Slabscape : Reset Page 7

  {[OK, I’ll listen. What’s up?]}

  [[‘Up? Up is up. Do you require information about Slab gravitational orientation?’]]

  Jeez, he thought. These interns were really pedantic.

  {[No, I mean: deliver]}

  [[‘The action you are about to perform will activate a long-dormant interactive personality made by a human entity over 360 Earth years ago using outdated and not fully comprehensive technology. Even though it is flawed in its data integrity, this entity, once activated, will immediately be allowed temporary citizen rights. Although it is currently locked to you, it will have free will and the right to exercise that will. This has already precipitated debate in SlabCouncil as to the validity of the rights so granted.’]]

  {[And why should I care about that?]}

  [[‘Quite’]]

  Dielle felt sure he heard a sigh in that word.

  [[‘There is one other thing to consider of a more personal nature; You are, at this moment, for all intents and purposes, like a new-born in a world that is designed to protect and provide for you. You have no encumbrances from the past and are free to explore and discover your new life as an innocent. It is a state that many would envy and some deliberately re-create through voluntary resetting. You may discover much from your past that you would rather not know. The purpose of this intern interrupt is to make you aware of this, as it is possible that you may not have considered this option.’]]

  Well, thought Dielle, he certainly hadn’t considered the possibility that it might be a mistake. He could, he supposed, just walk away from his own past and never look back. Life had been pretty good so far without knowing why he was here.

  He wondered why he was here.

  {[Yeah, thanks, but I thought about that already]}

  [[‘Are you ABSOLUTELY sure?’]]

  {[Yeah, and I’m pretty sure that I, that is the I that I used to be, would want to be reactivated, like I would]}

  [[‘Admirable rationalisation. Good luck.’]]

  A smiley male voice cut in. [[‘This intern interrupt was brought to you free of charge and is a service of SlabCouncil. Thank you for adding your thoughts to the contiguation. Enjoy the moment.’]]

  Dielle took another mouthful.

  {[Sis?]}

  [[vDek assigned, loaded and locked. Options start/stop/pause]]

  {[vDek:start]}

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  Dielle jumped. ‘Hey! Watch your mouth! Who do you think you’re talking too?’

  ‘I just fucking asked you that, you fucking moron!’

  ‘Who are you calling a moron?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I was trying to find out. Fuckwit.’

  Dielle was glaring at a guy sitting opposite who was supposed to be him, but couldn’t be. This guy was short, bald and ugly with a huge, bent nose and beady eyes. It couldn’t be who he used to be. This guy was a complete asshole.

  The old guy looked about him in amazement. ‘Hey, where am I? And what the fuck is that?’ he asked, pointing at the vDek.

  ‘You’re in Jenny’s Diner in Seacombe SideUp and that’s a vDek, it’s a portable holographic projector which must be broken or something.’

  ‘Portable? Fuck me! Portable? They had to construct a whole fucking room around me to get my personality down into that machine. It took ten fucking days! And I’m portable? Fucking A! What’s your name, numbnuts?’

  ‘I’m Dielle. Who are you? I was expecting to talk to my previous self.’

  ‘I,’ said the projection, proudly, ‘am Louie Clinton Drago, self-made business gurulla and semi-retired philanderer. And unless something has gone so woefully wrong that I’m going to have to sue somebody until they bleed, you must be the new, improved version of me. But if you are me, how come you don’t remember me?’

  ‘I’m a reset. All my memories have been wiped by the cryo process.’

  ‘Jeez! How long was I in there?’

  ‘Three hundred and sixty years.’

  ‘Sheesh!’ Louie was nonplussed, but not for long. ‘Hey! Let me look at you! I wanna check the merchandise!’ He scrutinised Dielle’s face. ‘Stand up!’

  ‘Who the fuck?’

  ‘Look, I paid the equivalent of a small African country’s Gross Domestic Product to re-make me into you, so the very least I get is to check that the contract was delivered. Right?’

  Dielle couldn’t argue with that – at least not right away.

  ‘Stand up! Turn around!’

  Dielle reluctantly stood up and turned half to one side, but that was all he was prepared to do. He sat down again.

