Dreambox Junkies Read online

  He had tried to get all of this through to Ruth, but to little avail. For Ruth, BoxRuth, things were simple: Groundworld was real; all those boxworlds just fantasies. Who cared what he got up to in his dreams? He could hook and fuck around to his cold male heart's content, so far as BoxRuth was concerned. Down here, of course, was a different matter.

  If only they could have hooked together, shared the box and built a new world between them. But you couldn't co-hook; it had been tried, and both minds got sizzled. The Berkeley Effect, the barely comprehensible quantum compliance phenomenon by means of which the Dreambox worked its magic, was fucked up by a di-or multiencephalic intravironment. The two minds cancelled each other out in an unresolvable id war. There was no room for two Fichtean Overminds lording it over the same boxworld. Indeed, Paulie reflected, the Berkeley Effect might more fittingly have been thought of as the Fichte Effect in its identification of the box user with the Overmind; only the support of the worldcopy rendered the boxworld more than a solipsistic phantasm.

  All of this was so much gobbledegook to Ruth. And yet, she was his accomplice. Somehow, she had brought herself to believe in him, in what he was attempting to achieve through sheer force of imagination, sleight-of-brain. She abetted his insanity. Out of love, she colluded in his delusion that he was no ordinary box junkie. At that very moment, in compressed time, in affluent bedrooms and scuzzy hovels alike, a thousand million acts of violence, sex, and violent sex were quasoccurring in a thousand million private boxworlds, predominantly male-generated, most of them numbingly near-identical in their swaggering scorn for the cerebral. Well, not for him those paltry little power trips and id orgies, those puerile superhero scenarios stuffed with gunplay and sexplay: Paulie Rayle had in mind a far, far higher purpose than mere self-gratification.

  Face it, Paulie thought, I'm a complete and utter flancase.

  Ruth deserved better.

  He had been Frances's kept man, and now here he was, a kept man again, a born taker.

  Was it worth it, what he was putting Ruth through?

  He gathered his saliva and swallowed the half-tab of Crowning Glory, followed by the C capsule. Getting water to wash them down would have meant going out there and seeing Ruth again and feeling the knife twist in his stomach.

  He felt dizzy. Dizzy from thinking about things. Wasn't that why he had come here, away from it all, to Hilford Abbots? All the shit the world expected of you, nowadays. And it was getting worse. How could they possibly function out there, all those stressmonkeys, up over their heads in the technocosm?

  But then, these were the folks who made the world go round.

  And people like Paulie Rayle?

  Useless eaters. The best that could be said about them was that they did at least refrain from making a more active nuisance of themselves, they didn't go out and commit crimes. Bigger crimes than no-goodness and parasitism.

  The door was opened again, more slowly this time.

  “Happy dreams."

  BoxRuth stood in the doorway, wanting to make up. Somehow, as usual, she had got it into her head that she was the one in the wrong, which could not have been further from the truth of things. He himself, Paulie Rayle, was absolutely to blame, and the tenderness in Ruth's voice, now, and the gaze he received from those beautiful eyes, were completely, absolutely undeserved.

  She came into the bedroom, into his arms.

  Kissing her, he said again, “I'm sorry."

  “We'll be fine.” Ruth returned the kiss three times over. “Stop worrying about us all the time. Kali likes to sit and watch me work. I strap her in her little seat, and she's fine. She loves to watch me sawing. Always cracks her up."

  “I feel mean."

  “Well, you shouldn't. It's not like you're just playing about.” She kissed his forehead. “Now go on, don't worry about us. We'll be here when you get back. And you'll never know if it's gunna work unless you keep at it, give it a proper try."

  He said, “It's a stupid idea."

  “No, it's not. It's worth trying. Now go on.” Ruth picked up the Dreambox, held it out to him. “I bought it for you to use, and that's what you're doing. Not like other people use them. Not like a toy. You're using it for something important. I mean, what could be more important than what you're trying to do?"

