by Greg Egan
“What was that for?”
“For being the ideal viewer, above and beyond all your many other virtues.”
“I think I’m going to throw up.”
We turned east, toward Surry Hills, into an even quieter street. A grim young man strode by alone, heavily muscled and probably facially sculpted … but again, there was no way to be sure. Gina glanced at me, still angry, but unable to resist. “ That – assuming he was umale – I understand even less. If someone wants a build like that … fine. But why the face, as well? It’s not as if anyone would be likely to mistake him for anything but an en-male, without it.”
“No – but being mistaken for an en-male would be an insult, because he’s migrated out of that gender as surely as any asex. The whole point of being umale is to distance yourself from the perceived weaknesses of contemporary natural males. To declare that their ‘consensual identity’ – stop laughing – is so much less masculine than your own that you effectively belong to another sex entirely. To say: no mere en-male can speak on my behalf, any more than a woman can.”
Gina mimed tearing out hair. “No woman can speak on behalf of all women , as far as I’m concerned. But I don’t feel obliged to have myself sculpted ufem or ifem to make that point!”
“Well … exactly. I feel the same way. Whenever some Iron John cretin writes a manifesto ‘in the name of’ all men, I’d much rather tell him to his face that he’s full of shit than desert the en-male gender and leave him thinking that he speaks for all those who remain. But … that is the commonest reason people cite for gender migration: they’re sick of self-appointed gender-political figureheads and pretentious Mystical Renaissance gurus claiming to represent them. And sick of being libeled for real and imagined gender crimes. If all men are violent, selfish, dominating, hierarchical … what can you do except slit your wrists, or migrate from male to imale, or asex? If all women are weak, passive, irrational victims—”
Gina thumped me on the arm admonishingly. “Now you’re caricaturing the caricaturists. I don’t believe anyone talks like that.”
“Only because you move in the wrong circles. Or should I say the right ones? But I thought you watched the program. There were people I interviewed who made exactly those assertions, word for word.”
“Then it’s the fault of the media for giving them publicity.”
We’d arrived at the restaurant, but we lingered outside. I said, “That’s partly true. I don’t know what the solution is, though. When will someone who stands up and proclaims, ‘I speak for no one but myself’ get as much coverage as someone who claims to speak for half the population?”
“When people like you give it to them.”
“You know it’s not that simple. And … imagine what would have happened with feminism – or the civil rights movements, for that matter – if no one could ever be permitted to speak ‘on behalf of’ any group, without their certified, unanimous consent? Just because some of the current lunatics are like parodies of the old leaders, it doesn’t mean we’d be better off now if TV producers had said: ‘Sorry Dr. King, sorry Ms. Greer, sorry Mr. Perkins, but if you can’t avoid these sweeping generalizations and confine your statements to your own personal circumstances, we’ll have to take you off the air.’”
Gina eyed me skeptically. “That’s ancient history. And you’re only arguing that position to try to squirm out of your own responsibilities.”
“Of course. But the point is … gender migration is ninety per cent politics . Some coverage still treats it as a kind of decadent, gratuitous, fashionable mimicry of gender reassignment for transsexuals – but most gender migrants go no further than superficial asex. They don’t cross right over; they have no reason to. It’s a protest action, like resigning from a political party, or renouncing your citizenship … or deserting a battlefield … but whether it will stabilize at some low level, and shake up attitudes enough to remove the whole reason for migration, or whether the population will end up evenly divided between all seven genders in a couple of generations, I have no idea.”
Gina grimaced. “Seven genders – and all of them perceived as monolithic. Everyone stereotyped at a glance. Seven pigeon-holes instead of two isn’t progress.”
“No. But maybe in the long run there’ll only be asex, umale and ufem. Those who want to be pigeon-holed will be – and those who don’t will remain mysterious.”
“No, no – in the long run we’ll have nothing but VR bodies, and we’ll all be mysterious or revelatory in turns, as the mood takes us.”
“I can’t wait.”
