Slabscape : Reset Page 8

‘How long has this been going on?’

  ‘Ages! Must be at least five hundred and sixty cykes by now – ask Sis.’

  Dielle suddenly felt very tired. ‘I guess I’ll look it up later. But first I have to ask you something. Something a bit, well, weird.’ Kiki looked concerned and the display changed into a brilliant arrangement of variegated penRoses, bringing a fresh fragrance to the room. ‘You know how you don’t use the word shit any more here?’

  ‘No dear, we don’t.’

  ‘Why is that? I mean I’ve type of noticed something about myself. That is something I haven’t done, or even needed to do. It’s a bit . . . delicate.’

  ‘We don’t use the word shit, dear, because we don’t shit, dear. That is, all of us non-naturalists don’t.’ She wrinkled her nose. That n word again. ‘You, like all of us civilised people, have emties installed in our digestive tracts and urinary systems which extract all of our body’s waste products after we’ve finally squeezed everything we need from our food and drink, and send it for recycling. It’s all completely automatic and you don’t even know it’s happening. Nice and clean.’

  Well, he thought, that explains that nagging feeling he’d been having and why they don’t use the word anymore – no-one here has ever seen the stuff. ‘Very efficient,’ he said, draining his glass.

  ‘Yes, the toilet paper manufacturers didn’t half kick up a stink about it though.’

  ‘No shit!’ said Dielle and they laughed.

  Wars, lost souls and useless assholes. Dielle thought it sounded like the name of a song.

  ‘Kiki, it’s sure felt like a long day,’ he sighed. He hadn’t got around to telling her about Louie yet. That could wait until the right moment. He needed to have a few words with himself before he let those two meet.

  He wondered for a moment about the integrity of hiding what was an important part of his past from the woman he loved. Then he looked at Kiki happily sipping her Generous Peasant, giving him sexy come-hither looks.

  ‘Let’s go to bed,’ he said.

  ten

  Kiki was missing again when he woke up. She’d left a voice message to tell him they’d been invited to a NewCycle party and that she’d be back around seven to get ready. She sounded excited. But then, he thought, it wasn’t too hard to get Kiki excited. He liked that about her.

  He had a conversation with Sis about clothes and learned he could select anything he wanted from a seemingly endless sume catalogue. He settled on a simple green tunic with knee-length baggy pants. He’d been wearing the same shoes he’d been given at Aux Renoir and couldn’t see a reason to change them, so he grabbed the vDek from the pile of clothes he’d discarded the night before and headed for Kiki’s transvex tube portal.

  [[State destination]]

  {[I don’t really know. Can I just explore?]}

  [[I can randomise you a selection of public portals or offer you one of 78.9 million personal tour recommendations]]

  {[Does Kiki have a personal tour recommendation?]}

  [[402 currently registered]]

  {[Then select one of those which starts with a quiet and stress-free place to eat]}

  [[••]]

  Dielle took a breath, stepped through the transvex and had to fight hard to control his rising panic as he plummeted down the narrow shaft. This was going to take a lot of getting used to, he thought.

  He hurtled into a wide, gracefully curving inter-section surge which was filled with hundreds of animated bubbles. All of the privacy fields were showing softAds. As one shot by, he heard the sound of clinking glasses and a familiar voice saying ‘Aux Renoir is my favourite French restaurant in Mitchell’ and thought that he saw . . . nah, he thought, it couldn’t be. Another one sped past him then slowed down before careering up toward an approaching funnel. It was showing the same softAd; a view of him smiling out at himself, sitting next to Kiki with Makepiece proudly bowing to camera in the distance. He looked around to check if all the other privacy shields were showing the same softAd and noticed a few of the other freetubers watching him with undisguised amusement.

  {[Can I have a privacy bubble please?]}

  It appeared instantly.

  [[Debit 26]]

  A support surface rose up as he sat down.

  {[Sis, I just saw a softAd that looked like it featured me and Kiki]}

  [[••]]

  {[What can you tell me about this?]}

  [[More precision required. What do you want to know about? Options: projection system/content creation/purchased media and market penetration/related affiliates/revenue streams/brokers/syndication]]

  Dielle interrupted.

