Dreambox Junkies Page 9

  And this erotoroutine was bound to strike again, and other people—at any rate, box users—would put two and two together and conclude that this was a boxworld, and they would share his terrible burden of knowledge.

  All at once Paulie thought, What if this is a military boxworld, employed for testing out new weapons of mass destruction?

  * * * *

  Sesha knew that, had she not pretended to be asleep, Paul Rayle would have been trying to convince her that the world wasn't real; resurgent paranoia hung about him like an unpleasant smell. She wanted no part of it. She wished she could have slept, but there was too much on her mind. Her head was spinning. At least it was keeping her from dwelling on where she was right at this moment, shooting through the sky at a ludicrous altitude. Planes were bad enough, let alone verticars. She had never enjoyed being airborne.

  Ajit had said they had done it for Frances's sake, stuck a bug in Bubu Flumpkin. For Frances's sake? Frances would have gone completely apesugar.

  Or would she? Sesha really didn't know. Perhaps Frances would have thought it ethically sound that the baby be watched over by an electronic guardian angel equipped with a pair of tiny camera eyes and microphonic ears, a secret supplement to parental care. An emergency measure, merely. Ajit wouldn't say who at the Institute had authorized it. Surely not Frances herself? Ajit had wanted to know if Sesha had seen the toy, could confirm that it was there in the cottage. The Bubu Flumpkin Ajit had produced was not the Bubu Flumpkin she had stolen, but a second Bubu Flumpkin. Ajit had intended for her to take this identical Bubu with her to the craft village and switch it with the first Bubu, to whose signals the airjam had proved impermeable. This substitute Bubu contained the very latest airjam-busting transmitter. Trouble was, Ajit had forgotten to give it to her before she'd flown out there. So now he'd asked her to sneak it into Paul Rayle's rucksack, in the farfetched hope that Paul Rayle would think it was Bubu Number One, packed by accident, and would take it home, give it to the baby, find to his surprise that she already had a Bubu, but shrug and say what the hell.

  Sesha couldn't get over it. Someone at the Institute—Ajit alone? Ajit and others, a bunch of them?—had concocted this hare-brained, half-baked, cynical, ridiculous and horribly insulting little scheme. They had installed their little bugging device, sent to the cottage as ‘a present from Frances.’ In the event of its at some point proving instrumental in saving the baby's life, perhaps by sounding an alarm, alerting the meds, even shooting out a microdart of some drug, they would claim credit for averting a tragedy. This would of course be risking Frances's wrath, but they were gambling on her gratitude being the greater. Promotion, bonuses, the sky would be the limit, they doubtless thought. How on earth could such a preposterous idea have arisen? Was it that the baby was being brought up in a craft village? To people like Ajit—and, in all honesty, to Sesha herself—that had seemed tantamount to growing up in the grim, dim, dirty past.

  It was almost as far beyond belief as Paul Rayle's rantings.

  Ajit still didn't know that she had stolen the original Bubu. She had taken both Bubus to her flat, along with the little wooden box, when she'd gone there to shower, change her clothes, and throw together some stuff for the trip to Seville. She had carefully cut open both Bubus, removed the implanted spying gizmos and thrown them in the trash. One Bubu she had kept for herself; the other was with her now, and would go into Paul Rayle's rucksack. Only then, perhaps, would she feel a tiny bit better about the whole thing.

  And what if Paul Rayle and Ruth were to learn of all this crass intrigue? In fact it was surprising that Ruth would have accepted a gift from Frances in the first place. And not only that, but the whole mad plan had been doomed right from the beginning; Ruth almost certainly wouldn't let the toy, Frances's toy, become the baby's close companion. The toy was only there on sufferance, no doubt because Ruth didn't want to feel petty.

  Sesha thought, I am sick to frucking death of plots, of paranoia, of bizarre and disturbing experiences that I cannot explain and do not want to have to bother trying to explain but just want to forget. I am a woman doing a job. My boss wants to see me, and so I am flying out to visit her. My boss is unwell. I hope she gets better. I made a terrible mistake; I stole a baby's toy. I shall return it. Like everyone else, I have my faults. But I also have strengths. Such as a good, level head and inner discipline.

  I AM NOT losing my grip.