We went inside. Unnatural Tastes was a converted department store, cavernous but brightly lit, opened up by the simple expedient of cutting a large elliptical hole in the middle of every floor. I waved my notepad at the entry turnstile; a voice confirmed our reservation, adding, “Table 519. Fifth floor.”
Gina smiled wickedly. “Fifth floor: stuffed toys and lingerie.”
I glanced up at our fellow diners – mostly umale and ufem couples. I said, “You behave yourself, redneck, or next time we’re eating in Epping.”
The place was three-quarters full, at least, but the seating capacity was less than it seemed; most of the volume of the building was taken up by the central well. In what was left of each floor, human waiters in tuxedos weaved their way between the chromed tables; it all looked archaic and stylized, almost Marx Brothers, to me. I wasn’t a big fan of Experimental Cuisine; essentially, we’d be guinea pigs, trying out medically safe but otherwise untested bioengineered produce. Gina had pointed out that at least the meal would be subsidized by the manufacturers. I wasn’t so sure; Experimental Cuisine had become so fashionable lately that it could probably attract a statistically significant sample of diners for each novelty, even at full price.
The tabletop flashed up menus as we took our seats – and the figures seemed to confirm my doubts about a subsidy. I groaned. “‘Crimson bean salad’? I don’t care what color they are, I want to know what they taste like . The last thing I ate here that looked like a kidney bean tasted exactly like boiled cabbage.”
Gina took her time, prodding the names of half a dozen dishes to view the finished products, and screens of data on the design of the ingredients. She said, “You can work it all out, if you pay attention. If you know what genes they moved from where, and why, you can make a fair stab at predicting the taste and texture.”
“Go ahead, dazzle me with science.”
She hit the CONFIRM ORDER button. “The green leafy stuff will taste like spinach-flavored pasta – but the iron in it will be absorbed by your body as easily as the heme iron in animal flesh, leaving spinach for dead. The yellow things which look like corn will taste like a cross between tomato and green capsicum spiced with oregano – but nutrients and flavor will be less sensitive to poor storage conditions and over-cooking. And the blue puree will taste almost like Parmesan cheese.”
“Why blue?”
“There’s a blue pigment, a photoactivated enzyme, in the new self-fermenting lactoberries. They could remove it during processing, but it turns out we metabolize it directly into vitamin D – which is safer than making it the usual way, with UV on the skin.”
“Food for people who never see the sun. How can I resist?” I ordered the same.
The service was swift – and Gina’s predictions were more or less correct. The whole combination was actually quite pleasant.
I said, “You’re wasted on wind turbines. You could be designing the spring collection for United Agronomics.”
“Gee, thanks. But I already get all the intellectual stimulation I can handle.”
“How is Big Harold coming along, anyway?”
“Still very much Little Harold, and likely to stay that way for a while.” Little Harold was the one-thousandth-scale prototype of a projected two-hundred megawatt turbine. “There are chaotic resonance modes turning up which we missed in the simulations. It’s starting to look like we’re going to have to reevaluate half
the assumptions of the software model.”
“I can never quite understand that. You know all the basic physics, the basic equations of air-flow dynamics, you have access to endless supercomputer time…”
“So how can we possibly screw up? Because we can’t compute the behavior of thousands of tonnes of air moving through a complex structure on a molecule-by-molecule basis. All the bulk flow equations are approximations, and we’re deliberately operating in a region where the best-understood approximations break down. There’s no magical new physics coming into play – but we’re in a gray zone between one set of convenient simplifying assumptions and another. And so far, the best new set of compromise assumptions are neither convenient nor simple. And they’re not even correct, as it turns out.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “It’s frustrating – but enough of it’s frustrating in an interesting way to keep me from going insane.”
I felt a stab of longing; I understood so little about this part of her life. She’d explained as much as I could follow, but I still had no real idea of what spun through her head when she was sitting at her work station juggling airflow simulations, or clambering around the wind tunnel making adjustments to Little Harold.
I said, “I wish you’d let me film some of this.”
Gina regarded me balefully. “Not a chance, Mister Frankenscience. Not until you can tell me categorically whether wind turbines are Good or Evil.”