  {[Who authorised this?]}

  [[Your agent]]

  {[Who?]} He remembered Bella had said something about an agent too.

  [[Kioki Sypher-Marie Pundechan of Pundechan Media Corporation]]

  Dielle became quiet and thought for a while. {[Do I get paid anything from the use of my image in this way?]}

  [[Do you want details?]]

  {[Deliver]}

  [[Your standard trading account is currently being credited at an average rate of 0.78 bucks per second, however there was a peak of 343.37 bps last night during the live sume cast of the copulation event which momentarily reached the top thirty of SlabNow mostSumed (54plus rating)]]

  ‘What?!’ Dielle said out-loud.

  {[What?]}`

  [[~~?]]

  {[People were watching us have sex last night? How?]}

  [[Normal sumecast subscription service syndicated by Pundechan Media]]

  {[I earn money from this? How many credits do I have at this moment?]}

  [[At this moment you have 524,345 credits after exTax]]

  {[Is that a lot?]}

  [[That depends on your point of view]]

  {[I don’t have a point of view]}

  [[Comparisons indicate your median bps income since re-entry is approximately 120.34 times that of the average SlabCitizen which would infer that most people would consider you to be doing very well. Does that help?]]

  {[I guess it does. If Kiki is my agent, I assume she is making credits out of this too?]}

  [[Of course. Pundechan Media has significant interests in the exploitation of your intellectual property]]

  {[How much?]}

  [[Private information; not authorised for your access. You will have to ask her]]

  {[That, I will do]} Not authorised, thought Dielle, why is that the only piece of information which doesn’t surprise me?

  [[Round Park Plaza level 521. Debit 45.23. Watch your step]]

  Dielle stumbled out into a bright, sunshiny day and a panorama of meadows and low, rolling hills. He walked toward the grass, looked down and froze in his tracks. The pavement between the tube portal and the park was transparent and more than a mile above the ground. Dielle threw himself onto the metre-thick invisipane and started hyperventilating. Sis emtied 2µg of Karmdown into his adrenal gland, then the equivalent of a rat 3 gin and tonic into his bloodstream and some reassuring information into his cognitive centres while the other two took effect.

  Round Park Plaza was a folly of magnificent proportions and the winning entry in the 'Mess with a Megatonne' competition that had been held subsequent to the capture of interstellar mass BJsus89654 in the early fourth century PD. It was a seven-kilometre-wide disk of pastoral peace floating two and a half kilometres above the Slabscape. A hundred translucent tubes spiralled down from a tranilinium perimeter to converge at a mobile interchange which tracked the park on its journey around the forests, plains and lakes of Mitchell SideUp. Daylight repeaters on the park’s underside meant that from below it looked like a gigantic jellyfish – which was exactly what the artist had intended. Visitors to the plaza were distributed around the park according to a personal-space optimisation algorithm and this, along with the low pressure, hyperoxygenated atmosphere made it a popular destination for wandering poets, strolling lovers and claustrophobic anti-socialites.

  After a few mi
nutes Dielle felt confident enough to open his eyes and crawl, slowly, to the grass verge. He stood up gingerly and backed away from the edge checking to see if he’d been spotted doing his bug-against-the-windscreen impression. There was no-one around. There was also nothing remotely resembling a restaurant within sight but he could see the top of a copse half-hidden in a nearby hollow so he decided to explore.

  As he walked, the grass flattened before him, sensing his path and adapting to his speed. He tried walking faster but the grass was always a step ahead of him. It whispered as he moved. When he sped up, it hissed. The air was cool and invigorating and made him want to take huge gulps of it and run. He ran.

  Beneath the trees was a sheltered clearing with wooden tables and benches but nothing that looked like a building or a machine that might dispense food. Hunger overrode his desire to figure it out for himself.

  {[Where do I get something to eat?]}

  [[What do you want?]]

  {[What do you recommend? No, scratch that. What do most people eat around here?]}

  [[Popular foods after an extended sleep period include: full Ænglish breakfast/fresh fruit and yoghurt/muesli/miso soup and desiccated fish/sugar cakes and chocolate drink/coffee, croissants and marmalade/cold cuts . . . ]]

  {[Stop]} Dielle had a feeling the list might be a long one.

  {[The first one]} He had no idea what he had just ordered.

