Chapter 1
Switch and gRazer
November 6, Tuesday afternoon
NetPolice are following the digital traces left by a group of technoAnarchists who projected Mickey Mouse ears onto Mount Rushmore. The notorious hackers, BLANK, took credit for the election day incident, declaring it another BLANKprank art happening. Authorities say they anticipate arrests soon . . .
BLANKprank. Kool. Dano steadied himself and turned away from the public vidScreen as the streetcar came to a halt. He usually didn’t pay attention to the brainless mix of infotainment and adverts, but this was juice.
I have to tell Audrey.
He texted her, hit PLAY on his app, and his head filled with last century Rok blasted from a pair of old wireless earpods. He couldn’t afford one of those eyeVid retina-interface glasses everyone wore, let alone the latest SIMchip jewelry, but he didn’t give a damn. No skin off his back. That SIMchip crap was fucked up anyway. Yeah, so maybe it looked razz on your forehead, but a direct net link to your brain? No fucking way. That stuff messed with your head. Sure, SIM could be intense, as intense as Real, but in the end that shit wasn’t real.
* * *
The aquamarine chip on Audrey’s temple flashed on. Audrey, fresh from her shower, sat naked and knock-kneed, drying her long iridescent blond hair with a towel. The inbox on the info layer in her mind messaged “Dano” with a cheesy ancient app icon. gRazers! Whatever. She read the text and smiled. ‘Juice,’ she responded, ‘love it!’ She hooked onto her news feed and rode the cascade of mouse ears on Rushmore virals.
Early exit polls in the North American presidential elections are showing Walt Disney Inc., the Republican candidate, with a solid 62 percent lead. Meanwhile, netPolice eyeTs still haven’t been able to dismantle the hacker program that is projecting the Mickey Mouse ears on to Mount Rushmore. Apparently a protest by BLANK against the Disney Corporation’s bid for the presidency, sources say the holo projection is run by a morphing fractal that . . .
‘Earth to Audrey . . .’ An icon glowed in her awareness red like an ember. This time it was Nina.
‘sorry :) forgot; gimme a sec,’ Audrey neuroCommed the text, threw on some underwear, thoughtClicked a link and found herself on the lake. Their lake.
Audrey and Nina liked meeting here, dangling their legs off this unknown digital dock someplace, somewhere, on an unknown digital lake, wriggling their toes in the spectral water. An unforgiving white light reflected off the waves and overexposed their faces like some faded bleached-out memory. A first version eyeVid freeware, it was now lost on some long forgotten and discarded netWorld by-way. Nobody remembered it. No one else came anymore. It was now their private SIMlounge. They’d been hanging here, just the two of them, since they were SIM enraptured kids playing with their very first eyeVids.
* * *
The polite voice suggested he mind his step as Dano alighted into the grey chill of a November afternoon and the Kraut Rok sounds of late Einsturzende. The doors hissed shut, and the driverless streetcar rumbled off behind him. He hunched his lithe athletic frame, zipped up his worn black leather jacket against the stinging wind, and stuck his cold hands into the pockets. The stillness in his clear blue eyes was misleading. A deeper look uncovered a gaze that was soulful yet searing, the lucid eyes of someone who sees truth in the void.
Dano walked over to the bus stop. Acid rain had eaten the rusted edges of the plexiglass shelter. The cracked flatscreen flickered “NEXT 54 – 28 MINUTES”. Crap, just missed it! It was supposed to connect with his streetcar, but the corpGrid didn’t give a shit about a lowLifer’s schedule. Might as well walk.
Dano avoided the chemSlick puddles as he made his way along a trash-strewn broken sidewalk, past grimy, mid-last century Communist-era concrete-panel high-rises. Public housing. It smelled like piss. People here lived like weeds in the cracks of society, barely surviving on bottomFeeder wages. The sun’s wan reflections in shards of shattered beer and vodka bottles confirmed that it too had turned its back on these parts.
He passed a rusting carcass of a car. Just beyond it a couple of dead-eyed Razr4Kids strung out on zingers were jerking like zombies to the jackhammer beat of some deathZKunt band. This was their turf. Dano crossed the street.
