Luminarium (21 page)

The others laughed. Fred offered the floor tiles a smarting grin, determined to be a good sport.

“You’re probably sick of hearing stuff like this,” Dot said, sidling up to Fred. “But George had the same kinds of questions.”

Fred looked at her. “He did?”

Guy
closed his eyes, opened them, blinked, his face impassive once more. “He had strong energy even then.”

“Shall we resume?” said the owl-man, after a silence.

Holly guided Fred into place at George’s feet. “You can learn all the techniques and positions later,” she said, as the others gathered around the sides of George’s bed. “For now, just hold out your hands, close your eyes, make your mind very quiet and peaceful, and it’ll happen.”

Holly and the others held out their hands and closed their eyes. Lest one of them cheat and look and catch him just standing here like an ingrate, Fred lifted his own hands, though he could bring himself neither to shut his eyes nor to look at his ostensible patient below. Instead, he looked at the rest of their blissed-out, drowsing faces, wondering if George had ever succeeded in feeling this energy of theirs. What was it he was supposed to do again? Picture Menelvagor the Star Man or something? Rivendell.
The Lord of the Rings.
The embarrassment made his flesh heat up anew. It was true, he’d gone to see the first installment more than once when it had come out at the end of 2001. He and Sam had gone together its first day out, and then again a couple weeks later, and a third time the following month. George, to their surprise and faint bafflement, had passed on every occasion. Indeed, their excursions had amused George greatly—a chink in the armor of Sam’s siege-mentality work ethic and Fred’s hardening dogma of hardheaded realism, through which, respectively, George would tweak the two of them for years afterward. The afternoon escapes were a little addiction that Fred and Sam—and a whole bunch of others, judging from those continually packed matinees—couldn’t quite shake. Bin Laden had his vision of a caliphate, Bush his nightly prayers for the End Times. The rest of them had Gandalf the Grey, and those peaceable hobbits fighting back against the forces of digitally animated darkness. For Fred and Sam, the seeming parallels to their own peaceable band of programmers fighting the virtual war, with the wizardry of Armation at their back, had been pretty impossible to resist. Which, George insisted, was precisely the problem. Everyone all over the world, every militia member and secret agent and madrassa teacher and West Bank settler, he said, was seeing it and identifying themselves with the good guys, and their enemies with the bad guys. Fred demanded substantiating evidence about those moviegoing West Bank settlers, then defended the movie, saying that its real message was that there was good and evil in everyone.

“Right,” George said, “and that unchecked, mechanized, imperial power is bad. And that Western materialism has gone too far. And that we’re destroying the environment. And that we need to reconnect with the spirit, the heart, the imagination, and Mother Earth.”

Fred was confused by the tinge of mockery. The list sounded like everything George himself was about.

“And
kumbaya
, and give peace a chance. And let’s have some kickass fight scenes while we’re at it.”

Fred was already nodding strenuously when he divined the criticism. George was full of shit, Fred decided. George loved fight scenes. But he proved to be at least consistently full of shit, keeping his distance as the two
Lord of the Rings
sequels came and went; as the uncannily titled Two Towers loomed; as the king returned; as the hobbits saved their world and went back to their peaceable lives. While back on Earth, and Urth, the wars stretched on through the murky twilight, no telling hobbits from orcs, liberators from torturers, patriots from profiteers, adults the world over eyeballing children’s stories as the world went to hell.

Make your mind peaceful
, Holly had said.
Behold the energy
.
Discern
its hue
.