  [[kTable to your left, flashing green]]

  One of the tables had a flashing green square above it which disappeared when he looked away. He sat down in the dappled sunlight and waited. After a few minutes, the central panel of the catering table slid open and one of the finest hand-cooked breakfasts onSlab rose to the surface. The sausages were sizzling, the bacon pink, firm and giving off a smell that made his saliva glands gush. The egg yolks were brilliant yellow, the tomatoes lush, the mushrooms steaming and juicy, the devilled kidneys plump and glistening. A stack of inch-thick brown toast oozed golden butter, and a large glass of freshly emtied orange juice sparkled with beads of condensation. The Seville orange marmalade fought the steaming coffee for olfactory dominance. The coffee won.

  [[debit 124.86]]

  ‘Not too shabby!’ said Dielle, pulling the plates toward him. He grabbed the hyperceramic cutlery and attacked the feast. After he’d taken the edge off his hunger, he wiped the grease from his chin and slowed down to savour each of the tastes. The combination of tomatoes with bacon triggered a deep and pleasant association that he couldn’t isolate, but the effort to delve into his past reminded him of the vDek in his pocket. He took it out and, with a sigh, asked Sis to activate it.

  ‘Hey! What the fuck? You turned me off! Who do you think you are?’

  ‘Don’t start that again. I’m having an absolutely fantastic breakfast and I’d quite enjoy turning you off again.’ He meant it.

  Louie took stock of their surroundings. ‘The fuck? We’re on a planet now?’

  ‘Nope. We’re still onSlab. This is a floating park in Mitchell SideUp and we’re alone because I need to talk to you.’

  ‘You’re jerking my chain! This ain’t no spaceship.’ He looked up. ‘I can see the sky! Hey, what’s that?’ he said, pointing upward.

  ‘That’s UpSideDown. Look, can’t you just ask Sis all this stuff?’

  ‘Who’s Sis?’

  ‘You know, the system, the thing that runs everything.’

  ‘Well you show her to me and I’ll fuckin’ ask it, OK? I don’t see no Sis.’

  ‘You just think to it through your neural interface. There’s nothing to see.’

  ‘Listen, the only interface I have is the one you’re listening to now,’ he said, pointing at his mouth.

  ‘Great,’ said Dielle. ‘So I have to explain everything to you?’

  ‘Yeah, right. Think of it as a public service,’ said Louie. ‘What the hell is wrong with you? I’m the guy who put you here in the first place. You don’t have the time to tell me what’s going on?’

  ‘Would you want to spend time talking to a three hundred and sixty-year-old projection of your former self that behaves like an animal and gives you shit?’

  ‘Good point! You do remind me of me a bit – only I was never such a creep!’ He looked down at Dielle’s plate. ‘How’s the food?’

  ‘Pretty great,’ said Dielle, through a mouthful of toast.

  ‘You should try mixing the tomato with the bacon – it’s a winner.’

  ‘Yeah, right. I need you to tell me how to eat.’

  ‘Look, kid, I was eighty years old when they popped me in the freezer. You don’t think I know stuff that’s valuable? I was a business man. I made a shitload of money. Enough to put me, that is you, into space on a luxury liner the size of a fucking country!’ Louie waved his arms toward the horizon and UpSide. He waved his arms a lot. Perhaps, thought Dielle, that was because they were so short.

  ‘I reckon I can get by without you. I don’t care what you know. That was a long time ago. You’re out of date.’

  ‘Yeah, I was always an independent son of a bitch too. Well, I thought of that.’ Louie tapped his nose as if he had some secret to tell.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I told you I was rich, right? Well I was still rich even after I’d paid those money-grubbing bastards for my cryo and our ticket out of there. If you want to know how rich, just ask your new sister about IRAK and how much it was worth when I cashed in my chips. I have a lot of moulah stashed away that only I know the access codes to, seeing as you can’t remember anything!’ He had a hands-around-the-testicles-and-ready-to-squeeze look on his face.

  ‘So you’ve got money – I have money too. I’m a star here. I’m making money just by sitting here.’ A thought crossed his mind. He put up his finger to silence Louie.

