Bruce Bethke: Cyberpunk

Bruce Bethke: Cyberpunk
The snoozer went off at seven and I was out of my sleepsack, powered up, and on-line in nanos. That's as far as
I got. Soon I booted and got CRACKERS/BUDDYBOO/8ER
on the tube I shut down fast. Damn! Rayno had been on line before me, like always, and that message meant
somebody else had gotten into our Net - and that meant trouble by the busload! I couldn't do anything mor on
term, so I zipped into my jumper, combed my hair, and went downstairs.
Mom and Dad were at breakfast when I slid into the kitchen. "Good Morning, Mikey!" said Mom with a smile.
"You were up so late last night I thought I wouldn't see you before you caught your bus."
"Had a tough program to crack," I said.
"Well," she said, "now you can sit down and have a decent breakfast." She turned around to pull some Sara
Lees out of the microwave and plunk them down on the table.
"If you'd do your schoolwork when you're supposed to you wouldn't have to stay up all night," growled Dad
from behind his caffix and faxsheet. I sloshed some juice in a glass and poured it down, stuffed a Sara Lee into
my mouth, and stood to go.
"What?" asked Mom. "That's all the breakfast you're going to have?"
"Haven't got time," I said. "I gotta get to school early to see if the program checks." Dad growled something
more and Mom spoke to quiet him, but I didn't hear much 'cause I was out the door.
I caught the transys for school, just in case they were watching. Two blocks down the line I got off and
transferred going back the other way, and a coupla transfers later I wound up whipping into Buddy's All-Night
Burgers. Rayno was in our booth, glaring into his caffix. It was 7:55 and I'd beat Georgie and Lisa there.
"What's on line?" I asked as I dropped into my seat, across from Rayno. He just looked up at me through his
eyebrows and I knew better than to ask again.
At eight Lisa came in. Lisa is Rayno's girl, or at least she hopes she is. I can see why: Rayno's seventeen - two
years older than the rest of us - he wears flash plastic and his hair in The Wedge (Dad blew a chip when I said I
wanted my hair cut like that) and he's so cool he won't even touch her, even when she's begging for it. She
plunked down in her seat next to Rayno and he didn't blink.
Georgie still wasn't there at 8:05. Rayno checked his watch again, then finally looked up from his caffix. "The
compiler's been cracked," he said. Lisa and I both swore. We'd worked up our own little code to keep our Net
private. I mean, our Olders would just blow boards if they ever found out what we were really up to. And now
somebody'd broken our code.
"Georgie's old man?" I asked.
"Looks that way." I swore again. Georgie and I started the Net by linking our smartterms with some stuff we
stored in his old man's home business system. Now my Dad woudln't know an opsys if he crashed on one, but
Georgie's old man - he's a greentooth. A tech-type. He'd found one of ours once before and tried to take it apart
to see what it did. We'd just skinned out that time.
"Any idea how far in he got?" Lisa asked. Rayno looked through her, at the front door. Georgie'd just come in.
"We're gonna find out," Rayno said.
Georgie was coming in smiling, but when he saw that look in Rayno's eyes he sat down next to me like the seat
was booby-trapped.
"Good Morning Georgie," said Rayno, smiling like a shark.
"I didn't glitch!" Georgie whined. "I didn't tell him a thing!"
"Then how the Hell did he do it?"
"You know how he is, he's weird! He likes puzzles!" Georgie looked to me for backup. "That's how come I was
late. He was trying to weasel me, but I didn't tell him a thing! I think he only got it partway open. He didn't ask
about the Net!"
Rayno actually sat back, pointed at us all, and smiled. "You kids just don't know how lucky you are. I was in
the Net last night and flagged somebody who didn't know the secures was poking Georgie's compiler. I made
some changes. By the time your old man figures them out, well..."
I sighed relief. See what I mean about being cool? Rayno had us outlooped all the time!
Rayno slammed his fist down on the table. "But Dammit Georgie, you gotta keep a closer watch on him!"
Then Rayno smiled and bought us all drinks and pie all the way around. Lisa had a cherry Coke, and Georgie
and I had caffix just like Rayno. God, that stuff tastes awful! The cups were cleared away, and Rayno unzipped
his jumper and reached inside.
"Now kids," he said quietly, "it's time for some serious fun." He whipped out his microterm. "School's off!"
I still drop a bit when I see that microterm - Geez, it's a beauty! It's a Zeilemann Nova 300, but we've spent so
much time reworking it, it's practically custom from the motherboard up. Hi-baud, rammed, rammed, ported,
with the wafer display folds down to about the size of a vid casette; I'd give an ear to have one like it. We'd
used Georgie's old man's chipburner to tuck some special tricks in ROM and there wasn't a system in CityNet it
couldn't talk to.
Rayno ordered up a smartcab and we piled out of Buddy's. No more riding the transys for us, we were going in
style! We charged the smartcab off to some law company and cruised all over Eastside.
Riding the boulevards got stale after awhile, so we rerouted to the library. We do a lot of our fun at the library,
'cause nobody ever bothers us there. Nobody ever goes there. We sent the smartcab, still on the law company
account, off to Westside. Getting past the guards and the librarians was just a matter of flashing some ID and
then we zipped off into the stacks.
Now, you've got to ID away your life to get on the libsys terms - which isn't worth half a scare when your ID is
all fudged like ours is - and they watch real careful. But they move their terms around a lot, so they've got ports
on line all over the building. We found an unused port, and me and Georgie kept watch while Rayno plugged in
his microterm and got on line.
"Get me into the Net," he said, handing me the term. We don't have a stored opsys yet for Netting, so Rayno
gives me the fast and tricky jobs.
Through the dataphones I got us out of the libsys and into CityNet. Now, Olders will never understand. They
still think a computer has got to be a brain in a single box. I can get the same results with opsys stored in a
hundred places, once I tie them together. Nearly every computer has got a dataphone port, CityNet is a great
linking system, and Rayno's microterm has the smarts to do the job clean and fast so nobody flags on us. I
pulled the compiler out of Georgie's old man's computer and got into our Net. Then I handed the term back to
Rayno.
"Well, let's do some fun. Any requests?" Georgie wanted something to get even with his old man, and I had a
new routine cooking, but Lisa's eyes lit up 'cause Rayno handed the term to her, first.
"I wanna burn Lewis," she said.
"Oh fritz!" Georgie complained. "You did that last week!"
"Well, he gave me another F on a theme."
"I never get F's. If yu'd read books once in a -"
"Georgie," Rayno said softly, "Lisa's on line." That settled that. Lisa's eyes were absolutely glowing.
Lisa got back into CityNet and charged a couple hundred overdue books to Lewis's libsys account. Then she
ordered a complete fax sheet of Encyclopedia Britannica printed out at his office. I got next turn.
Georgie and Lisa kept watch while I accessed. Rayno was looking over my shoulder. "Something new this
week?"
"Airline reservations. I was with my Dad two weeks ago when he set up a business trip, and I flagged on maybe
getting some fun. I scanned the ticket clerk real careful and picked up the access code."
"Okay, show me what you can do."
Accessing was so easy that I just wiped a couple of reservations first, to see if there were any bells and whistles.
None. No checks, no lockwords, no confirm codes. I erased a couple dozen people without crashing down or
locking up. "Geez," I said, "There's no deep secures at all!"
"I been telling you. Olders are even dumber than they look. Georgie? Lisa? C'mon over here and see what we're
running!" Georgie was real curious and asked a lot of questions, but Lisa just looked bored and snapped her
gum and tried to stand closer to Rayno. Then Rayno said, "Time to get off Sesame Street. Purge a flight."
I did. It was simple as a save. I punched a few keys, entered, and an entire plane disappeared from all the
reservation files. Boy, they'd be surprised when they showed up at the airport. I started purging down the line,
but Rayno interrupted.
"Maybe there's no bells and whistles, but wipe out a whole block of flights and it'll stand out. Watch this." He
took the term from me and cooked up a routine in RAM to do a global and wipe out every flight that departed at
an :07 for the next year. "Now that's how you do these things without waving a flag."
"That's sharp," Georgie chipped in, to me. "Mike, you're a genius! Where do you get these ideas?" Rayno got a
real funny look in his eyes.
"My turn," Rayno said, exiting the airline system.
"What's next in the stack?" Lisa asked him.
"Yeah, I mean, after garbaging the airlines . . ." Georgie didn't realize he was supposed to shut up.
"Georgie! Mike!" Rayno hissed. "Keep watch!" Soft, he added, "It's time for The Big One."
"You sure?" I asked. "Rayno, I don't think we're ready."
"We're ready."
Georgie got whiney. "We're gonna get in big trouble-"
"Wimp," spat Rayno. Georgie shut up.
We'd been working on The Big One for over two months, but I still didn't feel real solid about it. It almost made
a clean if/then/else; if The Big One worked/then we'd be rich/else . . . it was the else I didn't have down.
Georgie and me scanned while Rayno got down to business. He got back into CityNet, called the cracker opsys
out of OurNet, and poked it into Merchant's Bank & Trust. I'd gotten into them the hard way, but never messed
with their accounts; just did it to see if I could do it. My data'd been sitting in their system for about three weeks
now and nobody'd noticed. Rayno thought it would be really funny to use one bank computer to crack the
secures on other bank computers.
While he was peeking and poking I heard walking nearby and took a closer look. It was just some old waster
looking for a quiet place to sleep. Rayno was finished linking by the time I got back. "Okay kids," he said, "this
is it." He looked around to make sure we were all watching him, then held up the term and stabbed the
RETURN key. That was it. I stared hard at the display, waiting to see what else was gonna be. Rayno figured
it'd take about ninety seconds.
The Big One, y'see, was Rayno's idea. He'd heard about some kids in Sherman Oaks who almost got away with
a five million dollar electronic fund transfer; they hadn't hit a hangup moving the five mil around until they
tried to dump it into a personal savings account with a $40 balance. That's when all the flags went up.
Rayno's cool; Rayno's smart. We weren't going to be greedy, we were just going to EFT fifty K. And it wasn't
going to look real strang, 'cause it got strained through some legitimate accounts before we used it to open
twenty dummies.
If it worked.
The display blanked, flickered, and showed:
TRANSACTION COMPLETED. HAVE A NICE DAY.
I started to shout, but remembered I was in a library. Georgie looked less terrified. Lisa looked like she was
going to attack Rayno. Rayno just cracked his little half smile, and started exiting. "Funtime's over, kids."
"I didn't get a turn," Georgie mumbled.
Rayno was out of all the nets and powering down. He turned, slow, and looked at Georgie through those
eyebrows of his. "You are still on The List."
Georgie swallowed it 'cause there was nothing else he could do. Rayno folded up the microterm and tucked it
back inside his jumper.
We got a smartcab outside the library and went off to someplace Lisa picked for lunch. Georgie got this idea
about garbaging up the smartcab's brain so that the next customer would have a real state fair ride, but Rayno
wouldn't let him do it. Rayno didn't talk to him during lunch, either.
After lunch I talked them into heading up to Martin's Micros. That's one of my favorite places to hang out.
Martin's the only Older I know who can really work a computer without blowing out his headchips, and he
never talks down to me, and he never tells me to keep my hands off anything. In fact, Martin's been real happy
to see all of us, ever since Rayno bought that $3000 vidgraphics art animation package for Lisas birthday.
Martin was sitting at his term when we came in. "Oh, hi Mike! Rayno! Lisa! Georgie!" We all nodded. "Nice to
see you again. What can I do for you today?"
"Just looking," Rayno said.
"Well, that's free." Martin turned back to his term and punched a few more IN keys. "Damn!" he said to the
term.
"What's the problem?" Lisa asked.
"The problem is me," Martin said. "I got this software package I'm supposed to be writing, but it keeps bombing
out and I don't know what's wrong."
Rayno asked, "What's it supposed to do?"
"Oh, it's a real estate system. Y'know, the whoe future-values-in-current-dollars bit. Depreciation, inflation,
amortization, tax credits -"
"Put that in our tang," said. "What numbers crunch?"
Martin started to explain, and Rayno said to me, "This looks like your kind of work." Martin hauled his three
hundred pounds of fat out of the chair, and looked relieved as I dropped down in front of the term. I scanned the
parameters, looked over Martin's program, and processed a bit. Martin'd only made a few mistakes. Anybody
could have. I dumped Martin's program and started loading the right one in off the top of my head.
"Will you look at that?" Martin said.
I didn't answer 'cause I was thinking in assembly. In ten minutes I had it in, compiled, and running test sets. It
worked perfect, of course.
"I just can't believe you kids," Martin said. "You can program easier than I can talk."
"Nothing to it" I said.
"Maybe not for you. I knew a kid grew up speaking Arabic, used to say the same thing." He shook his head,
tugged his beard, looked me in the face, and smiled. "Anyhow, thanks loads, Mike. I don't know how to . . ." He
snapped his fingers. "Say, I just got something in the other day, I bet you'd be really interested in." He took me
over to the display case, pulled it out, and set it on the counter. "The latest word in microterms. The Zeilemann
Starfire 600."
I dropped a bit! Then I ballsed up enough to touch it. I flipped up the wafer display, ran my fingers over the
touch pads, and I just wanted it so bad! "It's smart," Martin said. "Rammed, rammed, and ported."
Rayno was looking at the specs with that cold look in his eye. "My 300 is still faster," he said.
"It should be," Martin said. "You customized it half to death. But the 600 is nearly as fast, and it's stock, and it
lists for $1400. I figure you must have spent nearly 3K upgrading yours."
"Can I try it out?" I asked. Martin plugged me into his system, and I booted and got on line. It worked great!
Quiet, accurate; so maybe it wasn't as fast as Rayno's - I couldn't tell the difference. "Rayno, this thing is the
max!" I looked at Martin. "Can we work out some kind of...?" Martin looked back to his terminal, where the
real estate program was still running tests without a glitch.
"I been thinking about that, Mike. You're a minor, so I can't legally employ you." He tugged on his beard and
rolled his tongue around his mouth. "But I'm hitting that real estate client for some pretty heavy bread on
consulting fees, and it doesn't seem real fair to me that you... Tell you what. Maybe I can't hire you, but I sure
can buy software you write. You be my consultant on, oh . . . seven more projects like this, and we'll call it a
deal? Sound okay to you?"
Before I could shout yes, Rayno pushed in between me and Martin. "I'll buy it. List." He pulled out a charge
card from his jumper pocket. Martin's jaw dropped. "Well, what're you waiting for? My plastic's good."
"List? But I owe Mike one," Martin protested.
"List. You don't owe us nothing."
Martin swallowed. "Okay Rayno." He took the card and ran a credcheck on it. "It's clean," Martin said,
surprised. He punched up the sale and started laughing. "I don't know where you kids get this kind of money!"
"We rob banks," Rayno said. Martin laughed, and Rayno laughed, and we all laughed. Rayno picked up the
term and walked out of the store. As soon as we got outside he handed it to me.
"Thanks Rayno, but . . . but I coulda made the deal myself."
"Happy Birthday, Mike."
"Rayno, my birthday is in August."
"Let's get one thing straight. You work for me."
It was near school endtime, so we routed back to Buddy's. On the way, in the smartcab, Georgie took my
Starfire, gently opened the case, and scanned the boards. "We could double the baud speed real easy."
"Leave it stock," Rayno said.
We split up at Buddy's, and I took the transys home. I was lucky, 'cause Mom and Dad weren't home and I
could zip right upstairs and hide the Starfire in my closet. I wish I had cool parents like Rayno does. They never
ask him any dumb questions.
Mom came home at her usual time, and asked how school was. I didn't have to say much, 'cause just then the
stove said dinner was ready and she started setting the table. Dad came in five minutes later and we started
eating.
We got the phone call halfway through dinner. I was the one who jumped up and answered it. It was Georgie's
old man, and he wanted to talk to my Dad. I gave him the phone and tried to overhear, but he took it in the next
room and talked real quiet. I got unhungry. I never liked tofu, anyway.
Dad didn't stay quiet for long. "He what?! Well thank you for telling me! I'm going to get to the bottom of this
right now!" He hung up.
"Who was that, David?" Mom asked.
"That was Mr. Hansen. Georgie's father. Mike and Georgie were hanging around with that punk Rayno again!"
He snapped around to look at me. I'd almost made it out the kitchen door. "Michael! Were you in school
today?"
I tried to talk cool. I think the tofu had my throat all clogged up. "Yeah...yeah, I was."
"Then how come Mr. Hansen saw you coming out of the downtown library?"
I was stuck. "I - I was down there doing some special research."
"For what class? C'mon Michael, what were you studying?"
It was too many inputs. I was locking up.
"David," Mom said, "Aren't you being a bit hasty? I'm sure there's a good explanation."
"Martha, Mr. Hansen found something in his computer that Georgie and Michael put there. He thinks they've
been messing with banks."
"Our Mikey? It must be some kind of bad joke."
"You don't know how serious this is! Michael Arthur Harris! What have you been doing sitting up all night
with that terminal? What was that system in Hansen's computer? Answer me! What have you been doing?!" My
eyes felt hot. "None of your business! Keep your nose out of things you'll never understand, you obsolete old
relic!"
"That does it! I don't know what's wrong with you damn kids, but I know that thing isn't helping!" He stormed
up to my room. I tried to get ahead of him all the way up the steps and just got my hands stepped on. Mom
came fluttering up behind as he yanked all the plugs on my terminal.
"Now David," Mom said. "Don't you think you're being a bit harsh? He needs that for his homework, don't you,
Mikey?"
"You can't make excuses for him this time, Martha! I mean it! This goes in the basement, and tomorrow I'm
calling the cable company and getting his line ripped out! If he has anything to do on computer he can damn
well use the terminal in the den, where I can watch him!" He stomped out, carrying my smartterm. I slammed
the door and locked it. "Go ahead and sulk! It won't do you any good!"
I threw some pillows around 'til I didn't feel like breaking anything anymore, then I hauled the Starfire out of
the closet. I'd watched over Dad's shoulders enough to know his account numbers and access codes, so I got on
line and got down to business. I was finished in half an hour.
I tied into Dad's terminal. He was using it, like I figured he would be, scanning school records. Fine. He
wouldn't find out anything; we'd figured out how to fix school records months ago. I crashed in and gave him a
new message on his vid display.
"Dad," it said, "there's going to be some changes around here."
It took a few seconds to sink in. I got up and made sure the door was locked real solid. I still got half a scare
when he came pounding up the stairs, though. I didn't know he could be so loud.
"MICHAEL!!" He slammed into the door. "Open this! Now!"
"No."
"If you don't open this door before I count to ten, I'm going to bust it down! One!"
"Before you do that-"
"Two!"
"Better call your bank!"
"Three!"
"B320-5127-OlR." That was his checking account access code. He silenced a couple seconds.
"Young man, I don't know what you think you're trying to pull-"
"I'm not trying anything. I did it already."
Mom came up the stairs and said, "What's going on, David?" "Shut up, Martha!" He was talking real quiet,
now. "What did you do, Michael?"
"Outlooped you. Disappeared you. Buried you."
"You mean, you got into the bank computer and erased my checking account?"
"Savings and mortgage on the condo, too."
"Oh my God . . ."
Mom said, "He's just angry, David. Give him time to cool off. Mikey, you wouldn't really do that, would you?"
"Then I accessed DynaRand," I said.
"Wiped your job. Your pension. I got to your plastic, too."
"He couldn't have, David. Could he?"
"Michael!" He hit the door. "I'm going to wring your scrawny neck!"
"Wait!" I shouted back. "I copied all your files before I purged! There's a way to recover!"
He let up hammering on the door, and struggled to talk calm. "Give me the copies right now and I'll just forget
that this happened."
"I can't. I mean, I did backups in other computers. And I secured the files and hid them where only I know how
to access."
There was quiet. No, in a nano I realised it wasn't quiet, it was Mom and Dad talking real soft. I eared up to the
door but all I caught was Mom saying "why not?" and Dad saying "but what if he is telling the truth?"
"Okay Michael, Dad said at last. "What do you want?"
I locked up. It was an embarasser; what did I want? I hadn't thought that far ahead. Me, caught without a
program! I dropped half a laugh, then tried to think. I mean, there was nothing they could get me I couldn't get
myself, or with Rayno's help. Rayno! I wanted to get in touch with him, is what I wanted. I'd pulled this whole
thing off without Rayno!
I decided then it'd probably be better if my Olders dind't know about the Starfire, so I told Dad first thing I
wanted was my smartterm back. It took a long time for him to clump down to the basement and get it. He
stopped at his term in the den, first, to scan if I'd really purged him. He was real subdued when he brought my
smartterm back up.
I kept processing, but by the time he got back I still hadn't come up with anything more than I wanted them to
leave me alone and stop telling me what to do. I got the smartterm into my room without being pulped, locked
the door, got on line, and gave Dad his job back. Then I tried to flag Rayno and Georgie, but couldn't, so I left
messages for when they booted. I stayed up half the night playing a war, just to make sure Dad didn't try
anything.
I booted and scanned first thing the next morning, but Rayno and Georgie still hadn't come on. So I went down
and had an utter silent breakfast and sent Mom and Dad off to work. I offed school and spent the whole day
finishing the war and working on some tricks and treats programs. We had another utter silent meal when Mom
and Dad came home, and after supper I flagged Rayno had been in the Net and left a remark on when to find
him.
I finally got him on line around eight, and he said Georgie was getting trashed and probably heading for
permanent downtime.
Then I told Rayno all about how I outlooped my old man, but he didn't seem real buzzed about it. He said he
had something cooking and couldn't meet me at Buddy's that night to talk about it, either. So we got off line,
and I started another war and then went to sleep.
The snoozer said 5:25 when I woke up, and I coudln't logic how come I was awake 'til I started making sense
out of my ears. Dad was taking apart the hinges on my door!
"Dad! You cut that out or I'll purge you clean! There won't be backups this time!"
"Try it," he growled.
I jumped out of my sleepsack, powered up, booted and - no boot. I tried again. I could get on line in my
smartterm, but I couldn't port out. "I cut your cable down in the basement," he said.
I grabbed the Starfire out of my closet and zipped it inside my jumper, but before I could do the window, the
door and Dad both fell in. Mom came in right behind, popped open my dresser, and started stuffing socks and
underwear in a suitcase.
"Now you're fritzed!" I told Dad. "I'll never give you back your files!" He grabbed my arm.
"Michael, there's something I think you should see." He dragged me down to his den and pulled some bundles
of old paper trash out of his desk. "These are receipts. This is what obsolete old relics like me use because we
don't trust computer bookkeeping. I checked with work and the bank; everything that goes on in the computer
has to be verified with paper. You can't change anything for more than 24 hours."
"Twenty-four hours?" I laughed. "Then you're still fritzed! I can still wipe you out any day, from any term in
CityNet'"
"I know."
Mom came into the den, carrying the suitcase and kleenexing her eyes. "Mikey, you've got to understand that
we love you, and this is for your own good." They dragged me down to the airport and stuffed me in a private
lear with a bunch of old gestapos.
#
I've had a few weeks now to get used to the Von Schlager Military Academy. They tell me I'm a bright kid and
with good behavior, there's really no reason at all why I shouldn't graduate in five years. I am getting tired,
though, of all the older cadets telling me how soft I've got it now that they've installed indoor plumbing.
Of course, I'm free to walk out any time I want. It's only three hundred miles to Fort McKenzie, where the road
ends.
Sometimes at night, after lights out, I'll pull out my Starfire and run my fingers over the touchpads. That's all I
can do, since they turn off power in the barracks at night. I'll lie there in the dark, thinking about Lisa, and
Georgie, and Buddy's All-Night Burgers, and all the fun we used to pull off. But mostly I'll think about Rayno,
and what great plans he cooks up.
I can't wait to see how he gets me out of this one.
THE END
******************************************************************
AGRIPPA (A Book of The Dead)
Text by William Gibson
I hesitated
before untying the bow
that bound this book together.
A black book:
ALBUMS
CA. AGRIPPA
Order Extra Leaves
By Letter and Name
A Kodak album of time-burned
black construction paper
The string he tied
Has been unravelled by years
and the dry weather of trunks
Like a lady's shoestring from the First World War
Its metal ferrules eaten by oxygen
Until they resemble cigarette-ash
Inside the cover he inscribed something in soft graphite
Now lost
Then his name
W.F. Gibson Jr.
and something, comma,
1924
Then he glued his Kodak prints down
And wrote under them
In chalk-like white pencil:
"Papa's saw mill, Aug. 1919."
