On My Way to Paradise (36 page)

On the ground were twigs and individual blades of
grass, and some black insects swarmed among the grass. I’d have
thought them to be boring beetles, but several were pushing bits of
dark ultraviolet leaves across the ground and they’d woven these
together with twigs and pebbles to build small round shelters the
size of a cupped hand. The shelters looked very much like tiny
huts. I toppled a hut, wondering if I’d find something remarkable
beneath—insects playing chess, or sculptures of alien beetle
gods—but found only huge fat beetles tending tiny white larvae. I
replaced the hut and sand flies jumped up at the movement of my
hand.

There was far too much detail for the computer to
have generated this illusion. The world was too
complete
to
be a simulation. The insects, the avians, the tiny fishes in the
water, the scents—all were things I’d never witnessed before. And
the fact that the computer now compensated for my prosthetic eyes
meant the illusion was tailored specifically for me. The ship’s
artificial intelligence couldn’t provide this type of service to
everyone—not with seven hundred men jacked into the simulators at
once.

This felt like a trap. Immediately I recalled the men
who’d died in the simulators, the men who were incapable of
penetrating the illusion. I wondered: Could they have been
murdered? Could they have died from shock because they were slain
in an impenetrable illusion, an illusion such as this? I searched
for something out of place: a tree that was too symmetrical and
healthy, a patch of ground that looked as if it had been generated
by fractal equations rather than formed naturally. But the trees
had leaves that were yellowed and worn at the edges, insect eaten
and diseased. The ground didn’t have the characteristic rumpled
look of landscapes generated by fractals-there were too many
smooth folds punctuated by sharp lines. I could find nothing out of
place.

If someone was using this method to murder, I decided
not to be a victim. I reached behind my neck and tried to claw at
the place where I knew the computer leads connected to my cranial
jack. But it was no use. My body was really sitting slumped in my
chair in the hovercraft, completely disconnected from the real
world. I couldn’t penetrate this illusion, and I could not escape
it.

I shouted to Kaigo, "Get me out! I can’t tell what’s
real anymore!" I waited, but he didn’t respond.

I touched the bump on my head and wondered at my
predicament. My hand came away with a smear of blood on it, and as
an experiment I touched the blood with my tongue to see if I could
taste it. The computer had never simulated taste before. It tasted
salty, and had the consistency of real blood.

Perhaps this is a test. Perhaps they want to see
how I’d fight if
I
felt my life to be in jeopardy,
I
wondered, realizing that if I couldn’t penetrate this illusion, I
had no option but to win this battle. My life could well be at
stake. But I didn’t care. I’d suffered death so many times in
simulation that I felt death would only result in an end to
suffering.

In the denser brush, beyond a screen of trees on the
far side of the marsh, something cracked a branch. I sat up and
peered in that direction: a large black creature moved through the
brush. It stopped in a partial clearing and then withdrew from
sight. It was hairy and wet, as if it had just risen from the
water.

Another predator thrown into the simulator, I
reasoned.

I crouched and aimed my laser rifle, taking a guess
as to where it might step out.

The creature snorted, releasing a great exhalation.
It had caught my scent. It lurched forward, and its feet hit the
ground like thunder. It crashed through the brush and charged into
the clearing, then stood, panting at me—a huge bull, black as onyx,
with broad horns.

Astride the bull sat a thin woman with black hair.
She wore a white dress that revealed more than it covered. She
smiled wanly.

"Bravo ... don Angelo." She paused between words, as
if to catch her breath. "You ... came to ... save ... me from this
beast ... again?" She kicked the bull’s ribs, and it strode
closer.

"Tamara?" This woman was not the emaciated creature
I’d known. She was beautiful in a way that Tamara had never been.
Her hair was dark and silky. Her teeth as white as crystal water
cascading down a mountain stream. Yet her small bones spoke of a
delicateness, a frailness, that even Tamara had never matched.

"You look ... much as I ... remember," Tamara said.
She studied me closely. Her lips tightened. Her expression was not
severe or disapproving. Rather, she appeared tired and sad.

