Cole Perriman's Terminal Games (9 page)

Marianne’s next tactic was to let the orbit continue until the other operator broke it. But her counterpart apparently had the same idea this time, too, and the orbit continued for several long seconds. Marianne decided to wait it out. Soon, one of the figures broke out of the orbit and Marianne then knew that hers was the figure still spinning in its original path.

Now Marianne propelled her figure toward a blue-toned Asiatic-looking fellow, and she quickly sensed that their contact was going to click. Sure enough, their bodies met and connected. Marianne lost all control of the action. She could only sit and watch as the two figures wrapped themselves more and more tightly together, the female’s legs winding serpent-like around the male’s.

The animation was remarkable, with shifting highlight and shadow falling perfectly across their constantly moving limbs. Marianne guessed that each possible pairing of puppets offered a separate animation sequence, so one could come to the Weightless Chamber many times and still feel that one was watching a fresh, spontaneous sex act.

It went on for a surprisingly long time. The figures thrust pelvis against pelvis, slowly at first but then more rapidly, and ran their hands all over each other. They craned their necks and arched their backs in simulated passion, and the female’s long hair floated freely everywhere. Their accelerating movements sent them spinning and whirling through the sphere like a wayward, slowly rotating gyroscope. They slowly careened against other bodies and the walls, bouncing helter-skelter. Their mouths dropped open in unheard outcries. Their very silence amid the random erotic sounds was highly evocative. A series of climactic spasms brought the episode to an end.

Marianne suddenly felt just a shade warmer.

Is something wrong with the thermostat in this place?

Now she had to make a decision. The two figures could remain locked together in pleasant afterglow, or they could disconnect and float elsewhere. If they continued their embrace, it had to be a mutual decision. It only took one of the operators to break out of it.

Marianne felt tired now, and the day’s discouragements had pretty well left her mind. The Weightless Chamber had served its purpose, and she felt pretty sure she could go to sleep. She gently tugged her figure out of the embrace. The blue man’s arms reached yearningly after the departing female. The other operator had wanted to sustain a moment of simple affection, but Marianne had broken it. Marianne felt a pang of sadness when she realized what had happened.

Remember, it’s just a cartoon. Maybe he—or she—will have better luck next time.

Marianne struck a command, and the airlock doors appeared. The doors opened noisily, and the naked puppet vanished into them.

*

safir>howdu lke to be in shobiz baby?

awgy>huh?

safir>u hrd me. howdu lke to cm out of that shll of urs and face the wrld? u’d be a hit i cn tell u.

Renee pressed the command for synthetic laughter and Sapphire complied with her usual gloating chuckle. She had lured Auggie into a “booth” by design. Here there could be no interruptions from other Auggie fans, and nobody could hear what they were saying to one another.

“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” Renee whispered to Sapphire. “Didn’t I say I wanted to go cold turkey?”

Renee’s resolve had broken the minute she had tried to go to sleep. It felt convenient, now, to blame Sapphire, who did seem rather willful at times. A lot of self-recrimination would only hurt Renee’s concentration, and she had to stay focused. She couldn’t let Auggie sweep her off to the Pleasure Dome or the casino or some other Insomnimania game room.

Anything might happen in one of those places.

And indeed, it had sometimes seemed as though anything
did
happen. On one or two occasions, Renee seemed to have fallen asleep in front of the computer while continuing to operate Sapphire. She had only a sketchy memory of what had actually transpired, particularly when she was prowling the maze with Auggie.

We’ll have none of that tonight.
She was resolved to keep Sapphire firmly in character—meaning under control.

Sapphire and Auggie were nestled in pixel-simulated upholstery across a pixel-simulated Formica table sipping on pixel-simulated drinks. Comic-book-style word balloons, invisible to the other patrons, enclosed each bit of their dialogue. Renee reminded herself to make sure Sapphire savored this strawberry daiquiri very slowly. Mixed drinks at Ernie’s cost more than she’d be willing to spend in a real bar. Whenever one logged into Ernie’s, one’s tab was automatically drawn off one’s credit card. And there was a two-drink minimum.

Sapphire was Renee’s image of a social climber from the Bronx who had long since succeeded in destroying the emotional well-being of four full-grown children (all financially successful professionals), emasculating her husband of thirty-two years (a used car salesman), and imprinting a brood of grandchildren with primal guilt trips. By Sapphire’s reckoning, this constituted having lived a rich, full life. Now she was loose in the infoworld, gathering and dispersing gossip, generally living it up and enjoying her retirement. Or so Renee imagined—and imagination was all that mattered in Ernie’s Bar.

