Versim (6 page)

Jesus Christ Almighty
.
She’s got to be in play.

That was an invitation Hark would usually make time for. He’d also have to send whatever hacker was in charge a gift. They liked to razz you most of the time, but he had a few fans in the Sersavant corps who looked out for him.

“Good food here?” he asked.

She kept chewing, looked like she might blow another bubble, and smiled. “General Sao’s Chicken is my favorite. I like your jacket.”

Frankie righted himself. “I picked it out.” He still grinned like a fool.

She gave Frankie a once over. “What’s he on?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“I do.” She nodded at the menu over the cashier. “I’ll order. Get a table upstairs, and I’ll join you. You can pay me back …
however you want
.” She winked.

“Sure thing.”

He gave Frankie a gentle shove in the right direction. Frankie continued to grin at the young woman.
 

“No way, bro,” Frankie said as they walked up the stairs. “That has never happened to me. That never even happens to my friends. We hear about it sometimes. You know, actors who’ve scored a hit, maybe a role in one the big shows. We see them in the theater district. The bars cater to them after each night’s matinees. But you have to be a big celebrity to get that kind of offer.” Frankie teetered on the last step. Hark righted him. “She wants you so bad … just like that, she let you know.”

They entered a long, narrow space with tables and chairs packed with diners. The sound of twenty conversations at once was a welcome distraction. Hark chose a table in the middle. He began clearing off a few dirty plates. He dropped them in a trash bin. Frankie stood there, pretending to be a smiling mannequin.

“You look like a dimwit, or a drug addict,” Hark said. “I can’t tell which.”

“I had a friend once,” Frankie said as he sat down. Hark sat as well, hands folded. “We were … I think it was the East Village … yeah, Leopard Lounge. We were sitting at the bar after work, happy hour, drinking Kettle One, Red Bull, when this girl walks up to him. She wasn’t hot, not like that hottie downstairs. But she … uhm … says to him, ‘Hey, if you want to take me home, I’d say yes,’ like out of the blue. Can you believe that? I almost fell off my chair. She didn’t even look at me twice. And you know what he says, ‘Maybe later!’ I almost slapped him silly, but he told me he was meeting someone and didn’t want to lose his mojo. Who has mojo? God, you do. I don’t, for sure.”

Frankie’s eyes were no longer as wide as saucers and the pace of his breathing had decreased. He was still smiling, though.

“Here’s how this goes,” Hark said. “Be cool and don’t interfere.”

“Me?”

Hark harrumphed because Frankie looked like a perfect candidate for interfering.

The blue-haired girl sauntered up the stairs with a tray full of food. She set it down and took a seat next to Frankie.

“So?” she asked as she arranged the plates. “What’s your story?”

Hark sized her up as a go-go dancer, or maybe an out-of-work actress—maybe even a high-end call girl who liked to dress funky during the day. Something about the cut of her lips and those big eyes made him think she was a paying full immersion customer in the Rend-V. She’d probably gotten her genoscript captured, paid the fee to be immersed, and quietly began living life as a 21
st
century girl in a body husked to order. She had a perfect look that seemed chosen off a menu. Everyone around them glanced at her for longer than they should. Several guys couldn’t stop looking.

“What’s your name?” Hark asked, making himself a plate.

“Binda Avey”

“You awake or dreaming, Binda?” he asked.

She sat ram-rod straight and looked around, as if she were being surveilled. “Since you asked, I’m allowed to say.”

“Those are the versim rules.” Hark took a bite. “As an employee of EA, I’m officially asking.”

“Awake and loving it.”

“What year is it?”

“Twenty five sixty one, C.E. I’ve been in for a year.”

Hark nodded. “I knew you were a customer. You under contract for possible entry into the drama?”

“No. I’ve applied. But I haven’t been called yet. I’m just a tourist, enjoying the scenery.”

Frankie said, “What?”

She glanced at him. “He doesn’t know?”

“Not yet.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“No biggie. Rules are changing in this one. I’ll let him know soon enough.”

“You guys are messing with me,” Frankie said. He put his head in his hands. “That date’s in the future.”

“Not time travel,” Hark said. “Something else entirely.”

“He a new principal?” she asked.

“Started his role today. Sidekick. You hoping to be?”