The fact that she stammered even in a simulator
suggested brain damage. I wondered how much was really left of the
Tamara I had known. I felt inside myself and tried to convince
myself that I didn’t really care about her anymore. The fact that
she’d finally sought me out, had finally made contact, seemed a
minor curiosity.

But her eyes were alive in spite of her frailty.
Bright. Fierce.

The bull stopped in front of me and Tamara daintily
slipped from its back.

I pointed to her mount, "That bull was dead in your
dreams before," I said. "Rotted. Like a zombie. "

Tamara wrinkled her brow in concern. "Was it?" she
asked wearily. "I forget. That’s why I ... came to you. I wanted to
fill holes. To fill in ... the holes."

I shrugged. "How deep are the holes? How wide?"

"Who knows?" she said. "Garzón ... tells me ... I’ve
got forty percent loss. I remember some things very well.
Repetitive things. Things I knew well. Individual. Incidents. Are
gone."

Forty percent memory loss was a lot. She’d be on
neural growth stimulator till the brain regenerated. Even after two
weeks the damage was really only beginning to repair on a cellular
level. The neurons that regenerated in her brain would not mature
for years. The actual connections between them would be sparse. Her
motor skills would be shot. She’d have to stay hooked up to
life-support for months.

"Is that why you came to see me-to learn about your
past?"

She nodded. "To learn ... what I told you. To see
what ... you remember."

I shrugged. I told her the story from the beginning,
leaving out nothing. When I got to the part about Flaco’s death I
was surprised that I felt empty. It seemed as if it had happened
long ago to someone else.

I told her of Flaco’s death and how I had avenged
him. I told her how I had brought her onto the ship.

When I finished, she said, "It’s ... funny: ... when
... we first met, I. practiced. Dying ... in the ... simulator. Now
... you practice ... dying."

I began to object. I was not practicing how to die. I
was trying to learn how to stay alive. But I remembered advice I’d
heard so often from Kaigo: "Learn to live as one already dead."

She was right. We were practicing how to die for
Motoki Corporation. And what disturbed me even more was that I felt
incapable of feeling any emotion at all.

"
Sí
.
I’m dead
inside
now. The
rest of me just waits for my body to catch up."

She looked at me strangely, turning her head
slightly. She seemed alarmed.

I shouted, "Go to hell, you bitch! I don’t need your
concern, your sympathy and sad faces. What do you do, practice that
sad expression in the mirror?"

"You don’t ... have a ... senses of. Humor.
Anymore."

"Nothing is funny anymore," I said, "except Mavro’s
jokes." She continued staring at me with those eyes filled with
compassion. I became enraged. "What good do your sad faces do? One
of my compadres had a pipe rammed through his belly this morning.
Why don’t you make sad faces for him? What good does your sympathy
do? I’d rather see shit on your face than that sad frown! You
bitch. This place is full of dead men, walking dead men! They
practice dying for Motoki Corporation! And do you know why? You and
your fucking Idealist Socialist friends drove them to it! They
throw their lives away because you took everything they have. And
now you feign sympathy.

"Don’t give us your sympathy, bitch! I wish I could
make a gift to you of all the ugliness I’ve witnessed in the past
two weeks. I wish I could spit it into your hand!" I found that I
was shouting, and I stopped. I was shaking violently, and wished to
strike her.

She’d listened patiently. Her expression of concern
didn’t falter, but her eyes began to gleam with tears.

"You’ve changed. You did not ask ... me how ... I am.
The old you would. Have. Asked."

"You’re right," I said. "I would have." I didn’t ask.
She was silent for a moment, uncomfortable.

"Buds itch," she said. The buds on her hand itched
where it was regenerating. It was a common problem.

Someone should have rubbed the growths with
cortisone. "Garzón ... treats me good. We ... made ... a bargain: I
tell him what he ... wants to know. And ... he lets ... me live."
She smiled a beautiful smile at the joke, all her white teeth
gleamed.

"I can ... not walk. Or move. Or breathe ... by
myself. But Garzón ... wants me. To. Practice. My skills. With.
The. Computer. And boost. Your simulations."

