In the Court of the Yellow King (11 page)

He resented the fear and disgust the figure had inspired in him, and was tempted to produce his handgun and return to the alley to pump the mutant full of virtual bullets, but a glance back at the shadowed corridor dissuaded him. In the fungal luminescence of the glyph, the mutant was an amorphous black mound with a pale white circle floating at the top, which turned toward him. The face’s unseen eyes on him felt like a slimy caress on naked skin.

Giff swiftly moved off down the sidewalk to pursue other adventures.

“I’ve met this girl,” Donny whispered to Giff at work, when Beau had gone into a neighboring department to chitchat with a friend there. Beau, closer to Giff’s age, was a little straight-laced – though even he had started taking interest in listening to Donny rhapsodizing about
Grand Thef
t Hovercar
. “I really like her, man.”

“You mean... in the game?” Donny had been married for less than a year.

“Yeah yeah, in the game. She’s beautiful,
gorgeous
, with this pristine white skin like... like
snow
. She’s like a statue come to life, Giff. She’s a Carcosan.”

“A what?”

“From Carcosa – it’s a planet.”

“Yeah? I’ve never heard of any Carcosa or Carcosans.”

“Hey, there are new races popping up in Punktown all the time. Anyway, I’ve taken her to my nice new Beaumonde Square apartment a few times, and... ohhh man.” Donny wagged his head, grinning, but then his grin lost its foothold. “I’m sorry now I got married to Tessy so fast. I’m still young, y’know? She doesn’t seem too happy, either. Lately I’ve even been thinking... maybe we should just get divorced.”

“Whoa, Donny,” Giff said. He’d had a wife once. Many times he’d regretted their divorce, though in his case it hadn’t been his decision. “Hold on, now. There’s no reason to throw away your real life relationship to pursue a virtual relationship. Can’t you just keep doing that on the side?”

“Yeah, but you don’t understand... Tessy’s always complaining about the time I spend in
GTH
. It’s getting hard to enjoy it like I should.”

“Well, maybe you are playing it too much, from the sound of it.”

“And you’re not?”

Giff ignored that comment. “This Carcosan girl... is she an AI, or a player?”

“I don’t know,” Donny said. After a thoughtful pause he added, “I guess I don’t care.”

The next day Beau announced that he had taken the plunge and bought himself a connection to the
Grand Theft
Hovercar
universe, too. Giff only smiled, but Donny whooped and clapped him on the shoulder. “Join the club, Beau! Now you can come to work with only three or four hours sleep, too, and a headache from listening to your wife bitch your ears bloody.”

At Donny’s insistence, Beau finally shyly described the avatar he had customized: a much younger man bulging with muscles. “I didn’t make him
too
huge, though,” Beau explained, “because I want to take him to the gym, in there, and bulk him up gradually.”

“Sounds fun!” Donny said. Then he bugged his eyes. “Hey! Guys! The three of us should meet up in
GTH
sometime, right? And go for some beers?”

Giff agreed, though he thought it was funny that the three of them had never done that in real life.

Giff stayed up too late playing the game, allowing himself only a forty-five minute nap before he was up again and showering for work. He’d thought maybe the nap, and an energy capsule washed down with black coffee, might be enough to help him slog through the day, but slouching in the shower he decided to call in sick. He sent a message to his manager, Pierre. Rather than return to bed, though, after he finished his coffee he sat down in front of his computer again, reaffixed the ultranet interface disks to the sides of his head, and delved back into the replica of Punktown.

Today he decided to revisit the neighborhood he had been living in twenty years ago, when he was still married. He visited it often enough in the real world, so he was very familiar with it, but he was curious to see how the facsimile compared. It was a fairly well-to-do area, too (he’d had a somewhat better job back then, and his wife had also been doing well), so he could also rob some local pedestrians for decent money with which to buy more ammunition for his guns.

He was also saving virtual money in case he wanted to put down rent on a nice apartment. He hadn’t mapped his real-life apartment. He didn’t want people getting inside it – strangers, or potentially nosy acquaintances like Donny – and seeing how tiny, dirty, and cluttered it was, maybe going through his personal belongings and discovering his love organ inching along the floor like a caterpillar.

From his last saved point, he rode toward his destination in a powerful Warper hovercar, but in speeding along maniacally he smashed it up against other cars until its belly began to scrape the pavement as it floated along. He abandoned it, carjacked a fluorescent orange Razer hovercar instead, and rode the rest of the way in that. When he arrived, he left the once-beautiful Razer, dented and scratched, by the curb.