Blue-white, Fred decided, finally shutting his eyes. He could feel a tingling, possibly. And a slight sense of porousness all over his skin. Nothing real, exactly, but not exactly fake either. No sooner had he reconciled himself to the daunting thought of entering his brother’s spiritual airspace than he felt a welling of sadness, but also an ease, as if he’d been on a long hike with a heavy pack and had suddenly allowed himself to flop down onto the grass. It was nothing real, just drowsiness, but Fred was soon feeling like he was being lifted again, like those rare instances in which he woke up in a dream in a good way rather than a paralyzing one, to feel the ground falling out from under him, to feel himself flying in darkness. Maybe it was happening again. Maybe any moment now, he’d leave his body, see them all from above—the gruff-faced buzzcut woman, the bearded owl-man, the spindrift elfin woman, the long-haired, benostriled man, his mother, himself—their hands outstretched in an oval over George. Maybe he’d float up higher still, like he did last time. Over the hospital, over the whole island. Maybe he’d see the vortex, and George floating above it. And he’d grab George by his astral arm. And ferry him back down.

The rustle of
movement opened his eyes. There George lay, droopmouthed, waxen as ever.

“Well, Holly, maybe you’ve got two of them,” said the wizard, stroking his beard.

“It was even stronger that time,” huffed the dwarf, her lower lip jutting.

“You know,” his mother said, eyeing him, then George, “for a minute there I felt like I was lifted off my feet.”

“Me too,” said the elf, her green eyes wide.

“It wasn’t so bad,” Strider allowed, with a look down his thinned nostrils. “For an amateur.”

34th Street never looked so good. Sidewalks sans so much as a gum
stain. Identically trimmed, bright green shrubs in the planters. Store window mannequins clad in every color of the rainbow. No traffic, just the three fire trucks, two police cars, and an ambulance parked along the curb. No people other than Sam and Fred, standing by the curb in firefighter coats and helmets, facing each other.

“Well,” Sam said. “At least you’re showing
a
face.”

Though Fred himself couldn’t see it from his third-person, above-and-behind vantage, he knew his face to be out of date, not quite up to the ever-evolving standards of realism. A couple days ago Sam had asked him to come in and let Conrad take his picture for the update, but it had instantly slipped Fred’s mind.

“Sorry, Sam,” he muttered.

Little Sam’s head tilted skyward. “Nice day for an attack. Glad the weather held.” A small joke to show they were putting the issue behind them. Sam’s virtual lips moved lethargically, out of sync with his voice coming through on Fred’s headset. The speech detection code didn’t work so well when players mumbled.

“The street looks … clean,” Fred observed.

“Not quite realistic,” Sam agreed. “But we don’t want to make the mayor’s office uncomfortable.”

The mood around him, both in the office and on the screen, was nervous elation. Fred was kind of excited too, though he was taking pains not to clue Sam into this. The look and feel of the place had advanced so much, it was as if Fred had been gone not months but decades, and he couldn’t help but marvel at it. Though he was also sure to remind himself what he knew from repeated experience, that a few weeks from now, some new video card would come along, some new videogame would come out, and Urth, by comparison, would begin to feel like some rustbelt neighborhood whose time had come and gone.

Little Sam, meanwhile, continued swiveling this way and that on the sidewalk. “Time to go, everybody,” he called out. Behind him, down the street, two other avatars popped in, Jesse and Conrad, it looked like. Jesse was a cop today, his blond mop streaming from a tented blue cap; Conrad was the fire chief, a white helmet replacing the upper hemisphere of his Afro. Little Jesse saluted, and Little Conrad gave the “hold position” combat signal, a closed fist, conveniently resembling the Black Power salute. Three years back, George had mentioned that he’d run into Conrad at an Iraq War protest. The two of them, George had said, had been embarrassed to see each other.

“T minus two,” Conrad announced, his voice coming through the headset fuzzed with noise, a simulated walkie-talkie link—one of a list of new features Fred had on a crib sheet taped to his screen, this one engaged by holding down the Control and Shift keys.

“Where is everybody?” Sam said. “Get them in here.”

Jesse’s virtual mouth moved but Fred couldn’t hear him, at least not through the headset, as police were on a different channel. Across the office, though, Jesse could be heard hollering and clapping in the faces of the other programmers to get them to take out their earphones, put on their headsets, and log on. More avatars, reed-thin ones, for the most part, popped onscreen, and the chatter increased. There were to be about thirty participants today, ten here in New York and the rest in Orlando. As the appointed time drew near, most of the avatars rotated to face across the street, their heads angling upward. Fred looked as well. The Empire State Building, pristine and symmetrical, receded like a road straight into the sky.

