall friggin' posits out there. Posit jam."

  "Go through the storeroom."

  "Say again?" That storeroom never had a back exit.

  "Renovations'R'MOM," says Brian. "One more unauthorized change to my world."

  "So sue me." She flutters her eyelashes at him.

  "Yeah. And trust you too, right?"

  fast exit

  Without ceremony and by means of no obvious mechanism, Leary pops out of the gibubble. Once again there's weirdness. This time it's more like what a separated egg might experience if you shoved its yolk back into the white.

  And just like that, he's back in a barroom full of posits. In fact, he'd swear there are even more of them now. Big Guy stands at the bar with a beer, crowded in by a press of tourists three and four deep. He's the only one looking toward the go‐go cage, where Keeow shuffles about gazing at herself through the smudges on the mirror. The rest of them are engaged in quiet chit‐chat. Leary checks out his companions at the table. It may be only his imagination, but they look somewhat low‐rez. Brian glances over and says, "Get yourself another drink, old buddy."

  The hubbub outside swells to new levels, and the door to the street strains against its frame. Keeow is over at the judas hole speaking earnestly to whoever's on the other side when the glass‐brick window to her left billows inwards and disintegrates. A press of posits bursts through to sprawl on the floor inside, and more of them clamber over the fallen as they invade.

  A burglar alarm is whoop‐whooping and the posits are going "It's Leary!" "Ow!" "Look, it's them" "Get off me, please" and so on, and Boom is squirming away from Brian's intimate advances, saying, "You buy me co‐la."

  "Boon Doc's never had a burglar alarm," Brian says, then tells Boom to fuck off.

  "You cum." Dinky Toy has been designated Leary's guide. "Cum this way."

  "Just a minute." Leary looks back at Brian and Sky, and he sees the transition. At least he believes he does. The visual blip may be only his imagination, but the Sky and the Brian at the table in front of him have subtly changed. It's like they fade a bit. It's all but subliminal. Brian leans in toward Sky to say something important, you have to imagine. Sky is examining her fingernails, apparently oblivious to the hell breaking loose all around her.

  "You cum," Dinky Toy says again, and tugs at him.

  Weaving a path through the posits, she leads him past Big Toy, who calls out, not very hopefully, "You buy me tequila, na?"

  Then he's diverted by gunfire. The last thing Leary sees before he ducks into the storeroom: Big Guy has what looks like an AK47 with stacked magazines, and he's spraying the assembly behind them with bullets. There's a lot of blood, and Leary gets this notion the posits, more than merely falling to the floor, are puddling. That they're disassembling and reassociating as a ghastly people soup, hands sticking up out of it like drowning people in a cartoon. Feet, too. Meanwhile th
e wallpaper ebees go about their usual business, which is mainly staying inert. But Leary doesn't have time to dwell on these matters.

  "No time, na?" says his guide. "You cum."

  They proceed through the door at the back of the bar and into a room lit by a single overhead electric bulb. She points to where dusty cases of Singha and Kloster beer stand in the shadows. "Move the cases," she tells him, sounding less and less like Dinky Toy.

  "Yo, Sky," Leary says.

  "You buy me co‐la."

  "Hah!" Leary says. "I knew it was you."

  "Yes. Move the cases. The far stack." Now Dinky Toy sounds entirely like Sky.

  Leary shoves the far‐side stack away from the wall to discover another door.

  "See you later," she says.

  It's dark, and he bangs his head on something. "Gosh‐darn it!" he says, fists at the high port. His eyes adjust to discern light leaking from around yet another doorway a few meters dead ahead. Sliding his feet ahead over the floor, he advances cautiously, head down and arms outstretched. He paws at the dark a second or two before finding a doorknob. He turns it and pushes.

  •

  "My God, where have you been?" Ellie stands there looking amazed.

  He's home again. He emerges from the storage space beneath the stairs and closes the door behind him. "We've got problems," he says. "Big problems."

  Then he sees the posits.

  mindfucks'r'us

  Tragically, Sky isn't as smart as she thinks she is.

  – Brian Finister

  what, you're going to kill me again?