  ‘Not too shabby! What are you, six four? Six five? How’s it feel?’

  {[How tall am I?]}

  [[1.97 metres, 6 foot 5 1⁄2 in imperial units]]

  ‘Yeah, it feels OK.’

  ‘Lemme see your hands.’

  Dielle obeyed like a puppet. An angry puppet.

  ‘That’s great! Job done, eh? You can play the adrenalin game now! I never stood a chance, but you . . . you could be a contender!’

  ‘What game?’

  ‘Basketball of course! You have the hands and the reach now – you can play!’

  {[What is basketball?]}

  [[Ball game played between two genetically-enhanced sides in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries on Earth. Highly specialised physical prowess was required and opposing sides became so evenly matched that games were often decided by less than a 2% margin, which was far smaller than the influence of pure chance. Ultimately this meant that no matter how much effort was invested into improving athletic skills, pure luck would always override it. Exponential audience decline resulted in it being abandoned on Earth October 19th 2099. Never revived onSlab]]

  ‘They don’t play it here.’

  ‘What??’ said Louie. ‘I can’t believe it!’

  ‘Too little interest, apparently,’ said Dielle with a shark-smile.

  ‘Not interesting?!’ Louie was aghast. ‘The slam dunk? The craze? The hizzerflop?’ He waved his arms about, mimicking moves.

  {[What the hell is he talking about?]}

  [[No idea. Running data integrity check on his program]]

  ‘The poodly-woodly! The jigger-bite! The grace and beauty! The tension courtside at the top of the fourth!’

  [[You may have to consider the possibility that your former self was severely . . .]]

  ‘I mean, DeLoitte Spinner for Christ’s sake! DEEEE-LOITTE!’

  [[DeLoitte Spinner was a Basketball star in the 2020s. That’s a relief, I thought I was going to have to take him offline for a millisecond there]]

  Louie held his head in his hands, muttering to himself about not letting someone down. He came to a conclusion and looked around, brightening instantly.

  ‘Hey, what is this joint? Looks just like a diner I used to practically live in when I was your age. Nah, that’s not possible. Maybe diners never change, eh? One of those constants the white-coats keep boring on about, eh? The Diner Constant – or the Constant Diner, that’s even better. Write that down!’

  ‘No way are you me, er, am I you. No way,’ said Dielle.

  The holo-projection of Louie abruptly disappeared to be replaced by a two dimensional picture of a younger man. Louie’s voice continued: ‘That’s me aged twenty-three. That’s about four years younger than you should have been regened back to. Imagine this guy with a smaller nose and, like, a bit taller.’

  Dielle had to admit, the picture he was looking at did carry a vague resemblance. ‘Shit! How’d you get to be so ugly?’

  Louie reappeared, and gave Dielle a piercing look, ‘You know, people used to accuse me of being a bit blunt too, but fuck ’em! They’re all dead now, right? Listen, I know I may not be the dupest guy in town, but you’d better remember that you’re me, and I’ve got a lot of secrets stashed up here in my head, or better still, somewhere in a triple-encrypted interactive programme loaded into some quadruple-redundant data core somewhere. Sooner or later you’re gonna nee
d to know some of the things I do, believe me, would I lie to you? What for? Why would I lie to myself? How could I win? Just think about it. You gotta be as smart as I was when I was your age and I may have gotten old but I never got stupid. Think about it.’

  Dielle thought about it. He was right. What possible reason would he have for lying to himself? He’d already realised he was pretty good at lying to others, but to himself? He was still too young and naïve to realise how many people spend the majority of their lives lying to themselves.

  Louie launched himself onto his back and lay on the table looking up at Dielle’s face. ‘Shit! Those bastards! They were sure they’d figure that one out!’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Fucking nose hair, that’s what! There is no point at all in the little fuckers and they’re irritating as hell! Shit! With all this technology,’ he said, waving his arms around at nothing resembling technology at all, ‘you’d have thought they could have got rid of a few bloody hairs.’

  ‘They don’t bother me,’ said Dielle.