  Paulie took the Dreambox. A third-gen, it was no larger than a paperback novel. Fourth-gens were already available, dinky little miniboxes half this size. How long would it be before they could implant them in your head like Mindseyes?

  Ruth should have known better than to have gone and got him started on this. Where would it end?

  They kissed again and, before leaving him, she whispered, “Good luck."

  He sat down again on their bed, a sturdy, handsome pine construction of Ruth's. He put the box down beside him, checked the timer once again, attached the trodes.

  How could he get it through to Ruth, that it could never, ever possibly work, that what he was planning was, if not insane, then ridiculously naive?

  He lay back, stretched out beside the Dreambox.

  It was so unfair to delude her, to let her keep on believing. Not that she actually believed—how could she? How could anyone? It was, Paulie suspected, more a matter of fidelity to his hopes, of loving support for his ambitions.

  How much longer could he let it go on?

  He had followed the instructions to the letter. For two weeks, night after night as he settled down to sleep, he had built up in his mind a detailed vision of his Personal Heaven, as the Dreambox manual termed it. And only then, after this recommended period of conceptual armament, had he put on the trodes for the first time.

  It was now—what was it?—more than a month he had been hooking. And how many chronocompressed months of boxtime had it taken so far? How much higher did he have to climb before he got there?

  He speakstarted the Berkeley Effect.

  His boxworld, all those nanographically stored terabytes faithfully recreating the Earth and its inhabitants from the planet's every available infosource slipped smoothly in to override his physiosensory paradigm. Gaps, problematic lacunae, were either algorithmically airbrushed in picoseconds, or else simply overlooked by the brain's internal homeostatic sanity safeguards. Thus was Paulie's psyche relieved of much of the the primary burden of furnishing the field upon which seeds of meaning could be sown, his energies freed for the task of shaping, moulding, transforming the boxworld's psychoplastic realitude to his own deep, secret needs and ends, like a tailor adjusting the cut of an off-the-peg suit: taking in, letting out, seeking the ideal fit. The box's forebrain implicators kicked in immediately, calling upon intellect to balance emotion, lending intravironmental rigour, Apollo keeping a cool eye on Dionysus.

  Paulie thought bitterly, Why can't I stop kidding myself?

  The room began to come unstitched.

  Wasting my time.

  Transconscious, he swam in the soft sweet bliss belly.

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  Chapter 4

  Enjoying an aromatherapeutic soak in one of the exquisitely-tiled bathrooms in the smallest of her three equally idyllic yet unpretentious European residences, the Moorish casa tucked down an alleyway in the heart of Seville'S Barrio Santa Cruz, where she had, of late, taken to spending one or two winter months, Frances Rayle felt the Feeling again.

  Darling Xabier promptly dealt with things, holding her and helping her and administering the Socratosine prescribed to cushion her from her dangerously outrageous joy. Of course, she might have resorted to any of several automedicatory methods. Something called a Homeoresponsive Embed had been recommended by more than one of her doctors. Yet stubbornly, perhaps unwisely—but then, it was her body, her life and her sanity—she had opted for Xabier and his hypoderm gun. She preferred to place her trust in people.

  Gently, Xabier lifted her out and towelled her dry. At some point, as always, she had lost consciousness, suffered a brief, delicious pink-out, as
it was called, and might well have drowned had Xabier not been there.

  The Feeling was impossible to describe with any adequacy. It was comparable to, yet qualitatively distinct from, the most intense of orgasms. It took her, body and soul, and filled her utterly and left her exhausted but exhilarated.

  I must, Frances thought, present quite a spectacle, panting with pleasure, a woman of my age and degree of maturity.

  She had Xabier take her to her bed, had him fetch the mirror. Naked, weak, but glowing, positively glowing, she lay and studied her reflection. This time, for once, she had not fallen, so there were no fresh bruises.

  She heard the word belleza murmured.

  Xabier had said it before, spoken of her beauty—though never so frequently as to devalue the compliment. He was a sensitive soul. All of her people were sensitive. She considered that sine qua non.