He walked on. FreeGrazing. Yeah, that’s what they called it, you know, just taking it all in, chill to the menace, go with the flow. Dano was a gRazer ‘cause he wanted it Real. Get it? Just stuff coming at him natural and not have some computer-fed SIMulated reality screwing around in his thoughts like Switch did. Troglodyte, they called him. You bet.
* * *
“Mickey Mouse ears on Mount Rushmore? I’ll bet they get charged with copyright infringement.” Nina’s pixie nose and the gap in her front teeth did not make her look like the gawky chipmunk that she imagined. Nevertheless, they had the effect of tenderizing her somewhat sarcastic mocking personality into something more along the lines of just plain irreverent.
“If they catch them, I’m sure that’ll be the least of their problems.”
“Well, yeah. Still, things are sure gonna get weird if a corp gets elected president.”
“You mean, like, in this case, are the mouse ears satire, or are they branded assets?”
“Yeah, and who skims the credits from the SIMstream, the US of NA or Walt Disney Inc.?”
“I still can’t believe it! Do you really think they’re going to pull this off? Elect a corporation as President of the North American States!? What a joke!” Audrey shook her head in amazement. “And it was a joke!” She threw her hands up in the air. “The whole draft Mickey Mouse for President was a bloody joke, a protest that started in Quebec.”
“I know, it’s totally scriptwriter went wild. I never thought I’d live to see the day.”
“Yeah, a vibe shift and Real got a whole lot stranger than SIM. I mean, you can’t make this shit up.”
“The Canadians must be really happy they joined the US,” Nina quipped. “So who do you think they are?”
“Who? The Canadians that wanted to join? I didn’t know there were any.”
“No, BLANK!”
“BLANK? How should I know?”
“Do you think they’re corp eyeT nerds? You know, in their day jobs?”
“Frustrated corp eyeT by day, artPrank hacktivists by night? I dunno, doesn’t seem likely. Corp eyeTs are, you know, corp eyeTs . . . totally nerdy!”
“So what do you think those hackers do for a day job?”
Audrey shrugged. “Download bankCredits? Design SIMgames? Actually, I’ve been thinking about it . . .”
“About what?”
“About designing a game. . . okay, not a game exactly, but a SIM where people can actually touch each other, you know, inside their feelings. It would be a whole new SIM experience.”
“Oh, god help us, Audrey, isn’t feelings what Real is for?”
“Nina, in Real you’re only guessing how someone else feels.” Audrey swabbed her hair with the low-res towel.
“It’s not the same.”
“What’s not the same?”
“SIM and Real. SIM is SIM, even when it comes to feelings. Sometimes, Audrey, I think you’re trying to avoid Real.”
“Really? And what exactly is Real, anyway? Can you define it?”
“According to Oxford? Let’s see . . . ‘existence that is absolute, self-sufficient or objective, and not subject to human decisions or conventions.’”
“But what if that’s all wrong, and Real is completely subjective? Maybe my consciousness is all there is, and this world is something I dreamt up . . .”
“Oh, help me . . . am I a grrrl dreaming I’m a butterfly or am I a butterfly dreaming I’m a grrrl?” Nina buried her face in her hands.
“I don’t know about the butterfly, but if I had dreamt up a world, it would have been way different from this one.”
Nina lifted her head cautiously. “There, see? It’s not you. You’re off the hook!”
“Well, maybe I don’t know, maybe I’m dreaming but I don’t know I’m dreaming, in which case . . . I mean, makes you wonder, who’s ‘I’ anyway?”
“Audrey!”
“What?” Audrey’s washed-out image glared back. “Anyway, I think I’m more of a SIMtreatment kind of grrrl than a SIMgame designer.”
“Yeah, I’ll buy that. So, how’s it working out with Dano?”
“What do you mean?”
“With the SIMtreatments you’re doing for his band. What did you think I meant? Are you . . . ?”
“Of course not!”
“No? You’re acting awfully defensive.”
“There’s nothing going on between us.”
“So you’re not doing the SIMtreatments for his band anymore?”
“Oh, yeah. That’s still going on. But,” Audrey rolled her video eyes, “doing SIM for gRazers is a pain in the ass. Half the time they’re bitching and complaining, and the other half they’re not even plugged in and have no idea what I’m doing. They just don’t get it.”