  {[Is all this being recorded?]}

  [[Of course, everything in range onSlab is recorded]]

  {[Can you make this private?]}

  [[••]]

  ‘What was that?’ said Louie. ‘You went all far-sighted on me. You talking to Sis?’

  ‘Yeah, I was just making sure this conversation wasn’t being broadcast.’

  ‘OK. Good point. Yeah, I would have thought of that if you’d let me know it was fucking possible!’

  ‘You just don’t get it, do you? You’re a fossil. I don’t need your money and you can’t even communicate with Sis.’

  ‘So what did you activate me for then?’ asked Louie.

  ‘Well I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions. Personal stuff. You know.’

  Louie wasn’t paying attention, he was staring over Dielle’s shoulder. Across the clearing, a beanpole of a man attired in top hat and tails was striding toward them.

  The man stopped and bowed slightly, removing his hat in a formal salutation.

  ‘Jeez!’ said Louie. ‘It’s Abraham fucking Lincoln!’

  ‘I’m very sorry for disturbing your repast,’ said the man in a slow, deliberate tone. ‘Please allow me to introduce myself. I am system admin representative 001.735.3160. However, you can call me Erik. I wonder if I could have a few moments of your time?’

  ‘Well, I suppose so,’ said Dielle. ‘You’re a system representative? You mean Sis?’

  ‘Precisely sir. May I sit?’

  It looked as though the old man needed to. Dielle moved over.

  ‘Why did you come to talk to me?’ he said. ‘Surely Sis can talk to me anytime without sending someone?’

  ‘Of course, sir. It isn’t you we need to speak with, sir, it’s your holo.’

  ‘Fuckin’ A!’ said Louie giving Dielle a triumphant look. ‘I need to have a few words with you, too.’

  ‘We have a . . .’ he paused, uncertain for a second, ‘situation.’ He was clearly unhappy about having to use this word. He turned to Louie. ‘Something has happened that we need your help with, something of the utmost secrecy and importance.’

  He turned back to Dielle looking grave. ‘We’re sorry, but we have to ask if you wou
ld mind turning yourself, your previous self, over to us for a while until we can get this little difficulty sorted out.’

  ‘Do I mind?’ said Dielle. ‘You can keep him.’

  ‘Little difficulty?’ said Louie. ‘You said it was of the utmost importance, and then that it was just a little difficulty. Which is it?’

  ‘Well it is both, Mr Drago, both. However it won’t do to spread alarm. And Dielle, sir, we’d be grateful if you kept this to yourself.’

  ‘No problem. In fact I’d already made sure the recording of this was private, so you’re fine here.’

  Erik was mildly amused. ‘Oh no sir, this isn’t being recorded.’

  ‘What’s in it for me?’ asked Louie.

  ‘I am authorised to certain limits, Mr Drago. What is it you want?’

  ‘Well, I want a long list of things but the first is complete autonomy from him!’ he said, pointing at Dielle.

  ‘Of course, Mr Drago. That is effective immediately.’

  ‘Call me Louie,’ said Louie with a smile, putting out his hand. Erik reached over and shook it. ‘Wow!’ said Louie excitedly, ‘I felt that! How’d you do that?’

  ‘I am a NAH, sir. Sometimes physical, but more often closer to your state of being.’

  ‘Nar?’ said Dielle. ‘What’s that?’

  Erik looked him steadily in the eyes. ‘Not Actually Human, sir.’

  Dielle shivered.

  ‘I’m sorry to be insistent but do you accept this requisition of your vDek, sir? We are in something of a hurry you see.’

  ‘Please, take it,’ said Dielle. And fuck off, he thought, loudly.

  [[~?]]

  {[Not meant for you, sorry]}

  Erik stood up, doffed his hat and collected the vDek. Louie floated in mid-air.

  Dielle grinned. ‘You’re legless!’ he laughed, pointing at Louie’s lower body as it faded out to nothing.

  ‘Yeah, well, I didn’t think I’d be needing them did I?’

  ‘Good day, sir’ said Erik, bowing slightly.

  Good riddance, thought Dielle. Then he wondered how he was going to find the answers to the things he wanted to know now that Louie was no longer under his control. Well at least he wasn’t going to have to introduce him to Kiki. That was a bonus. Then he thought about Kiki. Now that was going to be an interesting conversation.