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  * * *

  Chapter 12

  “Hello Paulie."

  “Frances."

  How long was it since last they had met? Paulie Rayle had no clear recollection. His ex-wife's voice, a velvet contralto, was disconcerting in its lack of immediate familiarity. And her general appearance—The Frances installed in his mind had eroded into a vague approximation; the woman before him was neither so tall nor so angular. Only the wanton witch hair, now with some grey streaks allowed, and the quiet sense of chic, the impeccable couture, and the big, strong, healthy, pearly teeth were true to his expectations. The years had been kind to her.

  The hammering of his heart was surely audible to everyone in this siesta-time quietude? And how, he wondered, did she see him? Did he disappoint? If she was shocked, she hid it well. Her luminous eyes—did she wear contacts, these days?—betrayed nothing save gratitude. A frightening amount of gratitude, as though he were an eminent surgeon, the only one qualified to operate, capable of saving her.

  So this, Paulie thought, is what I secretly want to happen, in this boxworld of mine? My hoped-for scenario. For I am, most likely, still boxed-up and dreaming.

  Framed in the arched doorway, the actress in her ever conscious of proscenia, Frances said, “Thank you for coming."

  He shrugged. “That's okay."

  Frances smiled, and it took him by surprise; how could he have forgotten her power? That way she had of making you feel you were transparent to her. She was able, without effort, to read anyone and everyone. The world's wise mother. But most easily of all, she could read Paulie Rayle. He had always been naked before her, and her smile, small and fond, was the sign of her own reacquaintance with this fact.

  “Processia."

  “Hello, Frances."

  Sesha Roffey was stiff, her voice taut and hoarse, that of a fan at the feet of an idol.

  “How was the journey?” Frances came forward, gave him a peck on the cheek. And then suddenly she was putting out her arms, and they were hugging, not without some awkwardness on both sides. She gave off a scent of essential oil, heavy, lemony. Her body lacked substance in comparison with Ruth. Up close, the marks of age were more apparent; her lips, besieged by tiny radiating lines, were no longer so full as her lipstick pretended, he noticed as, briefly, she pursed them to kiss Sesha Roffey.

  “I'm sure the both of you could do with a rest?” Frances tossed back her hair. “A freshen-up? We'll talk later."

  A young Spaniard, so ludicrously handsome and psychotrichologically Super-Congruent he made Paulie feel like Quasimodo in a fright wig, escorted them up stone steps of such worn, well-trodden substantivity as to set him marvelling at the flimsy things the world let a person parlay into real estate. The Happy Hair Book. What a strange old game life was.

  Sesha, Paulie saw, was in a trance. “Beautiful place,” he murmured redundantly.

  Her response was an awed pant.

  The rooms were adjacent. His was small, the furnishings basic, almost spartan, exquisitely timeless. Ruth would have loved it. They had similar aesthetic tastes, Ruth and Frances.

  Paulie stretched out on the bed and thought, I should never have come. This is ridiculous, pointless. He could do nothing for Frances. Requesting his presence was a symptom of her illness. He could be of no help, and just as long as that was understood.

  But of what consequence was any of this in a world—incredibly, it had slipped to the back of his mind—in a world that was, very probably, not Groundworld, but a boxworld, a mere recording of the real world, st
ored in the innards of a Dreambox? Perhaps his own box, or maybe someone else's.

  There was a knock at the door.

  Senor Sleek again, Frances's factotum, swift and efficient. Paulie had requested the use of a mobe and, a bare two minutes later, here it was, a bang-up-to-date Shintube wrist model, along with its attendant pair of smartspecs and, rather touchingly, a jug of fresh orange juice. Paulie thanked the man, took a shower, poured out some juice and then, returning to the bed to rest his aching back, he donned the ‘specs and asked the mobe to put him through to Hilford Abbots.

  But first, the mobe had a question: “Does my voice please you?” The vocpat was female, the mobe having established his sex from his own telltale timbre. It was the standard default vocpat, that popular international business choice: Classy Girl Friday.

  “You'll do,” Paulie told it.

  “Does that mean you're pleased?"

  “Immensely."

  “I'm so glad ... I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name?"

  “Big Boy."

  “And your preferred demeanour and vocab level is....?"