  ‘No of course they don’t bother you now,’ said Louie, exasperated. ‘Just you wait another twenty years or so, then they’ll drive you fucking crazy!’ He looked as though he was trying to put all his fingers of both hands up his nostrils. ‘Goddamn not-yet-invented clauses,’ he muttered.

  Louie looked around and spotted Mary-Belle, who was over at the table with the military-looking customers. They were all staring in Louie’s direction.

  ‘Hey, who’s the Barbie?’

  ‘That’s Bella, she brings food and stuff and she’s a really cute mover – watch.’ He waved at Bella who immediately came gliding over.

  ‘Are you going to introduce me to your friend, Dielle?’

  ‘Hi Bella, Louie Drago,’ said Louie, extending a hand which disappeared out of the edge of the projection field. He pulled it back in with a shrug. ‘How d’you glide like that?’

  ‘Anti-grav stick-ons,’ she replied, lifting a foot to reveal thin pads on the souls of her shoes. ‘I have them on all my work shoes. You won’t believe how much walking you have to do in this job.’ Both men looked at Bella’s finely shaped calves with a similar intensity. ‘So are you really from twenty-first century Earth? What was it like in those days?’

  ‘So far, exactly like this place. I used to breakfast, lunch and dinner in a joint like this one back in the twenties. You’re cute! What time you get off work? Maybe I got a few stories you haven’t heard?’

  ‘I bet you have!’

  ‘Hey!’ said Dielle. ‘I think we have some other stuff to talk about and anyway, in case you haven’t noticed, you’re a projection. You aren’t going anywhere without me.’

  ‘Well I’m sure Bella doesn’t mind, do you gorgeous?’ Louie tried to give Bella his winning smile, but as usual, it came out like a dirty leer from an old man. ‘And I don’t mind watching.’

  {[vDek:stop]}

  Louie disappeared. Dielle turned to Bella, his face reddening. ‘I’m really sorry. I didn’t know I was such a disgusting old man.’ He remembered the warning from the intern about discovering aspects of his past he’d rather not know. Maybe he should have listened.

  ‘Oh, don’t apologise for him, honey, he’s just a holo. All he can do is watch and make noise.’

  [[•]]

  {[Deliver]}

  [[‘Hello darling! I’m on my way home! I see you’re at Jenny’s. Shall I meet you there?’]]

  {[It’s OK, I’m just finishing up. I’ll come over]}

  [[‘I’ll be in the tub – it’s nearly ready now.’]]

  Now that, thought Dielle was the best idea he’d heard all day. He picked up the vDek and put it in his long sleeve. ‘Well,’ he said, turning to Bella, ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Now you come back whenever you want, honey. You’ll always find a warm welcome at Jenny’s!’

  [[Debit 14.35]]

  Dielle found his way back to Kiki’s place without asking Sis for directions and felt particularly proud of his navigation skills. Despite passing a few low buildings set discreetly into the landscaped platform, he saw no-one. As he entered the apartment a fine mist formed outside like a cloud descending.

  {[What’s happening?]}

  [[Routine cleaning and static biomass maintenance]]

  Dielle was glad not to have got wet until he heard Kiki call from the tub and the idea took on a sudden appeal. What a fine place this is, he thought. What a very, very fine place.

  Later, in the lounge, while drinking a large Generous Peasant, a refreshing, fruit-filled drink with light sparkles and level 2 regulated alcohol which Kiki said couldn’t get him drunk, no matter how many he drank, Dielle started to tell her about his day. When he got to the part about the two people he saw in Jenny’s wearing uniforms, Kiki sat up.

  ‘That’s reminded me, I overheard something earlier. Something happened today.’ She pulled her robe over her bare shoulders and turned to the flower display. ‘Let’s check on the war.’

  The flowers vanished and a fivedee projection of a firework display filled the space.

  ‘Dice!’ shouted Kiki. ‘That was a galactic-class destroyer. One of ours!’

  Dielle had a sinking sensation. He knew everything had been just a little too good so far. ‘We’re at war? Those people in Jenny’s – they were soldiers or something?’