A flat-roofed shack
Against a mountain ridge
In the foreground are tumbled boards and offcuts
He must have smelled the pitch, In August
The sweet hot reek
Of the electric saw
Biting into decades
Next the spaniel Moko
"Moko 1919"
Poses on small bench or table
Before a backyard tree
His coat is lustrous
The grass needs cutting
Beyond the tree,
In eerie Kodak clarity,
Are the summer backstairs of Wheeling,
West Virginia
Someone's left a wooden stepladder out
"Aunt Fran and [obscured]"
Although he isn't, this gent
He has a "G" belt-buckle
A lapel-device of Masonic origin
A patent propelling-pencil
A fountain-pen
And the flowers they pose behind so solidly
Are rooted in an upright length of whitewashed
concrete sewer-pipe.
Daddy had a horse named Dixie
"Ford on Dixie 1917"
A saddle-blanket marked with a single star
Corduroy jodpurs
A western saddle
And a cloth cap
Proud and happy
As any boy could be
"Arthur and Ford fishing 1919"
Shot by an adult
(Witness the steady hand
that captures the wildflowers
the shadows on their broad straw hats
reflections of a split-rail fence)
standing opposite them,
on the far side of the pond,
amid the snake-doctors and the mud,
Kodak in hand,
Ford Sr.?
And "Moma July, 1919"
strolls beside the pond,
in white big city shoes,
Purse tucked behind her,
While either Ford or Arthur, still straw-hatted,
approaches a canvas-topped touring car.
"Moma and Mrs. Graham at fish hatchery 1919"
Moma and Mrs. G. sit atop a graceful concrete
arch.
"Arthur on Dixie", likewise 1919,
rather ill at ease.
On the roof behind the barn, behind him,
can be made out this cryptic mark:
H.V.J.M.[?]
"Papa's Mill 1919", my grandfather most regal amid a wrack of
cut lumber,
might as easily be the record
of some later demolition, and
His cotton sleeves are rolled
to but not past the elbow,
striped, with a white neckband
for the attachment of a collar.
Behind him stands a cone of sawdust some thirty feet in height.
(How that feels to tumble down,
or smells when it is wet)
II.
The mechanism: stamped black tin,
Leatherette over cardboard, bits of boxwood,
A lens
The shutter falls
Forever
Dividing that from this.
Now in high-ceiling bedrooms,
unoccupied, unvisited,
in the bottom drawers of veneered bureaus
in cool chemical darkness curl commemorative
montages of the country's World War dead,
just as I myself discovered
one other summer in an attic trunk,
and beneath that every boy's best treasure
of tarnished actual ammunition
real little bits of war
but also
the mechanism
itself.
The blued finish of firearms
is a process, controlled, derived from common
rust, but there
under so rare and uncommon a patina
that many years untouched
until I took it up
and turning, entranced, down the unpainted
stair,
to the hallway where I swear
I never heard the first shot.
The copper-jacketed slug recovered
from the bathroom's cardboard cylinder of
Morton's Salt
was undeformed
save for the faint bright marks of lands
and grooves
so hot, stilled energy,
it blistered my hand.
The gun lay on the dusty carpet.
Returning in utter awe I took it so carefully up
That the second shot, equally unintended,
notched the hardwood bannister and brought
a strange bright smell of ancient sap to life
in a beam of dusty sunlight.
Absolutely alone
in awareness of the mechanism.
Like the first time you put your mouth
on a woman.
III.
"Ice Gorge at Wheeling
1917"
Iron bridge in the distance,
Beyond it a city.
Hotels where pimps went about their business
on the sidewalks of a lost world.
But the foreground is in focus,
this corner of carpenter's Gothic,
these backyards running down to the freeze.
"Steamboat on Ohio River",
its smoke foul and dark,
its year unknown,
beyond it the far bank
overgrown with factories.
"Our Wytheville
House Sept. 1921"
They have moved down from Wheeling and my father wears his
city clothes. Main Street is unpaved and an electric streetlamp is
slung high in the frame, centered above the tracked dust on a
slack wire, suggesting the way it might pitch in a strong wind,
the shadows that might throw.
The house is heavy, unattractive, sheathed in stucco, not native
to the region. My grandfather, who sold supplies to contractors,
was prone to modern materials, which he used with
wholesaler's enthusiasm. In 1921 he replaced the section of brick
sidewalk in front of his house with the broad smooth slab of poured
concrete, signing this improvement with a flourish, "W.F.
Gibson 1921". He believed in concrete and plywood
particularly. Seventy years later his signature remains, the slab
floating perfectly level and charmless between mossy stretches of
sweet uneven brick that knew the iron shoes of Yankee horses.
"Mama Jan. 1922" has come out to sweep the concrete with a
broom. Her boots are fastened with buttons requiring a special instrument.
Ice gorge again, the Ohio, 1917. The mechanism closes. A
torn clipping offers a 1957 DeSOTO FIREDOME, 4-door Sedan,
torqueflite radio, heater and power steering and brakes, new
w.s.w. premium tires. One owner. $1,595.
IV
He made it to the age of torqueflite radio
but not much past that, and never in that town.
That was mine to know, Main Street lined with
Rocket Eighty-eights,
the dimestore floored with wooden planks
pies under plastic in the Soda Shop,
and the mystery untold, the other thing,
sensed in the creaking of a sign after midnight
when nobody else was there.
In the talc-fine dust beneath the platform of the
Norfolk & Western
lay indian-head pennies undisturbed since
the dawn of man.
In the banks and courthouse, a fossil time
prevailed, limestone centuries.
When I went up to Toronto
in the draft,
my Local Board was there on Main Street,
above a store that bought and sold pistols.
I'd once traded that man a derringer for a
Walther P-38.
The pistols were in the window
behind an amber roller-blind
like sunglasses.
I was seventeen or so but basically I guess
you just had to be a white boy.
I'd hike out to a shale pit and run
ten dollars worth of 9mm
through it, so worn you hardly
had to pull the trigger.
Bored, tried shooting
down into a distant stream but
one of them came back at me
off a round of river rock
clipping walnut twigs from a branch
two feet above my head.
So that I remembered the mechanism.
V.
In the all night bus station
they sold scrambled eggs to state troopers
the long skinny clasp-knives called fruit knives
which were pearl handled watermelon-slicers
and hillbilly novelties in brown varnished wood
which were made in Japan.
First I'd be sent there at night only
if Mom's carton of Camels ran out,
but gradually I came to value
the submarine light, the alien reek
of the long human haul, the strangers
straight down from Port Authority
headed for Nashville, Memphis, Miami.
Sometimes the Sheriff watched them get off
making sure they got back on.
When the colored restroom
was no longer required
they knocked open the cinderblock
and extended the magazine rack
to new dimensions,
a cool fluorescent cave of dreams
smelling faintly and forever of disinfectant,
perhaps as well of the travelled fears
of those dark uncounted others who,
moving as though contours of hot iron,
were made thus to dance
or not to dance
as the law saw fit.
There it was that I was marked out as a writer,
having discovered in that alcove
copies of certain magazines
esoteric and precious, and, yes,
I knew then, knew utterly,
the deal done in my heart forever,
though how I knew not,
nor ever have.
Walking home
through all the streets unmoving
so quiet I could hear the timers of the traffic lights a block away:
the mechanism.
Nobody else, just the silence
spreading out
to where the long trucks groaned
on the highway
their vast brute souls in want.
VI.
There must have been a true last time
I saw the station but I don't remember
I remember the stiff black horsehide coat
gift in Tucson of a kid named Natkin
I remember the cold
I remember the Army duffle
that was lost and the black man in Buffalo
trying to sell me a fine diamond ring,
and in the coffee shop in Washington
I'd eavesdropped on a man wearing a black tie
embroidered with red roses
that I have looked for ever since.
They must have asked me something
at the border
I was admitted
somehow
and behind me swung the stamped tin shutter
across the very sky
and I went free
to find myself
mazed in Victorian brick
amid sweet tea with milk
and smoke from a cigarette called a Black Cat
and every unknown brand of chocolate
and girls with blunt-cut bangs
not even Americans
looking down from high narrow windows
on the melting snow
of the city undreamed
and on the revealed grace
of the mechanism,
no round trip.
They tore down the bus station
there's chainlink there
no buses stop at all
and I'm walking through Chiyoda-ku
in a typhoon
the fine rain horizontal
umbrella everted in the storm's Pacific breath
tonight red lanterns are battered,
laughing,
in the mechanism.
THE END
**************************************************************
Metrophage
Richard Kadrey
Chapter:
One Two Three Four Five Six Seven
Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen
Chapter:
METROPHAGE: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE ONLINE EDITION
METROPHAGE was my first novel. It came out in the U.S. in 1988, and
was gone faster than bearclaws at a cop convention. Since it was first
published, METROPHAGE has been reprinted in French, German,
Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Hebrew. Surprisingly, we're still
selling rights in various countries around the world.
The protagonist of METROPHAGE is Jonny Qabbala, a drug dealer in
his early 20s. When I wrote the book, I denied hugely that it was in
any way autobiographical. This was, of course, a stinking lie.
Aside from the fact I've never shot anyone or used cobra venom as a
recreational drug, METROPHAGE is a distillation of everything I'd
done, seen, read, heard or thought about up until the time I wrote it,
and is as purely autobiographical as anything I'm ever likely to
write. Which isn't to say you should read the book literally. Some of
what happens in METROPHAGE is straight reportage, and while some
of the events in the book happened to me, some of them happened to
friends. The things you think are the obvious truths probably aren't.
The most ridiculous and unbelievable things are quite possibly true.
Plus, the book is full of lies. It's a work of fiction. I made up a lot of
it. Yet it remains the psychological story of my life up into my mid-
twenties. This is not meant to dazzle anyone with my
accomplishments. If you read the book, you'll quickly discover an
unflattering truth: Jonny Qabbala is a jerk. He's not evil or stupid or
even a bad guy, he's just young and clueless. Jonny finds it difficult
to act decisively or take a stand, and when he does either, he's
usually wrong. Even when I was writing the book, when I was closer
to Jonny's age and temperament, I frequently wanted to crack his
skull with the collected works of Iggy Pop (which is another bit of
trivia: Iggy is in the book, but I won't tell you what character he
plays; if you've ever seen Iggy perform, you'll know).
Time passes, though, and I no longer want to slap Jonny around. I'm
not so far from Jonny that I can see him as my offspring, but I can
easily imagine him as a kid brother. As such, I can forgive him a lot
of his faults because as lame as he is, he's usually trying to do the
right thing.
The ending of METROPHAGE is deliberately open. A lot of people
have assumed that I intended to write a sequel. The truth is, I never
even considered it. However, I can't help but feel a certain
responsibility for Jonny, since I sort of left him in the middle of
downtown Nowhere. In order to settle Jonny's fate in my own mind,
I've written him into several stories and into one abandoned novel.
In the end, I took him out of all of them (and it doesn't get much
worse than ending up on the cutting room floor of a book that doesn't
even exist). Still, he tries to weasel his way into each book I write,
and I always try to find room for him. Sooner or later, he'll land in
one of them. I just hope I don't find him behind the counter of some
asteroid belt McDonald's asking, You want fries with that?"
Richard Kadrey
San Francisco, May 1995
**********************************************************************
METROPHAGE
by Richard Kadrey
Now I lay me down to sleep
I hear the sirens in the street
All my dreams are made of chrome
I have no way to get back home
--Tom Waits
ONE:
The Petrified City
A crip by the name of Easy Money ran the HoloWhores down at
a place called Carnaby's Pit. At least he had been running them the
last time Jonny Qabbala, drug dealer, ex-Committee for Public Health
bounty hunter, and self-confessed loser, had paid him a visit. Jonny
was hoping that Easy was still working the Pit. He had a present for
him from a dead friend.
The ugly and untimely murder of Raquin, the chemist, had left
an empty spot in the pit of Jonny's stomach. Not just because Raquin
had been Jonny's connection (since it was a simple matter for Jonny
to get his dope directly from Raquin's boss, the smuggler lord
Conover) but over the year or so of their acquaintance Raquin had
become, to Jonny, something close to a friend. And close to a friend"
was as much as Jonny generally allowed himself to become. It was
fear of loss more than any lack of feelings on his part that kept Jonny
at a distance from most of the other losers and one-percenters that
crowded Los Angeles.
Overhead, the moon was a bone-white sickle. Jonny wondered,
idly, if the Alpha Rats were watching Los Angeles that night. What
would the extraterrestrials think, through a quarter million miles of
empty space, when they saw him put a bullet through Easy Money's
head?
Jonny caught sight of Carnaby's Pit a few blocks away, quartz
prisms projecting captured atrocity videos from the Lunar Border
Wars. On a flat expanse of wall above the club's entrance, a New
Palestine soldier in a vacuum suit was smashing the faceplate of a
Mishima Guardsman. The Guardsman's blood bubbled from his
helmet, droplets boiling to hard black jewels as the soundtrack from
an ancient MGM musical played in the background: I want to be
loved by you, by you, and nobody else but you... The words
CARNABY'S PIT periodically superimposed themselves over the scene
in Kana and Roman characters.
Jonny pushed his way through a group of Pemex-U.S. workers
negotiating for rice wine at the weekend mercado that covered the
street near Fountain Avenue. The air was thick with the scents of
animal waste, sweat, roasting meat and hashish. Chickens beat their
wings against wire cages while legless vat-grown sheep lay docilely
in the butchers' stalls, waiting for their turn on their skewers. Old
women in hipils motioned Jonny over, holding up bright bolts of
cloth, bootleg computer chips and glittering butterfly knives. Jonny
kept shaking his head. No, gracias...Ima ja naku...Nein..."
Handsome young Germans, six of them, all in the latest eel-skin
cowboy boots and silk overalls (marked with the logo of some
European movie studio) lugged portable holo-recorders between the
stalls, making another in their endless series of World Link
documentaries about the death of street culture. Those quickly-made
documentaries and panel discussions about the Alpha Rats (who they
were, their intentions, their burden on the economy of the West)
seemed to make up the bulk of the Link's broadcasts these days.
Jonny swore that if he heard one more learned expert coolly
discussing the logic of drug and food rationing, he was going to
personally bury fifty kilos of C-4 plastique under the local Link
station and make his own contribution to street culture by liberating
a few acres of prime urban landscape.
At a stall near the back of the place, an old curandera was
selling her evil eye potions and a collection of malfunctioning robot
sentries: cybernetic goshawks, rottweilers and cougars, simple track
and kill devices controlled by a tabletop microwave link. The sentries
had been very popular with the nouveau riche toward the end of the
previous century, but the animals' electronics and maintenance
had proved to be remarkably unreliable. Eventually they passed, like
much of the mercado's merchandise, down from the hills, through the
rigid social strata of L.A., until they landed in the street, last stop
before the junk heap.
There by the twitching half-growling animals, the crew set up
their lights. Jonny hung around and watched them block out shots.
The film makers infuriated him, but in their own way, Jonny knew,
they were right.
The market was dying. When he had been a boy, Jonny
remembered it sprawling over a dozen square blocks. Now it barely
managed to occupy two. And most of the merchandise was junk.
Chromium paint flaked off the electronic components, revealing
ancient rusted works. The hydroponically grown fruits and
vegetables grew steadily smaller and more tasteless each season. All
that seemed to keep the market going was the communally owned
bank of leaking solar batteries. During the rolling brown-outs, they
alone kept the tortilla ovens hot, the fluorescents flickering, the
videos cranking.
Isn't it time you kids were in bed?" Jonny asked, stepping on
the toes of a lanky blonde camera man. Sprechen sie 'parasite'?"
Huddled in the doorways of clubs and arcades, groups of
fingerprint changers, nerve tissue merchants and brain cell thieves
regarded the crowd with hollow eyes, as if assessing their worth in
cash at every moment. The gangs, too, were out in force that hot
night: the Lizard Imperials (snake-skin boots and surgically split
tongues), the Zombie Analytics (subcutaneous pixels offering up
flickering flesh-images of dead video and rock stars), the anarchistphysician Croakers, the Yakuza Rebels and the Gypsy Titans; even the
Naginata Sisters were out, swinging blades and drinking on the
corner in front of the Iron Orchid.
As Jonny crossed Sunset, a few of the Sisters waved to him.
When he waved back, a gust of wind pulled open his tunic, revealing
his Futukoro Automatic. The Sisters whooped and laughed at the
sight of the weapon, feigning terror. A tall Sister with Maori facial
tattoos crooked her finger and began blasting him with an imaginary
gun.
Coming toward him from the opposite direction was a ring of
massive Otoko Niku. Meat Boys-- uniformly ugly acromegalic giants,
each easily three meters tall. In the center of the protective ring, an
old Yakuza oyabun openly stared and pointed at people. It was rare
enough for people to see a pure-blood Japanese in the street that
they stopped to stare back, until the Meat Boys cuffed them away.
Jonny thought of a word then.
Gaijin. Foreigner. Alien.
That's me. I'm gaijin, Jonny thought. He could find little comfort
in the familiarity of the streets. Jonny realized that by
acknowledging his desire to kill Easy Money, he had cut himself off
from everybody around him. He walked slower. Twice he almost
turned back.
A tiny nisei girl tried to sell him a peculiar local variation on
sushi-- refried beans and raw tuna wrapped in a corn husk-commonly known as Salmonella Roll. Jonny declined and ducked into
an alley. There, he swallowed two tabs of Desoxyn, hijacked from a
Committee warehouse.
It was good stuff. Very soon, a tingling began in his fingertips and moved up his arms, filling him with a pleasantly tense,
almost sexual, energy. Beads of sweat broke out on his hands and
face, ran down his chest. He thought of Sumi.
I might not be back tonight," he had told her before he left the
squat they shared. Uno tareja. Got some deliveries to make," he lied.
Routine stuff."
Then why are you taking that blunderbuss?" Sumi asked,
pointing to the Futukoro pistol Jonny had hidden under his tunic.
Jonny ignored her question and tried to look very interested in
the process of lacing up his steel-tipped boots. Sumi terrified him.
Sometimes, in his more callous moments, he considered her a slip-up,
his one remaining abandonment to emotional ties. Occasionally, when
he felt strong, he would admit to himself that he loved her.
I'll be passing through the territories of a dozen gangs tonight
and then if I'm lucky I'll be landing in Carnaby's Pit. That's why the
blunderbuss, he said. "I should be taking a Committee battalion with
me.
I bet they'd be thrilled if you called them."
I bet you're right."
Almond-eyed Sumi stroked his hair with delicate, callused
hands. He had met her at the zendo of an old Buddhist nun. The Zen
study had not stuck, but Sumi had. Her full name, Sumimasen, meant
variously, thank you," I'm sorry," and this never ends." She had
been on her own almost as long as Jonny. Along the way, she picked
up enough electronics to make her living as a Watt Snatcher; That is:
for a fee she would tap right into the government's electric lines
under the city and siphon off power for her customers.
Jonny got up and Sumi put her arms around him, thrusting her
belly at the pistol in his belt. Is that your gun or are you just happy
to see me? Sumi asked. She did a whole little act, rolling her eyes
and purring in her best vamp voice. But her nervousness was
obvious.
Jonny bent and kissed the base of her neck, held her long
enough to reassure, then longer. He felt her tense up again, under his
hands.
I'll be back," he said.
During the last few months, Jonny had begun to worry about
leaving Sumi alone. Officially, the government's power lines did not
exist. All the more reason the State would like to wipe the Watt
Snatchers out. All the gangs were outlaws, technically. The elements
of the equation were simple: its components were the price of
survival divided by the risks that survival demanded. And in an age
of rationing and manufactured shortages, survival meant the black
market. The gangs produced whatever the smuggler lords couldn't
bring in. And the pushers sold it on the streets.
Jonny had chosen his own brand of survival when he walked
away from the Committee for Public Health and threw in with the
pushers. It was a simple question of karma. Now he worked the
black market, selling any drugs the smuggler lords could supply-anti-biotics, LSD analogs, beta-endorphins, MDMA, skimming the
streets on a razor-sharp high compounded of adrenaline and
paranoia.
In his more philosophical moments, it seemed to Jonny that
they were all engaged in nothing more than some bizarre battle of
symbols. What the smuggler lords and gangs provided-- food, power
and drugs-- had become the ultimate symbols of control in their
world. The Federales could not afford to ease up their rationing of
medical treatment, access to public utilities and food distribution.
They had learned, long ago, how it easy it was to control vast
numbers of people simply by worrying them into submission,
keeping them busy hustling to stay alive.
Los Angeles, as such, had ceased to exist. L.A., however-- the
metaphorical heart and soul of the city-- was alive and kicking. An
L.A. of the mind, playground of trade and commerce: the City of
Night. Known in the local argot as Last Ass, Lonesome Angels, the
Laughing Adder, Los Angeles existed in the rarefied state of many
port cities, functioning mainly as a downloading point for a constant
stream of data, foreign currency, dope and weapons that flowed onto
the continent from all over the world.
It was the worst kept secret in the street that half the State
Legislature had their fingers deep in the black market pie. Like some
fragile species of hothouse orchid, the city existed only as long as it
had the politicos backing. Without that, the Committee would be on
them like rabid dogs. For the moment, though, the balance was there.
Merchandise flowed out and cash flowed in, blood and breath of the
city.
Jonny understood all this and accepted the tightrope existence.
He knew too, that someday the whole thing was going to crash. It
was their collective karma. Sooner or later some politico was going to
get greedy, try to undercut one of the gangs or simply sell them out
for a vote. And the Committee would move in. Jonny knew that this
knowledge should make a difference, but it did not.
In the alley, the speed came on like an old friend, an electric
hum up and down his spine. Suddenly all things were possible. The
nervous glare of neon signs and halogen street lamps domed Sunset
in a pulsing nimbus of come-on colors. Stepping from the alley, Jonny
barely felt his boots on the pavement. Easy Money was as good as
dead.
There were five or six lepers clustered around the entrance to
Carnaby's Pit, begging alms and exhibiting their wounds to those
willing to pay for a look. An upturned Stetson on the ground before
them held an assortment of coins, crumpled dollar and peso notes
and gaily colored pills. Ever since the lepers' numbers had grown too
large to ignore, odd rumors had sprung up around them. Many
people swore that the Committee was putting something in the
water, while others suspected the Arabs. Some blamed the Alpha
Rats, claiming they were trying to destroy the Earth with Leprosy
Rays from the moon. It was Jonny's opinion that most people were
idiots.
One leper in a nylon windbreaker was reciting in a low
whiskey voice:
The streets breathe, ebb and flow like the
seas beneath a sodden twilight eye.
The sky appears from a maw of rooftopsDusk streets, dry fountains
coax the cemetery stars.
Jonny pulled a few Dapsone and tetrahydrocanabinol capsules
from his pouch and dropped them into the battered Stetson. The
leper who had been reciting, his head and face heavily bandaged,
opened his jacket.
Thank you, friend," the leper said through broken lips,
pointing to his freshest scars.
Nodding politely, Jonny left the lepers and stepped down into
the Pit.
The skyline tilted, angled steeply downward, then up, became a
vertical blur of mirrored windows, skyscrapers leading to a hologram
star field. Jonny was in the Pit's game parlor, separated from the bar
by a dirty lotus print curtain. Around the edges of the room, antique
pinball machines beeped and rang prosaically while the air in the
center of the parlor burned with the phantom light of hologram
games. Crossing the parlor, Jonny was caught in a spray of hot blue
laser blasts from Sub-Orbital Commando, showered with fragments
of pint-sized galaxies spinning from Vishnu and Shiva's hands. Ratsized nudes swarmed above his head, frantically groping at each for
Fun In Zero G.
One angry pinball player threw a glass and it shattered against
the far wall. Jonny stepped back as two members of the Pit's own
Meat Boys moved smoothly from opposite ends of the room to
intercept the shouting man.
Goddamit, this machine just ate my last dollar!" screamed the
pinball player.
He was still screaming as the two beefy monsters grabbed an
arm apiece and ushered him through the front doors. They came
back alone. Jonny half expected to see them return with the guy's
arms.
Peace! Can't we have a little peace in here?" mumbled a
sweating man lining up Jacqueline Kennedy in the sights of a
fiberglass reproduction of a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. It was
Smokefinger, the pickpocket, fat and nervous, jacked into the Date
With Destiny game by a length of pencil-thin cable extending from
the game console to a 24-prong mini-plug implanted at the base of
his skull. Most of the players in the room were jacked into various
games by similar plugs. Jonny's stomach fluttered at the sight.
Elective surgery, he had decided years before, did not extend to
having little platinum bullets permanently jammed into his skull,
thank you. He could watch the World Link on a monitor and as for
the games, they seemed real enough without skull-plugs.