“Or they don’t want to get it because they’re gRazers.”
“Yeah . . . I think they’re only going along with it because Dano wants it. I feel a little weird about that,” Audrey splashed her toes in the bit-mapped water, “but it’s fun . . . okay, sometimes. I mean, band politics can be a real pain.”
“At least they know enough to listen to Dano!” Nina gazed off into the overexposed dreamscape. “I’ve only seen you guys a couple of times . . .”
“That’s ‘cause we’ve only played a couple of times.”
“Your stuff is really good, and Dano, he’s . . . well, he’s fucking amaaazing . . . the best damned guitarist I’ve ever heard.”
“Oh, I’m ‘good’ and he’s ‘fucking amaazing’?”
“Come on Audrey, The eXitTrip are awesome.” Nina looked into Audrey’s sapphire lowRez eyes. “You guys have something there.”
“But there aren’t any guarantees, are there?” Audrey dropped the towel and it pixilated and vanished. “I mean I can’t help thinking, what if we don’t make it?”
“Then you gave it your best shot and you try something else.”
“Like what? A corp job? Sell my soul ‘cause the whole world has gone corpFascist anyway?”
“Audrey, what’s that got to do with anything? Haven’t we had this conversation like about a hundred times?”
“Well, maybe that’s because you’re still not getting it.” Audrey stood up and went to her dresser. In SIM she was hovering, in bra and panties, casting discordant reflections out over the rasterized water. “I mean, look at the North American States! First their Supreme Court ruled that corporations have the same rights as individuals . . .” She walked on digital water, a series of freeze-framed steps, back to the dock, with an armful of clothes. “…and now they’re about to elect Walt Disney Inc.” Audrey pulled a sweater over her head.
“Power to the people.” Nina shrugged. “I bet Wall Street wasn’t backing Mickey Mouse.” She looked to Audrey for some sign of levity.
Audrey’s head popped out of the sweater. “Nina, of course they were!” She slipped into a pair of tights and wriggled them up to her waist. “Somebody paid for all those votes.”
Nina made a face. “We’re not the North American States, Audrey.”
“Only because there are too many factions in the European Union to buy every one of them.” She stepped into her skirt, zipped it up, plunked herself back down and cast her eyes over the ripples in the water, absently anticipating the recurring glitch in the repeat. That it was such an outmoded SIM program only added to the nostalgic sentimentality of the place.
“Oh, Audrey!”
“Maybe I’m just paranoid.”
“Ya think?” Nina furrowed her brow. The bit-map glitched for an instant.
* * *
Vibing to his tracks, Dano absentmindedly kicked a Kofola can. Black Sabbath followed Einsturzende as he rounded the corner, the one across from the BillaHypermarket. Layers of graffiti on stained concrete framed the faded adverts for Eezybeef and ChokoChews in the window. He noticed the cam tracking him to “Paranoid” blasting in his ear pods. Kool. Reality soundtrack. Invisible drones and CCTV pods transmitting millions of images a second to algorithms crunching petabytes inside LibertyCorp computers. Non-stop surveillance. Facial recognition. Gait analysis. Security is freedom. Got nothing to hide, got nothing to fear, the adverts said. Keep your head low, zero out the deviance, and the red lights stay dead. Exhibit deviant and the nanoDrones were all over you in seconds. What was deviant was classified. Paranoia? Yeah, red-lined.
The scrapyard at the edgeZone was nuZkin territory. He looped the long way around. He cut a hard turn at the soccer field, pushing past the decayed corroded bleachers rotting like dead tech. Crabgrass and dandelions struggled through shredded synthGrass and toxic mud. Cold gusts stirred up degraded bio-bags and whipped Dano’s long brown mop as he headed for the faded Orangina advert on the fence at the far end. When he got there, he pulled aside the ragged plastiply board, squeezed through the rusted wire-mesh fence and crossed the railroad tracks.
