Strange Flesh (38 page)

So this is how Billy’s planning to expose his family dirt. He’s mixed
his awful childhood mementos in with a trove of reward videos for his players. I’ll bet he’s assembled a record of Blake’s crimes that covers everything from youthful cheating at Wiffle ball to his recent indecorous investments. Since the videos have to get progressively worse, he probably intends the climax of these atrocities to be Gina’s suicide video and will then detail his reasons for laying her body at his brother’s feet. Billy must think that as people start digesting his gumdrops, the pressure on Blake will ratchet to a point where he’ll start to envy her.

I
’m far from the only one helping to pump
Savant
’s poison into the real world. Judging by the series of news reports sent from Red Rook’s clipping service, Château de Silling has turned a wave of its inmates loose on the streets.

Several online crime blotters have noted an uptick in sexual misdemeanor cases in certain metro areas. One put together an interesting montage of cuffed men in police cars wearing full powdered wigs.

Sex worker boards are filling with alerts defining archaic terminology. For example, this one on
The Erotic Review
:

Ladies, if someone asks if you allow “fustigation,” the answer is “No,” or “Fuck off.” It means beating you with a stick. And red-flag him for your sisters. Has there been a full moon this past week, or what?

Then this appeal from a woman posting to the main
Savant
forum:

Thread: Reward for Information

Frantic_Mom
Joined: 2/01/15
Posts: 1
Location: Los Angeles, CA

Please help me!!!
My son has been missing for four days. I got into his computer, and I know he spent a lot of time playing this game.
I don’t care what he’s been doing, I just want him back.
I have $5,000 for anyone who can give me information to help find him. No questions asked. He is only sixteen.

Attached to the post is a picture split in halves. The left is a yearbook photo of a spindly, nervous-looking teen. The right shows a screen shot of his burly leather-lord NOD avatar.

I guess these days one picture isn’t enough.

Blake finally got back to me later that evening.

He left a voicemail asking to meet at an unfamiliar address in Brooklyn, a small bar called Paul’s that is more or less the inverse of the Racquet and Tennis. At six
PM
, the place is dark, dusty, and deserted. Paul must be going through a long-term identity crisis. Woefully maintained Irish accents are muddled by pictures of Mexican national soccer teams from the 1970s.

Blake has secured us a pair of martinis, and he tips his glass as I take the seat next to him. He says, “I didn’t suppose the little bastard would ever have the balls to attack my sister. Think this might add some urgency to your efforts?”

“Do you really believe having him committed is going to prevent people from finding out that you’re building a virtual sex empire?”

My question was meant to jar him, but it fails miserably. Blake beams a satisfied smile at me, like his prize pupil has just solved a complicated proof. “Virtual sex empire. I like the sound of that.”

“Think your board will? What about your sister?”

Blake just shrugs as if the questions, or at least the questioner, are of little consequence. I try a different approach. “You know, my work would have been a lot easier if you’d told me all this at the beginning.”

Blake sips his drink and says, “True. But I needed to know what you could find out and how you’d go about it. I won’t mention the fact that
your
disclosures on this topic were, shall we say, less than candid?”

“Fair enough. But I’m trying to help you, and you’re making that more difficult.”

“Okay. Absolute honesty henceforth.” But his eyes sparkle mischievously. As if mocking the whole concept of veracity. “What would you like to know?”

There’s a lot I’d like to know. Why does Billy blame him for Gina’s death? Does he really think his brother is crazy? What’s he going to do if he finds him? But all these give way to my real concern: his intentions toward the Dancers.

I ask, “Why are you backing IT? With this huge merger coming up, why give your brother the ammunition? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“You have any idea why I wanted to meet you at this shithole?”

Exasperated, I shake my head.

“Good. Let’s take a walk.”

Five minutes later, we’ve stepped across the street to an anonymous red brick warehouse. Now we sit in a conference room, empty except for a pair of odd contraptions. While I’m used to mechanisms with human orifices, these things look like the open mouths of giant robotic squids. Each has a steel center ring five feet in diameter around which stand a series of eight spiky robot arms. In the center of the ring are two segmented beams bristling with heavy-duty motors. They terminate in what seem to be extraterrestrial ski boots with soles supported by large air cylinders.

“Welcome to Project Holy Duck,” says Blake.

He walks up to the first machine, slips off his shoes, and steps carefully into the boots. A rack hanging from the ceiling holds a pair of HMD goggles and a foam maul. Something about its fat cylindrical head attached to a thin plastic handle sets off hazy recognition signals.

Leveling his now sightless gaze at me, he says, “When I said ‘let’s take a walk,’ I hope you didn’t think I meant just across the street.”

Blake gestures at the other machine, and I climb aboard. A series of bladders inflate around my feet, and I rise a couple inches on what feels like a cloud of air. As if I’ve strapped on a pair of Mercury’s winged sandals. Then the visuals rez up, showing almost the reverse.

I stand in front of a polished brass mirror in an underground burrow. Tree roots meander along the dirt walls. My reflection shows that I’ve become a garden gnome, complete with bushy white beard and red
conical hat. I wiggle to test out the body tracking. It’s seamless. I look over to see that Blake’s assumed the form of a tiny fluttering fairy.