I cringed. “You know that’s not up to me. And it changes every year. New studies are published, the alternatives come in and out of favor—”
She cut me off bitterly. “ Alternatives? Planting photovoltaic engineered forests on ten thousand times as much land per megawatt sounds like environmental vandalism to me.”
“I’m not arguing. I could always make a Good Turbine documentary … and if I can’t sell it straight away, just wait for the tide to turn again.”
“You can’t afford to make anything on spec.”
“True. I’d have to fit it in between other shooting.”
Gina laughed. “I wouldn’t try it. You can’t even manage—”
“What?”
“Nothing. Forget it.” She waved a hand, retracting the comment. I could have pressed her, but I would have been wasting my time.
I said, “Speaking of filming—” I described the two projects Lydia had offered me. Gina listened patiently, but when I asked for her opinion, she seemed baffled.
“If you don’t want to make Distress … then don’t. It’s really none of my business.”
That stung. I said, “It affects you, too. It would be a lot more money—” Gina was affronted. “All I mean is, we could afford to take a holiday, or something. We could go overseas next time you have leave. If that’s what you wanted.”
She said stiffly, “I’m not taking leave for another eighteen months. And I can pay for my own holidays.”
“All right. Forget it.” I reached over to take her hand; she pulled away, irritated.
We ate in silence. I stared down at my plate, running through the rules, trying to decide where I’d gone wrong. Had I broken some taboo about money? We kept separate accounts, sharing the rent fifty-fifty – but we’d both helped each other out, many times, and given each other small luxuries. What should I have done? Gone ahead and made Distress – purely for the money – and only then asked if there was anything we could spend it on together that would make it worthwhile?
Maybe I’d made it sound as if I thought she expected to dictate the projects I chose – offending her by seeming to have failed to appreciate the independence she allowed me. My head spun. The truth was, I had no idea what she was thinking. It was all too hard, too slippery. And I couldn’t imagine what I could say that might begin to put it right, without the risk of making everything far worse.
After a while, Gina said, “So where’s the big conference being held?”
I opened my mouth, then realized I didn’t have a clue. I picked up my notepad and quickly checked the briefing Sisyphus had prepared.
“Ah. On Stateless.”
“ Stateless? ” She laughed. “You’re a burned-out case on biotech … so they’re sending you to the world’s largest engineered-coral island?”
“I’m only fleeing Evil biotech. Stateless is Good.”
“Oh, really? Tell that to the governments who keep it embargoed. Are you sure you won’t get thrown in prison when you come home?”
“I’m not going to trade with the wicked anarchists. I’m not even going to film them.”
“Anarcho-syndicalists, get it right. Though they don’t even call themselves that, do they?”
I said, “Who’s ‘they’? It depends who you ask.”
“You should have had a segment on Stateless in Junk DNA . Embargoed or not, they’re prospering – and all thanks to biotechnology. That would have balanced the talking corpse.”
“But then I couldn’t have called it Junk DNA , could I?”
“Exactly.” She smiled. Whatever I’d done, I’d been forgiven. I felt my heart pounding, as if I’d been dragged back at the last moment from the edge of an abyss.
The dessert we chose tasted like cardboard and snow, but we obligingly filled out the tabletop questionnaires before leaving.
We headed north up George Street to Martin Place. There was a nightclub called the Sorting Room in the old Post Office building. They played Zimbabwean njari music, multi-layered, hypnotic, pounding but never metronomic, leaving splinters of rhythm in the brain like the marks of fingernails raked over flesh. Gina danced ecstatically, and the music was so loud that speech was, mercifully, almost impossible. In this wordless place I could do no wrong.
We left just after one. On the train back to Eastwood, we sat in a corner of the carriage, kissing like teenagers. I wondered how my parents’ generation had ever driven their precious cars in such a state. (Badly, no doubt.) The trip home was ten minutes – almost too short. I wanted everything to unfold as slowly as possible. I wanted it to last for hours.
We stopped a dozen times, walking down from the station. We stood outside the front door for so long that the security system asked us if we’d lost our keys.