“I got my ticket for full immersion and applied for a principal role. But no luck. I’ve been living here with a body on a trust fund, enjoying myself, hoping for a chance to show my stuff.”

“Rend-V actress, eh?”

“They just have to give me a chance.”

“And today?”

“Message on my phone to be here at this time,” she said, finally relaxing enough to make herself a plate.

“From who?” Hark asked, suddenly very interested.

“I have no idea. But when I saw you, I knew who you were. Anyone would know you. From what I remember, you weren’t in the cast. You’re new in this V.”

“Immersed today,” Hark pushed a plate to Frankie, who wouldn’t even look at the food.
 

“I know who you are, Specialist Harken Cole,” Binda said. "You got something for me to do?”

Hark was annoyed as hell all of this was happening around him, and he had jack-spit intelligence. She was a definite player he could use, but how?

“I’ll come up with something.”

She winked again and ate a healthy fork full of glazed chicken.

Frankie looked up. “What are you guys talking about?”

“You’re dreaming and don’t know it,” Binda said flatly.

Hark drummed his fingers on the table. “Wake up time.”

“I love it when this happens,” Binda said.

“Frankie, pay attention,” Hark said. “Look around the room. Look closely. I want you to keep looking until you see something odd, something only you would find odd. When you see it, tell me what it is.”

Frankie took his time looking, as if he were scanning the room in hopes of recognizing someone. Hark and Binda ate their food. A few minutes later Hark saw Frankie staring at an empty table. Hark turned around. On it, a small action-figure toy lay, one of the plastic kinds that kids in this time enjoyed.

“That looks like a Han Solo,” Frankie said.

“Who?” Binda asked.

“
Who
?” Hark said. “What kind of a narrative junkie are you? They let you in as a potential Rend-V actress without knowing that?”

“I passed the tests, sir,” she said, obviously perturbed. “Just not into the weird sci-fi stuff.”

“Settle down. Just playing.”

Frankie stood. Hark grabbed his forearm, lodging him in place. “Remember the red pill … blue pill?”
 

Frankie nodded. “Red pill.”

“When you pick up that object, there’s no going back.”

Frankie walked forward, grabbed the toy, went rigid, and crumpled to the floor.

“I was hoping that wouldn’t happen,” Hark said and stood to go help.

8

Krista Cole’s eyes snapped open. A dim light overhead caused her field of vision to remain blurry. She breathed deep, tasting the scrubbed tang of hive air. If you asked her, Rend-V air had no taste, ever—an odd versim phenomenon the Sersavants hadn’t corrected. She waited, listening to the humming of immersion equipment around her, glad to be back in the mundane world.

She saw the vague form of her brother, Tripp, lying on a low, canvas cot next to her. The immersion technician, Sammy, stood over both of them.

“Feeling better?” Sammy asked, wiping hands on a white smock smudged with mustard stains.

Krista sat up. “Tripp returning?”

“He’ll be with us in a minute or two.”

Krista waited for … a
pop
, as if every cell in her body expanded and collapsed at the same time, resounded from deep inside her. She couldn’t explain how her in-V body, which was nothing more than an immaterial copy housed in the mind of their host, synched with her actual one. But according to the technomystics, they were really two sides of the same coin. One person; two bodies.

“You’re clear,” Sammy said, leaning into a monitor with Krista’s data. “All the cellular stamps synced with the ‘rendered you.’”

She stood. She was in a cramped room full of digital equipment that surrounded them in a horseshoe. Sammy stood near a display wall with incomprehensible data feeding from their tunneler-host. Thin plastic sheeting stretched from ceiling to floor separated their room from a smaller one. She glanced that way and saw a glass cylindrical immersion vat. A young man in a bodysuit and bio-support harness floated in the nano liquid.
 

“How’s he doing?” she asked.

“No one’ll catch Garce. He’s the best invisible host in the business.”

Krista edged aside the plastic. Garce was the trade name for their current host. He was a skinny, unenhanced young man floating peacefully in a fetal position, appearing to sleep in the golden stasis liquid. He also had a brain that scored off the charts in V-Theory aptitude. He charged huge sums to illegally immerse individuals into Rend-Vs. And he’d never been caught. Sammy stood behind her and smiled, obviously happy with the level of care he provided. Around Garce’s vat, pinwheels lodged in the wall hung at attention, each one twirling even though no wind was blowing.