Dano was still zoned cruising to his sounds, when a disheveled old man stumbled out of a two-bit Rolex holo quivering erratically in front of the EZ Money PawnKing and almost plowed into him. Without thinking, Dano made a quick sidestep and avoided the collision. The man stopped and swayed precariously as he assessed Dano. “You shouldn’t be out here, you know.” He shoved an index finger into Dano’s chest. “Word is,” alchohol-fueled breath whispered, “today’s a bad day to be out. Come on,” he placed his hand on Dano’s shoulder and gestured at a ghostly martini glass promoting the dive bar halfway down the block. “I’ll buy you a drink. I just got some fold.” He reached into the pocket of his stained threadbare coat and pulled out a crumpled wad of bills. Paper money was supposedly extinct and illegal, but it was currency amongst fortyPercenters in places like Redcent. “I still had a good watch, you know.” He waved at the trashy Rolex holo and shoved the bills into Dano’s face. “This’ll keep me going a couple of weeks, at least.”
“Listen, thanks man, but it’s too early for me,” replied Dano. If it weren’t for his appointment with Tommy Gunn he might have accepted. That was what freeGrazing was all about. “But take care, man.” He patted the wino on the shoulder and walked away with his easy rhythmic gait.
“Okay, man,” the wino hollered after him, “but take care of yourself. Remember what I said—it’s a bad day to be out.”
This was Redcent. Every day was a bad day to be out. Redcent was a crime-infested offGrid hood populated by the trash society had spit out. Redcent had once been an industrial district. But that was then. Now it was a rathole that reeked of sewage—a zero law-enforcement combatZone of dive bars, hardCore clubs, decaying cars, trash-strewn lots, and abandoned buildings occupied by squatters. But commerce thrived. Got a connection? Got fold? You got a deal. Everything’s for sale—useless crap, illegal shit, lethal tech, who’s asking? Hit the right back alley and you can score a knock-off Patek Phillippe. Know the right fixers and you can grab printed heat that won’t trip scanners. Need a deepFreak edge? Shenzhen killaChips will redline your netSurfing. Caveat emptor buyer beware. In Redcent everything had a price tag. People would trade their sister for a fix. Or hawk their own son to a harvesting clinic, if the credit line was fat enough. But Dano wasn’t into any of that. He was looking for deMode, you know, things, archaic things that were hard to get. Tommy Gunn had scored some rare amplifier tubes. Kool. Maybe that old Marshall amp of his would finally work.
It wasn’t until he got to his usual place, Zip’s Chow’nStuff, that Dano noticed. Where the hell is everyone? It suddenly hit him that he hadn’t seen a soul since the wino. He tried the door to Chow’nStuff. Why the fuck is it locked? Above him the Nescafé holoVert steamed, the cup filled, emptied, steamed, and filled again. The lights inside were out, but he peered in and noticed some of the regulars in the shadows. What the hell is going on? Franta, a cigarette hanging over his sandpaper chin, came to the door and waved like a madman. What? Shit! Dano saw the reflection on the glass door. He spun around. This isn’t fucking Real! This is crazy deepFreak! Right there in front of his face hovered a synchronized swarm of hissing needle-thin predatory nanoDrones! Adrenaline kicked in and his amped-up heart beat like the bass in his earpods. Had he slipped into a deathZKunt SIM run by some asshole Switch? But when had the slip happened? When he zoned out? This had to be SIM. His soundtrack kicked into “Die! Die! Die!” Way juice if he was doing SIM, way not otherwise.
“Freeze, citizen!”
What the—? The barked command crashed into his awareness. SIM or Real? Input overload. Fuck, this isn’t juice! There’s no one there! Then Dano noticed the oddly undulating refracting air, like a mirage on a seriously hot day. Shit! Cloaking! Before he could deal three black-clad LibertyCorp operatives flashedIn, assault rifles pointed dead between his eyes.
“On your knees, NOW!” The voice, shit man, that sound! “Hands behind the head, elbows out!” Authority amplified, vPrint altered, and broadcast directly into his app. It cut right through “Die! Die! Die!” and burst inside his brain. Dano didn’t argue. Petrified, he did exactly as he was told.
“We have a positive drone scan here. 72% on the TPM.”
“Affirmative. ID and TPM logged in. Van ETA thirty-six seconds.”