Smokefinger tracked the ghostly hologram of the presidential
limousine as crimson numbers flickered in the metallic-blue Dallas
sky, reading out his score. Jonny leaned close to pickpocket's ear and
said, How's it going, Smoke?" Smokefinger ignored him and
continued to move the toy rifle with steady, insect-like
concentration. Hey Smoke," said Jonny, waving his fingers before
Smokefinger's eyes just as the fat man pulled the trigger.
No score. Shit," mumbled the pickpocket, still ignoring Jonny.
He had aced the chauffeur.
This wasn't going to be any fun at all, Jonny decided. He pushed
the release button on the plug at the back of Smokefinger's
head. The wire dropped and a spring-loaded coil drew it back inside
the game console.
What the hell--" yelled Smokefinger, grabbing for his neck. He
looked at Jonny dumbly as his eyes slowly re-focused. In a moment,
he said, Hey Jonny, que pasa?"
Not much," Jonny said. I can't believe you're still playing this
game. Haven't you killed everybody in Dallas by now?
Smokefinger shrugged. I pop 'em, but they keep coming back."
Sweat pooled on the pickpocket's glasses where the rims touched his
cheeks.
Jonny smiled and looked around the room hoping there was
anyone else from whom he might get information. However, in the
pastel glare of meteor showers and laser fire, none of the faces
looked familiar. You seen Easy Money around?" he asked
Smokefinger. I've got to talk to him."
Right, talk. You and everybody else." Smokefinger looked back
at the empty hologram chamber and cursed. I almost broke my own
record, you know, he said. He looked at Jonny accusingly. "No, I ain't
seen Easy. Random's tending bar tonight. Maybe you should go talk
to him. To tell you the truth, you're distracting me. Smokefinger
never took his finger from the trigger of the fiberglass rifle. Jonny
pulled some yen coins from his pocket and fed them into the
machine.
Thanks for all your help, killer," he said. But Smokefinger did
not hear him; he was already jacking in. Jonny left Smokefinger,
wishing he could find peace as easily as that, and pushed his way
into the bar.
Jonny always found it a little disconcerting that the main room
never seemed to change. He imagined it frozen in time, like a
scratched record, repeating the same snatch of lyric over and over
again. The usual weekend crowd of small-time smugglers, B actors
and bored prostitutes stared from the blue veil of smoke around the
bar. The same tired porn played on the big screen for the benefit of
those unfortunates not equipped with skull-plugs. Even the band,
Taking Tiger Mountain were blasting the same old riffs, stopping
half-way through their own Guernica Rising" when the crowd
shouted them down. They switched to a desultory Brown Sugar," a
song that was out-of-date long before anybody in the club had been
born. Dancers undulated under the strobes and sub-sonic mood
enhancers as projectors threw holograms of lunar atrocities onto
their hot bodies.
In fact, the only real difference Jonny could see in the place
was the darkness in the HoloWhores bundling booths.
Jonny pushed his way through the tightly packed crowd and
tried the door to Easy's control room. It was locked, and the bar far
too full to force the door. He would have to wait. Feeling relief, and
guilt at that relief, Jonny made his way to the bar for a drink and
some questions.
Random, the bartender, was drying glasses behind a bar
constructed of old automobile dashboards. Tall and thin, his skin
creased like dead leaves, Random offered Jonny the same half-smile
he offered everybody. Jonny ordered an Asahi dark and gin; he put a
twenty on the bar. Random set down the beer and slid the bill into
his pocket in one smooth motion.
The bartender inclined his head toward the dance floor.
Necrophiliacs," he said above the roar of the band. They can't stand
new music. Like it's deadly to them or something. Bunch of assholes.
Random shrugged. Then he looked away, like a blind man, eyes
unfocused. They just nuked Kansas City. The Jordanian ReUnification Army, a New Palestine splinter group. They called the
local Net up link. Said Houston's next, he reported. The bartender
shook his head. Those boys must really hate cows." Random had a
passion for morbid news items and stayed plugged into the Net's
data lines constantly, relaying the most worthy bits to his customers.
Jonny thought it was one of his most charming qualities.
He turned back to Jonny as if anticipating his question. Easy split.
Been gone a couple of days now. Left quick, too. Didn't touch his holo
stuff.
I don't suppose you have any idea where he went?" asked
Jonny.
I'm afraid he neglected to leave a forwarding address. A
shame too, so close to Thanksgiving and all.
The band's volume jumped abruptly as they broke from the
song into a tense, rhythmic jam. Saint Peter, the guitarist, stood at
the edge of the stage between soaring liquid-cooled stacks of KruppVerwandlungsinhalt speakers. Eyes squeezed shut, shoulders loose,
Saint Peter pumped walls of noise, his myoelectric left-hand racing
like a frantic silver spider up and down the fretboard. As he played,
a pattern of light glinted off the chrome hand, marking its progress
through the air. Then, just as the jam reached its peak, the song died;
the porn faded and the lights dimmed. Brown-out," said Random. He
casually threw a switch under the bar and the power returned. Tell
Sumi gracias for the watts, he said.
Jonny nodded. Did you hear that Easy had another Flare Gun
Party?
he asked.
No, who got burned?"
Raquin."
Random raised an eyebrow in sympathy. Sorry, man," he said.
Although, I must admit, I'm not entirely surprised to hear he's been
up to something. He took a long hit from a hookah next to the cash
register. Looking for Easy Money seems to be the hot new game in
town. Last night the crowd was so thick I had 'em line up and take
numbers. Of course, Easy's not the only one who seems to have
captured the public's imagination. Random smiled at Jonny. "You
appear to have developed a bit of celebrity all your own.
Me?" Jonny asked guardedly. Who's been asking about me?"
Random shrugged. No one I knew." The bartender winked
conspiratorially. Come on, boy-o. Whose ankles have you been
nipping at?
I am pathetically clean." Jonny said. Tell me about them.
Anything you can remember.
Random stuck two nicotine yellow fingers into his shirt pocket
and pulled out a glicene envelope of white powder. Pure as Mother
Mary and twice as nice, he said, giving the envelope a light kiss.
Interesting lads. They didn't try to pay off in crude cash." He
dropped the envelope back into his pocket.
Smugglers?" asked Jonny.
Could be, only what's a smuggler lord doing shooting for small
shit like Easy Money? Or you for that matter.
Who knows," Jonny said. He took a long gulp of his drink.
Maybe he's decided he's in the wrong business."
Hell," said the bartender, everybody in Last Ass's in the
wrong business.
Random set down the glass he had been cleaning and said,
Weather." His eyes shifted. Junior senator on the Atmospheric
Management Committee announced they can clean-up the mess left
by the Weather Wars. Says they ought to be able to stabilize weather
patterns over most of North America in three to five years.
Didn't they announce that same program three to five years
ago? asked Jonny.
At least." And with that, Random gave Jonny the other half of
the smile and moved on to other customers.
Swirling the dregs of his beer, Jonny turned and studied the
noisy crowd moving through the bar. He searched their heads for a
sign of goat horns grafted above a thin face, inset with darting,
suspicious eyes. Or arms thick with tattooed serpents, like the
stigmata of some junky god. Easy Money always stood out in a crowd
which, Jonny supposed, was the idea. If Easy was around, he should
not be hard to spot.
Jonny had met Easy while they were both in the employ of the
smuggler lord Conover. This was just after Easy had made a name for
himself with his first Flare Gun Party.
The party had become something of a legend with the pushers.
It went like this: Easy Money, a human parasite with the unerring
ability to detect the softest, most vulnerable part of his prey, had
acquired a contract to kill the leader of the Los Santos Atomicos gang.
Beginning with a philosophy that later became his trademark (like
the hourglass on the belly of a spider) Easy reasoned that gang
retribution being such a swift and ugly thing, eliminating the entire
gang would be less trouble than the removal of any single member.
It was well known to those who, like Easy, always kept a
metaphorical ear to the ground, that the Los Santos Atomicos gang's
particular vice was free-basing cocaine. Easy located their safe-house
with information from a rival gang. He also found that the Los Santos
Atomicos liked to buy the ether they used to treat the coke, in bulk.
They kept big tanks of the stuff hidden under the floor.
As he was fond of saying, from there it was easy money.
Like some stoned Prometheus, Easy brought fire to the Los
Santos Atomicos in the form of a red Navy signal flare which he fired
into their lab from the roof of a Catholic mission across the street.
The explosion literally ripped the roof off the ether-filled building.
The fireball boiled down onto many of the adjoining buildings,
igniting them, too.
Besides the Los Santos Atomicos, at least a dozen other people,
mainly junkies and prostitutes, died in the fires that engulfed the
grimy neighborhood. And Easy Money moved up a rung in the
hierarchy of the movers and shakers in their little world.
Looking back, none of it had seemed important to Jonny at the time.
When he heard of the deaths it seemed somehow normal.
Just one more senseless act in the long series of senseless acts that
made up their lives. However, Raquin's death had moved events
from the abstract into a personal affront. He knew Raquin.
And he knew Easy had killed him. Jonny would finish Easy Money
simply because nobody else would and because the little prick
deserved it.
Jonny slowed his breathing, counted each intake of breath,
centering himself as his roshi had taught him. Visions of horned,
tattooed Easy swam before him as he hunted for that savage part of
himself he had sought before whenever he had to kill.
But the passion was gone, seemed pointless now. The speed had
been cut with something unpleasant. It was wearing off already,
leaving him feeling numb and stupid. Jonny gulped down the rest of
his beer and tried to get into the buzz from the liquor.
He wondered if perhaps he had figured things wrong. If the
smuggler lords really were after Easy maybe he was not needed,
after all. There was always work to do, money to be made. He had to
establish a new connection. Something bothered Jonny, though. He
could not figure out who, besides the Committee, would be looking
for him. Had he trod on someone's toes in the last few days looking
for Easy? He could not remember.
The bar seemed to tip slightly as Jonny downed his second
Asahi and gin. When he wiped a hand across his brow it came away
cool and covered in sweat. He left the bar, pushing carelessly through
a tight knot of nervous teenagers from the Valley made up to look
like they had grafts and implants. Near the restroom, a Zombie
Analytic flashed Jonny in quick succession: Marilyn Monroe, Jim
Morrison and Aoki Vega. He ignored her.
Inside the restroom, Jonny splashed rusty water onto his face.
The room stank of human waste, and the paper towel dispenser was
empty. On the floor he found half a copy of Twilight of the Gods".
The toilet was full of Nietzsche. Jonny dried his hands with the few
remaining pages. The water made him feel a little better. However,
the come down from the speed had left him jumpy and nervous.
When Jonny left the restroom, a hand clamped on his arm.
Jonny, how's it going?" asked a short man that Jonny did not
recognize. The man's smile was wide and toothy, intended to give the
impression that he was a very dangerous character. He wore shades
whose lenses were dichromatic holograms depicting some cavern.
Where his eyes should have been were twin bottomless pits.
That's a good way to lose some teeth or an eye," Jonny said
evenly.
The little man's smile faded only slightly. He relaxed his grip on
Jonny's arm, but did not release him.
Sorry Jonny," he said. Look, could I buy you a drink or
something?
No."
Jonny shook off the little man's grip and headed back to the
bar to get drunk. But again, strong fingers caught him.
Where are you going in such a hurry?" the little man asked.
Let's talk. I've got a deal for you."
Jonny jammed his elbow into the little man's midsection, spun
and pressed the barrel of the Futukoro into the man's throat.
If you ever grab me again, I will kill you. Do you understand
that? Jonny whispered.
The little man released Jonny's arm and stepped back, his
hands held in front of his chest, palms out. It's cool," the little man
said giddily. It's cool."
Jonny pushed the man away roughly and left him chattering to
himself. He was sweating again. Jonny went back to the bar and
drank cheap fishy-tasting Japanese vodka, thinking as he drank,
about how vile it was and how he wished he could afford the good
stuff. He put the little man out of his mind. Jonny wondered if he
should call Sumi, but that seemed like a bad idea. She would ask
questions he did not want to answer. Eventually, his thoughts drifted
to Raquin. Jonny wondered what it was like to burn to death. He
remembered that someone had once told him that you would not feel
anything, that the fire would consume all the oxygen and you would
smother before you ever felt the flames. That seemed like small
comfort. How much better was it to smother than to burn?
Jonny continued drinking straight shots of the fishy vodka until
the taste disappeared altogether. Taking six of the shot-glasses, he
constructed a little pyramid, but Random took the glasses away and
soon Jonny ran out of money. While he was fishing in his pouch for
more dope, there was a slight tug on his arm. Somehow, when he
turned, Jonny knew the little man would be standing there. His
shades were off and he held his hands up as if to ward off a blow.
Truce, okay? I did not grab you," the little man said. I just
tapped you on the shoulder.
Jonny nodded. I could tell you were a quick study. What do
you want?
The man leaned forward, anxiously. Look Jonny, I didn't want
to tell you before-- I'm working for Mister Conover. He sent me to
get you. If you don't come back with me, my ass is grass.
Sorry to hear that. Tell Mister Conover I'll get in touch with
him as soon as I'm through with the deal I'm working on now.
I can't do that. He wants you now," said the little man.
Hopefully, he added, You know that whatever it is you're working
on, Mister Conover will make it worth your while to drop.
Jonny shook his head.
No thanks; this is personal."
The little man leaned closer. You aren't looking for Easy
Money, are you?
What if I am?"
Well, that's great," said the little man. That's the job-- Easy
Money copped something that belongs to Mister Conover. And Mister
Conover wants you to help him get it back.
Jonny nodded, took a piece of ice from someone's empty glass,
and rubbed it across his forehead. My problem, friend, is that I
know Mister Conover pretty well and I know that he is a
professional, Jonny said. "No offense, but why would he send a hard
guy like you to get me?
The little man looked around, apparently to make sure that
nobody was eavesdropping. This really isn't my job," he whispered.
Jonny smiled. No shit?" he said.
I'm more of a bookkeeper. It's just that Mister Conover's got
all his muscle guys out looking for Easy Money, he said. The little
man looked at Jonny gravely. You know how it is."
Yeah, I know how it is," said Jonny, genuinely amused.
He told me that you always hang out at Carnaby's Pit," the
little man continued. He made a face as if he had just smelled
something foul. To tell you the truth, it's a little bit much for me."
Jonny laughed. Sometimes it's a bit much for me, too," he said.
The little man smiled; for real, this time. Then you'll come with
me? he asked.
Jonny shrugged. That stuff about looking for Easy, you weren't
just being cute again, were you? "No, all that was true, he said.
Good."
Then you'll come?"
I'm not sure. I hate to beat a point to death, but how do I
know you work for Mister Conover? "Oh yeah, said the little man
brightening. He reached into his jacket pocket. Mister Conover said
to give you this.
He handed Jonny a plastic bag containing two gelatinous blue
capsules. The manufacturer's markings were Swiss, the capsules
NATO issue, banded with an orange warning stripe indicating
myotoxins. Jonny had seen the stuff on the Committee. Frosty the
Snowman. It was a necrotic, a synthetic variation on pit viper venom
that killed by breaking down collagen fibers, effectively dissolving
skin and muscle tissue. The NATO variation, he had heard, was
constructed with certain open" segments along its DNA chain,
allowing the toxin to bind with polypeptides in the victim's collagen
and replicate itself there. Rumor had it that Frosty could break down
the skin and muscle tissue of a seventy kilo man in just under
fourteen hours. It was not the kind of drug that many people would
have access to. Jonny stuffed the bag into his pouch.
So, I'm convinced," he said.
Then you'll come?"
Why not," he said. I'm not getting anywhere here."
The little man beamed at him. Jonny thought it might be love.
By the way, have you got a name?" Jonny asked.
Cyrano. Bender Cyrano, like the guy in the old book, you
know? Only I haven't got the nose. Cyrano laughed at his own joke.
Jonny did not know what the hell Cyrano was talking about,
but he smiled so as not to hurt the little man's feelings. When Cyrano
extended his hand, Jonny shook it.
Nice to meet you, Cyrano. Let's get out of here," said Jonny.
When they reached the dirty curtain, Jonny turned and took a last
look at the band. They were burning through one of Saint Peter's
best tunes, Street Prince." The crowd ignored them, utterly.
Random was right, Jonny decided. A bunch of assholes.
Outside, the hot night had cooled somewhat. That usually meant that
the street people would haunt Sunset Boulevard until dawn, but an
uneasy silence had settled upon the street. A scrap of paper, plucked
up by the wind, did a careless pirouette before being carried away. A
quiet crowd had gathered across the street, watching the club. Jonny
took a step back. Cyrano walked on a few steps before he noticed
that Jonny was no longer there.
What's wrong?" he asked.
Jonny was barely six when the first of the Protein Rebellions
took place. That was when the citizens of Los Angeles, inspired by
uprisings in other cities, rose up and wrecked the Griffith Park Zoo in
search of fresh meat. The riots were finally put down, but not until
ten days of fighting left the city little more than an open wound. The
official body count was something like 10,000 civilian and military
dead.
The authorities, however, had not been caught entirely
unprepared. Many in power had seen what was coming. Plans were
pushed forward, timetables scrapped, and those select few, wealthy
enough to buy entrance or powerful enough to demand it, began
their silent pilgrimages deep into the desert, to governmentsponsored havens like New Hope.
The rest of the city remained behind with the rest of the
solution. The rest of the solution, in this case, was a paramilitary
organization known, without apparent irony, as the Committee
for Public Health. And several armed members of that organization
were waiting for Jonny when he left Carnaby's Pit.
Spotlights hit Jonny and Cyrano from across the street.
A adolescent, bullhorned voice called, Do not move. You are
both under arrest.
Jonny dropped to the ground, pulling his gun. Cyrano
awkwardly wrestled a Mexican Barretta from his belt and got off one
shot before a Futukoro blast ripped into his chest. The little man fell
on Jonny, bleeding everywhere, looking horrified. He clutched at the
wound, as if by holding it closed, he could keep his life from slipping
out. Jonny looked up in time to see the leper in the Spacer uniform
peering at him from around the side of the bar.
Automatic weapons fire bit into the front of the Pit as the
Committee opened up. Shattered glass and concrete showered down
on Jonny as he flattened himself on the ground. From behind, the
door of the bar burst open and a phalanx of the Pit's Meat Boys
emerged, armed to the teeth. Jonny wanted very muchto disappear.
Across Sunset, the evening crowds were pinned down in
windows and doorways, watching the fire fight. Occasionally, one or
two kids wearing gang colors would make a break into the open and
run across Sunset, waving and shouting as they reached the other
side alive. A young, fat Gypsy Titan started across behind his faster
friend. It looked as if the fat boy would make it, when a shot spun
him around. He tore at the long scarf knotted about his throat before
collapsing between two parked cars.
Jonny heard orders barked from somewhere in the dark and
the sound of scrambling feet. The Meat Boys were fanning out,
covering the entrance of the Pit. No escape that way. Why the hell
were the Meat Boys fighting the Committee, Jonny wondered. Must
think it's some rogue gang trying to shake them down.
Jonny pressed close to the building for cover. Sounds like
thunder, breaking glass and splintering wood enclosed him. He tried
to crawl behind the Meat Boys, but they were moving all over the
street.
At the side of the bar, Jonny saw the leper again, giving him
the finger with one diseased hand. At that instant, Jonny recognized
him. Even with the bandages and the uniform, he knew the leper was
Easy Money. Jonny took a shot at him, but Easy ducked behind the
building.
Again, the door to Carnaby's Pit burst open and Smokefinger
came running out. He was screaming what sounded like
Motherfuckers" at the top of his lungs. His right arm was a mass of
wet red flesh. Running into the street, he was cut to pieces by
Committee cross-fire.
Jonny made a break for the alley behind the Pit. Moving
quickly to a low crouch, he crawled around the perimeter of the
building. He almost made it when he felt a terrible kick in his
shoulder. Jonny's muscles turned to water.
Sometime later, he was not sure how long, Jonny awoke in the
alley. He had no idea how he had gotten there. He could still hear
occasional bursts of automatic weapons fire. When he tried to stand,
Jonny discovered that his whole right side was numb.
With his left arm, Jonny grabbed the rim of an overflowing
dumpster and pulled himself to his feet. It took him a few seconds
to find his balance, but when he did, he started running to exit at the
far end of the alley.
He almost made it, but somewhere along the way, a boot
whipped out of the darkness and sent him sprawling.
Oh fuck, Jonny thought.
This time he did not get up.
TWO:
History, Payback, and an Unhappy Reunion
in the Belly of the Beast
The Greater Southern California Detention Facility: an ant hill; a
graveyard; a factory where souls were processed, packaged, and
delivered to what some laughingly called justice. At least, many on
the inside (guards and prisoners, alike) had heard rumors to that
effect. Rumors of the search for justice. Memos were circulated about
it. Petitions were signed for it. Statues of Greek goddesses
brandishing scales were erected to it. Still, few had seen any sign of
it.
The prison squatted, blank and huge, by the port in what was
left of the old warehouse district. Built on the bones of an old liquid
natural gas plant, it had originally been envisioned as the location for
the flagship lab of the Pentagon's notorious genetic warfare programs
in the late nineteen-nineties. The building had sat unused when the
government's war plans ran out of steam and money at the same
time. It was not until eighteen months later, with a few billion yen to
back it up, that the order came down to pull out the half-finished
labs and begin slicing up the old storage tanks, refitting them to form
the cell walls within the new facility.
The majority of the prison's bulk was hidden, sunk deep into
the ancient pig iron waste pits. Lichen-streaked, great solid planes of
cracked concrete rose at severe angles to a flat roof studded with
sealed cooling ducts and dish antennae. A damp ocean breeze kept
the walls of the prison perpetually glistening, the concrete stinking
with a thousand dock smells: the ozone residue of synthetic fuels,
over-ripe fruit, rusting machinery, dead fish.
A common joke was that the average prisoner was doing five to
ten while the guards were doing nine to five. They, like the
prisoners, were just trying to get by. They were young men mostly,
Jonny's age and a little older. Primarily recruits from the Committee
for Public Health, at twenty the boys were already considered too old
for street duty, burned-out on the Committee's steady diet of speed
and anabolic steroids.
Two years earlier, with motives as mysterious to himself as
anybody else, Jonny had joined the Committee. Indifference and
boredom seemed to be his main reasons. A few years as a petty thief
and courier for the smugglers left him fast on his feet and quick with
a knife and pistol. Still, he remained naive enough to be surprised
when it was these same criminal qualities that helped land him a
high-paying job with the Committee.
After his training, Jonny was assigned to what was called
Perimeter Maintenance." The mechanics of the job were not too
different from what he had been doing all his life-- meeting with
thieves, tracking down warehouses of stolen drugs and food.
However, the Committee had little patience with prisoners; they paid
him a commission for each smuggler he killed above his quota.
Recruits were encouraged to compete. Body counts were posted at
Committee headquarters. There were bonuses and prizes to be won
at the end of each month.
Jonny tried to make the best of it, telling himself how much
better it was to be off the streets and on the side of power for a
change. But killing for the Committee did not make any more sense
than killing for the smugglers. Sometimes, when he was helping load
bodies into transports after a raid, Jonny would see a face he
recognized: a junky from the Strip, a panhandler, a street musician.
More than once, in the hallucinatory haze of the synth-fuels fumes
and halogen lamps, he thought he saw his own face among the dead.
And he was growing increasingly dependent on the speed. He
simply could not let go. The come down was too awful. Without the
speed he would begin to think again.
Jonny had never known self-loathing before, but there it was.
He had sudden bouts of vertigo, mouth ulcers, cramps in his gun
hand. He found himself growing more sympathetic to the cause of the
smugglers; at least he understood their motives. In the end it simply
grew too ugly, the self-deceptions too obvious for him to continue.
The manner of his desertion, however, was more complicated. It was
generally known that he turned in his uniform, pressed and clean,
and picked up the last of his commissions. But he never turned in his
pistol. That became significant later when his immediate superior, a
one-eyed brute named Cawfly, was found shot through his good eye.
And Jonny, barely twenty one, in his inevitable search for the
point of least resistance, drifted back to the streets. No longer
resisting the flow of events or pretending to chart a course through
them, he existed by luck. But that was before; now it seemed even
that had deserted him.
He awoke, with a small cry, to the stink of vomit and antiseptic
in a damp, gray holding cell. As the sound of his cry died away,
Jonny rolled onto his side where he was distressed to find that the
vomit he smelled was his own. His left hand was resting in a small
pool of the stuff. His mouth burned with bile.