  A flotilla of heavily armoured battle cruisers bristling with spines and antennae ploughed through the remnants of the annihilated spaceship. Lines of incandescent light shot out from the fleet in seemingly random directions. Small explosions flowered into a semicircular shell surrounding the scene.

  ‘Yeah, of course,’ said Kiki, getting excited. ‘All those spiky ones are ours, the enemy are in cloaked mode so we can’t see them, but they can see us.’ As she spoke a line of light originated from the top right corner of the display area and ten ships instantly targeted the point of origin. Nothing happened. Kiki slammed her fist into the couch. ‘Missed! Lookadat!’ The display cut to a full-length picture of a handsome middle-aged man in a similar uniform to the ones Dielle had seen earlier. ‘Oh, it’s Admiral Massive!’ said Kiki.

  Behind the admiral was a jumble of displays filled with flashing graphics and information he didn’t understand and military types doing incomprehensible things.

  ‘They let you see what’s happening on the warships?’

  ‘They’re not on the warships, silly!’ said Kiki without taking her eyes from the scene. ‘They’re here onSlab. Most high-ranking officers will co-ordinate from one of the local command centres, but the marines and pilots usually fight from home. Admiral Massive lives quite near here. I’ve met his wife a couple of times. She’s nice.’

  ‘So who’s on the warships and who are we fighting?’

  ‘No-one’s on the warships!’ Kiki was shocked. ‘People would get killed! How horrible!’ She shuddered. Dielle thought that killing people was probably one of the main tactics of war, but didn’t feel secure enough to say it. ‘And we’re fighting the enemy of course.’

  ‘So the ships are run by remote control or something?’

  ‘Well of course! You wouldn’t send actual living people into a war zone, would you?’ she looked at Dielle suspiciously. He felt his next answer might be strategically important.

  ‘No, of course, it’s just that . . . where is this war taking place anyway? Are we in danger?’

  ‘It’s a couple of million klicks behind us at the moment, so no, we’re not actually in any danger. But if they get any closer we might be. It’s really crucial we figure out a way to detect them through their cloaking device and fast. They’ve advanced almost thirty thousand klicks since they got this new technology and that’s in just three cycles.

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘Exactly!’ Kiki was excited. ‘That’s more than they’ve gained since the quantum collapse over five hundred cykes ago and we were nearly invaded then! I can still remember the crisis over that, even though I was just a little girl. Everyone fre
aked out when they got to within two hundred thousand klicks. Oh, and we don’t use that word anymore, dear.’

  The display cut back to the battle as a cloud of small fighter craft exited one of the spiky ships, all heading in the same direction – toward nothing that could be seen. Kiki became even more excited, ‘Oh! Maybe they’ve figured something out! Hang on . . .’ She paused briefly while she checked with Sis. ‘No.’ She said, deflated. ‘Just a trial sortie apparently. More of a training run. They’re not going to make a big offensive until the new gigaplat arrives. It should get there the day after tomorrow. I’ve heard a very reliable rumour that it’s got some really cool stuff in it, too.’

  The point of view pulled away from the main area of conflict as sporadic fire fizzled down to a few dying explosions.

  ‘That must be it for today,’ said Kiki. ‘The enemy must have disengaged. Yes. Same time tomorrow for the next skirmish.’

  ‘They tell you when they’re going to fight next? Who are these people?’

  ‘Yes – and we tell them – it’s a kind of convention.’ Kiki smiled innocently. ‘We don’t actually know where they came from or what they look like because there’s no-one on their ships either. We’ve never even seen one. The rumour is that they are just like us though, because of the way they fight and the type of weapons they use. There’s a theory about parallel humanform development which states that any life-form capable of being in the same time and place as us and having similar technology to us must therefore look and behave like us. I think it’s a load of blocks, but I suppose it could just about be true.’

  ‘Why don’t we attack their planet or wherever they come from?’

  ‘No-one knows where it is, dear. But you can bet there’s a lot of effort going into finding out. If you’re interested, there are loads of sumes about it.’

  Dielle took another drink, wishing it was stronger. ‘So we’re at war with an alien life-form we’ve never met and no-one ever gets hurt?’

  ‘Yes! It’s terribly exciting at the moment, too!’