  “I don't know, what've you got?"

  “Streetslut, Cutesy No-threat, Jailbait Ear Candy, Exotic Flower, Postgrad Compeer are the options currently loaded. These are merely a representative sample of the wide range of demeanours available. Additional demeanour chips may be obtained from your nearest Shintube stockist or any good infocoms outlet, or downloaded with payment by transac ring. I can, should you prefer, adopt a male persona, and you may also program me to share up to sixteen prejudices—although please note that this is purely polite indulgence and in no way constitutes an endorsement of bigotry. So name your demeanour, Big Boy?"

  “Postgrad Compeer."

  “Nice choice. But can I just say,” the mobe's voice adjusted itself, acquiring a more aptly sonorous texture, “that hardly jibes with your name?"

  Robin Richly, the Hilford Abbots elder in whose custody resided the village's sole sliproad onto what people of Robin's age still called the ‘Information Superhighway', was a sometime folk singer turned trader in vintage home electronics, those ancient LED Sinclair calculators and clunking great analog video decks that were currently de rigeur collectibles among London's trendiest fadgeteers. Robin treated the things like faithful old animals cruelly dumped once cooler pets came along. His love-hate relationship with technology Paulie found refreshingly congenial; the back-to-nature fanaticism of some others in the village was a state of mind with which he was unable to identify. Purism was untenable; the compromise reached was to advertise the village itself on the Net, but to buy and sell face-to-face with visitors or via snailmail. It was a situation increasingly precarious, the commercial value of its quirkiness in decline.

  Use of Robin's phone was not meant to be casually contemplated—a good villager was always cognizant of the distinction between luxury and necessity—and Robin's moods could range from effusive to curmudgeonly. Paulie steeled himself as, via landline fibropt, Robin's demi-goatee and Einstein mop materialized on the smartspecs’ v-screen, the diamantine nose-stud that was his latest bid for youth cred undermined by the stale fashion statement of an intricately henna'd forehead.

  “Paul?” He was slightly taken aback, but otherwise buoyant and affable. “I was told it was someone name of ... Big Boy? My little friend here says you're in Seville?” Drily, Robin asked, “Real or Pseudo? Is that orange juice you're drinking? How very touristic. Give my love to Carmen. I take it all this is connected with with that abominable racket ast night? Don't say that's what we have to look forward to, tourists descending from the heavens in flying Fords and Chryslers? Damn thing must have woken up the whole village."

  “Sorry. Bit of an emergency."

  “Oh. Oh dear. Anything we can do to help?"

  “No, no. Everything's fine now, thanks."

  Robin's caterpillar eyebrows maintained their quizzicality, but Paulie offered no further elucidation; Robin was a terrible gossip. Not that word wouldn't get round the whole village at light-speed. Others must have heard the verticar. Paulie didn't much care for Hilford Abbots’ share-your-troubles-and-lighten-the-load policy. It may have been good for the soul, but he was too much a child of the age not to find it invasive. Or maybe, to be brutally cynical, he sought insulation from the woes of his neighbours. And Ruth, for all her bucolic nostalgia, set a similar value on privacy.

  “So anyway,” he asked Robin, “how are things?"

  “Oh, no real cause for complaint. How's about you?"

  “Not so bad."

  “Ruth and the baby?"

  “Fine, last I heard."

  Robin put his long, vampiric fingers to his temples in the manner of a stage psychic. “You'd like to speak to Ruth ... am I right?” He paused to yawn spectacularly. “Listen Paul, if you've any problems ... I mean, old mate, forgive my bluntness, but what are you doing in the village if you prefer to live like city folk? We're here to help each other. Ever heard of the word ‘community'?"

  Spare me the sermon, you old fart, Paulie thought. He said acidly, “So you're going to kick us out for lacking communal spirit, for not being true adherents, disrespecting the craft village ethos?” He sighed, regretting the outburst. “Look Robin, I'm sorry, I'm tired. And I apologize for the verticar waking you up. It won't happen again. And I promise we'll do our best to turn over a new leaf and be model villagers if you could just do a little tiny favour for me and tell Ruth I arrived safely and I'll be back just as soon as I can."