  Her former self had always taken such remarks from Xabier as a reference to her hair, unarguably her most attractive feature. The old Frances Rayle had regarded her body as something once enviable, perhaps, but now in terminal decline. Prior to the therapy, her policy had been to avoid mirrors. And yes, the mirror still showed her a woman of fifty-six, unretouched by the scalpel. A face that, on close scrutiny, betrayed some leatheriness and strain. The tumble of hair, though, all those Congruent corkscrews, might easily have been the tresses of a teenager. Indeed, without the judicious leavening of grey—nowadays merely a part of one's palette, rather than a plight to be feared—she would most probably have appeared quite grotesque, mutton lurking under lambswool.

  The doctors had wanted to keep her brain constantly monitored. In her ignorance, she had imagined that this would necessitate the shaving of her head, a measure she had adamantly refused to even contemplate. Every iota of morale was now precious; any loss might upset what was, her instincts told her, the barest subjugation of dread by excitement. Or was it, more simply, that she wished to look her best for Paulie, couldn't bear to have him wince, show shock at the sight of her? Whatever the case, she needn't have worried: far from the cumbersome, unsightly mop of wired electrodes she had visualized, the monitoring device the doctors had in mind turned out to be discreet almost to the point of invisibility, consisting of a collection of tiny, bindi-like microtrodes stuck to her scalp, hidden under her hair, adhering so tenaciously that even a shampooing wouldn't dislodge them. Well, in theory, at least. In theory, she should not have spotted one of the little things floating on the surface of her bathwater only moments before this latest attack.

  Her eyes—Frances couldn't get over the eyes that gazed back at her from the mirror. The sharp, sparkling eyes of a younger woman, of her younger self. In fact, she found it quite comical, the transformation wrought already by the telotherapy. For what else was it but the very embodiment of that old advertising cliché, the treatment that renders one bright-eyed and bushy-tailed? If the therapy proved a success, and she knew it had, she could feel that it had, she stood to see her cells tread water at this stage for who knew how long?

  Strange. How removed she now felt from the frightened woman who, scarcely two months ago, had seen fit to spend an unconscionable amount on a new and very dubious treatment with its preposterous promise of—not quite eternal youth, in her particular case, since age reversal had not as yet been achieved, but a halt to the process, a containment.

  But she was glad of her vanity; it had given her this.

  Angel Syndrome, they had termed it. A new, peculiar form of dementia. Her previous self, her pre-treatment self, had read up on this very rare side-effect of telotherapy: how the sufferer became subject to the most ludicrous delusions, lost touch with reality so completely as to be unable to cope with the everyday world. To undergo telotherapy, even in a form carefully tailored to one's own genestory, would mean that one effectively risked sharing the pitiful predicament of drug users and their electronically-addled cousins, the so-called Dreambox junkies. And still, she had gone ahead. Why? Because she was human. Because she was tired of seeing her familiar self slipping away year on year, weary of maintaining the pretence of being able to grow old with grace. She could never bear to be operated upon by a cosmetic surgeon; not a phobia but surely a very natural, understandable antipathy when one's mother had died as a result of—why not put it plainly?—a facelift gone wrong. And so when telotherapy emerged, offering to freeze her cells’ regenerative powers at their current level of efficiency by means of a simple dietary supplement, it was nothing less than a godsend to a knife-shy femme moyen—vain?—the French word eluded her.

  And now here she lay, pregnant with the promise of enlightenment.

  Xabier froze, his eyes narrowing, and it was clear that a call was coming through to his Mindseye. He had opted for the device quite independently; she had not so much as suggested that he have the frightful thing implanted. In fact she would have advised against it. But Xabier was young, enamoured with technotoys and fadgets.

  The call was from London. They had been unable to make contact with Paulie. He had retreated to the countryside with his partner and their child, a tiny girl child. They were living very modestly, by all accounts; Paulie had never been materially acquisitive. Someone was going out to see him. Processia. A good, efficient girl, if memory served.