“He’s on fire today. How was it inside? Bright and detailed?” Sammy asked.

“As real as it gets. His mind is a wonderful thing.”

“That’s Garce. Pure imagineer.” Sammy continued to smile as if he were the one psychically rendering objects in the Rend-V. “How much time until you need to return?”

“I’ll be back in a few hours. Frankie and Binda are in play. Hark’s pissed he knows so little.”

“Hark’ll have his full memory soon.” Sammy waited. He obviously wanted her to explain what she was planning to do. “As soon as it’s safe.”

Behind Garce hung another curtain of plastic. She walked to it and pushed it aside. Standing upright was another immersion vat. Her brother, Hark, floated peacefully inside the biotic fluid. He wore his official EA jumpsuit and a skullcap to keep his hair in check. Goggles protected his eyes. Tiny bubbles moved in and out of his mouth and nostrils as he breathed the oxygenated liquid. She was bothered by the tubes that ran from different parts of his body. He looked … half machine. But all of it could keep him alive indefinitely, without any harm to his body, while his rendered self lived in the mind of Garce, who, himself, had snuck into the mind of Celia Preston.

“See you in a little while.”

9

Krista sat behind the windscreen in an open shuttle as it sped her along a central axis corridor inside EA’s Upper Deck Headquarters. It dropped into a shaft, where it rode through a narrow tunnel on its way to the Voxyprog rendering fortress where all Rend-Vs were generated.
 

Since she was a bleedover investigator, no one gave her trouble. She had access as deep as she needed to go. The tiny apartment in which she’d left her brothers had been buried deep in the subterranean levels beneath a ghetto arcology a shuttle’s ride away. What she was doing now was waging war on the Voxyprog. If she were caught, more than her career would be in jeopardy.

In minutes she exited the shuttle at a disembarkation security checkpoint. She flashed her retinas at the security camera and walked through the double doors into the most lucrative organization on the planet.
 

She had changed into formal attire: an EA uniform singlet used for dignitaries on official business. Hers was navy blue with white stripping on the legs and arms. A zipper that ran to her neck closed a flap at her breast. EA’s logo was stamped in the middle. She wore her hair in a bun, a few locks hanging free. Otherwise, she was happy she looked like a woman born with an outstanding intellect package and a subtle but graceful aesthetic package: which meant men always looked twice.
 

She ignored everyone as she moved deeper into the fortress. She had dampened her AI, Atticus. She didn’t want the Voxyprog having any access to her by listening to him chat about what V-nerds the Sersavant hackers were.
 

When she emerged into a huge interior space, she relaxed. Here the workers lived. It was a hollow pyramid-shaped structure with three-hundred floors. It housed over five million residents. The hive-city structures were a technomystic’s haven. She saw people strapped into pods traveling to the exclusive shops and restaurants on top. Transparent catwalks crossed the space as well, rows of pedestrians moving like ghosts through the air. Above her a cantilevered restaurant with a transparent floor extended overhead.
 

She waved at an automated pod of bubble chrome. The hovering vehicle emerged from a lower level and floated at the edge of a platform. She pulled open the gate and stepped in. She strapped herself into the harness, resting her arm on the side, preparing to enjoy the ride like any one of the thousand tourists who visited every day.

“The
Collides
shrine.”

“Yes, Inspector Cole,” the autopilot’s voice said.

The pod gently increased speed and elevation as it worked its way into a lane of ascending traffic. The cool air of the arcology smelled of scrubbed O2 and something else she imagined to be machine sweat.
 

She let her mind wander as her pod rushed her out of the hive through a connecting artery into the fortress. Years of her work were now being jeopardized because Hark had let himself get played. Krista considered the unavoidable fact that her valuable archive in
Collides
was in jeopardy. Year after painstaking year, she had built up the repository to house every piece of narrative created inside a series of Rend-Vs. She’d been given a special place—a rendered New York Public Library—to house these unique pieces of art. Each one was proof that constructed persons were real persons. Each one was proof a world such as
Collides
shouldn’t be snuffed out with the blink of an eye.