I tried to calm myself, to move to a. safer subject.
I responded, "Your dreamwork on my little monitor at home was
excellent. I’m sure you’ll do a fine job."

The truth was that she did more than a fine job. With
the help of the ship’s artificial intelligence she’d created an
illusion I couldn’t pierce, and she’d done it while terribly
disadvantaged.

"Redundant thoughts stay," she said. She meant that
she’d practiced a lot, and had therefore not lost the ability to
create dreamworlds when she was injured. Those acts we do
repeatedly, those concerns we care about often, are least likely to
be lost when the brain is damaged.

"When you worked for Alliance Intelligence, what did
you do?" I asked. "Were you some kind of dream assassin? Did you
kill people in their sleep?"

She shook her head. "No. Something ... Someday I will
tell ... you. Angelo—I’m sorry ... I hurt you. You’ve been kinder
to me ... than I deserve. And you served me ... better than ... I
could have ... imagined."

She began to cry. I didn’t care to see it. I
shrugged.
"De nada."

"I know you still care. I can ... not ... pay you
back. I wish to pay ... you something. I don’t ... speak well, uh
...”

I felt a thrill as if a strong wind were about to
lift me. The wind whipped the trees overhead until the noise became
a dull roar. Monkeys began to scream and howl from their secret
places all around and above me, creating a great clamor. I
remembered the howling wind from Tamara’s previous dream, the one
where she’d attacked me, and I pointed my rifle barrel toward her
chest, wondering if she’d be forced to jack out if I pulled the
trigger, or if she was immune to the effects of the simulator.

Amid all this noise Tamara stood before me. Her
dress, whipped by the wind, became as white as lightning, and her
face was pale and beautiful. She reached down into her dress
between her breasts and pulled out a small ornate wooden box.

She opened the box and held it up for me to see.

Inside was a tiny heart, like that of a dog; it was
beating furiously as if just cut from a living body. Beneath the
din and the turmoil I could hear the it.

"Listen. Listen." She moved the box closer to my
face. The beating became louder. The howls and the yammers of the
monkeys and the roaring wind faded into the background. The sound
of the beating heart was soft and insistent. "Become fluent ... in
... the gentle language ... of the heart."

I looked up at Tamara’s face. Tears streamed from her
fierce eyes. "This is what I feel like now. This is ... what it
feels ... like to
live!"

She grasped the tiny heart between two fingers and
shoved it into my chest. It was like breathing the wind that blows
over a mint field and basking in sunlight—my nerves danced along
the whole length of my body. I seemed to move upward and out, to
pass through an insubstantial wall where lethargy, pain, fatigue,
and fear were left behind, and I was standing in a warm pleasant
place, at the center of myself, where there was only joy.

I felt Tamara’s emotions—her peace, the gratitude she
held toward me for helping her escape Earth, and a compassion so
strong, so alive, it seemed unconquerable. She viewed me as a
broken doll, some small thing she desperately wished to mend.

I wanted to laugh at her view of me. I wanted to tell
her I wasn’t broken. But my own body seemed far away and I couldn’t
touch it.

She withdrew her fingers, yanking the tiny heart from
my chest, and I collapsed onto the ground. The warmth, the
compassion, the energy—all drained from me. I tried to feel
something, to rejoice in the air pumping through my lungs, to touch
the ground with my fingertips and relish the sensation of loam.
But I felt nothing. My fingers were dead, and the air seemed stale
and empty. I was empty. Desolate.

I tried to call up the sensation I’d just felt, to
remember what it was like to love. But when had I ever loved? I
hadn’t let myself be touched inside for thirty years, not since my
wife had died. On those rare occasions when I felt something stir
within my breast, I hadn’t reacted to it. I’d shut myself off,
retreated. For all these years I’d pretended to serve society,
feigned compassion, because I’d believed in it on an intellectual
level. I did it because it sounded good in theory. But for one
moment, did I ever
feel
the pain of another?

If I had, I couldn’t recall the emotion, dredge it
up, or bring it to life again.

I listened in my chest for the sound of my own
heart.

There was nothing inside. I was truly a broken doll,
empty and lifeless, and perhaps beyond repair.