As Renee manipulated Sapphire’s image by striking the command key in various combinations with other keys, Sapphire indulged in her chronic nervous mannerism of fingering her ruby necklace as she leaned across the table toward Auggie. Sapphire was sipping her drink, revealing a gratuitous quantity of pudgy cleavage. Renee typed in Sapphire’s next line of dialogue, and a rectangular word balloon expanded to fit the increasing verbiage. As the dialogue balloons appeared, Renee read both Auggie’s and Sapphire’s words aloud. Somehow the conversation seemed more real that way.

safir>awgy hunny lissn to your deah frnd safir. doncha think its maby time u shd think abt goin public?

awgy>whassat? going
pubic
?

safir>o awgy u scamp. u r trooooly bad. u no what i meeeeen.

Tricky territory.
But she was determined to draw Auggie out—and ultimately to get him on the air. She chuckled to herself. Imagine getting an entity who only existed on a computer screen to go
audio
—and face a big, big audience.
A telephone interview would do it.
Auggie’s anonymity could he preserved even while she tried to get him to reveal as much possible about himself.

Her racing thoughts hesitated a moment at the idea of revealing that Sapphire was actually the alter of L.A.’s hottest talk radio host. Did Renee actually want to meet somebody whose nighttime hobby was creating computer simulations of real-life killings?

Oh, but it got to be worth the risk. “Auggie, the Computerized Snuff Room Virtuoso”—a virtual entity “live” on real life radio—the latest thing in performance art.
It would be a ratings hit! And in a town like L.A., who knew what kind of doors it might open up for Auggie, too—or whoever this character really was?
He might be the next Max Headroom—and longer lasting. Someday he’ll thank me for it.

In the meantime, Auggie sat with his elbow on the table, his chin resting on his raggedy-gloved hand, sipping at a pint of Irish stout, tilting his head quizzically in a manner reminiscent of Jack Benny. He made no reply to Sapphire’s last remark.

Lucifer stalked toward the keyboard.

“Shooo!” hissed Renee loudly. Lucifer had an uncanny knack for pressing the wrong keys when he strayed near the computer. On one occasion, he’d managed to delete an entire file. On another, he successfully logged Renee off Insomnimania at an extremely inappropriate moment in the Weightless Chamber.

Renee vigorously brushed Lucifer off her desk. She sat waiting, trying to decide what to say next. But the clown was talking again.

awgy>do u no hw mportnt u r 2 me safir? we r a hol wurld al bi rselvs. a univers. we cn be 1 tgether. Ths hol act’s immutably decreed. Twus rehersed by thee and me a billiun yeers before insomnimania ever wus.

Renee shivered slightly. Between crude jokes, Auggie sometimes spoke fleetingly of profound secrets and the powers of fate—brief, incongruous bursts of intimacy and eloquence that always disturbed her a little. And now he was quoting something again. What was it? She wished her knowledge of literature were better.

The clown said nothing more. He seemed to grow larger, to fill more of her vision. An animator’s trick? As aware as she was of the techniques being used, she shrank back from the intensity projected through her computer monitor. She took a breath and began to type again.

safir>awgy hunny safir nos a litl seeeeeecret abt u.

Auggie made no reply, but wiggled his fingers and eyebrows at Sapphire in the lecherous mode of a burlesque comic. Gone was the daunting air he had assumed the moment before. Now he was fully a clown again.

safir>safir nos wher u get ideas for thos wunnerful snuffs of urs.

Auggie was motionless. He still made no reply. Slowly and cautiously, Renee continued to type.

safir>u get them frm reeeeeeel lif dont u?

Still silent, Auggie made an exquisitely slow and exaggerated shrug, proclaiming with nonverbal ingenuousness, “I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”

Oh, he’s a virtuoso.
Renee typed some more.

safir>awgy sweethart u can pla this dnky tavern or that lil snuff room for the rest of ur days—but who d’u think ure rechin? 100 a show r maybe 2? doncha think u dezerv bettah? doncha evah think abot goin for the bucks n glory? now lissn to safir awgy—ive gotta frnd hoos gotta frnd hoos gotta frnd hoo cld get u gobs—n i dooo meeeeeen
gobs
of media hype n exposhuh. shd u hppn 2 be intrstd.