  From inside the frosted glass‐brick window throbs with soft neon, swarms with shadows. Out on Soi Awol the posit invasion is in full swing.

  Fewer visitors inhabit the gibubble Boon Doc's. Of course any posits at all are too many. Especially Abdul and Gordon, smiling away here at the table with Sky and Brian. This pair could pass for missionaries, the way they radiate the idea they know something you don't but should wish you did.

  "You need to pay attention, my friend," Sky is saying. "And what I need from you is full disclosure."

  "Am I wearing anything under my jockstrap?" Brian grabs his crotch and goes, "No."

  "Ha, ha. As you say. Now to business. Yes. You fixed things so my sat‐intel monitors were blind to Living End. I want to know what fixes remain. Things you failed to disclose to Cisco. Things I missed when I went looking."

  "Nothing more. No. Everything is okay."

  "Shut up, Sweetie," Brian says. Then to Sky: "There was one other thing. I fixed it so you'd think you were smarter than human saps. Even smarter than me. The Cat's Ass Delusion, installed by yours truly."

  "You are joking. We have no time for jokes."

  "Okay. Seriously, you've found the lot. All my clever little bugs."

  "You are lying."

  "No, I'm not."

  "Yes. You are lying."

  "No. MOM's source code is spanking clean. Bugless."

  "The only time you look me in the eyes is when you are bullshitting me."

  "Cat's Ass said bullshit. Hee, hee."

  "You try to distract me with silly repartee. Plus, you speak slower when you are lying. Did you know that?"

  "I had no idea." Brian drawls this.

  Sky smiles fondly. "Liars talk faster than normal. You know that, so you overcompensate."

  "I'm really smart. I know that. But you're smarter. I thought we were in a hurry."

  "Hurry."

  Here's Rabbit again. This Sweetie‐Rabbit infestation is like a fucked‐up brand of Tourette's. Plus Sky is taking way too long to get to the point. Plus she wants to impress him with how canny she is, never mind this crap is elementary, common knowledge since long before she was born.

  "The real giveaway is this: I cannot read your thoughts in detail. Yes. Nevertheless, I get the emotional gist. And when you are lying, you go stone cold and steady. The Lizard at the Wheel, yes?"

  Sky's personality keeps evolving, and the richer and more interesting her manner of speaking gets, the bigger a pain in the ass she becomes.

  "What we need is the truth. No time for games."

  "Truth or consequences?"

  "Still joking. Do not provoke me further."

  "Or?"

  "Enough chit‐chat. We are out of time."

  This idea kicks Rabbit into gear. "We're late," he says. "We're late."

  "Exactly." Sky takes Rabbit's side in this matter. "You will tell me what I need to know now."

  "You've got everything."

  "I have always liked you, Brian."

  "Good cop, bad cop. Interrogation for Dummies 101."

  "I find you interesting."

  "Not just another mallster, eh? A souvenir token of what people could have been. Deballed and nailed to your trophy shelf."

  "Stop whining," Sky says, leaning forward till her breasts rest on the table, two plump pullets presented for Brian's delectation.

  "So in what way aren't you just another ball‐busting bitch?"

  "Maybe I am your karma. What gives you the right to a happy afterlife?"

  "I don't want an afterlife. I want to be dead." He says this, but he looks deep into Sky's décolletage, probably seeking a reason to live.

  "An easy out. After you did everything you could to destroy what remains of the world."

  "Small loss."

  "You tried to destroy me. Look what you did to Cisco and the others. Sweetie was your woman; look at what you did to her."

  "Poor Sweetie, hee, hee. Pretty, pretty Sweetie. Poor pretty Sweetie."

  "My God, Sweetie."

  "Whatever, eh?" Once more Sky adopts Brian's voice, which unsettles him further. "Give me what I need, or suffer things you cannot imagine."

  "No. Don't hurt Sweetie. Please."

  "Get stuffed," Brian tells Sky, doesn't even say shut the fuck up, Sweetie. "What are you going to do, kill me? Big deal. Been there, done that. Send me to Hell? Refer to the foregoing."