He lay on a bare aluminum cot frame, his head spinning,
wondering where he was. Eventually, he was able to focus on the
wall. GAMMA LOVES RAMON and DEZ were scratched there, and THE
EXQUISITE CORPSE WILL DRINK THE NEW WINE. Much of the graffiti
was in Spanish and Japanese. He was too tired to translate, but he did
not need to. He already knew what it said. Fuck you!" or I didn't do
it or just "Let me out! The international language of the
dispossessed. He grinned; it was almost comforting. Jonny knew
where he was now.
When he tried to sit up, he found that hisright shoulder was
wrapped in gauze and a thermoplastic carapace. For a terrible
instant, he panicked, but relaxed when he felt the reassuring bulge of
his arm, intact under the cast.
Rubbing his injured arm, Jonny tried to figure out who had
turned him. It was clearly no coincidence that the Committee had
been waiting for him outside Carnaby's Pit. It was possible, he
thought, that it had been a routine sweep for all pushers, but that did
not seem likely. Deep shit," he said to the empty cell. Extremely
deep shit.
He was almost asleep when the polarized glass panel on his cell
door blinked to the transparent, then darkened. Jonny lay still on the
aluminum frame as the cell door scrapped open. He heard whispers-three or four distinct voices. Annoyance and nervousness. He kept
his eyes closed. The door opened further, then closed quickly. The
voices stopped. Jonny was aware of somebody standing over him.
Is that him?" came a low, adolescent voice.
Yeah," I think so, said a different voice.
He's a skinny motherfucker. Looks like a chica," came a third,
huskier voice.
That give you ideas, man?"
Yeah-- I'm gonna cut him."
Hey, don't-- "
Jonny heard the metallic snick of a switchblade opening. He did
not move.
Touch him and we're muy morto. He's tagged, man."
Doesn't look special."
I seen his files. Interrogacion especial."
Man, I'm not going to kill him," came the husky voice. Just
gonna get a knuckle or part of his ear.
No!"
Who's gonna stop me?"
Jonny swung one steel-tipped boot into the gut of a blonde boy
and the other onto the floor, screaming like a lunatic, letting his
momentum carry him up and toward the door. The other boys fell
back without being touched, too surprised to stop him.
He almost had the door open before they came to their senses and
grabbed him. But he kept moving, biting fingers, kicking shins, not
letting them get a good grip. Finally, a boy with some sort of scarring
on his hands and neck caught him with a smooth uppercut to the jaw.
Jonny went down on his face. The scarred boy rolled him over and
dropped onto his chest, bringing the switchblade up level with
Jonny's throat. The other boys crowded in behind him, grumbling
and shaking their injured hands and legs. Jonny realized that the
hands of the boy holding the knife were covered with sores, similar
to leprosy lesions.
You funny, man?" the boy with the knife demanded. What's
your story?
Fuck you, la chinga," said Jonny.
The boy sliced Jonny's cheek. You're dead, man. I don't care
who you are, he said.
You haven't got the cojones."
You got to stick him, now. He'll tell," said the blonde boy.
Jonny twisted around and kicked the blonde boy, again. The
boy on his chest punched his throat.
What are you doing?" came a new voice.
The boys drew back abruptly, staring guiltily at the door. The
boy with the knife stood up and glanced at his nervous accomplices,
then back at the door. All Jonny could see from the floor was a pair
of highly polished boots and a sleeve with lieutenant's stripes.
I asked what you were doing," said the lieutenant.
The boy with the lesions pointed to Jonny. He was trying to
escape. We stopped him.
The lieutenant nodded. What were you doing in this cell?"
The boy glanced at his friends for support. They would not look at
him. I told you, man. He was trying to escape," he said.
Don't lie to me."
The boys in the back of the cell, the blonde and a tall, Mestizo
with bad teeth, stared at the floor. Jonny guessed that they were
about sixteen. The boy with the knife looked to be a year or two
older. The insignia on his Committee uniform indicated that he was a
corporal. That explained it, then. It had all been good, clean fun. An
older boy out to show his young friends a good time.
The lieutenant made a curt gesture with his hand. Get him up,"
he said.
The two younger boys moved quickly. Slipping their arms
under Jonny, they lifted him easily, their steroid thickened muscles
hardly straining. Then they set him gentlyon the cot frame and
stood against the wall, trying desperately to blend with the peeling
paint.
The older boy still held the knife, moving it uncertainly from
hand to infected hand. The lieutenant faced him. You're all on
report, he said. "Return to your duties.
I'm telling you, this man tried to escape," the older boy
insisted.
I understand," said the lieutenant, a flat-nosed young black
who, Jonny could now see, was not much older than the boy with the
jaw implant. That's how it was in the Committee. They worked
mainly with teenage boys. Give them the right stimulants and guns
and they would go anywhere, risk everything. Higher ranking boys
kept them in line, while desk-bound old men ran the rest of the
show. It was cheap and efficient. The Committee never had to pay
much in the way of retirement benefits.
Get out of here," the lieutenant said.
But-- "
One more word and you can explain it to the Colonel."
That shut the boy up. Reluctantly, he closed the switchblade,
tucking it into the top of his boot. While adjusting his uniform, he
gave Jonny a quick, accusing glance, and followed his friends out of
the cell.
So long, guys," called Jonny. Keep in touch." He laughed and
nodded to the lieutenant. The young man's identity tag read
TAUSSIG. Thanks for your help. I thought I was dog food for sure-- "
On your feet, pusher," said Lieutenant Taussig.
Jonny took a deep breath and leaned against the wall. You
mind if I catch my breath first? he asked.
Taussig reached down to examine Jonny's face, turning it this
way and that in the light. He did not look pleased.
If anybody asks, tell them the anesthetic hadn't quite worn off
and you fell on the stairs, the lieutenant said.
Why? What do you care about those clowns?" asked Jonny.
Just do it."
Jonny smiled. Oh, I get it. Afraid someone'll find out you can't
handle your troops?
Taussig pulled Jonny up by his good arm. Let's go," he said.
The lieutenant led Jonny out onto a rusted loading gantry,
through a maze of small-bore piping and frozen transfer valves to
the floor the old processing plant cum prison. Vague breezes and
convection currents kicked up scraps of paper, fluttering them
around the pylons of fifty foot cryogenic tanks.
The floor sloped; the air cooled. They entered a battered hydroplunge service lift whose burnished walls reflected the harsh
industrial lighting in jagged bolts and loops. As they descended,
Jonny noticed that Taussig had punched a button in the Yellow
Sector. Jonny was impressed. He had never received clearance to
enter any of the restricted areas.
When the elevator doors opened, Taussig pushed Jonny to a
jerry-rigged desk (a horizontal slab of tank cladding bolted athwart
two enormous shock-coils) and handed a sheaf of documents to a
pale boy whose eyes seemed to have no pupils at all. The red-faced
boy motioned for a couple of pre-pubescent guards to follow them,
and walked Jonny and the lieutenant down a short corridor. At the
end, he unlocked a scuffed yellow door for them.
Inside, it was another world.
The light came from incandescent bulbs, a muted nonindustrial glow. They stood in a small anteroom whose walls Jonny
was sure were real wood, not plasti-form. Between two locked doors
at the far end of the room was a low table, in the Kamakura style. On
the table was a small bowl holding a single bonsai. Jonny coughed
into his fist a couple of times. The sound was flat, swallowed up by
the walls like water on sand. Sound-proofed, he thought.
Taussig walked to door on the right of the table and leaned
over the eyepiece of a portable Haag-Streit retinal scanner. A
moment later, a buzzer sounded. Gripping the ornamental brass
handle, the lieutenant pushed the door open and motioned Jonny
inside. Taussig did not enter. When Jonny turned to look at him, the
lieutenant closed the door in his face.
What the hell happened to you?" came a familiar, avuncular
voice.
Jonny faced the room, seeing only a computer terminal on the
far side of a mahogany table with four matching chairs drawn up to
it. Dragons inset in some lighter wood coiled in battle or play on the
table's surface. In the dim light, Jonny could not see the face of the
man sitting on the opposite side of the table. But that voice. It made
Jonny feel a little sick.
I thought they cleaned you up in the infirmary," the man said.
Jonny could just make out the silhouette. It gestured for Jonny to
take a seat.
I tripped on the stairs," Jonny said. The-- uh-- anesthetic." He
sat in the chair as he was told.
Jonny could see the face now. It smiled at him. The short
cropped hair was whiter than he remembered.
What's the matter, Gordon? Not even a 'hello' for your old
C.O.? The officer, Colonel Brigidio Zamora, set a small pile of
crumpled currency next to a collection of pills and Jonny's tagged
Futukoro.
Captain Zamora--" Jonny began.
Colonel."
Congratulations," Jonny said. He rubbed his wounded shoulder,
reflexively. Look Colonel, you're too late. I know this room and the
ride down here were supposed to mind-fuck me, but you blew it.
Three of your puppies broke into my cell just now and tried to slice
me up. I'm exhausted and my shoulder hurts like hell. Jonny leaned
his good elbow on the table. So tell me, Colonel, what kind of deal
are you prepared to offer me?
For a moment, Zamora did nothing and Jonny found himself
wondering if he had chosen the wrong tactic. The Colonel, he
remembered, liked to have a good time. In a moment, though,
Zamora relaxed, exhaling little bursts of air from his throat. His
version of laughter.
I tell you, Gordon, you kill me," said the Colonel, with good
humor. You beg for it; that's what you do. You beg people to smash
you up. No wonder your life's such a mess.
What's wrong with my life?" asked Jonny.
Well for starters, look where you are."
Jonny could not argue with that one.
The Colonel, Jonny noticed, had put on some weight. The jacket
of his uniform now fit tight across his belly. The creases around his
mouth and eyes had taken on the exaggerated depth of cheap
statuary. Colonel Zamora did not seem to be aging so much as
fossilizing. In his presence, Jonny was always reminded of reptiles,
slow, solid beasts of ancient bloodlines, all muscles and teeth.
Is that why I'm here?" Jonny asked. You're a social worker
now? Gonna fix my life?
Zamora shook his head. No, Gordon; you're going to fix mine."
What does that mean?"
You really have no concept, do you?" Zamora asked. He spoke
slowly, as if addressing someone of less than average intelligence.
See if you can grasp this: you killed Captain Cawfly-- one of my
officers, and then just waltzed away. Do you know how that makes
me look? And then you turn up with these smugglers. Selling their
drugs; giving them Committee secrets. Working for terrorists, Gordon.
I mean, just how much abuse am I supposed to take?
Jonny started to say something, then met Zamora's tired gray
eyes. Thin ice.
The way I figure it, you owe me," said the Colonel.
I don't owe you anything," Jonny replied quickly.
That seemed to amuse Zamora. See, you're doing it again."
Jonny looked around the room impatiently. Look, Colonel, I had
enough of this crap when I was in the Committee. That's why I took a
walk.
Oh, is that the reason?" asked the Colonel. He raised an
eyebrow. Just a case of restless youth, was it? No gestures were
implied? Giving the finger to me, to the Committee?
I didn't even think about it."
Well, you should have," said Zamora.
Fuck you and your disgrace," blurted Jonny. If you want to
deal, fine. If not, charge me with something and let me call my
lawyer.
For the second time, Jonny made the Colonel laugh. You think
I'm going to bother with the courts? I'm not subtle like you, Gordon.
You play this my way or you're dead. That's my gesture to you.
Bueno," said Jonny. He did not even know any lawyers, but at
least he knew where he stood. His throat was dry and raw. Can I get
some water?
Later," said the Colonel. First, you're going to help me out with
some information.
What could I tell you that your agents don't already know?
Raquin was my connection and he's dead.
I know all about Raquin. He worked for the Committee."
Jonny stared at the Colonel. He's baiting me, he thought. It
worked, though. That's bullshit," Jonny said.
Zamora grinned. It's a buyers market, Gordon."
You offer him a deal like mine? Play or die?"
No," said the Colonel with great satisfaction. He came to us."
Balls."
Grow up, Gordon. This city is full of troglodytes who'd peddle
your ass to some organ broker as soon as look at you. That's what
you walked back to.
I don't believe you," Jonny told the Colonel.
Zamora shrugged. You can believe anything you want. It
doesn't change our situation one bit. What I want from you is
information about the smuggler lord Conover, said Zamora. He typed
something on the computer terminal and activated the room's
recording unit. I want you tell me about Conover and his connection
to the Alpha Rats.
For a moment, relief washed through Jonny like a cleansing
wave. Pointing to the pile of pills, he said, Your fingers in the cookie
jar, Colonel? Been taking home samples?
Zamora gave Jonny a look of absolute disgust. What are you,
an animal? I'm giving you a chance to stay alive.
How am I supposed to take a question like that seriously?"
asked Jonny. I don't know anything about Conover and I sure don't
keep tabs on space pirates.
You're a liar, Gordon," said the Colonel. Remember? Your
friend Raquin worked for me. I have videos of you with all kinds of
nasty people, including Conover.
Jonny looked away from the Colonel, wondering how long he
had been inside the prison. Sumi would be worried by now. All she
would hear is that he'd been shot and taken away by the Committee.
Sumi, he was afraid, would not survive long on her own. She did not
protect herself enough; she left herself too open, was too willing to
trust and be wounded. It was that inner calm that had originally
attracted Jonny to her. At the moment, though, it merely chilled him.
All right, so I know Conover," said Jonny. I move merchandise
for him. I help get his trucks though Committee checkpoints, but you
know all that, right? As for this Alpha Rat thing, though, that is
completely out-to-lunch.
Is it? I don't think so."
I can't give you what I don't have."
No, but you can get it for me."
What do you want?"
Conover," Zamora said.
Oh man," said Jonny, why don't you just ask me to bring to
Alpha Rats down here, too? I've got as much chance.
You can't just waltz away from this one, Gordon," said the Colonel.
This hook-up between Conover and the Alpha Rats makes it too big."
Jonny slammed his hand down on the table top. Will you lay-off that
'Gordon' stuff. Nobody calls me that, anymore.
Don't tell me what to do, boy. I own you."
Jonny leaned back in his chair. Just what is it between you and
these spacemen?
Colonel Zamora tilted his head back slightly, scrutinizing Jonny.
Jonny's fingers lightly traced the pattern of the dragons on the table
top. In truth, he wished he had something to give Zamora. Some
innocuous bit of information or rumor that might satisfy him. Jonny's
head was light. He could not even think of a good lie.
Finally, the Colonel nodded. He keyed something on the computer
and turned the recorder off. All right, maybe you are that ignorant,"
Zamora said. Let's try something else. Tell me anything you know
about the Alpha Rats.
Jonny took a deep breath and let it out slowly. His mind was still
sluggish from the drugs they had given him in the infirmary. He
found it difficult to concentrate on anything but his anger, which he
was eager to show, and his fear, which he was not. Jonny realized
then that he was afraid of Colonel Zamora, had always been so. That
his fear of Zamora had been another reason he had deserted the
Committee. And that this confrontation had been, in a sense, preordained. He had cheated Zamora of something when he ran away. Of
what, Jonny was not sure, but he understood that whatever it was,
the Colonel had come to claim it.
Well?" said Colonel Zamora.
The Alpha Rats," he said, Yeah, I saw the news rags. Big ships
from deep space, right? They landed on the moon and smashed up all
the bases, ours and New Palestine's. Flattened everything. Burned all
the techs.
And do you have any idea what was going on up there at the
time?
Jonny tried to remember. It had been at long time ago. Some
engineering. Mostly mining and genetic work, right? The Colonel
seemed impressed. Right, but there was something else going on,
too; something more important, he said. "A war. An economic war
between the New Palestine Federation and the Tokyo Alliance. The
Arabs have always had the oil, the minerals, the heavy machinery.
They've been mining the asteroid belt for decades in those big
hydrogen scoop ships.
But think-- what does the Tokyo Alliance have? We have
software and hardware, sure, but it's the really delicate items:
protein-based data storage, genetics, micro-electronics. That's where
our strength lies, Gordon. And we lost a big piece of it.
You can thank the Alpha Rats that you're in business. A lot of
the drugs you people sell illegally were produced on the moon or in
those circumlunar labs. You need that environment, sterile conditions
you can't get on earth and, above all, weightlessness-- or something
close to it-- to produce some of those items.
The Arabs control over half the earth's land mass. Africa alone
will keep them supplied with raw materials for centuries. Do you see
what I'm getting at?
Sure, The Tokyo Alliance lost its economic balls when the
Alphas moved in on the moon. But I don't see what any of this has to
do with me. Jonny opened his eyes wide. "Honest officer, I was
nowhere near the moon that day.
Zamora ignored him and typed something on the computer
keyboard. A rectangle of glass set into the top of the table glowed.
Rising from the projection plate, a three-dimensional chaos of fractal
points and ice-blue connecting lines flared like a crystalline vascular
system. The angles of the hologram filled in with colors, primary,
then secondary. Jonny thought he recognized a desert. Look at this,"
Zamora said.
Jonny leaned forward, staring hard at the miniature landscape.
What is this?" he asked. Looks like a burned up spring roll."
It's a shuttle," said Zamora. The moon bases used them to send
samples back to the corporate labs on Earth. We picked that one up
in the desert near Anza Borego. Up until a couple of months ago, all
the Alpha Rats were doing was broadcasting a steady stream of
signals to deep space. Some French tech at Tokyo U thinks to the
constellation Pegasus. There's a binary system there called
'Alpheratz'. That's how they got the name.
Jonny nodded. I'm thrilled," he said.
Anyway, a few months ago, the signals changed. The Alphas
started broadcasting to Earth. No shit. To the desert southwest of
here. And you know what? asked Zamora, with more than a touch of
glee. Somebody broadcast back. Is that rich? Now, we've got some of
the best data decryption software available. We've only been to
decipher bits and pieces, but what we got, Gordon, it's tasty. Really
tasty.
Jonny said: All right, so I'm hooked. What was it?"
Zamora looked delighted. A deal," he said. A deal. Between
your pal Conover and the Alpha Rats. But don't stop listening yet,
because it gets better. It seems that you're involved.
Christ," said Jonny. You're too much." He got up and walked to
the back of the room. Zamora did not seemed very concerned; he just
kept smiling. The door, Jonny saw, had a magnetic lock, a device the
Committee was very fond of. You could blow the whole wall away
and still not get one of those locks to move, he thought. He remained
there, though, taking comfort in the small distance he could put
between himself and the Colonel.
Calm down, Gordon. I said you were involved. I didn't say you
were a participant.
What's the difference?"
Willingness," said Zamora. I tell you, boy, if I was working on
a deal of this magnitude I might let you sharpen pencils; hell, I might
even use you as a courier, but I sure wouldn't let you near anything
important. Therefore, I'm willing to accept that you are not a
conscious participant in all this.
Thanks."
But you've got something I want: access to Conover. If he does
have a connection to the Alpha Rats, no matter what the nature of
their deal, it can only end up benefiting the Arabs.
Jonny leaned against the wall, mindlessly working his
fingernails between two strips of paneling. Funny, I never pegged
you for a flagwaver, Colonel.
I'm not. This is simple economics. What they've got, we want.
By the time we found that shuttle, its cargo section had been
emptied, Zamora said. "Whatever the deal is, it's already in motion.
Jonny smiled at him. You know, I don't believe a word of this."
Colonel Zamora glanced at his watch. Well, believe this: As of right
now, you have forty eight hours to deliver Conover to me. If you do
that, you and I are square. Bullshit me and maybe I'll give you back
to those children upstairs. Some of them very vivid imaginations. I
imagine they'd start on your eyes.
Jonny walked back to the table, working the kinks from his
legs. His hands were shaking, so he shoved them into his pockets. If
I go along, how soon can I get out of here? he asked.
Right now," said Zamora. Do you accept my terms?"
Jonny smiled. Colonel, I'm a happy child of the New Rising Sun.
No camel jockey's gonna push me around.
Zamora narrowed his eyes at Jonny. You should take this more
seriously, he said.
If I took this anymore seriously, I'd drop dead."
Good, consider that your new koan, Gordon." Zamora said. He
rose, picked up a leather satchel and pulled Jonny with him to the
door. Meditate on it. At least for the next forty eight hours."
Colonel Zamora took a flat metallic octagon from his pocket and
placed it against the magnetic lock. The door clicked open and Jonny
followed him outside.
Jonny and Colonel Zamora waited in the lobby of the Yellow
Sector for an elevator. Across the plant floor, a recruit with polarized
cornea implants was jacked into a construction masterboard,
directing a bank of plasma torches. Whacked-out on alkaloid
stimulants, he still managed to move a dozen torch-bearing waldoes
in a smooth tidal dance, like a clock-work anemone, simultaneously
slicing four sides of a gutted fission furnace.
That's a neat trick," said Jonny.
Zamora nodded. We have to clear away some of this old
equipment. We'll be needing the space for new cells soon.
Come on, Colonel, no one's recording us now," said Jonny. That
stuff you were saying before, you really don't buy all that space
pirate crap, do you?
Colonel Zamora sighed. Seeing you has depressed me, Gordon.
You remind me too much of the sad state of the world. Paranoia. Selfcenteredness. All the symptoms of information overload. The World
Link's the real enemy. Thirty years ago we didn't have the Link,
plugs in our heads. We had to rely solely on videos and the news
rags. The Arabs were the enemy and we still had a chance to kick
Japan and Mexico in their industrial balls. Now we've got the moon.
The Alpha Rats hanging like Damocles' sword over our heads. The Net
should never have broken that story. I'm telling you, this city, this
country would be a different place if they had kept all that under
wraps. It's too strange to assimilate. Too alienating. That kind of
information invites paranoia and destroys trust.
It's hard to trust, Colonel," said Jonny, when you've got
something like the Committee breathing down your neck.
Bullshit. In a sane world, our presence wouldn't cause a ripple.
As a nation, we've allowed ourselves to behave like animals in a trap,
gnawing off our own legs to get out.
You wouldn't be trying to win me over by telling me this is
some kind of crusade, would you?
Of course not," said Zamora. That would be expecting too
much of you. The Colonel pushed the elevator button again. The boy
directing the waldoes aimed them at the base of the furnace, cutting
at the support structure with long, smooth strokes that reminded
Jonny of kendo strikes. We're at a crossroads," said Zamora. Do you
know that? The next few years will tell the story. Whether we're
going to end up another post-colonial back alley like Britain or
France or whether we're going to take back the dominance we gave
up too easily. To do that, we have to get rid of the Alpha Rats. Until
they're gone we can't even start on the Arabs. The Colonel smiled.
It all comes down to economics. It always does."
A few meters away, a bell rang and elevator doors slid open.
Nimble Virtue, a slunk merchant and one of the least trustworthy
lords in the city, stepped out. She was leaning heavily on the arm of
one of her handsome young nephews." When she spotted Jonny, she
gave him a tiny bow, indicating that she had no time to talk. Then
she and her young man walked down the corridor, awash in the
echoes of insect clicks from the exoskeleton Nimble Virtue wore
beneath her kimono. At the end of the corridor, a door hissed open
for them and they were gone.
A moment later, Jonny found himself being pushed into the
elevator car Nimble Virtue had just vacated. He and Zamora rode up
in silence. Jonny felt a nasty satisfaction at having caught the Colonel
with his snitches down. The look on Nimble Virtue's face had said it
all. She had sold Jonny out.
Now that I can believe," said Jonny. The Great White Whale
would sell her mother for sausage if she thought she could hide the
wrinkles.
Don't let her concern you."
Jonny sniffed the air distastefully. Sorta stank up the joint,
didn't she?
Zamora backhanded him across his injured shoulder. Something
blue and hot exploded in Jonny's eyes, fragments trailing away down
some bottomless cavern. He slid down the wall to the floor.
Don't even think about going after Nimble Virtue. You haven't
got the time, said Zamora.
The elevator shuddered to a halt and the doors slid open.
Taussig was waiting, a small grin spreading across his face when he
saw Jonny on his knees.
Help him up," ordered Zamora.
The lieutenant pulled Jonny to his feet and walked him from
the car. When they caught up with Zamora, the Colonel turned to
Taussig and said, Later, you and I are going to talk about what went
on in this man's cell.
Jonny had the satisfaction of seeing the blood
drain from the young lieutenant's face.
Zamora lead Jonny out a side exit and left him weak-kneed,
standing in an oily puddle. The Colonel removed a Futukoro from his
satchel and tossed it behind Jonny.
Take that with you. Wouldn't want you getting mugged, now
that you're back on duty. I'll be available to you for the next fortyeight hours, Gordon. After that, the deal's off. I'll be seeing you, said
the Colonel.
The door swung in quietly, hissing as it sealed itself shut.