“Is there a plane?” he asked.

“We haven’t gotten to that,” Sam said. “Just the fireworks.”

“Hey Fred,” Jesse said, having stepped with Conrad into speaking range, “way to have a cartoon face.”

“I’m old school, what can I say?”

“Well, don’t be self-conscious, God just made you different, is all.” Jesse walked off, back toward some other cops.

“The execs here yet?” Fred whispered to Sam, scanning the crowd, then peering around the Cray Y-MP still wedging him in against his desk, to see if anyone had overheard. He didn’t quite trust the new proximity hearing code, which allowed avatars standing close to each other to converse in relative privacy.

“Don’t see them. Len is supposed to take them around.”

“Thirty seconds,” Conrad radioed.

The impact, somewhat randomized, was now being calculated. Leaning over his keyboard, Fred could see across the office into Sam’s alcove. A row of shelving blocked Sam himself from view, but Fred could see the glow of lamplight above Sam’s desk reflecting off the posterboard sheets with which Sam had tiled over the window. It would have been reassuring to catch a glimpse of the actual city, the one not currently under attack.

“In three, two, one,” Conrad announced, “and …”

Halfway up the tower, a fireball and a cloud of black smoke erupted, followed by a hail of glass and stone. A cheer went up in the room. The Armation coding team congratulated Sam’s team over the radio channels. Debris began clattering down to the street. Fred backed up, then flinched as a chunk of masonry seemed to pass right through Sam, smashing to dust and leaving behind a small, webbed crater in the concrete beneath his feet.

“We disabled avatar deformability for the first two minutes,” Sam explained. “To give everyone a chance to watch the show.”

“—kick ass particle effects—”

“—check out what that chunk did to the fire truck—”

“—got jumpers today?—”

“Hmm,” Sam muttered. He took off, over to the cops, Fred following. “Do we have jumpers?” Sam asked Jesse.

“Haven’t tested anything like that yet. That kind of impact will probably take a lot of calculations with these new human physiology models.” “It’s one of the hazards,” Sam said, palpably upset. “Next time, all right?”

“Yeah,” Jesse said, his voice growing strained as well. “What’s a few more sixteen-hour workdays? We’ll put it on the list.”

“Stay with Len and the execs. Make sure they see all the best stuff.”

Jesse gave a
Sieg heil
—one of George’s last contributions to the gesture menu—and moved off. Sam turned, heading up the sidewalk. Fred trailed him, forcing his actual muscles to unclench. The smoke above was beginning to block out the sun.

“This deadline is a monster,” Sam told Fred. “The tour for the city brass is less than three weeks away. We’ve only got two generic floor plans, the textures aren’t done, and the whole thing’s as buggy as a locust plague. Plus there’s the move. I’ve got to start sending everyone down south next week.”

Gradually, the hail stopped, and the street was once again quiet, though up above the smoke kept billowing.

“Fire chief!” Sam shouted.

“Oh, right,” Conrad said. “Let’s move, people.”

The thirty of them crossed the street, filing into the lobby. Computer-controlled civilians—their mouths forming little o’s of terror, moved with swinging arms around the players’ avatars and out the door. Conrad, voice rising, ordered some firemen to help the civilians exit, others to check the elevators and report back. Fred followed Sam around a corner into a blackened elevator bank. On the floor was what looked at first to be an outsized Yule log bedecked with merry, dancing flames. Sam grabbed a fire extinguisher from a nearby wall and unleashed a shower of foam over the blaze.

“Bodily ignition,” he said. “Fire still doesn’t look right.” He moved closer to the sprawled avatar, mottled with white foam and black char. “Good textures, though. Wonder what Conrad used. Looks like burnt hot dogs and shaving cream. Come take a look.”