The Cygnus Virus

by Terry Zakreski

  Chapter 13:

  Life on the Tetherball

  Cygnus and Andron are the first two representatives from their planets to meet. There are weighty matters to discuss.

  “No way dude, our Marilyn is way hotter than your Marilyn.”

  Cygnus and Andron are comparing pictures and movie clips. Andron is wearing the TACHY. They have agreed that Eden Marks, or lack of them, don’t count.

  A video clip of an elderly lady squatting over a young man’s face flashes up in vivid 3D.

  “You like that, sonny? I ate plenty of asparagus for you?”

  A gross-out in digital surround sound.

  Cygnus has been doing this for weeks.

  He calls it porn bombing.

  He doesn’t just do it when Andron is wearing the TACHY. The sneak attacks can happen anytime he’s around anything electronic. Andron has been shuddering before opening emails lately.

  Complaining makes it worse. Cygnus seems incapable of letting up.

  An Internet forum was the only exception Andron could think of.

  Andron discovered that Cygnus hijacked his handle Andi-O and was using it for mischief on HeartIt. A poster named Danny_Boy had the audacity to write, “Dude, no one says dude anymore,” to one of Cygnus’ posts.

  The next day every word on the forum, in every thread and post, over a million in all, was changed to dude.

  …dude dude dude dude dude dude dude dude…

  Everywhere.

  Cygnus as Andi-O helped the administrator and investigators track down the origin of the Dude Virus. Turns out, it was Danny_Boy.

  Poor Danny_Boy was arrested and charged with public mischief.

  Andron thinks that Cygnus let up because otherwise he would have kept on dude deluging the world until it dude drowned.

  “Come on, dude, that granny was bangable.”

  Andron doesn’t reply, even though indifference equally encourages Cygnus.

  “Okay…imagine her then.”

  The peeing granny is replaced by a beautiful woman opening herself up to Andron on a pink heart-shaped bed with silk sheets.

  She looks just like Marilyn.

  “Imagine having a full suit on instead of just a helmet. Your skin, your dick, all wired in. You could fuck Marilyn here without leaving the comfort of home. No STDs, no unwanted babies, no mess. No emotional attachments. Just fuck who and when you want.”

  “Sounds like it would be pretty revolutionary.”

  Marilyn wants him. She is waving him in. Her eyes are half-closed. Her lips are flushed.

  “Bitches acting as sex surrogates for gaming and software companies are going to make a killing, I’m telling you. It’s what makes us the same, just follow the porn. You should totally buy stock in computer gaming companies, because they’re going to be the second through the door.”

  “Thanks, duly noted.”

  “It’s great but when I left, most people hoped to win the Life Lottery for a chance to fuck for real anyway.”

  Marilyn is playing with herself and smiling at him.

  “Oh-oh…dude has a boner.”

  Andron turns red.

  “You can beat off if you want, dude.

  “I promise I won’t watch.”

  ~ Club Jacko’s ~

  Cygnus and Andron are in Club Jacko’s, a popular nightclub in Biosphere 51.

  The logo is a large rat-like creature. There’s a glass video countertop running the length of the bar that plays music videos from the 1980s. Everyone sits in big red velvet chairs that look like puckered lips. The club’s full of beautiful people, most of them wearing tight silver outfits.

  The women have bright blue, white or yellow hair, wear micro minis, with thigh-high silver boots, and blue or red bright lipstick. The men wear their genitals on the outside, with perpetual erections that are painted phosphorescent colors.

  They serve only blue drinks in martini glasses that contain whatever kind of high a person wants. The bartender is the only person not dressed in silver with his dick out. He wears a pink tuxedo.

  Cygnus is sitting beside Andron at the bar drinking a blue martini that would make him high on pot, if it were real. Andron’s blue martini tastes like the rum and coke he’s actually drinking.

  “What does it feel like, the state you are in now?”

  Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Relax is booming out the speakers.