  “I'll do better than that. I'll pop over and get her round here so you two can have a...” Robin grimaced cartoonishly then took on the air of a raddled old roué straight out of de Sade. “Why shut off a part of yourself? The primitive part. We all have it, us males ... we're all part beast. Why not..."

  Paulie pulled off the ‘specs; he knew the sort of perverted pirate morphomercial spiel he was in for. With weary disgust, he listened as Robin's sampled, mimicked voice lisped wetly on, “...indulge this dark side of your nature? Sonia wants someone to punish her. Sonia is real, live, flesh-and-blood, bruisable. Let me repeat that: SONIA IS A GENUINE, REAL, NOT VIRTUAL, TEENAGE SUBMITRIX WHO WILL DO ANYTHING ... ANYTHING AT ALL ... to appease your libido. Rip off her clothes with our RemoTouch manipulators! Violate her from the privacy of your home! Enjoy the full panphonic splendour of her screams! Do as you will with her! In Fist Mode our RemoTouch manipulators can deliver jaw-splintering, rib-crushing blows with greater speed and accuracy than any heavyweight champion. Or if it's chops you prefer, choose from twenty-four key Martial Arts moves. And, if all that crunch potential isn't enough, why not try our new RemoTeeth biting mechanism? To all of these devices Sonia will eagerly sub ... sub ... sub ... submit herself.” The hiccups signalled that the mobe's shitfilters had finally made headway in their fight to shrug off the morphomercial and restore the true Robin Richly. Paulie donned the ‘specs again. The phony Robin's face was contorting grotesquely, leering and sneering and scowling as the puppet program battled on to the bitter end: “For furt ... fur ... further information and an appetite-whetting audvid clip, simply swipe your transac ring by the sensor on your mobe, or, altern ... tern ... tern ... tern ... ternatively...” And then at last the shitfilters did away with the sick, illicit Netvert that had hijacked Robin's screen image.

  “What was that?” Robin demanded grimly. “What was it making me say?"

  “Some kind of crap.” Paulie shrugged. It would only upset the poor old sod. “I don't know, I wasn't really listening.” What a fuckawful world, he thought. No wonder they want to keep the village Netless.

  “Well anyhow, before I was so rudely interrupted, I was saying that I'd nip round and get Ruth for you ... how's about that? Stay tuned. Shan't be a sec."

  “Okay.” Paulie felt warmth for the man. Robin always tried to be kind, and that, in Paulie's scheme of things, was perhaps the most admirable of traits. “I'm humbled by your neighbourly example. You'll make a villager out of me yet."

  �
��Smart-arsed young herbert."

  “Thanks, Robin."

  “Don't mench, old mate."

  While he waited for Robin to fetch Ruth, Paulie asked the mobe whether there had been any reports, anywhere on the planet, of Sick Nick copycat violence. There had. Several, from several countries. Paulie then asked the mobe if anyone out there was claiming that this world was a boxworld.

  “Okay, Big Boy...” After an impressively brief interval, the mobe came back with: “Two hundred ninety-four hits."

  “How many in California?"

  “One hundred eighty-one."

  “Typical example? Leave out California."

  “Okay ... Humberto Sfat, Sao Paulo, Brazil ... and I quote, translating with Shintube FideliTrans software, the Number One choice for all your..."

  “Just do it."

  “Quote: This morning a considerable portion of the body of one of the neighbourhood tomcats, the uppermost thirty percent, including virtually the whole of the creature's head, suddenly vanished off the face of the earth for a period which, as I was without a timepiece, I could only estimate to be in excess of one full minute and a half. The remainder of the cat's body could plainly be seen to be hollow, and yet the animal was going about its business perfectly as normal. The absent body portion reappeared with equal abruptness. None of this should happen. I do not take drugs or own a Dreambox, and have no history of psychosis or brain damage. The cat, a friendly tortoiseshell, was flesh-and-blood, most certainly not a mechanical or holographic simulation. The only theories I can come up with to explain this most bizarre occurrence are: A. I an insane. B. I do take drugs, but am in denial. C. Unbeknown to myself, I do in fact own a Dreambox and am using it now; or D. I am not my original human self but a humiliant copy in someone else's boxworld. Ergo the animal suffered a data dropout, rather tardily corrected. Can anyone else cite comparable experiences?"