Jonny was alone in the alley. He drew himself up and taking a few
drunken steps forward, kicked savagely at the door's heavy riveted
face; he pounded it with his good hand.
Like hell, you bastard!" he screamed. You can't do this to me!"
For a vertiginous second he was insane, turning in frustrated circles,
splashing more filth onto his ruined jeans.
Finally, panting and lightheaded, Jonny stepped away from the
unyielding door, feeling angry for such a stupid waste of energy. He
should be on his way out of town.
Jonny's gaze slid down the damp walls to the thin fog at the
alley's mouth. He stooped awkwardly, protecting his throbbing
shoulder, and scooped up the Futukoro. He walked to the infra-red
scanner that monitored the alley, took aim and blew it off its
mounting. Somewhere, an alarm went off. Jonny hurried away from
the place.
THREE:
The Flight of a non-Euclidean Fly
Shit," Jonny mumbled as he stepped on something soft and
clinging in the doorway of the abandoned hotel. Then, Shit" again as
he recognized the accuracy of his curse. He was somewhere near
Exposition Boulevard, out of breath, a few blocks from the old
Lockheed rocket bunkers. Ancient booster engines and decaying nose
cones displayed their brittle bones behind fences topped with razor
wire.
Gingerly, Jonny scraped his soiled boot on a cracked stone step
and peered from the alcove. Whoever Zamora had following him was
being very cagey. Jonny still had not caught sight of the tail, but he
knew the man was out there. Zamora would never let him just walk
out like that.
He had exhausted himself, running for cover and for the sheer
joy of running, for the momentary sense of freedom it gave him. Still,
he had not been able to spot the tail and that bothered him. Even
now, as he watched from the alcove, nothing on the street moved.
Except for the doorway-bums shifting restlessly with their chemical
dreams.
The hot night had remained hot, was giving way to another hot
day. Jonny's tunic clung to him like a second skin. He relaxed against
the hotel and tried to regain his bearings. His shoulder had begun to
throb within a few minutes of leaving the prison. He desperately
wanted a drink, a snort, a smoke, anything that would transport him
from the pain, the Colonel's obsessions and the old neighborhood in
which he was hiding. Writers had been at work on the old buildings
with their compressed-air canisters of sulfuric acid, burning their
messages, like grim oracles, into the very bodies of the structures.
Over the years, the fronts of the abandoned hotels and shops had
taken on the texture and feel of old candle wax. In the alcove, Jonny
ran his fingers over crumbling letters. DUCK AND COVER. And, ALPHA
RATS ARE SCARED OF CATS.
On an impulse, Jonny pushed on the hotel door. It scraped
across a warped wooden floor and stuck, revealing a bleak interior.
Jonny took a tentative step inside.
It looked to him as if a bomb had gone off in the lobby. The
plaster meat and wooden bones of the place were visible where
sections of the wall had caved in or been torn away. An oldfashioned wrought iron elevator lay scattered among blistered
Lockheed tail fins and useless landing gear.
But, as depressing as the old hotel was to look at, it was the
smell of the place that got to Jonny. The deadly stink (ammonia, old
cheese, mildew) brought tears to his eyes. But he held his breath and
pushed the lobby door closed. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust
to the darkness, then, tired and leadfooted, his shoulders bumping
into walls that appeared from nowhere, he started up the stairs for
the roof. From there everything would be visible, and he reasoned
that by leaping from rooftop to rooftop, he could lose whoever was
following him.
He had not counted on the smell, though. At the first landing,
Jonny's eyes were watering; by the second, he was having
trouble breathing. Then, on the third floor he abruptly ran out of
stairs. There was a door, labeled ROOF, but it was immovable-crusted shut with age and grime. Jonny put his boot to it, but that
only brought a pitiful rain of dust from the sagging ceiling.
Outside, he thought, and up the fire escape. Jonny entered one
of the guest rooms that opened off the corridor and headed for a
window.
Inside, the room was large and, empty of furnishings, faintly
echoed his steps. A dim rectangle of street light outlined the smashed
innards of an old telephone-comsat uplink. The place must have been
nice once, he thought, if they could afford to put those in the rooms.
In the middle of the floor was an upturned hubcap someone had
been using to cook in.
Jonny had taken, perhaps, a dozen steps into the room before
the smell got to him. It was a physical presence, twisting in his lungs
like a tormented animal. His nose ran; he coughed. Holding his arm
across his face, he breathed through his mouth. If the Committee had
this stuff, they could wipe out the whole city, he thought.
When Jonny reached the window, he found it swollen in place
from the damp ocean air. Knowing that Zamora's tail would hear it if
he broke the glass, he started back into the hotel to look for a pipe or
board. Something that would help him pry the window open.
A rustle of fabric from the far corner of the room. The flicker of
something small and metallic.
Jonny took a step forward-- and was in the air, falling, his legs
knocked out from under him. He curled up as best he could and came
down flat, protecting his shoulder.
Goddamit," he yelled as shapes closed in from the gray edges
of the room.
Get his clothes," came a voice dry and thin as wind.
Get his shoes," came another voice.
Get him."
A stooped figure in rags lumbered up to Jonny and began
grabbing at his tunic. Jonny cried out at the sudden pressure on his
bleeding shoulder, lashing out with his free arm. Pain exploded in his
wrist as something sharp and wet dug into it.
Jonny kicked out blindly into the dark, noting with satisfaction
a groan as his boot connected. Rolling into a crouch, he propelled
himself up into the stomach of the tunic puller. The figure staggered
back, wheezing horrid breath.
Jonny leaned forward, letting his weight propel him toward the
window. But he was knocked back as someone else jumped him.
He's going to get out...He'll rat..."
Little monster..."
Watch his boots..."
At the window, he was dragged back by a swarm of dry,
reptilian fingers. He screamed. Things like vises and knives, pincers
and broken glass cut into his back and arms.
Christ, they're biting me, he thought.
Jonny managed to loop his leg behind the leg of one of his
attackers. Then, pushing forward with all his strength, he heard a
window crack and shatter. Suddenly, he and one or two others were
on the fire escape. The sudden release of hands and rush of air left
him light-headed, but some animal part of his brain moved his arms
and legs, pushing him up and away. No one followed.
Two flights up the fire escape, Jonny stopped to look at his
attackers. They huddled below, cooing and mewing over their
injured. Though it was cooler outside, the heat still broiled the
streets, baking the old tenements; the whole neighborhood rippled
behind waves of desert heat. Yet, the mob were clothed in layer upon
layer of cast-off coats, moldering lab smocks and vacuum suits. A fat
man in tattered test pilot gear crawled onto the landing and gazed
down at the street. His clothes hung from his arms in strips, little
more than patches all crudely sewn or wired together. The mass of
rags on his thick frame gave him an awkward bear-like appearance,
but his eyes burned with a savage clarity.
Jonny was already backing up the stairs when the fat man
caught sight of him. A scream welled up from the fat man's throat; he
bared his yellow teeth. But not real teeth, Jonny knew, just plastisteel implants, sharpened with care to needle points. In the thin
unreal light of the street lamps, the fat man's teeth glowed like a
trap.
Pirhanas, Jonny thought. A whole gang of them. It had been a
stupid mistake, entering the old hotel. It reminded Jonny just how
tired he was.
The abandoned hotels and apartments that fronted the
warehouse district were useless to most gangs, lying just beyond the
lights of Committee headquarters. That is why the Pirhanas,
septuagenarians mostly, for there were no Pirhanas under sixty, held
them. Used for target practice by the younger gangs, lied to and
finally abandoned by the government, the old discards and
defectives banded together to hold some piece of ground for
themselves. Using the few weapons they could find, principally
government issued teeth-- filed and set firmly in angry, withered
jaws-- they were tolerated because they consumed nothing but the
leavings of others. Besides, even in Los Angeles, slaughtering old
people in the streets would have been frowned on.
As Jonny watched, more Pirhanas began to crawl from the
hotel. The fat man started up the fire escape. He carried a sharpened
pipe in his hand. Jonny started climbing, too.
He vaulted the low wall onto the roof clumsily, and sprawled
on his stomach. Gravel dented his cheeks. As Jonny pushed himself
up, he saw a thin, but steady stream of blood running from under his
chest. The fat man was a few yards away. Jonny started running
again.
Behind the fat man, more Pirhanas appeared, running like a
ragged army of the dead. They waved their pipes and broken bottles
wearily, more, it seemed, to remind themselves of the connection
they still had to the flesh they inhabited, than to menace Jonny.
When he reached the other side of the roof, Jonny looked
frantically for a way down. What he found puzzled him more.
An entire network of home-made bridges and catwalks, like
some outrageous model of the neural pathways of the Pirhana's
brains, criss-crossed the roofs, connecting all the buildings within a
dozen blocks. Ribbed conduits, old antennae, the rusted drive shafts
of decades-dead jet turbines were hammered into the surfaces of the
roofs. Secured to these were lengths of rotting rope, pilfered from the
docks. Flattened cans of krill, backs of discarded computer terminals
and insulation tiles from L5 shuttles filled the gaps between rough
planks to form walkways over the street, a hundred feet below.
The bridges did not look all that secure, but the Pirhanas were
closing in. Jonny stepped onto the closest walkway and hurried
across. The support ropes stretched and tightened as things cracked
and shifted under his feet.
He leaped off onto the adjoining roof. The bridge strained
behind him, weighed down by the gang. The fat man was still in
front, holding the pipe before him. Jonny moved in circles around the
roof, frantic for something to throw. He knew that if he used his gun,
Zamora's man would find him and all this would have been for
nothing. In the end, he decided that the situation did not cry out for
subtlety. Fumbling in the folds of his tunic, he pulled out the sweatsoaked Futukoro and waved it in the face of the fat man, who pulled
up short at the sight of the gun. The Pirhanas bunched up behind
him, growing silent.
That's it!" Jonny shouted. No more games. The first one who
moves is meat for the others.
It was rubbish and he knew it, but it sometimes worked, as it
seemed to be working now. The Pirhanas, including the fat man,
remained where they were. They stared at Jonny with empty, feral
eyes.
Sentiment had always been Jonny's undoing. At heart, all cops
are romantic slobs and ex-cops are worse. A terrible wave of sorrow
overcame his fear as he backed away from the pathetic group. They
were defectives, not unlike the losers and one-percenters that he
knew, that he was a part of. Jonny scanned the faces of the crowd,
wondering if whatever errant gene that had sent them out here to
the wilds was present in his blood. He regarded them with a certain
awe.
From behind, a brick fell and shattered hollowly. Jonny turned
quickly, keeping the gun on the fat man. Dozens of Pirhanas
had crowded onto the other roofs, pipes and heavy connecting rods
in their hands. Many grinned, showing sharp, stained teeth. Jonny
was surrounded.
He shuffled to the edge of the roof, turning in slow circles,
trying to cover himself in all directions. When Jonny reached the fire
escape, the bridges were packed with Pirhanas. When he stepped
onto the ladder, a few were moving toward him across the roof.
When he was straddling the wall, the fat man threw his pipe and
screamed, charging him.
Jonny managed to duck the pipe and dropped over the edge of
the wall, landing hard on the fire escape platform. He rolled onto his
back and pointed his Futukoro. Too late. The Pirhanas were over him,
pelting him with pipes and stones. But even under that hail of debris,
Jonny could not bring himself to kill any of them. He settled for
spraying three sides of the sky with bullets.
The Pirhanas fell back, unaware of Jonny's good intentions.
With his gun straight up, Jonny squeezed off a few more rounds and
clattered down the steps.
When he hit the ground, he hung in the shadows, pressing
himself tight against the building, waiting for the sounds of pursuit.
But there were none. Jonny breathed through his mouth, swallowing
great gobs of hot, wet air.
He was in a blind alley; at the far end lay a vacant lot dotted
with discarded dressing dummies and barbed wire rolls. Jonny
remained against the building, feeling it solid against his back. He
checked the rounds left in his gun and carefully slid down the wall
toward the alley's mouth.
He did not stand a chance.
A gleeful cry echoed from above. Jonny looked up just in time
to see the junk raining down on him: pipes, bottles, jet canopies and
electronic components, all the technological refuse of the city. He
leaped and rolled, groaning at a sharp pain in his shoulder.
The first wave of junk crashed behind him. The second wave
caught him in the open with nowhere to hide. Compassion vanished.
Hunkering down behind a dressing dummy, he opened fire at the
roof, his bullets chewing the head off a sexless stone cherub. Its
companions made no comment and the Pirhanas, who knew better
than to stand close to the edge, just laughed at him. Jonny remained
low in the dirt, cursing himself for not having blown a few of them
away when he had the chance.
DO NOT MOVE. STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE," commanded a
bland, amplified voice.
The Committee hovercar roared by suddenly, like an angry
metal wasp-- all sleek and deadly-- its belly lights casting angry
fingers of brilliance over the empty buildings. Shadows moved like a
year of nightmares across deserted storefronts. Dust and grit
billowed from the roof into the alley, filling it with smoky phantoms.
Jonny coughed, trying to clear his throat. The clamor on the roof
picked up as the Pirhanas turned their anger toward the hovercar,
pelting it with junk. Jonny took the opportunity to move into the
street. His shadow circled him like a nervous cat, then appeared in a
dozen places at once-- thin and diffuse.
Crouching by a gutted lamp post, Jonny found a sewer grating
and gave it a tug. By rocking it back and forth, he worked the grating
loose and pulled it free. Peering down to see if the way was clear, a
sudden attack of vertigo tilted the street toward the dark hole. Jonny
grabbed the lamp post, fighting to keep his balance, and turned back
toward the hotel.
Overhead, the hovercar was hanging in the air like a patient
predator, waiting for an opening. Abruptly, a mechanical whine filled
the air. Jonny squeezed his eyes shut and covered his ears as the
pacifiers kicked in.
The fighting on the roof died away as, much too late, the
Pirhanas realized what was happening. They stood as one, staring at
the whirling pattern of lights, paralyzed and helpless.
Jonny decided that it was time to find the Croakers. He slid
quietly into the sewer and pulled the grating closed.
The sewers were the lichen-slicked relics of another time, a
means of concealment as old as revolution itself. The Croakers took to
them soon after the shoot-on-sight orders became official policy with
the Committee. The Croakers were outlaws, anarchists and physicians
mainly, treating diseases that officially did not exist or could not be
diagnosed without authority of the local medical boards. Their roots
extended back to the early days of the century when the first doctors
went underground, destroying the records of patients with AIDS and
certain new strains of hepatitis, treating these patients (the new
untouchable" caste) in the black clinics hastily thrown together with
whatever those original rebels could carry with them.
Other doctors, mostly young ones back from the Lunar Border
Wars, frustrated by the impenetrable bureaucracy and government
seizures of their patient records, joined them. It took only a few
years for the medical community to split into two distinct camps:
those doctors who remained above ground, working with the powers
that be, and those who walked away from all that, joining the other
gangs of Los Angeles in constructing their own micro-society beyond
the boundaries of conventional law.
Jonny had been a supplier and occasional courier to the
Croakers and he liked them, despite their revolutionary proselytizing. He cringed when one of them called him brother," but he felt
a silly pride at being associated with them. That was also why he
remained suspicious of them. To be otherwise would demand a
response that he was not prepared to give, was still not sure of. It
implied certain ties, a common heritage, and that made him nervous.
The sewers, laced within the body of the city, were the
corroded veins of a sick addict, shut down from age and abuse. The
only things that moved in them were alien, looking for a way out.
Jonny stood at the bottom of a ladder of steel rungs embedded in a
stone wall. Knee deep in black water, the floor sucked at his legs.
The air was thick with stagnancy; corrupt, buzzing with
mosquitoes. They tickled his face, covering his eyes and hands. They
stung him until he swung out blindly at the curtain of pests, fighting
back an overpowering sense of his own death. But death was not it,
not exactly. It was more a formless sense of great anxiety, a feeling
that he had done something terribly wrong and that if he could just
remember what it was and fix it, everything would be all right.
Jonny knew a little about the layout of the sewers, but he did not
know the location of the Croakers' secret tunnels. Since all directions
were the same in the dark, he started moving straight ahead, into a
faint, sticky breeze. Very soon, Jonny realized that he was no longer
moving through absolute darkness.
He could see the mosquitoes. They seemed to be crawling over
a flat two-dimensional background; a trick of the strange light that
seemed to fill the tunnel. The lichen on the walls were glowing a
weak green. When he ran his fingers over the damp stones of the
wall, he left a black trail where the lichen peeled off. His fingers
glowed with the little plants. Jonny walked on, his legs sluggish in
the oozing mess of the floors.
But he was still moving without direction. Light-headed, he lost
track of the hours in the endless branches and sub-branches of the
tunnels. The water rarely moved above mid-thigh, but a few times
he had to turn back from tunnels when the water reached his chest
and threatened to go higher.
Along the way, Jonny scratched messages on the walls. Crude
serpents, ready to strike; he wrote his name in big block letters and
some obscenities concerning the relationship of Committee boys and
their mothers. He drew the outline of his hands and eyes with wings.
He stumbled more as exhaustion crept into his muscles,
loosening them at the joints. For a time, he walked with his eyes
closed, mechanically trailing his fingers along the wall to keep his
direction. Was it for hours or minutes? When Jonny opened his eyes
again, he staggered back, nearly fell. Jesus Christ," he said.
Slogans, names, and drawings were scrawled over every inch of
the walls and arched ceiling of the tunnel. They screamed down at
Jonny from all directions, black shimmering lightly above green. It
looked like the last record of some tribe or group mind which had
blasted itself, intact, onto the walls. The words seemed to hang in
space around him.
LIFE WITHOUT DEAD TIMES
SOCIETY IS A CARNIVOROUS FLOWER
I AM HERE BY THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE AND
WILL NOT LEAVE UNTIL I GET MY RAINCOAT BACK
BEAUTY MUST BE CONVULSIVE OR IT WILL NOT BE AT ALL
SKID THE KID WAS HERE!
SURREALISM AU SERVICE DE LA REVOLUTION
Humpbacked shadows skittered along the pipes near the
ceiling. Rats, huge and dangerous. Jonny pulled his gun and fired at
them. Rats had caused him enough trouble for one night. He watched
as a couple of them skittered to a wall a few meters ahead, and
squeezed into a small opening near the floor. As each rat
disappeared, its coat was illuminated for a second by a flash of white
light.
Jonny went to the wall, knelt, and pressed his face to the crack.
A steady stream of cooler air. Running his hand around the edge of
the hole, he realizedthat the wall was false, not stone at all, but some
sort of cast polymeric resin. Digging in his heels, Jonny pulled at the
opening. And the wall slid out a few centimeters, stuck, then opened
wider, trailing scabrous fingers of adhesive. Light exploded into the
sewer.
White and agonizingly bright, the light burned Jonny's eyes.
But he did not care. It was beautiful. He squinted into it, trying to
locate its source, but he had to turn away, finally, when he thought
he would go blind. It was several minutes before he could look into
the luminous cavern without flinching. But when he did, Jonny knew
he was safe.
Still, it was a strange sight in the squalor of the sewer. The
transparent plastic bubble-- clean, and brightly lit--glowed like a
dream, filling the tunnel before him. Through a haze of condensation,
Jonny could just make out the hydroponic racks that lined the
walls along both sides of the tunnel. Yage vines trailed onto the floor;
aloe vera, psilicybe mexicana, and other medicinals grew there in
abundance. By pressing his face up to the thick plastic membrane,
Jonny could see the other end of the tunnel where the plastic was
tucked neatly around a weathered access hatch.
Jonny stamped his right foot down sharply, at an angle, so that
the heel of his boot snapped off with a click. Balancing against the
bubble wall, afraid somehow of moving too far away, he felt along
the bottom of his boot until he found the hilt of the hidden knife.
Then tugging at the blade, which slid bright and clean from his
hollow sole, he rammed it into the bubble. Sliding the blade down, he
made a single, neat incision in the membrane wall. Then he pushed
through the tight aperture, into a warm, musky chamber which
pulsed with the regular beating of a pump.
He replaced the knife and snapped the heel back on his boot.
There was a smell of life and order in the tunnel that revived him.
When Jonny reached the access hatch, he gripped the big metal
handle and turning it, was rewarded with a reassuring rumbling
inside the walls as bolts drew back. After that, the door swung open
effortlessly.
Jonny stepped into the darkened room and felt along the walls
for a door. He went blind in the apex of multiple cones of light,
ghostly afterimages tracking his retinas. Someone grabbed his sleeve
and pulled him forward. Jonny could just discern the outlines of
Futukoros and crossbows pointed at him from beyond the light. He
started to say something, but the air, which had seemed so pleasant a
moment before, suddenly went bad. The room tilted back and forth,
wobbling, as his vertigo returned. Then he was on his face on the
floor.
Here we go again," he said.
Something moved in front of Jonny's nose. A Burnett crossbow
pistol lowered and a woman-- small, but well muscled, the planes of
her face smooth, as if carved from cool black marble-- took a step
toward him. The woman's name was Ice. She knelt in front of Jonny
and squinted at him. In a moment, her scowl softened to an
expression of embarrassed recognition. She reached out and touched
his filthy face.
Jonny? Oh, my god," she said quietly. We heard you'd been
shot.
He smiled then, too, partly with affection and partly with
surprise. He kissed her cool hand. Not to worry, he said. "The pain
stopped soon after I died.
The next few hours existed only in fragments. Physical
sensations. Later, Jonny remembered lying on the floor, wondering
distantly if he was going to be sick. He remembered hands moving
over him. Objects had taken on a fragile, crystalline quality. Things
dripped into his arms through haloed tubes. Ice moved into view
occasionally and tried to speak to him. But Jonny was off floating
where there was no pain and no need to run. Then there was only
the dark.
Jonny awoke on a futon, naked, his arms wrapped in clean
bandages. He moved his hands, but only after a considerable effort of
will. They slid from under cool sheets as if being manipulated from
far away. He felt numb and dizzy, but somehow peaceful. He was in a
little room stacked high with milky injection-molded cases and
styrofoam packing modules. It did not look at all like part of a
hospital.
It's not. I'm just borrowing it," said Ice, as she slid a dark arm
around Jonny's chest, pulling him closer. Jonny remembered Ice's
unnerving talent for verbalizing his thoughts.
Ice," he said, rolling to face her.
For an ex-cop you've got big feet. You set off every alarm in
the place.
Ice, Jonny, and Sumi: the three of them had formed a solid
union for a time in the disintegrating city. Then suddenly, Ice had
disappeared, leaving only a short, lame note. Jonny recalled the first
terrible days after she had gone. He and Sumi walked on razor
blades. Each was aware that neither had been to blame for Ice's
disappearance, yet each secretly sensed that they were the one
responsible. It was days before Jonny could bear to let Sumi out of
his sight. The terror of being alone overwhelmed him. Sumi had been
no different. They trailed each other from room to room like absurd
puppies, only dimly aware of what they were doing.
Seeing Ice now, lying next to her, Jonny ran his hands over the
contours of her body. She had changed in subtle ways. There was a
new, pleasant firmness to her hips and legs. And her arms were
thicker, more muscular, which Jonny was sure pleased her. Her grin
still possessed the openness which contradicted her usual detached
expression. His fingers traced the old post-operative scar where she
had received a black market liver.
I didn't recognize when you when you came crashing into the
storeroom tonight. Then, when I heard your voice I couldn't believe
it was you, she said.
Jonny's throat was dry when he tried to speak. I didn't know
that you'd be here. That you were a Croaker, he said.
Ice nodded. I've been here a few months now." She shrugged.
Sometimes, I'm not even sure why. Groucho recruited me. Do you
know him? He's great. He plans a lot of the raids and holds the group
together. I'll introduce you tomorrow. He helps keeps the ghosts
away.
The ghosts had been with Ice for as long as Jonny had known
her. They were an image she toyed with, but he knew that to her the
ghosts of memory were real.
Ice had been working as a prostitute at the Zone Deluxe when
Sumi introduced them. Before that, Ice had farmed-out her body to
the Boys of Tangier gang, allowing herself to be infected with specific
viruses. The gang would then purchase her infected blood, which
they used to produce various immunotoxins. These they sold on the
street or to the smuggler lords.
While infected with a mutant strain of hepatitis, Ice's liver
gave out. The Boys of Tangier gave her a new one, but when they
demanded payment, Ice revealed that she was broke. The Boys sold
her to the owners of the Zone Deluxe, a pair of identical albino twins
who called themselves the Tundra Brothers.
Jonny called in some favors with a smuggler who specialized in
stolen corporate data and brought out the Brothers' interest in Ice
with the access codes for the Tokyo Stock Exchange. It was sweet
deal all the way around. Jonny knew the Tundra Brothers were not
particularly smart.