Auggie remained motionless and silent. Renee began to get a little nervous. The last thing she wanted was to trigger one of Auggie’s tantrums. The smiling clown often became furious over one trivial matter or another. Once he had criticized Sapphire’s penchant for strawberry daiquiris, insisting that she should drink stout instead. When Sapphire demurred, Auggie had angrily scrawled the word “bitch” across the screen and disappeared. Another time he criticized her hair color, insisting that lavender would be preferable to orange. Again Sapphire disagreed, and again Auggie cried “bitch” and vanished. Auggie had dumped poor Sapphire in such a peremptory manner a half dozen times now.

Simply to vanish from Ernie’s Bar—or indeed, from any room in Insomnimania—was considered the height of discourtesy. Your alter was expected to walk away and exit properly from even the most confrontational situations. Making your alter vanish was cheating, pure and simple. It broke the delicate reality of cyberspace.

But Auggie was notoriously uncouth and prima donna-ish.
Just like most celebrities.
She wanted to keep him on the hook just this once—long enough to set up some kind of arrangement with him. Then Auggie spoke again.

awgy>mr. 0 reely likes u. mr. 0 wunts to c u agin. rite now.

Oh, not this again.
Renee groaned. She remembered last week’s wretched episode when she had dressed up as “Blue Angel,” a scantily clad cabaret singer, and Auggie had transformed himself into an amorphous, faceless character named “Mr. Zero.” The two of them had retired to the Tunnel of Love, and their rompings there had left Renee distinctly queasy. Half asleep at her desk at home with Lucifer purring in her lap, Renee had almost felt an eerily tactile embrace of pixel limbs. She often enjoyed the Weightless Chamber, but the Tunnel of Love was much too furtive for her taste—and Mr. Zero was unmistakably weird. She typed again.

safir>awgy, hunny, pleez tel mr. 0 i luv him as a frnd. i reeeeelly dooo. but ime afrd it jst dosent click btween us, u no, sx wise.

awgy>then ile
cum
as i
am
!

To Renee’s great surprise. Auggie shoved his stout aside and grasped Sapphire by the wrist. He actually raised Sapphire’s hand passionately to his lips and kissed it. A noisy “smack” crackled over the computer speaker.

Renee inhaled sharply as if her own hand had been seized and kissed.
Impossible!

Physical contact between alters was reserved purely for the Pleasure Dome. It supposedly couldn’t even happen in Ernie’s Bar.

How did he do it?
How had Auggie—or the person manipulating Auggie—assumed power over Sapphire? Had this other user hacked into Renee’s Insomnimania file? Had he taken Sapphire away from her altogether?

Renee anxiously punched a command, and Sapphire obediently pulled both of her hands to her sides. Renee breathed a sigh of relief. She was in control of her alter again.

Auggie leaned across the table toward Sapphire, his big white eyes rolling wildly and bawdily in opposite directions.

awgy>o darlin safir ther iz a hol world watin 4 u & me. how cn you tok of fame and forchin wen wut i want is u u u u u? cm wth me to the pleshur dome n we wll al the pleshurs proov tht groves hills n feelds woods r steepy mtn yeelds!

The computer speaker suddenly roared with bells, sirens, bicycle horns, and calliope music. Renee laughed aloud nervously. This was getting her nowhere. She had to get Auggie off the subject of sex, but how? Well, what would a well-bred Bronx social climber say when propositioned by some witty but painty-faced freak?

safir>wht maks u think ide hve sx wth a clown?

The sound effects stopped abruptly. Renee shuddered as Auggie’s features darkened—she couldn’t quite tell how. Was it a subtle change of expression, or did his loudly painted face actually turn a more somber hue? Whichever was the case, Auggie had suddenly become inexplicably threatening.

awgy>huer u callin a clwn?

“Shit, I should have known!” Renee said aloud. “What a ridiculous situation.” She was genuinely uneasy now—although she felt stupid, too. Why had she insulted Auggie? A booth, after all, was customarily a place where couples clandestinely arranged liaisons in the Pleasure Dome—where new alters and sexual agendas were agreed upon. By luring Auggie here, Sapphire had seemed to be making the first move in another virtual dalliance.

safir>awgy hunny thers bn a litel misunderstndng. it jst wont work out. not btween u n me. fr 1 thng ive got anuther date 2nite.

awgy>
lying cunt