  “Pure hell. I can’t feel anything. When you’re living in this way in my world, brain parts from your last corporeal existence are preserved and plugged into the NEG.”

  “What’s the NEG?”

  “What?”

  “I said what’s the NEG?”

  “It means Neuro-Electro Grid. When you’re plugged into it, you can experience real sensations and emotions instead of facsimiles. Real groovy like.”

  “I’m still not getting how this consciousness thing works electronically.”

  “Not that hard, dude. The basic algorithm that could replicate it was discovered in the twenty-second century. The stuff is imbedded in the universe as it turns out, and breaks out when conditions are ripe…ripe, ripe, ripe.”

  “So couldn’t you manipulate it to make yourself super smart?”

  “You would think, but nooooo. I mean, don’t get me wrong, without being held back by the brain’s vulnerability to decay, disease, chemical imbalances and so forth, you can go pretty far. But that’s about it. The same algorithms used to capture your consciousness are limited by their DNA coding. Freaky shit, huh?”

  “Super freaky.”

  “Anyway, experiments to add intelligence and abilities failed. The folks involved in these experiments freaked out, some lost their sense of self. Or they went insane in other ways. Or they just killed themselves.

  “Anyway, anyone who survived ended up on the outs because they were pretty weird. In fact, everyone hated them because they were so coo-coo.

  “Coo-coo.”

  Cygnus is looking directly at Andron twirling his finger around his ear.

  “Couldn’t superior people be genetically engineered?”

  “Probably. But there isn’t any room on Earth for anyone new. We’re all stuck in a loop of reincarnation between physical and virtual lives. No one wants to give up their place in line for someone else, even if they might be new and improved.”

  “That sounds depressing.”

  “You’re telling me. I tried doing something about it and look where it got me.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  Cygnus kills off the rest of his blue martini.

  “Barkeep.

  “Another round.”

  ~ Berlin ~

  They’re walking in Berlin in 1938, near Alexexanderplatz. The street is bustling with people and street vendors. Andron is wearing a grey suit and a dark blue homburg hat.

  Cygnus is wearing a black SS officer’s uniform.

  “What are we doing here?”

  “This is Berlin in the late 1930s.”

  “I gathered, but why are we here?”

  “I wanted to show you what a VSW was like, if you were living in the NEG.”

  “What’s a VSW?”

  “Virtual Simulation World, Herr Dude. I haven’t built these yet, but the popular ones when I left were Pharaoh, where you could live in ancient Egypt, Compton, where you could live in Los Angeles in the late-80s, Sherwood, where you could live in medieval England, Chag’an, where you could live in the Tang Dynasty, and Rome, where you could live in the time of Caesar.

  “Jerusalem was the coolest. In Jerusalem, time shifted randomly so that one day you would be in the time of the Crusades, then you would be in the Six-Day War, and then you’d be back in the time of Jesus.”

  “That sounds pretty amazing. So these were games where you could interact with other digital people? It seems pretty real.”

  “You don’t know the half of it, Herr Dude, or even a tenth. When you’re in a VSW, not only do you navigate through them in c
haracter, you breathe the air, feel the earth beneath your feet, eat the food and drink the wine. You would smell that Bratwurst grilling over there, for instance.”

  “Wow.”

  “Here’s the thing, the more players playing…I mean there would be millions playing…contributes to the coding, so they would get more real and nuanced. Remember, this was a substitute for real life so the intense belief and desire for it to be real contributed tangibly to its authenticity.”

  “So would you have to learn different languages?”

  “Not if you didn’t want to. Language translation can be set in game settings. So can your pain and pleasure levels.”

  “Wouldn’t everyone just set the pleasure on max and the pain on minimum?”

  “Nope, it was almost the opposite. No pain, no rain, they say.”

  “I think you mean gain.”

  “Nope, rain. Without the pain settings set on a higher level, you wouldn’t really feel the rain.”

  “What happens if you die?”