He walked along the sidewalk, saying hello to passersby, waiting to see if someone would prompt him to attack them and take their money (perhaps leading ultimately to a massive standoff with forcers, which was always good fun, though it always resulted with his death and having to sign back into the game). He was restless for a woman, too. This wasn’t the best location to find a prosty, but prosties were everywhere in Punktown.

He wondered if his ex-wife ever played this game, and if so, if she too would be nostalgically drawn back to this area. Would he even recognize her if he passed her on the street? What younger actress or singing star might she choose as an avatar? Knowing her tastes in films and music, that might be the only way to spot her. He hadn’t seen her in the flesh for over a decade.

Up ahead, as he walked on, Giff spotted a holographic sign floating in the air in front of a building’s brick face. The sign, in glowing yellow letters, read
Imperial Dynasty
. He slowed his pace, his brow rumpled. Strange; he didn’t recall any such establishment from this neighborhood he knew so well. It could have sprung up only very recently, though: the map of
Grand Theft Hove
rcar
was kept up-to-date on a real-time basis.

He stopped in front of the establishment, which had a large window facing onto the sidewalk. With a name like
Imperial Dynas
ty
, he figured it might be a Chinese restaurant. He peered through the window.

The room beyond was full of tables, at which people were sitting, but no lights appeared to be on... so that only the people at the tables closest to the window could be seen somewhat clearly. For all he could tell from out here, the room full of figures seated at little circular tables might stretch back for miles... to infinity. Everyone’s clothing was either darkened by the gloom or black, and every white face was turned to stare back at Giff through the window. Otherwise, the figures were immobile. Might they be mannequins in some kind of shop display, and not restaurant customers?

All those pallid faces, though vague, put Giff in mind of that derelict mutant who had spoken to him in the alley. A shudder buzzed through him, and he spun away from the window so abruptly that he almost collided with a woman who was walking briskly along the sidewalk.

Giff watched her walk away from him. She wore a silk dress that snugly encased her slender body, black with a gold pattern of what he took to be stylized flowers, though they might have been something else. Because it reminded him of a high-collared Chinese dress, and because her short bobbed hair was so very black, and even because he had thought he was standing in front of a Chinese restaurant, he had the impression the woman might be of Asian descent... though he couldn’t see her face. The way her body moved in her tight silk dress caused him to start walking after her instantly, the darkened room of motionless figures sliding from his mind.

She was sexy, no question, but he had the sense she wasn’t a prosty. There was an elegance about her, almost like something regal that he couldn’t put his finger on. He hastened his step but somehow couldn’t quite catch up to see her face. It didn’t seem appropriate to call out to her in Marcel Valentin’s voice, “Hey sweetness,” but he wanted to catch her attention, so instead he said politely, “Excuse me, miss?” Anything to get her to stop, turn, show him her face. It must be as beautifully, snowy white as her slim arms and legs.

“I’m sorry, I have to hurry,” the woman said without slowing or looking around at him. “I’m going to see the play.”

“The play?” Giff still couldn’t catch up with her strides, although she was petite so her legs weren’t long, and he was all but jogging by now.

“You should see it, too,” she said.

“Uh... where is it?” he asked, just to keep her talking with him.

“It’s all over the city,” she called back to him, as she turned the corner of the street.

The pedestrian traffic grew thick at the corner, where people were waiting for the lights to change at the crosswalk, and Giff hit a tangle of bodies. “Out of my way,” he snarled, this time in the manner of Marcel Valentin, shoving his way through them, but when he rounded the corner he found the woman in the black dress with gold designs had disappeared.

“Well, look who decided to visit us today,” Beau remarked when Giff walked into their department the next day, twenty minutes late.

Giff grunted, not in the mood. He’d only had two hours of sleep and was all out of energy capsules.

“Whatever you had yesterday must be catching,” Beau went on. “Now Donny’s out sick today.”

“Oh, really?” Giff said.

“Yeah. But I think I know what you two are really suffering: an overdose of
Grand Theft Hover
car
.”

Giff grunted again.

Beau continued, “I’m sorry I spent all that money on it, myself – I think I’m going to stop, and maybe let my son take over my account.”

Giff had been surprised that Beau had tried the game out in the first place. “Is your wife complaining about the time you spend on it?”