When we undressed and fell onto the bed together, and my vision lurched, I thought it was just a side-effect of passion. When my arms went numb, though, I realized what was happening.
I’d pushed myself too far with the melatonin blockers, depleting neurotransmitter reserves in the region of the hypothalamus where alertness was controlled. I’d borrowed too much time, and the plateau was crumbling.
Stricken, I said, “I don’t believe this. I’m sorry.”
“About what?” I still had an erection.
I forced myself to concentrate; I reached over and hit a button on the pharm. “Give me half an hour.”
“No. Safety limits—”
“Fifteen minutes,” I pleaded. “This is an emergency.”
The pharm hesitated, consulting the security system. “There is no emergency. You’re safe in bed, and the house is under no threat.”
“You’re gone. You’re recycled.”
Gina seemed more amused than disappointed. “See what happens when you transgress natural limits? I hope you’re recording this for Junk DNA .” Mockery only made her a thousand times more desirable – but I was already lapsing into microsleeps. I said dolefully, “Forgive me? Maybe … tomorrow, we could—”
“I don’t think so. Tomorrow you’ll be working till 1 a.m. And I’m not waiting up.” She took me by the shoulders and rolled me on to my back, then knelt astride my stomach.
I made sounds of protest. She bent over and kissed me on the mouth, tenderly. “Come on. You don’t really want to waste this rare opportunity, do you?” She reached down and stroked my cock; I could feel it respond to her touch, but it barely seemed to be a part of me anymore.
I murmured, “Ravisher. Necrophiliac.” I wanted to make a long earnest speech about sex and communication, but
Gina seemed intent on disproving my whole thesis before I could even begin. “Talk about Bad Timing .”
She said, “Is that a yes or a no?”
I gave up trying to open my eyes. “Go ahead.”
Something vaguely pleasant began to happen, but my senses were retreating, my body was spinning off into the void.
I heard a voice, light-years away, whisper something about “sweet dreams.”
But I plunged into blackness, feeling nothing. And I dreamed of silent oceanic depths.
Of falling through dark water, alone.
Chapter 6
I’d heard that London had suffered badly from the coming of the networks, but was less of a ghost town than Sydney. The Ruins were more extensive, but they were being exploited far more diligently; even the last glass-and-aluminum towers built for bankers and stockbrokers at the turn of the millennium, and the last of the “high tech” printing presses which had “revolutionized” newspaper publishing (before becoming completely obsolete), had been labeled “historic” and taken under the wing of the tourism industry.
I hadn’t had time, though, to visit the hushed tombs of Bishopsgate or Wapping. I’d flown straight to Manchester – which appeared to be thriving. According to Sisyphus ’s potted history, the balance between real-estate prices and infrastructure costs had favored the city in the twenties, and thousands of information-based companies – with a largely telecommuting workforce, but the need for a small central office as well – had moved there from the south. This industrial revival had also shored up the academic sector, and Manchester University was widely acknowledged to be leading the world in at least a dozen fields – including neurolinguistics, neo-protein chemistry, and advanced medical imaging.
I replayed the footage I’d taken of the city center – swarming with pedestrians, bicycles and quadcycles – and picked out a few brief establishing shots. I’d hired a bicycle, myself, from one of the automated depots outside Victoria Station; ten euros and it was mine for the day. It was a recent model Whirlwind, a beautiful machine: light, elegant, and nearly indestructible – made in nearby Sheffield. It could simulate a pushbike if required (a trivial option to include, and it kept the masochistic purists happy), but there was no mechanical connection between pedals and wheels; essentially, it was a human-powered electric motorbike. Superconducting current loops buried in the chassis acted as a short-term energy store, smoothing out demands on the rider, and taking full advantage of the energy-reclaiming brakes. Forty kph took no more effort than a brisk walk, and hills were almost irrelevant, ascent and descent nearly canceling each other out in energy lost and gained. It must have been worth about two thousand euros – but the navigation system, the beacons and locks, were so close to tamper-proof that I would have needed a small factory, and a PhD in cryptology, to steal it.