  “In a rare case, it could cause Final Extinction, if the death were particularly painful and traumatizing. Otherwise, it’s just Game Over. With enough Game Credits you can buy yourself back in as a new bottom level character.”

  “What kind of characters?”

  “Anything or anybody who might have lived at the time, really. Here, you could be a nurse, butcher, Jew, Gestapo, store clerk, worker, cabaret singer, soldier, lawyer, housewife. Berlin had so many participants that there were hardly any computer ones left.”

  “What’s the object of the game? Assassinate Himmler?”

  “It’s Hitler here, dude. But no. No one living back then would know that they should. The object is just to survive and make your way in the world as best you can, in whatever circumstances that you find yourself, same as the real world. The Controllers throw in some random shit in for the people to react and adapt to, also same as the real world.”

  Both men walk together, taking in the scenery. Passers-by look away from Cygnus, but stare at Andron.

  “I’m going to grab us some bratwurst, Herr Dude. Hang on.”

  Cygnus heads back where they came from.

  Andron looks around. There are merchant signs in gothic German print, Nazi banners, cars and trucks with horseshoe front ends and big lights, and tramcars. Everyone is wearing suits and dresses.

  A sign catches his eye — Kabarett der Komiker. Andron walks up to it and goes inside. He peeks through the doorway and sees a large tavern with an orchestra pit and stage.

  A young lady who he didn’t notice before speaks to him. She’s sitting in a box office that he passed on the way in.

  “Gutten Tag, suchen Sie Tickets für heute abend?”

  “I’m sorry, you scared me. Um, I can’t speak German.”

  “Oh well, you should learn. This is Deutschland after all. Are you desiring tickets? They kosten only seventy-five Reichspfennigs.”

  “Um no thanks for now. When does the show start?”

  “Seven o’clock. You should come. They are loving Americans.”

  “Actually Kanadian.”

  “Those, too.”

  “Thank you, I might. Bye.”

  “Auf Weidersehn.”

  Andron walks back out into the light. The young ticket lady watches him leave. He heads toward where he thinks Cygnus went, but is stopped by two police officers.

  “Ihre Papiere bitte?”

  “Excuse me, but I don’t speak German.”

  “Ihre Unterlagen bitte.”

  The officer’s eyes narrow.

  Game or no game, Andron is terrified.

  Cygnus shows up. He steps between them and stares at the police officers until they look down.

  “Was hat das zu bedeuten?”

  “Es ist eine Dokumenten Überprüfen, Oberführer.”

  “Dieser amerikanischer Geschäftsmann ist mein Freund. Sie werden Ihn nicht belästigen — verstanden?”

  “Jawohl, Oberführer.”

  The police officers click their heels and then skulk away.

  “Sorry about that. I’ll change the settings to English for when you visit again. Also, your travel documents show you as American businessman, Frank Manz from St. Louis, born in Sioux City, Idaho. You’re a beer merchant here to meet with brewery representatives for potential imports. You’d be advised to study your details if you visit again. Take a look at yourself.”

  Andron looks down at his legs.

  “No, I mean your reflection in the window, nitwit.”

  Andron looks at his reflection in the store window. He’s a medium-height, pale, pudgier man. He removes his hat, and sees his dark blonde hair is cropped short on the sides and back, and swooped across his brow. He has light brown eyes. When Andron looks at his eyes in his avatar, he has a queasy feeling and his legs buckle.

  “Whoa, that’s kind of weird. I can kind of feel my new body.”

  “That’s your mind accepting the reality of what it’s seeing and your brain reacting to the inputs from the electrodes. There’s a two-way relationship between you and the game that’ll grow over time. You’ll eventually feel your avatar’s physical needs, desires, and tactile senses. It’ll never be as good as an actual NEG VSW, but it won’t be that far off. By the way, if you check, I provided you with some walking around money.”

  Andron checks the billfold in his suit pocket. He has fifteen hundred Reichsmarks.

  “How much is this?”