  How old would Paulie be now? Thirty-eight? Almost the age that Frances herself had been when the two of them had married, sixteen years ago. It felt more like seven, eight at the most. She wondered, Will he want to know? Does he feel anything, still, anything at all? He was the closest she could boast to a son, and she had served as his surrogate mother. Of course, he had entered into this other relationship, now. And there was a child. But Paulie, please, please come. You are the only one to whom I can turn. The only one who will understand.

  Yet, he would be warned that she was slipping into insanity. She could not bear to have him recoil from her, to witness his distress, should his feelings for her still run to such a reaction. She could scarcely blame him should he choose not to see her.

  Perhaps she was losing her mind? But no. No, she was not. Pregnant with imminent insight, she was on the verge of angelhood.

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  Chapter 5

  They put baby Kali in her cot for a nap and took a walk down to the bottom of the garden.

  GroundRuth farted.

  “Beg pardon,” she said, keeping well clear of him for a moment or two. Leaning back against the silver birch tree she said, “There. If that doesn't prove it I don't know what does."

  Paulie looked at her.

  “Dreamgirls don't fart.” GroundRuth mock-frowned. “Well, not unless you've got some funny preferences I don't know about?"

  They'd had this conversation before, or exchanges along broadly similar lines. What dreamgirls would and wouldn't do.

  Paulie said, “Maybe it's just that I'm the kind of person who can't believe in anything too perfect."

  “Your dreams have to be dirtied-up. You need ... what's that word?"

  “Verisimilitude."

  “So is she very different?” GroundRuth sank down into a crouch against the trunk. “Do we look the same? Do we act just the same?” She pulled at the grass. “Yeah, I know, I'm always asking that question, you must be sick of it by now. Am I fatter than her? Are her tits bigger?"

  Paulie said, “Down there you're..."

  “I'm what?” She was rapt. “Mmm?"

  He was well aware that Ruth humoured him out of love, was prepared to listen to crap she wouldn't have given the time of day to if it had come from anyone else.

  He said, “Down there you're exactly the same. Everything's the same.” He shrugged. “The weather's better here. There, it's winter."

  “So that's all you really want ... nicer weather? I suppose that's flattering, in a way."

  There was of course the bliss belly, maybe that was it? Could it be that he was addicted to the bliss, the massive shots of sheer joy in which your journey to the boxworl
d would envelop you? Apart from that, he really didn't know why he bothered. From down there on the ground, boxworld seemed to offer everything. And then, once you actually got here...

  He thought, Better to travel hopefully.

  “You're just the same."

  GroundRuth said, “Well I would've thought I'd be less myself up here, if all I am is a sort of ghost in your imagination, and you're the only real person in this world. What is it we're all supposed to be? Computer puppets, copies of people? What was that word you used?"

  “Humiliants."

  Humiliants were your boxworld's supporting actors: the entire population of Groundworld—every person whose existence was on record somewhere or other, the inaccessible remainder generated by best-guess subroutines during the worldcopying process—duplicated as pseudautonomous simulacra compelled by the Berkeley Effect to play whatever part your transconscious scenario required of them. In order that the Dreambox and its user's brain did not run short of raw processing power, an esse-percipi program—'to be is to be perceived'—shut down those humiliants who were, at any instant, surplus to requirements. Out of sight, out of mind. Thus humiliants constantly fluctuated between a kind of life and a form of death, without ever being aware of it.

  Depending upon the extravagance of your boxlife, your humiliants could either find themselves having a hard time, a happy quasexistence, or being left to go about their daily affairs unperturbed, much the same as their originals in Groundworld. Only in the most megalomaniacal—or imaginative?—of boxworlds would every single potential humiliant be incarnated, implicated, affected, impacted upon. Humiliants could be lived amongst peaceably, brainwashed, tortured, radically altered physically and mentally, or just abandoned to their own devices while the user went off exploring the planets his or her mind had conjured up from the starting-point of the boxworld, restricted only by the human power to visualize and conceptualize. Humiliants were toys.