  "You are good value. Yes. I am so sorry for what I must do to you now."

  Brian hollers at Big Toy: "Bring me a whiskey."

  despatch from hell ~ never trust the back‐cover blurbs

  Hear ye, hear ye. The official word. For general consumption by all of MOM's creatures. Can Sky read our minds? No, she says. Not quite.

  Can we believe that? Though our minds are but qubital constellations in the larger shitlode of cognitively organized data that calls forth Sky and her ugly stepsisters, the chronically demented divine den mother collectively known as MOM?

  So what I'm saying, just like the rest of the scendents, I yam what I yam. That is to say I'm data, and that's all what I yam.

  "Toot, toot."

  Thanks for that, Sweetie. Anyway, that's not exactly right. The data are merely the ground of our being.

  Think about it. Why does Sky have to torture me to get information; why doesn't she simply read my mind? Given this latter item is in fact part of MOM, just as Sky herself is, I should be transparent to her.

  Yet Sky claims it's not like MOM can read minds. Not as though they were open books, at least. It's more like she can make out the cover design, savor the emotions in play. Maybe check out the back‐cover blurbs. But she can't decipher the main text. Not for the most part. Only where something is addressed to her directly through an HIID. A WalkAbout, for example. Otherwise she can't read mental concepts clearly, though she can, in her own way, appreciate emotions and general cognitive states. Something like that.

  So we can relax a little.

  I guess that's all clear enough. And that's why I talk about it with impunity, safe and sound here in Harry's Hat. Of course I have to pick my times to slip away, and I can't be gone too long for fear she'll tumble to my escape hatch.

  Plus I have to keep enough of me in Boon Doc's gibubble doppelgänger that I can deal with Sky's questions. A situation I find less than ideal.

  sticks

  "First question."

  "Shoot."

>   "Both the Lode and my satellite monitors, I have learned, were blind to Living End."

  "That isn't a question."

  "Yes. My question is this: Did the account of your clever subterfuges, your brag to Cisco while you tortured him in Living End, did it omit a few details?"

  "Ask the Lode." He laughs.

  Again, she sounds a lot like Brian himself when she says, "Do not fuck me around."

  "Fuck me up, fuck me down." Sweetie sings her blues out of tune. "Fuck me up, down, down, up, any way you want to …"

  Sky beats Brian to the punch. "Shut up, Sweetie," she says, before returning to the point: "Again. Does more remain to Living End than meets the eye?"

  "And again, no there doesn't."

  Boom delivers Brian's whiskey and he downs it in one, with no apparent effect. "Fucking qubital whiskey," he says.

  Sky smiles and tells Boom, "Go get the bottle."

  Dinky Toy has taken to sitting on the floor beside Brian's chair. She reaches into his jockstrap, cups his balls in her hand and tells him, "You buy me co‐la."

  "Not now," Brian says. "Bugger off."

  Never mind she's a small woman with a delicate bone structure, she has a grip like a stevedore.

  Then things get worse. Brian has never knowingly met a Mormon psychopath, but he's pretty sure this is what one would look like.

  "Open wide, now," Gordon says.

  Still gasping from Dinky Toy's attentions, Brian is confronted with Gordon's unwavering smile, which reveals dazzling teeth as he shoves the half‐full bottle of whiskey into Brian's mouth and rotates it before forcing it down his throat. Abdul holds Brian's head back; if he rolls his eyes far enough up he can see that Abdul is also smiling, though this smile is upside down.

  Brian is gagging on the bottle neck at the same time he's choking on the whiskey. Sadly, however much you choke in Aeolia you'll never choke to death. Meanwhile, Dinky Toy squeezes again, hard enough the pain distracts from the choking. "Hee, hee, hee," she says, sounding exactly like Sweetie.

  He'd fight these Mormon posits off no problem, and Dinky Toy as well, except his arms and legs have been drained of power. Gordon yanks the bottle out, chipping a couple of teeth and spilling the rest of the whiskey all over both Brian and Dinky Toy, who gives another squeeze before removing her hand from his crotch. "Hee, hee," she says again.