Using the codes, the Brothers made themselves rich in a week.
They descended into a kind of madness then, like a tape player stuck
on fast forward, spiraling on a terminal party high, manipulating
stock prices. By the end of the second week, the Brother's bank
accounts rivaled the big corporate fortunes of the oldest families of
Tokyo. It took another week for the Yakuza to find them. After that,
the Tundra Brothers and the Zone Deluxe were relegated to that
specialized branch of urban mythology embracing everything from
the merely foolish to the truly insane. But Ice was out by then.
Why did you go?" asked Jonny.
I don't know," Ice answered quickly, as if she had anticipated
the question. She closed her eyes. I really don't."
Too many ghosts," said Jonny.
Ice lay down on the futon and rested her head on Jonny's chest.
She opened her eyes, but would not look at him.
I'm better here," she said. I know who I am. There's a
structure to reality. She tugged at her short, curly hair. "Things tend
to stay in focus.
Yeah, I understand," Jonny said.
He looked around the room, gnawing the inside of his cheek
nervously. Among the packing material, clothes and books had been
tossed at random. Ice and Jonny had been the slobs in their menagea-trois. Sumi was the only one who cared for a clean house. He was
glad to see that, at least, that had not changed.
We could all use a little structure," he said.
He looked back at Ice and watched her rubbing her eyes
sleepily. It was at times like this when Jonny was reminded of just
how small she was. Of how much strength it took for her just to push
back the void each day. I'll leave, if you want. I can sleep in the
ward, he said.
No," said Ice, looking troubled. Please stay. How's Sumi?"
I don't know. That's part of why I'm here. I have to get out of
Los Angeles. Zamora's after me. We have to get Sumi before he finds
the house in Silver Lake.
We will," Ice said, but not now. Tomorrow, when Groucho gets
back.
Jonny nodded wearily and lay his head down on the pillow. Ice
leaned over and kissed him. Opening her lips, she invited his tongue
into the warmth of her mouth. His hands roamed her body, found the
tail of her shirt, and slid up to cup her small breasts. They moved
together for some time until, suddenly exhausted, Jonny's head
began to spin. But they kept their arms around each other, as if one
of them might be swept away at any moment.
You shouldn't have run off like that," Jonny said.
I know," Ice whispered. Now go to sleep."
He turned to her, groggily.
We have to get Sumi."
We will, don't worry."
Jonny rolled onto his side. He felt her arm encircle him.
Too many ghosts," he said.
He felt her nod.
Too many goddam ghosts."
FOUR:
Premonition of Civil War
During the last few hours of night, Jonny was caught in a series
of violent, fevered dreams in which he was being pursued by things
he could not see. The end of each dream was the same: he would
stumble or feel his legs lock like rusting machinery, leaving him
stranded and helpless. Then something would grab him and he would
be jolted awake by a phosphorous dream-flash that snapped his eyes
open. He would lie in the dark room staring at the ceiling as vague
pains stirred just behind his eyes. In a few minutes he would drift
back to sleep. For a time he would float peacefully on a sea of
nothingness, but then the dreams would start again.
There was a woman, all in white, running down Hollywood
Boulevard, her hair and dress in flames. Long rows of chrome beetles
moving over damp brickwork. A man in the back of a pedicab.
Mirror shades, cheap plastic poncho. From the cab, he points a gun at
Jonny. It is all deliriously slow. There is no sound, only the muzzle
flash and the heat of impact.
Jonny, wake up, goddamit!" called Ice. You're gonna pull your
stitches out.
Jonny awoke at the sound of her voice. Her face was right
above his, thin lines of tension spreading out radially from the
corners of her eyes. Jesus, what a ride," he said, his voice hoarse
with sleep. How long have I been out?"
Almost twenty hours," said Ice. She settled down next to him
on the futon. She was wearing baggy fatigue pants and a tank top
with the faded picture of some Japanese pop singer. I was starting
to get worried. You barely twitched in all that time, then all of a
sudden you're moaning and rolling around like you're trying to
hogtie a Meat Boy.
Did it look like I made it?"
Ice smiled. You were massacred."
Typical," replied Jonny.
The room they were in was small. Seeing that brought back
images of the previous night. He remembered the Piranhas, his trek
through the sewers, Zamora's threats. His arms were still bandaged,
his right shoulder itched fiercely in a clear plastic induction cast,
healing in its weak electrical field. Looking around, Jonny saw rough
walls, gray limestone papered with yellowing layers of ancient
subway schedules and anti-Arab propaganda. Hexagonal panels of
radio-luminescent plastic lit cases of medical supplies and electronic
gear stacked ceiling-high against two walls.
No windows," Jonny said. We're still underground."
Give that man a cigar," said Ice. She picked up a styrofoam
tray from a crate littered with drug ampoules. The smell of frijoles
and rice assaulted Jonny. Breakfast, babe. Quieres?"
He groaned and pulled the sheets up over his face. Take it
away. I'll never eat again.
Come on, you've got to get your strength back."
Forget it. You're going to have to feed me with needles. I think
something slept in my mouth.
Ice set the tray down, ad Jonny reached out and took her arm,
pulling her on top of him. Careful to avoid his bandages, she slid her
arms under his shoulders, grinding her crotch into his. The scent of
her body transported him; they were home, in their own bed in
Hollywood. He could sense Sumi's presence nearby. Then a second
later, the hallucination was gone. Still kissing, Jonny experienced a
terrific urge to bite Ice's tongue.
You know I'm still pissed at you," he said.
I know," said Ice.
And I don't buy that 'I don't know why I left' crap, either."
But I don't know why. It's all twisted around in my head." Ice
sat up, pushing a few beaded corn-rows of hair from her face. I just
knew I had to move. Get away.
From what?"
From everything. From my life. And that meant you and
Sumi.
That's comforting."
Part of it was living in this city. Nothing's real here. It was
getting to me. Was getting to you, too.
Jonny put a hand on Ice's cheek and turned her head, forcing
her to look at him. What do you mean?"
We were dying," she said quietly, almost whispering. I
watched you staring out the window night after night like you were
working on some puzzle, trying to put it together in your mind. Sumi
fiddling with her circuit boards. We were all together, but we might
as well have been on different continents.
Jonny shrugged. Let's face it, we have to keep a little detached in
our work to stay sane. Sometimes that spills over. But we can fix
that.
But there's more than that," said Ice. Have you ever heard of the
Spectacle?
No."
It's a political theory. Groucho talks about it. He's kind of our leader
around here. Says the Spectacle is the way the government keeps
control. It sets up these mysterious and complex systems like
restrictions on medical service, the Committee, it makes the Arabs
and the Alpha Rats into icons of evil. That way, it keeps us isolated
and makes us feel like we don't have any control over our own lives.
And you think the three of us got eaten up by the Spectacle?"
Yeah," said Ice. Do you understand what I'm saying? "
As Jonny he sat up, Ice rolled off his lap and lay down beside
him. I understand it's all very easy to argue in the abstract," he said.
Talking politics is a good way to avoid what really hurts."
Ice looked at her hands, lines of tension deepening around her
eyes. I was sick," she said. I didn't love you. I didn't love Sumi. I
was hollow and dead and there was nothing inside me but dust and
dry bones. I don't think you want to understand.
That's not true." Jonny reached under her shirt and rubbed the
small of her back. We're back together; that's what counts. We'll get
Sumi and work the rest of it out.
For what it's worth, I'm sorry," Ice said.
So am I. I wish I'd seen you needed help back at the old
place. Ice smiling guardedly, and rested her hand on his stomach.
Under her fingers, Jonny became aware of the steady rhythm of his
own breathing. He groped for something to say to ease the tension,
but nothing came to him. We kept your stupid Samba tapes," he
offered finally. That made her laugh. Jonny broke up, too, and they
lay on the futon giggling like idiots until she pulled him to her.
He bent to her breasts, pulling her shirt off over her head,
finding her penny-colored nipples with his tongue. Ice arched her
back, tugging off her pants and tossing them away, cupping his
testicles on the return motion. She pushed Jonny onto his back,
rubbing herself along the shaft of his erect penis. When she lowered
herself upon him, he held her for a moment, struck again by a cold
deja vu, needing to confirm for himself the reality of her presence,
the flesh that held him. She gave a little grunt as he entered her; her
face eased of tension for the first time since he had woken.
They moved slowly at first, drawing out each thrust (damp
friction), the motion resolving itself at the moment of greatest
tension, and beginning again. He came quickly, unexpectedly, and
she, a moment later.
They lay there, clinging to each other damply, unwilling and
unable to do anything else. Jonny traced the outline of her shoulder
blades with his fingers. She closed her eyes, her feathery breath
coming cool across his chest.
Later he asked, So what do we do about getting Sumi?"
Ice sat up, wiping sweat from her eyes. We talk to Groucho
and see if he has any ideas.
You called him 'your leader'? I didn't think anarquistas had
leaders.
Every group has leaders," Ice said evenly. What the Croakers
shun are rulers.
Shun. Jesus, you really are one of them, aren't you?"
I really am," she said somewhat wickedly.
What would your poor mother think?"
My mama was a Hollywood whore and so was yours." Ice
rolled off the bed onto her feet and clapped her hands. Come on, you
have to move around or you're going to get stiff.
When Jonny stood up, he caught his reflection in the aluminum
housing of a portable CT scanner. I look like a goddam mummy," he
said.
You look fine. Let's see how you walk."
Standing, Jonny found his balance shot by the combination of
long sleep and drugs. With his arm around Ice's shoulder, he made it
around the room a few times, his legs feeling stronger with each
circuit. However, he was aware of not yet thinking straight. There
was something he had to do. Twenty hours sleep was a long time.
How long had he wandered in the sewers?
What time is it?" he
asked.
About four in the afternoon." said Ice, glancing at her watch.
What day?"
Wednesday."
Jonny concentrated, trying to force the fog from his brain. He
counted backwards; the numbers stumbled by. Eventually, the
answer seemed right, or at least close enough. Six hours," he said.
Six hours what?"
In six hours Colonel Zamora declares open season on me."
Ice handed him a set of green nylon overalls with the Pemex
logo stenciled on the back. Under the breast pocket was a small hole
surrounded by a suggestive rust-colored stain.
Welcome to the club," she said.
Ice lead him through three levels of absolute darkness, through
crawl spaces damp with leakage from underground pipes, up frozen
escalators and an elevator shaft where they stood on a section of
heavy wire mesh barely a half-meter square and were lifted slowly
by a retrofit electric dumb waiter. At the top of the shaft Jonny was
engulfed in stars. A three hundred and sixty degree panorama of
open space swung slowly around him, illuminating the tile walls with
solar flares and star fire. It was like nothing he had ever seen sober.
He said, I'm seeing this, right? This isn't just brain damage or
something?
Don't worry," said Ice. Some lunatic dragged a Zeiss projector
from the planetarium and reassembled it down here. We got it
hooked to a satellite dish top-side. Pulls down signals from some old
NASA probe. You know, Jonny... Ice took his hand and lead him to
the edge of a subway platform, then down onto the tracks. ...things
get a little strange here sometimes. I mean, we're all dedicated
anarquistas, but we're also artists. Some of us more than others.
You an artist, too?" asked Jonny.
Ice shrugged. Only where stars marked her face could Jonny
see her, her dark features blending evenly with the black of space.
I'm not a painter or a sculptor, if that's what you mean. Art here
means more than that. It's a way of looking at the world;a state of
mind. I just don't want you to make any quick judgments about
these people.
You afraid I might not like your revolution?"
You work very hard at being cynical, I know that. But what
we're doing down here means something. It's not just revolution
we're after. It's political alchemy.
What does that mean?"
We're out to change the world."
Jonny scratched at his injured shoulder. Sounds great," he said.
Just hope I have the shoes to go with it."
As they moved beyond the star fields, they were plunged back
into darkness. Ice pulled Jonny to one side of the tracks and said,
Don't step on any wires. Some of 'em are dummies. Cables hooked up
to vacuum alarms. Jonny was impressed with the sureness of Ice's
moves in the dark tunnels. Whatever she had been doing with the
Croakers for the last year had revitalized her. Jonny thought back on
the last months he and Ice and Sumi had lived together. It was just
as Ice described it. Stasis. The long, slow surrender of emotions to
habit. Things could be different now, he thought. He reached for her
shoulder in the darkness, and felt her hand close around his. Up
ahead, there was light on the tracks.
This is it," said Ice evenly. But Jonny could see she was trying
to contain her excitement. Your gonna love this. We're right on the
edge of the clinic.
Voices echoed around the edges of the tunnel, blending to
become a single voice whispering in a language Jonny could not
understand. As they approached the light, the sound deepened, was
joined by the astringent smell of disinfectants. Jonny followed Ice up
a short flight of particle board stairs to the flat expanse of a subway
platform. A group of Croakers, techs, by the look of them, were
lounging, smoking and talking, on a stack of brushed aluminum
packing cases. A couple of the women waved to Ice from their perch.
Recognize the place? It's the old financial district metro line,"
Ice said.
I've seen photos. But I thought the Committee dynamited
these tunnels during the Protein Rebellion.
They closed off the ends and a lot of the service tunnels, but
squatters were living down here for years.
Jonny followed Ice through a maze of maintenance shops
sectioned off with ruined vending machines and lozenges of graffiticovered fiberglass. Croaker techs bent over fiber optic bundles and
circuit boards in a jumble of disassembled diagnostic devices (HaagStreit electron microscopes, magnetic resonance imagers, a video
micrographer) nodding and shouting polyglot advice. Further on, Ice
lead him through a workshop where rusting M-16's and AK-47's
were retooled and fit with computer-aided sighting mechanisms.
There was a surgery, cool lights glinting off delicate instruments.
Silent children stood to the side of one table, studying a man's open
abdomen through an enormous Fresnel lens. A legless woman
surgeon, suspended in a harness from a webwork of runners
attached to the ceiling, described the tying off of an artery in rapidfire Spanish. Older children translated into English and Japanese for
the younger ones. We're also a teaching hospital," said Ice. She
nodded gravely toward the children. If things don't work out, they'll
be the next generation of Croakers.
Jonny leaned against a wall covered in stylized biomorphic
landscapes of L.A., done in watery browns and grays. This is really-impressive, he said. Someone had painted the Capital Records
building to resemble the bleached skeleton of some prehistoric
whale. The HOLLYWOOD sign, all driftwood and jellyfish. He shook his
head numbly.
The place is quiet now," said Ice. Rumor has it that the
Committee's gearing up for a big push. We've been getting almost
double our usual patient-load.
How do you get them down here?"
Same way you got here: through the sewers. Most people
make a less spectacular entrance, though.
I sure hope so," said Jonny. He rubbed his sore shoulder, wondering
if he could score some endorphins. Tell me, you getting many
leprosy cases down here? I'm moving Dapsone and Rifampin like
cotton candy at the circus.
Ice crooked a finger at Jonny and lead him through a poured
concrete arch studded with vacuum tubes and plastic children's toys.
At the end of a short service corridor they entered a lab. Inside, Ice
keyed in a number sequence on a Zijin Chinese PC hooked to a bank
of video monitors. Three screens lit up with multi-colored snow,
which gradually dissipated when Ice punched the monitor housing
with the side of her fist. On one screen, a couple of Croakers in
moonsuits were taking blood from a woman's arm. Fingering the PC's
joystick, Jonny moved the picture in tighter on the woman's face.
There were marks there. Seamless and discolored lepromatous
lesions. Another screen showed the same room from a different
angle. There were about a dozen other people, smoking and reading
on cots. All had lesions similar to the first woman.
Jonny let out a long breath. What's with the quarantine?" he
asked.
Ice entered another code on the Zijin and more monitors lit up.
It seemed like a good idea. Most of the lepers we've seen have been
carrying a weird new strain of the disease. It seems to be viral.
Jonny squinted slightly at the monitors. On one screen, a
Croaker was moving from cot to cot, using a scalpel to scrape tissue
samples from each leper's arm, while a second Croaker took the
samples and sealed them in a plastic case marked with an orange
biohazard trefoil. Viral leprosy? Never heard of it," Jonny said.
Neither had we," said Ice. She pointed to a monitor where
amber alphanumerics scrolled up a line at a time. We cross-checked
all our exam data with the Merck software and came up empty. The
symptoms match all the known strains of leprosy-- skin macules,
epidermal tumors, lesions of the peripheral nerves, loss of feeling in
the limbs-- but the little bugger that causes it is some kind of
mutant-voodoo-patch job. It's also killing people.
How?" asked Jonny.
Secondary infection. In the latter stages, patients tend to
develop high fevers and brain lesions. The pathology could be
meningitis. There it is, said Ice. She nodded to a screen at the upper
right.
Jonny looked up. The monitor displayed a time-lapse video
micrograph of the leprosy virus, surrounded by numbers and biodata
graphs. As he watched, the virus inserted its genetic material into
the nucleus of a cell. Within seconds, the virus was cloning itself,
filling the cell with ghostly larvae until the walls burst, scattering
parasites into the blood stream. The virus's shape, the polyhedral
head, cylindrical sheath and jointed fibers that attached it to the cell
wall, reminded Jonny of pictures he had seen of twentieth century
lunar landing modules. But the proportions of this module were all
wrong.
Jesus, the head on that thing's huge," he said. But it's just a
bacteriophage. Nothing weird about that.
That's what everybody says," replied a different voice. Jonny
turned and saw a boy wearing the body portion of a moon suit. In
one hand, the boy carried the suit's head covering; in the other, a
small case marked with a biohazard sticker. Ice, you teasing the
guests, again? he asked. The boy's face was luminously white, his
head, hairless and smooth. Jonny recognized the look. He was a
Zombie Analytic.
As the Zombie shed the rest of his protective gear, depositing it
in a gray metal hamper, Ice went to him and kissed him lightly on
the lips. She looked back and said, Jonny, meet Skid the Kid."
The Kid held out one thin, white hand to Jonny and they shook.
Closer now, Jonny could see that the boy was no more than sixteen,
and thin to the point of anorexia. He wore a tight see-through shirt
and black drawstring pants. The archetypal Zombie, Jonny thought.
However, there were dark patches on the boy's scalp and hands
where the subcutaneous pixels had burned out or been destroyed. He
obviously had not had any serious maintenance in months.
Actually, we've met already," Skid said. I was in the stomping
party that found you in the greenhouse.
Yeah? Those must be your footprints on the back of my skull."
Skid laughed. Wouldn't be at all surprised." Over his features, he
flashed a boxer's face, sweaty and bruised. Croakers rule, okay! Eat
the dead! Totally badass. A second later, his own face was back.
'Course, I also helped carry you up to the clinic, so maybe it all
balances out, right?
Jonny smiled. Sure. Someday if I have to beat on you, I'll drive
you to the farmacia. No problem. He was put-off by the Kid. It was
almost a cellular thing. Most Zombie Analytics Jonny had known had
worked too hard at being ingratiating, going straight for the hardsell. No doubt it was some habit left over from their early days in the
flesh trade. And it was not helped by the fact it cost each Zombie a
small fortune to maintain their electronics. Still, knowing the time
and expense they took to have their skin dermatoned off and
underlayed with pixel strips, Jonny found it difficult to work up
much sympathy.
But Skid the Kid kept on smiling. Ice tells me you used to be a
cop.
No," said Jonny. I was in the Committee for Public Health.
Completely different organization.
What's the difference?"
The Committee knows what they're doing. And cops can't call
in an air strike.
Skid the Kid laughed again, and clapped his hands in delight.
What's a Zombie doing working with the Croakers? You
moonlighting or something? asked Jonny.
There's lots of Zombies down here," Ice cut-in. We've got
Naginata Sisters on security and the Bosozukos help with vehicle
maintenance. The Funky Gurus pretty much run the armory on their
own. We're a mongrel group. Everybody's welcome.
Jonny nodded curtly. He sensed a set-up. Sounds like a great
set-up. Think I'll pass, though.
We weren't trying to recruit you," said Ice quickly. But she
frowned so fiercely, Jonny could tell she was lying. And probably
disappointed.
Hoping to steer things back to neutral ground, he said, So tell
me more about this virus.
Ice sighed. Not much more to tell. We don't know what the hell
it is or where it came from. It looks like a phage, but it only attacks
cells, like a virus. If we catch the infection early, we can slow it down
with interferon or interlukin IV. But the virus mutates in a few days,
and we're back where we started.
She opened and closer her hands in frustration. We're just a
clinic, you know? We patch people up and send 'em home. We're not
set-up to do goddam research.
Skid leaned back against the computer console, fingers busy in
his breast pocket. He pulled out a crumpled pack of Beedees, broke
off the filter and lit one up. The burning rope-smell of cheap Indian
tobacco filled the room. We've got scouts out, keeping tabs on how
the military handles things. Also, we're watching traffic in and out of
New Hope. Figure those assholes'll have access to any new vaccines
before they hit the street.
Sounds reasonable," said Jonny. He watched the monitors over
Skid's shoulder. They were cycling through a programmed
surveillance routine, displaying a series of grainy views of the
Croakers' underground lair. The greenhouse, with its newly patched
bubble. Machine shops. A young Mestizo girl leading a group of
patients to the surface. The surgery. The children. Listen, I'm sorry
if I'm a little of jumpy, Jonny said. "Truth is, I'm hurting and
nervous and probably still a little punch drunk. You guys-- this setup-- it's a lot to take in at once, you know?
You have a talent for pissing people off," said Ice. But it was a
small reprove, pouting and indulgent. You'll be all right though,
officer.
Definitely all right. I sense star quality here," Skid said. He
puffed at the Beedee and smiled broadly. You gonna want to see
Groucho?
Yeah, is he back yet?" asked Ice.
About an hour ago."
Aces," Ice replied. She draped an arm across Jonny's shoulders.
Looks like you get an audience with the most wanted man in
California.
Sounds like fun," said Jonny.
He is."
Skid the Kid raised his eyebrows. Yeah, like the riddle of the
Sphinx.
Jonny followed Ice and Skid past empty and subterranean shop
fronts. Each deserted glass facade presented him with a different and
more bizarre tableau. He remembered that Ice had said they were all
artists down here. He supposed that had something to do with the
strange windows. Behind one, an animated hologram, something like
a Mandala or a printed circuit, showed men and women experiencing
all fifty-eight versions of the Tantric afterlife. Another seemed to
hold a shooting gallery. A vacuumed-suited mannequin was mounted
on a revolving wheel of fortune, animal and machine fetishes
dangling from its arms and neck. Jonny's legs shook with the subsonic rumbling of traffic overhead. He thought of ghost trains moving
through the metro tunnels on endless runs, the passengers turning to
dust as they held onto the overhead straps. His reflection in a
window startled him, and he hurried to catch up with the others.
Nice architecture you got down here," Jonny said. I dig the
style. Early Nervous Breakdown, right?
They walked through an empty lobby, behind a semi-circular
wall of frosted glass, into the old metro line security complex. Ice
knocked on a door of cheap oak veneer and ushered Jonny through.
The smell of sandalwood incense was strong. The room (Actually two
rooms; Jonny could see where the sheet rock had been cut away,
leaving a ragged white fringe.), was large and mostly empty. It
contained an electronic wall map of the metro system, a small
lacquered shrine to Shakyamuni, some cheap reproductions of
surrealist artwork and a slight, dark-skinned man with the smooth,
functional musculature of a dancer.
A blur of gray metal sliced the air above man's head. When he
opened his hand, the chain end of a kusairagama flew, curling itself,
snake-like, around a bare wall beam. Then, fluid and savage, he
started forward, twisting, kicking and feinting, until he ripped the
sickle portion of the weapon across the beam at eye level. He stepped
back and exhaled once. Then he turned and grinned, acknowledging
Jonny and the others for the first time.
I see our guest has returned from the dead," he said,
unwrapping the chain from the scarred beam. Jonny noticed that the
other beams bore similar scars. You look good in Croaker banderas,
Jonny. Course, you better not let la Migra see you dressed like that.
They'll have your ass over the border and chained to some Tijuana
work-gang faster than you can say 'green card.'
Tossing the kusairagama aside, he crossed the room with the
same liquid grace he had displayed while on the attack. His eyes
were small and dark, but quick, missing nothing. He wore his hair
slicked back, chollo-style, and had cross-hatched tattoos extending
from his shoulders to his wrists, the mark of a particular Iban
warrior-priest class. A gold earring, a Caduceus, dangled from his left
lobe. As he shook Jonny's hand, he said, The name's Groucho, by the
way. Please come in.