Damn, this was some serious SIM shit he was in. It had to be SIM. Kneeling, shaking, despite his best efforts to stay kool, Dano was scared shitless. Rough hands brutally twisted his arms and zip-cuffed his wrists behind his back. Dano grimaced in pain. A black LibertyCorp van pulled up. Like an irritated wasp, a nanoDrone buzzed out of the swarm, and with lethal precision buried its micro-needle into his carotid artery, juicing him with a military grade blackout cocktail. The world melted away in a neon haze and Dano drifted off to another nightmare, maybe another SIM, where an insane electoWizard danced on naked neurons slowly oozing out of his brain.
* * *
“Ow!” Audrey rubbed her neck. “That hurt!”
“What hurt?”
“I don’t know, it’s this weird pain.”
“Probably stress from all your crazy paranoia. Look, not to change the subject or anything,” Nina cocked her head, “but are you joining us at the Ophidian Thursday night? Anton put you on the list. It’s that SIM feature for the Le Monde Sunday Supplement, you know, French fashion ideas for the holidays or something.”
“I don’t know, I have to study. It’s exam time.”
“C’mon, you have to! It’s Paris. Besides, Anton and his friends are going. That really handsome French architect might be there. I think he likes you.”
“Yeah, handsome in SIM. He’s probably some disgusting eighty-year-old perv in Real.”
“No way! He’s a friend of Anton’s. Besides, an eighty-year-old perv would select an off-the-shelf classic handsome. Your French admirer has more of a gritty je ne sais quoi look.”
“You don’t think he’s . . .” Audrey uploaded a selection of hunky avatars from Avatopia (“Avatopia - welcome to your next evolution!”), and chose “Athletic Intellectual version 3.2” The life-like hunk expanded to quarter scale, its cutting-edge highRez features contrasting sharply with the antiquated lowRez generated by the eyeVid freeware.
“Nah . . . this avatar’s not, I dunno, individual enough? You know, it has no real character. Besides, your admirer’s not so beefy.”
“Okay, how about . . .” Audrey switched the Avatopia settings to custom mode. With a flick of her hand she slimmed the avatar down, raised the cheekbones, and sculpted the jaw.
“Uh-uh. See the eyes? They’re, like, dead. Lifeless. His are kind and intelligent. You can’t fake those.”
“Well, if you’re so interested, why don’t you make a play for him?”
“I would if he was taller.”
“Taller? He’s as tall as you. What am I saying? He’s an avatar. You have no idea how tall he really is.”
“Yeah, well, men never opt for shorter. Only taller.”
“Men? But you might shave a couple of centimeters off your avatar?”
“Not really. I don’t want to be a shocking, towering surprise when we actually meet in Real. I want a man who makes me feel petite.”
“Petite?” Audrey asked dubiously. “You’re over 1.85 meters tall and you want to feel petite? Good luck with that. Do you realize that you’re ruling out ninety-nine point nine percent of the male population?”
“So what if I am? And what are you holding out for?”
“I guess someone I can trust.”
“Why don’t you think you can trust Anton’s friend? Just because he’s French?”
“Well, yeah . . .”
“Come on, you don’t even know him. Why not give him a chance?”
“Because he’s got a cleft chin. Okay, his avatar does, like this.” Audrey modeled a cleft onto hunk avatar 3.2’s chin. “And you know what they say, ‘never trust an avatar with a cleft chin.’”
“Oh, right. Are you sure it’s not ‘Never trust an avatar with unruly sandy brown hair’?” Nina asked.
“Yeah, damned right it is,” Audrey giggled, “that, and a sexy smile.” She curved 3.2’s lips.
“Or a perfect body?”
“Mmm . . .” she spun the avatar around, “with a tight little ass.”
“So you’re coming?”
“I’m not coming just to fevR at a really hot avatar . . . and if I really wanted to, I could create my own.”
“Audrey, you’re twisted! That’s not the same thing! C’mon! It would be good for you.”
“Oh, all right. Look, I should get going. I have to dump a SIMfile into Dano’s app.” Audrey’s voice flattened sarcastically when she said the word “app.” “That is, if it fits. gRazers! What time Thursday?”
“Eight.”
“Okay. Send me the link. Bye.”
The dock and the lake and the leached landscape slowly dissolved. Audrey opened her eyes and once again found herself on her sofa. She was dressed. Her hair was dry.