  “Careful flashing that around, Herr Manz, especially if I’m not around. A Reichsmark is hard to convert, but back then fifteen hundred RM would be worth about ten thousand in terms of what it could buy.”

  “Can we spend it at that place?”

  Andron points to the Kabarett der Komiker.

  “I don’t like to go in there.”

  Cygnus looks away.

  “But I can go, can’t I?”

  “Was auch immer Ihre einsame Herz begehrt, Herr Manz.”

  Andron takes that for a yes.

  ~ Biosphere 51 ~

  Andron and Cygnus are driving outside the dome in an Earth Terrain Vehicle. It’s like driving on a bald prairie during a bad dust storm.

  “It doesn’t look very hospitable out there.”

  “It isn’t. You wouldn’t last very long without an Earthsuit. Actually, when it’s blowing like this, you’d survive longer than if it wasn’t.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “The dust shields you from the sun, so you wouldn’t burn to a crisp as fast. You want to try driving?”

  “Sure, but where are we going?”

  “We are going to my Biosphere.”

  Cygnus trains Andron at the controls. There are several monitors and it steers somewhat like an aircraft. To go forward the steering wheel is pushed forward, and so on. There’s a brake pedal for additional stopping power. There are four forward ranges and two reverse ones.

  It isn’t complicated to drive. They even try some off-roading to allow Andron to get used to it. The interior furnishings are cushy — much more like a luxury automobile than a space utility vehicle. It’s like a luxurious motorhome with giant wheels that handles like a sports car.

  They’re in Forward Two and heading toward Biosphere 51. Andron follows the directions of the 3D onboard navigation system. At 80 miles per hour, they’re about an hour and a half out. Andron enjoys it. He’s pleased that he can add an Earth ETV to the list of the vehicles that he has driven.

  They chat about a few things to pass the miles. The dust storm abates, and the sun lights up the barren world. The barren land and angry sky make Andron feel open. He asks Cygnus about religion on his planet.

  “I dunno. After the Apocalypse, most of the major religions died off. There was no Second Coming and a lot of religions lost their credibility. The remaining ones simply failed to retain believers. The poor never made it into the Biospheres. The rich who did more or less abandoned religious beliefs, since they achieved a form of immortality, and probably felt gui
lty about all those folks left behind.”

  “So everyone became an atheist. I guess you wouldn’t need a God if you sorta already were one.”

  “Dude, you’re pretty close. The After World is the afterlife. In the After World, science is the new religion. Science moved so far into the unknown that there was little room left for superstition. The new faith is based on the belief that to know the cosmos is to know God, if you think of the cosmos as not a large collection of rocks but as a living thing.”

  “I guess that makes sense.”

  “But here’s something mind-blowing. Nearly every world, including yours, has much the same prophets. Jesus, as he is called on Earth, your Yeshua. They keep popping up from one world to the next.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. Christosian, as you call it, teaching with its emphasis on internal devotion, which in turn promotes individual rights, might have been a seed necessary for the rise of liberal democracies, and the industrial and digital revolutions that followed. Leading, of course, to fuckedization.”

  “I think some of the other religions would debate that.”

  “Anyway, that case you’re working on with the Church of the Holy Cloth is really interesting to me. On Earth, it was known as the Shroud of Turin but Jesus left no useable DNA like Terra’s Cloth. There’s no church built around it either. It’s an anomaly about your world that really intrigues me.”

  “Those COHC guys are assholes. And I think their plan to try and clone Yeshua is ridiculous.”

  “Not if they succeed. Anyway, here we are.”

  A large blue dome rises in front of them — nearly swallowing the horizon.

  “I think you should take over from here.”

  Andron pulls back on the wheel.

  “Nah, we can just put it on auto pilot, dude.”

  There’s a huge complex of loading docks after the airlock. The ETV steers toward an open one and parks itself. There are robots waiting to unload the vehicle and welcome them.

  “This is quite the rock star treatment.”

  “Yeah, there are plenty of these guys to help. There’s one to help you with practically anything you need at any time.

  “Anything.”