The anarchist went to a foam rubber mattress set in a corner of
the room, and pulled on a black mesh t-shirt. On a cheap plastic
folding table lay a crumbling volume of Rimbaud. Near it was an old
fashioned metronome with a photo of an eye clipped to the
pendulum. Jonny wondered if it was some kind of joke.
Do you like our set-up?" asked Groucho. I'm sure these two
have been keeping you busy. That's good. Boredom and lack of
purpose are the chief problems of our age. Don't you agree, Jonny?
Jonny, who was still trying to figure out the metronome joke,
was caught off guard. What? Oh yeah, sure. Boredom and getting
shot in the head.
Groucho brought over a couple of canvas chairs, and sat down,
smiling in a manner that Jonny found unsettling. The anarchist
possessed a certain relaxed grace, an unaffected air, that was
riveting. It was impossible to take your eyes off him.
But violence is the choice we've made, isn't it?" Groucho said.
We accept the uncertainties, our lives revolve around them. As
Croakers, we don't kill because we want to. As a Buddhist, it goes
against all my principles. But the act of ridding ourselves of the
Committee brings death with it. That's why we run these clinics. It's
partly revolution, but, frankly, it's part penance, too. When you take
life, you are also obligated to try and save it. He shrugged. "And
speaking of payback, please accept my thanks, for blowing away that
pig, Lieutenant Cawfly. This last bit, Groucho spoke with more
venom than the first.
Did somebody buy a billboard about that or something?" Jonny
asked. He shook his head. I was a lot younger then. I don't even
know if I'd do it now. But I can tell you it wasn't for anybody's
liberation but my own.
Independent thought and action are essential for a good
anarchist, said Groucho.
Jonny slammed his fist onto the table. Don't call me that! I'm
no anarquista and I wouldn't have come here if I thought I was going
to get campaign speeches.
Jonny looked at Ice hoping for support, but she was reading
Rimbaud over Skid's shoulder. Abandoning me to the lions, Jonny
thought.
Groucho leaned forward, pointing his finger at Jonny. No
monkeys are soldiers, all monkeys are mischievous, i.e. Some
mischievous creatures are not soldiers, he said. "Jonny, you're a
dealer-- You help to undermine a corrupt system. You subvert it and
that is a basic function of a revolutionary.
The anarchist grinned wider and held up his hands to indicate
that he knew he was moving too fast. Lightly, he rose from his chair
and went to a battered desk, where he pulled a bottle of red wine
from a file drawer. The sight of the liquor made Jonny groan. His
thought was that he would like to have the whole thing for himself,
to leave these people and their strange art, their talk of politics and
death, and get lost in the sweet oblivion of ethanol madness. On the
other hand, his stomach turned to acid mush at the mere thought of
alcohol. While he tried to sort out which impulse was stronger, his
psychic desires or his physical needs, he gazed at the art
reproductions above his head.
When Groucho returned, (Ice and Skid, trailing behind) he said:
Do you like the surrealists? They were a remarkable twentieth
century art movement. The first artists to genuinely comprehend the
modern age. They applied principles of both psychology and physics
to their work, attempting to unite the conscious and unconscious in a
single gesture. But more than that, they were the ultimate
revolutionaries, questioning everything that was known or
knowable.
To Jonny, the Ernsts and the Dalis could have been snapshots
from an only slightly depraved tour book of Los Angeles. The empty
architecture that Groucho identified as Chirico's standard made him
think of crumbling freeway overpasses and stretches of Hollywood in
those few hours after sunset, before the gangs took possession of
them for the night. The Tanguy reproductions reminded him of the
mural of Los Angeles on the train platform. Someone had copied his
style very accurately.
Groucho passed around fluted black champagne glasses, then
opening the bottle, poured wine for all. The anarchist raised his glass
as in a toast, but he did not drink. Instead, he went back to his chair,
his eyes distant. Jonny felt relief when Ice sat beside him on the thin
foam mattress.
Forgive me if I seem to be pushing things," said Groucho. I
know about your run-in with Zamora. In fact, I may know more
about old Pere Ubu's motives than you. How did you escape?
I didn't. Zamora let me go," Jonny replied, sniffing the tart
wine. His stomach won the battle over his brain. He set the down
glass down beside his foot.
Yes, that makes sense in light of everything else." Groucho
nodded, off somewhere.
In light of what?"
The anarchist frowned, rolling the crystal glass between his
palms. Things are afoot, Jonny. I don't know the specifics yet. There
are layers that are still hidden to me. Did you know that we've been
trying to contact you, but couldn't because there was a tail on you for
the last few weeks?
I had no idea."
I thought not. Then old Ubu catches you and releases you a
few hours later. Nimble Virtue turned you, by the way.
I know. I saw her at detention center."
Ice chuckled. I hope you shook that old bitch up. She's playing
finger for Zamora, sucking up to old bastard. Got Easy Money working
for her now, too.
The slime leading the slime," said Jonny.
Exactly," said Groucho. Over the anarchist's shoulder, Skid
flashed Nimble Virtue's ravaged face. He stuck a finger up his nose,
making a great production out of examining what he found there. He
pulled his ears, rolled his eyes back in his sockets. A very un-Zombie
thing to do. Jonny laughed in spite of himself.
I understand that Easy Money's sticky fingers have gotten him
in deep shit with Conover, Groucho said. "Did you hear that the
Colonel is getting political heat from Sacramento about the smuggler
lords? I believe he's getting set for a big move against them. There's
talk that the Army's trying to get it together and take the moon back
from the Alpha Rats. And somewhere in the middle of all this, you fit
in, Jonny. Your name is all over town. Someone even mentioned
Arabs.
Jonny rubbed at his sore shoulder. To Groucho, he said, Look, if
this is some simple trick to get me to join your army, you can forget
it. The Colonel picked me up because he's trying to queer some deal
of Conover's.
Groucho sipped his wine. He stared at the floor. I doubt that. If
anything, Zamora's trying to angle himself in for a piece of the action.
That's why his move against the lords is so important. Not only will it
satisfy the politicians, but if it succeeds, it will force the lords to deal
with him directly. And that's what we're waiting for-- when Zamora
makes his move so do we. An all out attack on the Committee.
Jonny nodded. Something prickled along his spine as he
realized that the anarchist was completely sincere. Jonny smiled and
shivered at the same time. He thought of war.
Why exactly did you come here?" asked Groucho.
I need to get out town," Jonny said. You've just said I'm being
watched. That means I can't use any of my normal contacts. I heard
that the Croakers have some smuggling routes that'll get me out onto
the desert.
Groucho smiled and opened his hands. I'd love to help you,
Jonny. You're center stage in fat Ubu's carnival. Whatever we can do
to trip him up if fine by me.
There's one more thing," Jonny said. I have to get Sumi, the
woman I live with. I won't leave the city without her.
That might be more difficult," said Groucho. He ran a finger
around the rim of his glass, producing a clear, high ringing tone. The
Committee must know where you live by now.
I don't think so. If they did, why would they pay Nimble
Virtue to tip them that I was at the Pit? Wouldn't it be better to
surprise me at home?
Not necessarily," said Ice. They probably assumed we'd
booby-trapped the apartment, so you'd be easier to pick off in the
street.
Jonny looked at Groucho. Your mind is made up?" asked the
anarchist.
I won't go without her."
You're loyalty's commendable. Ice, what do you think?"
Sumi means a lot to me, too, Groucho," Ice said. I don't like
the idea of leaving her out there alone. She's not equipped to deal
with that kind of craziness.
Ice sat with her legs bent. Jonny looped an arm around one of
her knees. It was just like old times. The two of them taking care of
Sumi. That was assuming, he reminded himself. that Sumi was all
right. That no one had gotten to her yet. What's your answer?"
Jonny asked.
Groucho leaned back in his plastic folding chair, pointed to the
wall over Jonny's head. You see those photos, Jonny?" he asked
quietly. The one on the right is from the uprising in Paris, nineteen
sixty eight. The other is the Spanish war against the fascists, in thirty
seven. Yet here we are, over a hundred years later, in a mad city in a
sick century fighting exactly the same battles they fought. Isolated,
alienated, bored and drugged beyond caring. We're the trained dogs
of the Spectacle. Zamora whistles, and we jump through his hoops.
The Committee is the Spectacle's ultimate tool. It's devoured our
lives, all art, our dignity. But existence is not predicated on the whim
of politicians. The anarchist took a sip of wine. "A hundred and fifty
years ago the surrealists proclaimed themselves the revolt of the
spirit. The spark in the wind, seeking the powder keg. The anarchist
nodded in satisfaction. So, we'll get your friend and we'll get you out
of town and, with any luck at all, we'll humiliate fat King Ubu in the
process. How does that sound?
Jonny smiled at the anarchist, he just could not resist. Yeah,
but what if you get caught?
Ice began to recite, and Skid joined in:
Well, then, rent me a tomb,
whitewashed and outlined in cementFar, far underground.
Jonny frowned and fingered the musty volume of poetry.
Rimbaud, right? Terrific. By the way, where'd that wine go?"
FIVE:
The Rescue of Sumimasen
An acid rain, the sins of the fathers, blew down hard and cold,
etching obscure messages into the faces of the graceless old
buildings. A few blocks to the south, beyond the fifty-story torus
housing Lockheed's business offices, carbon arcs burned a pure white
nimbus of light into the fat, menacing clouds. Pemex-U.S. was out
there somewhere, Jonny knew. Exxon; Krupp International. And
Sony-- a flat black silicon sphere, almost invisible at night, like a hole
punched in the sky. Wilshire Boulevard.
Hushed evening crowds hurried by. Business men, anonymous
in their Gucci snake skin goggles and respirators. Groups of giggling
teenage girls in matching state school ponchos. A stoned young boy,
shirtless chest aglow with bio-luminescent tattoos, kicked up wings
of water on a skateboard. When Ice reached Jonny's side, the boy
circled once in the street, gave them the finger, and took off. Ice
laughed once. Don't say it," said Jonny. She laughed again.
I don't have to, doll. It's plain as day. That's your lean and
hungry youth just skated by.
Jonny shook his head. I was never that skinny," he said. A
great knot of tension was uncoiling in his chest. He kicked at some
weeds sprouting through a crack in the pavement. Outside again, in
the street, a cold wind blowing stinking sulfur rain. There was a siren
fading somewhere, far off. He was home. It felt great.
Where to?" he asked.
Ice nodded up the street, started that way and Jonny followed. He
could see Groucho and Skid a few meters ahead.
They had left the old subway terminal perhaps twenty minutes
before. Jonny had been surprised at how easily they reached the
surface, cutting through sewers and abandoned underground
shopping malls full of rotting acoustical tiles and dismembered
mannequins. They had emerged in the back of a heavy equipment
warehouse surrounded by the smell of rust and slow leaking
canisters of toluene. Jonny had been the first one out the door. The
first one into the rain. Ice had given him a belted Army raincoat
before they left the clinic. Now, walking with her, he used one hand
to hold the collar of the coat closed; he kept the other hand in his
pocket, around the textured plastic grip of his Futukoro. Three extra
clips clicked against each other in his pocket.
Across from a storage yard full of PVC piping, Groucho and Skid
were in animated conversation with an albino. Jonny followed Ice
through the flooded street, over to where the men were talking. The
albino was seated sideways in the cab of an armored Mercedes van, a
squat double-axled monstrosity with thick wire mesh bolted over the
windows and grubby scales of titanium alloy welded to the body.
Jonny thought the vehicle looked something like the chimeric
offspring of a half-track and a rhinoceros. He was admiring its
extraordinary and single-minded ugliness when Groucho called him
over.
Jonny, I want you to meet our driver, Man Ray. He runs with
the Funky Gurus, said the anarchist.
Man Ray, the albino, gave Jonny a slight nod and Jonny
responded in kind. Then added a quick upward movement with two
fingers of his right hand, drawing the fingers across his lips
horizontally, running through a rapid series of similar gestures-- a
terse street distillation of Amerslan and gang recognition codes.
Obviously surprised, Man Ray gave him the answering gesture. Jonny
knew the Gurus well. They were all insane, he had decided years
before, but pleasantly so. They called themselves combat artists,
insisted on fighting with weapons of their own devising. Their
greatest pleasure came in staging absurd and bloody raids on rival
gangs. There was always a theme; sometimes it was eating utensils,
sometimes patterns of light and color. For the Gurus, style always
counted more than the damage done, but the damage was usually
considerable.
Man Ray wore what appeared to be home-made polypyrrole
body armor, cut kendo-style, and red high-top sneakers. A gold obi
around his waist was studded with throwing darts, shurikens and
other small glittering things Jonny did not recognize. Like many of
the Gurus, Man Ray was not a true albino; his features were negroid,
but his face was burned the palest of pinks, shading to yellow behind
his ears. Traditionally, the Gurus were recruited from workers at the
Daimyo Corporation's hellish zero G foundries orbiting the moon.
Constant exposure to low-level radiation often burned out the
melanin-producing cells in the worker's skin.
Thanks for the wheels," Jonny said. I owe you."
Man Ray smiled. He had no teeth, just stained porcelain
implants running along his upper and lower jaws, like twins walls.
You don't owe me nothin'. Blood's my muse. Flesh is my canvas,"
Man Ray said. I wouldn't miss a run." He looked at Jonny, grinning
slyly. Groucho here's been telling me how you're a great appreciator
of art, a true fan of beauty. Here--, he said, plucking something from
his sash. This is new."
Jonny accepted the object, turning it over in his hands. It was a
perfect silver rose, about half the size of a natural one, its edges
rimmed with hot gold from the sodium street lights. Man Ray pointed
to the storage yard. Over the top," he said.
Jonny looked at him once, glanced at Ice. He shrugged and
threw the rose over the collapsing hurricane fence that surrounded
the pipes.
There was silence, then a rush of air; the street was lit by an
explosion of white flame that leapt ten meters into the air. In
seconds, the blaze became a shaft of churning light, burning down to
a sizzling white mass of flame and molten piping. Jonny turned to
Man Ray who said, Le fleurs du mal."
Fuck that," said Jonny. That was a phosphorous grenade."
Everybody's a critic," Man Ray told Groucho. The Croaker
stepped into the passenger side of the van, Skid behind him. Jonny
got into the back, hunkering down next to Ice. Man Ray gunned the
van's big methanol engine and turned north onto La Cienega toward
Hollywood.
The Funky Guru thumbed on a short wave scanner, tuned to
the Committee's frequencies, and plugged in a sound chip. The
metallic voice of Committee dispatchers was overlaid with music-Taking Tiger Mountain doing an up-tempo version of Saint James
Infirmary, Saint Peter taking the lead vocals.
As I passed Saint James Infirmary
I saw my sweetheart there,
All stretched out on a table,
So pale, so cold, so fair
As I passed Saint James Infirmary-As the van rumbled crossed Beverly Boulevard, Jonny was
suddenly aware of being very cold. He shivered against the jellied
glycerin padding the walls of the van, clenching his teeth to keep
them from chattering. His right shoulder was almost numb; before
leaving the clinic, Ice had placed a xylocaine transdermal patch
under the induction cast. The Committee's last wave of raids had left
endorphins in short supply, she had explained. Now she was staring
out one of the van's armored windows, frowning to herself.
Your optimism's contagious," Jonny told her.
Ice gave him a weak smile and asked, What're you going to do
when we get Sumi?
I thought you understood that," he said. Gonna get the hell of
here. Groucho said he'd check his contacts in the south. Maybe head
down to Mexico. Why?
Ice wiped away a small island of fog her breath had left on the
window. They passed a truck unloading a cargo of black market
meat. Boneless pig heads hung limply from the back, like masks from
some awful theater. What if Sumi doesn't want to leave?" she asked.
That's her decision," Jonny said. She can do what she wants."
His voice was harder than he had intended. The possibility that Sumi
might choose to stay behind had not occurred to him. He did not
want to battle with Ice for Sumi's loyalty. He had, after all, stayed
with her when Ice took off. But Ice and Sumi had been lovers on and
off before Jonny had known either of them. No comfort there.
You won't stay?" Ice asked.
I can't."
Why not?"
Because the Colonel wants to use my balls for an ashtray,"
Jonny replied. Because Easy Money knows I'm looking for him and
that means he's looking for me. And because I don't believe any of
this anarquista wetdream bullshit. Nothing changes-- it never does.
One bunch loses power, another comes in. So what? There's new faces
to hate, new guns to run from. But nothing real ever changes.
Maybe we can help that," she said.
We're talking about the Committee here," Jonny said. They'll
eat your faces off. When we get Sumi, I'm gone.
I wish you wouldn't."
What do you want from me?"
Ice fixed Jonny with a look that he could not quite read. Anger,
frustration, fear, they were all there. What?" he said.
You never make it easy, do you?" she asked. Maybe I just
want us all to be together again. The three of us.
Why does she have to bring this up now, Jonny wondered. He
had been thinking along similar lines all along, the three of them
together again. But with Zamora and Easy Money gunning for him, it
seemed impossible. Ice, he knew, would not see it that way. Her love
came in broader strokes, great passions, grand gestures. That's why
she's a good Croaker, he thought. That's why she ran away. I want
the same thing you do, he whispered. "But not here.
I can't leave," said Ice.
I can't stay." They were on Sunset now, rolling past crowds
hanging around the bars and theaters. A restaurant shaped like
Kukulcan's pyramid at Chichen Itza, outlined in bright neon. Jonny's
face grew hot. Don't ask me to prove myself, okay? I'm not the one
who took the big walk, he said.
Almost without sound, Ice moved to the front of the van. She
sat on the floor behind Groucho. Jonny tried to look out the window,
but found himself watching Ice's reflection as she rocked with the
gentle motion of the van. He felt alone, hardly human-- he could
have been an insect observing the Croakers and the lone Guru from
the ceiling. Jonny was about to speak when Ice pointed at something
and said, Pull over there."
Man Ray turned up a side street near the World Link
substation, shielding the van from Sunset behind a stand of towering
date palms. The Guru killed the engine, reached up and flicked on an
overhead light.
Groucho turned to Jonny, his face soft and ghostly in the dim
light. Let's make this fast," he said.
Jonny nodded. We're going in the back way," he said.
Man Ray duck-walked past Jonny to the rear of the van and
removed one of the side panels, jellied glycerin rolling in sluggish
waves. From a storage area, he removed a Medusa, something like an
electrified cat o' nine tails, and some smaller gear, pistols and bolos,
which he handed to the Croakers. Over the Guru's shoulder, Jonny
could see a whole rack of colorful and oddly outfitted weapons. See
anything you like? Man Ray asked.
I'm fine," said Jonny.
Man Ray looked disappointed You got this bad prosaic streak,
you know?
The rain had given way to wind-driven mist. Ice moved ahead
of them in a loping trot, Skid doggedly at her side. Jonny did not try
to catch up, preferring to let her cope with the ghosts in her own
way.
Twisted winds whipped the mist into tiny vortices in the lee of
an enormous tent-like structure. One hundred meters high and
covering almost sixty square blocks, a perverse relic, it was the
single still-standing structure from the Los Angeles-Tokyo
Exposition, held to celebratethe one hundredth anniversary of the
transistor.
It was a series of tents, really, two hundred and eighty of them,
each half an acre of Teflon-coated fiberglass, all mildewed and
leaking badly. Beneath the tents were three life-size thermoplast and
concrete reconstructions that had comprised the Golden Age of
Hollywood Pavilion: Robin Hood's castle, sporting a peeling metallic
caricature that might once have resembled Errol Flynn; the Emerald
City from The Wizard of Oz," and the Babylonian temple from D.W.
Griffith's Intolerance." Jonny lived in the last of these
reconstructions, as did two thousand other people.
At a service port near the bottom of a support pylon, Jonny
pried a ten key pad away from its housing. Sumi had set the pad
there loosely, with a gummy brown adhesive, after instructing him
how to short out the locking mechanism. With a thunk, the port slid
open and the five of them entered, climbing quickly up a spiral
staircase to a slimy platform at the top. Jonny shorted out a second
pad and a moment later, they were out onto the translucent surface
of the tent itself.
Jonny motioned for them to spread out, to keep the tent fabric
from sagging under their weight. Above their heads, suspended in
slings and plastic bubbles were the lost tribes of Los Angeles.
Any permanent or semi-permanent structure in the city was
an invitation to squatters. In the years since its construction, the
Hollywood Pavilion had served as home to thousands of local downand-outers, illegals from Mexico and Jamaica, indentured workers
from Thailand and the Ukraine. A few of those one-percenters, the
ones who had found the life below too confining or too desperate,
had moved to the open spaces above the tents themselves,
wandering like nomads across the billowing fiberglass dunes. Years
later, tribes hunted, whole societies had sprung up with their own
customs and languages. Jonny watched Man Ray and Skid taking it all
in, eyeing the delicate habitats with a combination of fascination and
nervousness. Groucho waved happily to the fleeting figures
shadowing them along the cables. On the dripping wires were hung
tribal banners, crude Catholic shrines, prayer flags marked with
curious symbols resembling Mayan, Nepalese and parts of schematic
diagrams, cabalistic cries for help directed at any god or gods who
might be listening.
Jonny felt in control here. He was gripped by a strange
combination of tension and elation. His mind raced. He found himself
staring at the moon as it appeared from behind a cloud bank. He
thought of the Alpha Rats. Again, he wondered if somewhere on that
airless surface they were watching all this, noting it for some future
inquiry. He had the sudden urge to meet them, to somehow explain
things to them. At that same moment, he thought of Sumi down
below, unaware of his and Ice's presence. His senses expanded
outward until they encompassed the whole of the saddle-backed
landscape. This is right, he thought; it was good to be moving again.
He felt as if he had regained some lost part of himself.
He broke ranks and scrambled to the crest of a corner dune. Its
peak was a circular anchorage, open to the structure below. Quickly,
he uncoiled lengths of nylon rope attached to the cement anchor and
let them drop. Ice caught up with him, releasing other lines. She still
would not look at him, but Jonny knew she was feeling a high similar
to his. Climbing clumsily in his cast, he made it over the rim and
dropped with Ice to a ledge beside a Babylonian elephant deity, its
chicken wire frame visible through the cracked concrete. The others
dropped down a moment later. A tangle of echoing voices from below
made it impossible to hear; Jonny signed for them to follow him
inside.
They moved through a series of packed gray rooms, dusty
storage areas for the concession stands that had filled the pavilion
during the expo. They entered a clearing; around them, half-empty
crates trailed shreds of Taiwanese gun catalogs (improvised packing
material) to rows of ceiling-high shelves crowded with miniature
cowboy and samurai figures, still new in their plastic wrappers. Skid
picked up souvenirs as he walked along: Hollywood Boulevard sealed
in a water filled-lucite bubble; when he shook it, plastic snow settled
over the buildings; paper jackets emblazoned with the Rising Sun;
candy in the shape of silicon chips. Except for a layer of dust, most of
the merchandise seemed to have changed very little over the years.
Wall-sized holograms of Uncle Sam and Disney characters, dreams
figures of an extinct culture, were carefully sealed in bubble pack
and duct tape, waiting for their owners to return from other errands.
They came to a flight of stairs. Jonny lead them down a couple
of levels, then up one, careful to keep to the deserted areas of the
structure. They saw yellow signs in a dozen languages warning them
not to smoke, pointing out fire exits and giving long and detailed
explanations of local hygiene laws.
From below drifted the smell of bodies pressed close together,
cooking fires, mildew and something else, the almost metallic scent of
nervous action. Strange insect odors of commerce, shady deals,
strictly off-the-record meetings. They came upon a young girl
kneeling in the corridor, bathed in the blue light of an ancient
portable television, tying off with a hachimaka. When she saw them,
the girl gathered up her works and took off. She left the television,
which was slowly rolling a dead channel of snow. At the junction of
four corridors, Ice signed for Jonny to take the rear entrance of the
apartment, while she took Skid and Groucho to check out the front.
Jonny gave her the acknowledging sign and with Man Ray, started
down the corridor to his right. Half-way down, they entered a room
of immense asbestos-wrapped standing pipes.
Help me get this up," whispered Jonny, indicating a textured
metal plate in the floor. We're right above the apartment."
The two of them stooped, worked their fingers under the plate
and lifted it free. Jonny went feet-first into the hole, kicking out the
plastic louvers of a false ventilating duct, and dropped to the floor of
the apartment. A moment later, he heard Man Ray hit the floor
behind him.
The room was dark, the air dead and hot; it clung to Jonny,
bitter with the fumes of charred synthetics.