He says in a voice processed into a squeaky chirp, “Hurry, Gwilligur! Our burrow is under attack!”

With that, he sparkles open the room’s door and flies out. Without thinking about it, I follow him. Only as I cross the threshold and enter a long, torch-lit passage do I fully realize what I’m doing.

I’m walking.

Perhaps the most crucial problem with this kind of simulation has been the lack of a natural way to move oneself through space, which tends to ruin the illusion of presence. Here I’m not pushing my av around the screen with a joystick, but actually walking like a normal human through a fantasy world. Just to try it, I turn and walk in the other direction down the hall. Blake’s mechanized boots handle this without a hitch.

He’s got a working omnimill.

Technically you’d call it an omnidirectional locomotion interface. Most of these have been developed for the army, and various labs have tried everything from motorized roller skates to giant spherical hamster balls, with varying degrees of success. But Blake’s system represents a real breakthrough. The complete gestalt.

My thoughts are interrupted by a trickling of dirt down the wall in front of me. A hole opens, and out of it emerges a small but demonic-looking purple mole. Its giant claws and pulsating star nose remind me of something from a fifties creature feature. It calmly steps out onto a nearby root, takes a tiny crossbow off its back, loads a bolt, and fires.

I’m startled almost to the point of panic when I feel a sting on my chest where the arrow hits me—the snap of a rubber band fired from close range.

Can Blake’s machine actually be firing BBs at me?

“Ow. That hurts.”

His fairy grins at me. “Well, what are you going to do about it?”

Just then I feel another much more painful sting on the left side of my neck. Instinctively, I lash out at the horrible mole with my maul. I’m expecting an airy visual damage metaphor, but instead I get a sharp twinge in my elbow when my mallet impacts with an unbelievably delightful crushing sensation. Right then I realize what’s familiar about this setup: it’s a thirty-years-overdue update of the classic carnival game
Whack-A-Mole. As the most tactilely satisfying game of all time, there’s no better app for Blake to show off his next-gen VR system. This game lets the player stroll about and whack moles, not in a restricted little box, but all around him.

And the moles can fight back.

Blake flutters over to inspect the green goo dripping off my war hammer. “I give you Walk-A-Mole.” He pronounces its name like the avocado dip that bears a strong resemblance to the remains of the creature I just pulverized.

Suddenly, there’s a huge cascade of dirt from the surrounding walls, and a regiment of mutant moles begins unloading on me. Mass slaughter ensues, and three minutes later, after a desperately fought running battle, I stand victorious. Out of breath and sweating, I contemplate the single most compelling digital experience I’ve ever had—save of course my first date with Ginger. But what Blake has done here is even bigger. He’s finally put us all the way into the machine.

I flip up my HMD to see him standing to the side of his omniboots, watching me.

I look him in the eye and say, “Holy fuck.”

He bows. “Thus the name. Derived from the word ‘holodeck,’ but we soon realized it was refreshingly apropos.”

“So . . .”

“So my brother’s not the only one who swallowed the blue pill.” Blake turns his back to me and lifts the hair at the nape of his neck. He uncovers a small tattoo: just a dot with a circle around it.

But clearly a jack.

We’re seated in a small chamber behind some one-way glass watching several of Blake’s technicians work on the consumer version of the military-grade system I just test-drove.

“Had I known the difficulties,” he says, “I would have never started this. But here we are, and now I’ve got over a hundred engineers worshipping the Duck.”

“Shave my head and dress me in robes. That thing is insane. It’s also insane that your board was avant-garde enough to back the development effort.”

“Ah, well that’s just it. They didn’t.”

“What?”

“Yeah. I pitched them an earlier version of the project, and they barfed all over it. Not a core competency and all that. I decided to do it anyway.”

“So you diverted the money? Wait, let me guess . . . From Goblin, which was supposed to be venture capital for squashing future competitors.”

“Right. Soon the department will start showing ‘material losses,’ and the board will start shitting Yorkshire terriers.”

“And the Dancers are going to glide in to provide a distraction?”

“Not exactly. When I found out about Olya’s opportunity, I knew that, regardless of whether people really want to copulate with machines, the
announcement
would generate a certain amount of heat. And one can profit when the animal spirits are stirred. Now, IMP couldn’t invest in IT directly, but I could use some of my personal money to prime the pump. And Goblin could benefit if I bought support companies that might see immediate returns as Money realizes the implications of real virtual sex.”

“That’s why I’m doing this turbo NOD integration.”

“Yeah. And why beforehand we funded the development of LibIA, so that we have a cybersexual ecosystem already in place for when we release the Dancers into the wild. Goblin cashes in on the buzz, and I get time to finish Holy Duck. Once it’s a fait accompli, the board will fall in on the marketing.” Blake’s voice segues into ironic soliloquy. “Holy Duck will be a huge hit, and I become the visionary who is going to lead IMP into the twenty-first century. Then there will be no one to stop my evil plans.”

“But in the meantime, you’re walking a fine line. If the board finds out about all the money going into Holy Duck, or that you’re the one behind our plastic fantastics—”