A mass of broken furniture lay scattered across the floor,
blistered seat backs and pressboard chair legs forming the ribs of
some skinned animal. Small appliances seemed to have been thrown
into a pile and methodically smashed. Jonny had trouble identifying
individual objects, he could make out a coffee grinder and a small
microwave oven; the rest of it was unrecognizable, beaten beyond
recognition. Someone had placed duct tape over the room's only
window. To hide what they were doing, he thought. The tape was
peeling off now, the pavilion's floods cutting the far wall into neat
diagonal segments, alternating bands of light and dark. Pills and
diskettes crunched beneath their feet, giving off a sour reek of
spoiled hormonal extracts; an Indian throw rug was gummy with
half-dissolved capsules of vasopressin and prolactin. There did not
seem to be much in the room that was not burned or broken.
They followed a trail of books and Sumi's gutted electronic gear
(fused circuits glowing like raw opals) down the hall to the bedroom.
In the small chamber, the arson-smell was stronger. Man Ray
thumbed on a small squeeze light attached to his obi. The bed had
been torched. Shredded clothes were scattered over the floor, and
Freon slurred the wall from a refrigeration unit, now slag, that Jonny
had hidden to store perishable drugs, and the occasional blackmarket
kidney or lung for a client.
A scraping. From the living room.
Both men had their weapons up and out, Jonny leaning into the
hall, anxious for something to shoot. In the far room, Ice and the
others were silently surveying the wreckage on the floor.
Back here," Jonny called.
They came back, huddling dumbly in the doorway. Ice
performed a slow motion sleepwalk through the bedroom, stopping
occasionally to finger a piece of clothing, a crushed circuit board,
vials of pills. Man Ray's light fixed her in a wedge of sudden color.
She turned to Jonny. Her tool belt is gone," Ice said.
That's good," said Groucho hopefully. Then there's a chance
Sumi got away.
Jonny leaned against the wall, sliding down into a crouch. And
maybe they just took it with them for evidence. Prove she's a Watt
Snatcher.
From the corner of his eye, Jonny saw Skid, shifting his weight
nervously from foot to foot. Maybe we shouldn't stay here," said the
Kid quietly.
Ice stood up, holding a small prayer wheel; its half-melted
copper cap squeaked as she spun it. Either way, Sumi's long gone,"
she said. Turn off that damned light."
Man Ray put the squeeze light back on his sash. Jonny
remained on his haunches; Ice kicked her way through the clothes
and half-melted lumps of cheap plastic furniture, and nudged him
with her boot. Looks like it's just you and me for now, cowboy," she
said.
Jonny looked up at her. I'm going to kill someone for this, you
know.
Ice nodded, smiled. Well, don't forget to leave something for
me, she said.
This is payback from Zamora," said Jonny.
Groucho cleared his throat. I think Skid was right a moment
ago, he said. "Perhaps we ought to leave. If Pere Ubu's involved, he
may have left sentries behind.
Jonny pulled himself from the floor, looking the room over one
more time, pressing the image in his brain for later. When he might
need the anger. Okay," he said, we came in the back, we go out the
front. Good crowds for cover.
They left the apartment. Skid abandoned his coat and walked
point in his Zombie gear: an innocent hustler in search of the night's
mark. They saw no Committee boys on the way out.
The main courtyard of the Babylonian temple was stifling in
the overheated illumination coming from tiered ranks of klieg lamps.
Dozens of made-up, costumed extras milled around, Valley kids
mostly, speaking in hushed cathedral tones. The movie set reminded
Jonny of something-- an immense surgery, the light giving people
and objects a look of startling precision and sterility.
Okay kids, Ms. Vega's going to make her walk in a minute,"
came a man's flat nasal voice from a P.A. What we need here is lots
of clapping and cheering. But no whistling. You want to whistle, go
see kick-boxing.
This brought shrill waves of high-pitched whistling from the
temple's squatters who were massed just behind a police line around
the set. The extras were costumed in cleaned-up Hollywood versions
of squatter gear, much too clean and well-fed, thought Jonny.
Very funny. Get to your positions, kids."
Jonny and the others joined the general flow of the crowd,
threading their way through the back of the set, following a line of
dancers in sequined parodies of Lunar Commando vacuum-suits.
Jonny was not particularly surprised by the presence of the film
crew; it was not the first time he and the other squatters had been
forced from their digs by a some local production company. Aoki
Vega was one of the Link's most popular musical-porn stars. The
irony of the situation, Jonny thought, was that the Link was going to
turn around and sell the broadcast of Vega's performance to the
same squatters they had displaced, presenting them with an
expensive ad glittering souvenir of their powerlessness.
The dancers Jonny and the others were following seemed to be
headed to a partitioned area at the far end of the pavilion near a
semicircle of honeywagons and generator trucks. Skid was walking
on his toes, trying to see over the line of extras waiting to cheer the
star. A bank of stadium-sized video projectors displayed views of the
set from several different angles.
As he pushed his way through the extras, Jonny became aware
of a certain unnerving sameness about them, as if they had all been
weaned from the same shallow gene pool. Caucasian faces were
blandly orientalized; nisei kids snapping their fingers to unheard pop
tunes, their hair bleached and skin darkened with biologics to some
bizarre ideal of southern California chic. They could have been from
anywhere, nowhere. A gag postcard about sex appeal and beaches.
I know you. You're the producer, right?" said someone nearby.
Jonny turned to her. She wore a loose jacket of woven
aluminum filament, plated gold. Her face held the same assembly
line features as the others. Only her eyes were memorable. She wore
diffraction grating contacts; her eyes were spiraling rainbows.
We met at Marty's party in Laurel Canyon," she said brightly.
You're Mister Radoslav, right?"
It was obvious to Jonny that the woman was stoned. She might
as easily have thought he was the Pope. Jonny, still moving, glanced
over at the police line, then fixed her with the most radiant smile he
could muster. Please keep your voice down," he said. No one's
supposed to know I'm here. He put his arm around Skid. "This is my
associate, Mister Kidd.
My pleasure," the woman said, extending a bronzed hand. She
and Skid shook, the Kid mumbled an incoherent pleasantry.
Tell me, is there somewhere we can go and talk, Ms.--?" Jonny
began.
Viebecke," she said. But everybody calls me Becky."
Becky, of course. Is there anywhere we can speak privately,
Becky? Perhaps discuss an audition?
Sure," she said. The extra's trailer is probably empty now."
The look she gave Jonny was infused with such hunger and lust that,
for a moment, he considered cutting right then and there and taking
his chances with the police.
Something glided by. Jonny looked up. A long articulated arm
supporting a German video-cam was hovering a few meters
overhead; a half-dozen lenses rotated, pulling to focus on them. His
face and Skid's were splashed across the dozen enormous video
screens. The trailer sounds fine," he said.
Ice and the others were waiting beside a two-story boom crane
that reminded him of an orange praying mantis. He introduced the
others to Becky who clung to his arm, looking disappointed when she
saw Ice. Then she smiled, the Hollywood optimism bubbling forth.
Oh wow, are you guys actors, too?" she crooned.
How'd you guess?" asked Ice, flashing her teeth.
We're casting a new feature right now," said Jonny. Looking
for fresh, interesting faces.
Becky giggled and led them to a group of trailers behind the
honeywagon. The chemical smells of processed fish and beef analogs
permeated the place. Becky went inside before them, holding up a
hand to indicate that they should wait there. The sound of raised
voices came from beyond the door. Jonny looked at Ice. She shook
her head slowly.
A moment later, a young woman came storming out of the
trailer. She resembled Becky so strongly, that for an instant, Jonny
thought it was the actress in a new set of clothes. But the new
woman just glared at them and stalked off. You can come in now,"
Becky called from the doorway. They went inside.
The trailer was long and narrow, smelling faintly of perfume
and sweat, with rows of lighted mirrors on one side, benches and
hooks heavy with clothes on the other. Sun lamps and video monitors
were crowded at opposite ends of the room. Jonny and the others
went immediately to the clothes, and started pawing through them.
Becky perched on a table by the mirrors, holding her head rigid,
favoring them with her best side.
What are you guys doing?" she asked at last.
Costumes," said Jonny. Gotta know what young people are
wearing these days.
Becky lit a joint, puffed, and rose from her perch, trying to
keep up a merry front. Man Ray found a hound's tooth overcoat that
fit over his body armor; Ice put on a white toreador jacket, trimmed
with gold beads. When Becky lay a hand on Jonny's arm she was
radiating nervousness, but her face remained a smiling mask.
Looking at her, Jonny felt an obscure sorrow. He wondered if she had
any other facial expressions buried somewhere under all that
bargain basement surgery.
Is there anything youwant to ask me?" she purred. Yeah,
there much security down at this end of the set?
Becky looked at him blankly, like a deranged puppy. She
screamed:
Hey! You aren't the producer!"
We're criminals," said Jonny. Desperate, armed criminals."
Becky fell back drunkenly and cowered in a far corner of the trailer,
whimpering and mumbling Oh wow," like a mantra.
They had their new clothes on in a few seconds, (Groucho in a
Mexican Air Force jacket studded with medals, Skid in a black
leather jumpsuit and Chinese revivalist Mao cap) and started out the
door. Jonny went to Becky to attempt a quick apology. She was still
in the corner, struck dumb with drugs and fear, and when she thrust
a chair at him, he could not tell if she wanted to give it to him or hit
him with it. He just backed away slowly saying, I'm sorry, Becky.
But it's our asses.
Outside, the P.A. was blaring, Okay kids, let's really hear it."
They moved to the very back of the set, smiling at the techs,
just another group of extras waiting for their call, and started out
between two grinding generator rigs. Behind them they heard the
trailer door burst open and a shrill, hysterical voice. He's not the
producer! He's just a goddam thief!
Security moved in quickly on the screaming actress. By the
Babylon set, music started, drowning out Becky's voice. Someone
called out for them to stop. But Jonny and the rest were running
then, out of the pavilion and across the wet street.
Near the van, Jonny sneaked a look over his shoulder, and saw
a couple of overweight film company rent-a-cops in pursuit. He
almost laughed. Spinning on the balls of his feet, he brought his
Futukoro up level with the rent-a-cops' heaving chests. The nearest
one saw him, momentarily misplaced his center of gravity, and went
down in a puddle like an overstuffed sack. His partner did a little tap
dance, hands thrust over his head, and started back toward the
bright lights of the pavilion.
Jonny ran on to the van, arriving there just in time to see Skid
hit the street under the hulked black back of a uniform. Ice went
down on top of them. The bright flicker of her knife blade, and she
and Skid were up. Groucho caught another uniform, whipping his
bolo like a garrote, pinning the uniform's upraised arm to his throat,
before dispatching him with a kick to the solar plexus. Very weird
for rent-a-cops, thought Jonny. A couple of Futukoro rounds
slammed into the scarred armor on the side of the van. Very fucking
weird.
One of the uniforms scrambled by, illuminated by the flickering
green florescence of a street lamp. Oh shit," Jonny said.
He ducked and ran, hoping the Committee boys had not spotted
him. Man Ray was already behind the wheel of the van, gunning the
engine. Ice and Groucho had their guns out, and were giving Jonny
covering fire. The three jumped in the back. Skid, however, remained
outside, in maniacal pursuit of the Committee boy who had attacked
him.
Man Ray ground the van into gear, accelerating past the Kid.
Jonny held onto one of Groucho's arms as he leaned out the back. The
anarchist snared the Kid and they dragged him by his sleeves for a
block or so before Ice got hold of his collar and pulled him inside.
A hovercar skimmed down low over the van, burning lights,
manic shadows; hot fists of turbine wash forced them back from the
door. Man Ray jammed through the gears. He took two corners,
nearly overturning the van on one, but the hovercar just hung there.
Then it veered suddenly off to the left.
It seemed for a moment that they had lost it, but it dropped
down a few feet in front of them, barely skimming over the puddles.
Man Ray stood on the brakes, sending the van wiggling down
the street like a speared fish. When he regained control, the Guru ran
them through a parking lot off Vine and out onto Melrose.
Gripping the doorframe, Jonny and the others shot at the
turbine vanes on the underside of the hovercar with Man Ray's
custom ammo. Pink and silver spheres impacted the polycarbonate
surface; blue firework dragons pawed at the landing gear, before
being sucked up through the intake ports. Skid pushed past them,
and threw some of Man Ray's roses, knife-fashion, at the low flying
car. They exploded behind the van, blistering asphalt and palm trees.
Let there be light!" yelled Man Ray. He cranked up the short
wave scanner, making adjustments to his own broadcasting unit.
Listen'a that dumb fuck," he said. Thinks he's calling us in. I
got that boy jammed so hard, surprised he knows which end holds
the mike.
The hovercar let loose then with a burst of automatic weapons
fire that hammered down on the roof of the van like a phosphorescent avalanche, blue sparks dancing around the edges of the door.
Jonny and the others fell back. Man Ray steered them onto Wilshire
Boulevard, dodging slow-moving low riders and pedicabs.
Jonny leaned up to the driver seat. How far are we from the
underground? he yelled.
Almost there," Man Ray said. He had slipped on a high-domed
crash helmet.
Can we take more of that fire?"
The Guru grinned through high-impact plastic. Don't insult
me.
The glass donut of Lockheed's office tower was glowing just a
few blocks ahead. The Guru steered the van onto a side street, trying
to lose their tail before heading for the clinic. The hovercar hung
implacably above them.
We're really eating it," Man Ray said. There's no major turnoffs and the underground's just ahead. Any suggestions?
I got one," said Ice. She pulled one of the Croakers'
Kalashnikov rifles, retrofit with an M-79 grenade launcher, from the
weapons bin. The van was running fast down a side street between
long rows of grimed and decaying old geodesic greenhouses, some
forgotten experiment in urban self-sufficiency.
Wind tearing at her corn-rows, Ice sighted in on the hovercar,
tracking the subtle, massive glide of the machine as it positioned
itself for another attack. When she did not fire, Jonny was tempted to
pull her away from the door. Then, just as he was reaching for her,
she pulled the trigger, sending the burning M-79 bolt at the aft
section of the car. The explosion, when the shell hit, blew out
windows in one old greenhouse dome, peppering the van with dead
vegetation and fragments of glass.
Black smoke and guttering light above them. The hovercar
tried to rise, but its remaining engine clipped a transformer tower,
flipping the car onto its back. It hung there for a moment, as if
undecided what to do. Finally, in what looked like an attempt to right
itself, it slammed through a greenhouse roof, emerging from the far
side in flames.
Brace yourselves!" screamed Man Ray. He wrenched the
steering wheel left, sending the van broadside into the hovercar just
as it skidded to the ground in front of them.
The first thing Jonny was aware of was the constant blaring of
a horn; then came shadows, flickering over his eyelids in frozen
micro-second silhouettes; then a thick wetness on his face, across his
chest and arms. He opened his eyes. Glycerin. It was everywhere,
thick puddles massing on the floor and slopping out the back,
ruptured padding going limp on the walls. He crawled to the open
door and dropped a couple of unexpected feet to the pavement. The
vehicle was resting at a severe angle, its three left wheels spinning in
the air.
He walked on some stranger's legs; they refused to work
together.
Around the side of the van he found the mangled hovercar, a
skeletal mass of crumpled alloys and scorched plastic, two feeble red
lights rotating out of synch; the fuselage had twisted itself
thoroughly into the undercarriage of the van, merging with it.
Symbiotic junk.
A sleeve grazed his face, electric jolt sending Jonny down to his
knees. Man Ray danced past him, his Medusa out and swinging over
his head. Charged lashes flowered sparks as they touched, gilding the
air above the Guru's head with spinning galaxies, ghostly landscapes
of exploding stars, playing cards, cometary butterflies. He was easily
holding three Committee boys at bay. There was an enormous
stained-porcelain smile plastered across his face. Even groggy, Jonny
could read it: Total fulfillment. Man Ray was in his element, writing
sonnets with his weapons; the image of the artist at work.
The Guru froze and held out his arms, crystal geckos skittering
from his sleeves. Light-footed, quick-tongued, they leaped to the
ground at the Committee boys' feet, exploding into billowing,
lavender clouds of CS gas. Jonny fell back on the van, coughing, eyes
filling with tears, and saw Man Ray emerge from the cloud a moment
later. Somewhere along the way, the Guru had slipped a respirator on
under his kendo helmet. A Committee boy grabbed him and was
jolted off by the electrical charge of the polypyrrole armor.
Then someone was pulling Jonny away, around to the back of
the ruined van. It was Skid, blood ruining the white perfection of his
teeth, rimming his lips. The hand he used to hold Jonny was glowing,
pixels throbbing nervously, but offering no image. He was shouting
something.
We're fucked! They've blown it! We're on our own, man!"
The Kid started to pull again, but Jonny shifted his weight and
held him in place. What are you talking about? Where's Ice?"
The Kid pointed with his gun. Pinned down with Groucho. It's
the Committee, man. They've blown the clinic!
Jonny pushed the Kid aside and ran between the rows of
greenhouses. A block away, he could see a dozen of the Committee's
meat wagons forming an armored barrier around the warehouse he
and the others had left earlier that evening. Force men were leading
a few cuffed Croakers to the wagons. There were bodies, Committee
boys and anarchists, lying in the flood-lit parking lot. Ice and
Groucho were there, pinned-down in an alley off to the right, meters
apart, unable to reach the cover of the greenhouses.
See? We're fucked!" Skid shrilled. They found the clinic!"
Jonny watched as Ice and Groucho tried to make a run for it,
shooting into the air to cover each other. The Committee boys
laughed at them from the roof, cat and mousing them, letting them
get a few meters out, then forcing them back against the warehouse
under a curtain of bullets.
If we lay down some fire on that roof, they could make it,"
Jonny told Skid. Watch them. I need a weapon." He crawled away,
then sprinted to the van.
Weapons and ammunition were scattered on the ground behind
the van's open door. Some of Man Ray's clockwork constructions had
been activated; they crawled absently off into the shadows where
they popped and flared. The Guru was nowhere in sight. Jonny
grabbed a Futukoro and, as he fished for a clip in the glycerin
flooded bin, paused for a moment to take a couple of deep, even
breaths. His hands were shaking. He closed his eyes, tried to will
himself calm. Nothing but ruins, he thought. Seeing Ice pinned down
had snapped something inside him. He thought of Sumi. He could not
lose them both in one night.
A high-pitched animal scream. Jonny ran back to the
warehouse in time to see Skid zig-zagging into the open, his pixels
wild, a slight figure crawling with pastel geometrics and snapping
death's heads. As the Kid ran, he shot wildly at the roof of the
adjoining warehouse, forcing the Committee boys back. Ice, Jonny
realized, had been caught between the buildings, unable to get out of
the line of fire. Now, under Skid's cover, she made it to a greenhouse
on the far side, Groucho right on her heels. They turned to give the
Kid covering fire, but he seemed confused; unwilling to be pinned at
the warehouse wall as they had been, he sprinted back toward
Jonny.
He got about ten meters when a shot caught him from behind,
punching a wet hole in his chest. The Kid spun around stiffly, firing
the last of his clip into the pavement. Skid!" Ice screamed. The Kid
was on his back, half-conscious, crawling with snakes and
phosphenes. A file dump, Jonny realized. All the images in his
software were bubbling up at once, out of control. The arm Skid held
up strobed madly: the arm of a woman, a reptile, an industrial robot;
crimson spiders webbed him; amber alphanumerics scrolled up his
twisted face; Brando, Lee, Bowie, Vega; his system was looping, the
faces flickering by faster and faster, merging into one meta-fantasy
face, colorless, all colors, fading at the same instant it formed. Skid
sat up, looked around wildly and laughed. A single bright flash of
binary, and he slumped to the ground. The Kid lay still and dark.
By the meat wagons, a loudspeaker clicked on: MY GOD, IS
THAT YOU, GORDON? NICE TO SEE YOU, ASSHOLE. WHAT HAPPENED
TO OUR DEAL? came Zamora's voice. "YOU FUCKED ME, GORDON, BUT I
DIDN'T THINK YOU WERE STUPID. I CUT YOU LOOSE AND YOU RUN
RIGHT INTO THE ARMS OF CRIMINALS; TERRORISTS, FOR CHRISSAKE.
It was a game, Jonny knew. Could the Colonel make him mad
enough to do something stupid? Jonny tried to force the sound of
Colonel Zamora's voice from his brain; he conjured up visions of
clawing the man's eyes out with his hands, but he stayed in the
shadows, shaking, hating himself, and biting his lip until he drew
blood.
I'M GOING TO ROAST YOU, KID. ONE OF YOUR BITCHES IS MINE
ALREADY. THEY LOVE FRESH CUNT AT THE WEAPONS LAB, YOU
KNOW. THEY'LL HAVE HER INCUBATING SPINAL WORMS. EVER SEEN
THOSE THINGS? ALL THEY EAT IS NERVE TISSUE, AND THEY DON'T
STOP TILL IT'S ALL GONE...
Before Jonny knew what he was doing, he was flat on his belly,
screaming, firing the Futukoro, filling the air above the meat wagons
with dragons, burning comets, screeching harpies. He knocked out
the P.A. with the first volley, and took out some of the flood lights.
Something occurred to him then, and he was up, scrambling back to
the van. Some of Man Ray's toys were been back there, he
remembered. What a nice surprise they would be for the Colonel.
But he never got there.
Two dark suited men intercepted him as he was stepping into
the vehicle. Instinctively, Jonny brought his boot up into one man's
armpit, paralyzing the arm. But it was not enough. His whole system
hummed, crying out for blood. Jonny grabbed a handful of the first
man's face and pushed him into the second. They both went down,
and Jonny was on them, bringing his boots down heel-first, aiming
for the throat. He missed the first man, corrected his aim for the
second and knocked out some of his teeth. Jonny's fun was cut short,
however, when an arm clamped across his face, and something cold
and stinging touched his throat. As his body went limp, some neutral
part of his brain noted that he had been stuck with a neural
scrambler. The effect was a strange one since Jonny's mind continued
to function perfectly, but with the pyramidal tracks of his brain
jammed, his body had suddenly been reduced to so much useless
meat. He was aware of the two men carrying him for some distance.
He hoped they would not let him swallow his tongue.
When they removed the scrambler, Jonny found himself on the
filthy floor of an underground garage. A stretched Cadillac limousine,
the rear end huge under twin sweeping tail fins, was parked nearby.
His tongue seemed to be intact. The car door swung open, and a
familiar florid scent of clove cigarettes billowed out. Then the ugliest
man Jonny had ever seen smiled out at him.
Please don't be angry, Jonny. Your friends are gone. Some of
their compatriots picked them up a few moments ago, said Mister
Conover, the smuggler lord. Aside from that, it's been my sad
experience that people who are ready to die for a cause, all too often,
end up doing just that. He grinned apologetically, showing horrid
yellow teeth. There are far too many of them out there for you to do
any good, you know. You'll just get yourself killed.
Killed?" said Jonny. He laughed. Wouldn't that be a joke on
everybody.
SIX:
The Exquisite Corpse
Mister Conover, relaxed and smiling, was sporting that season's
newest suit style from Milan (high-waisted pants, shoulder pads in
the jacket, all woven from Russian silk. There was a Cyrillic character
on each of the gold buttons. In all, the suit violated a dozen U.S. trade
embargoes against pro-Arab countries.). He was the most powerful
smuggler lord in Los Angeles, singlehandedly controlling most of the
drug traffic in and out of southern California.
Many of the other lords were working small, furtive drug deals
of their own, deals designed to boost their cash flow and their selfesteem, and while they were, technically, cutting into Conover's
action, he did not mind. Allowing the other lords to have their little
deals helped to keep them happy and in line. And that, Conover
knew, was a form of power he could not buy or do without.
Rumor had it that Mr. Conover's influence reached far beyond
the limits of Los Angeles, into the governor's mansion, and the offices
of the multi-nationals in Osaka and Mexico City. Part of this was due
to an elaborate kick-back scheme he had reputedly concocted with
several pharmaceutical firms decades before, a scheme having to do
with the scuttling of artificial intelligence controlled-cargo blimps
and tankers, allowing the companies to collect on the insurance, then
returning the vessels with new names and computer logs, while he
kept the cargo. However, a portion of his influence had simply to do
with his age. He had been born in the previous century, making him
older than most of the corporations and politicos he was dealing with.
Through the years, he had become a link to a golden age when the
foundations for the power structure of their world was being laid, a
sort of icon to commerce and stability.
Mr. Conover was also a Greenies addict. Originally marketed in
the late nineteen nineties as a longevity drug, Greenies were later
found to be responsible for a whole range of bizarre side effects.
However, these effects manifested themselves only after decades of
use, and by then it was usually too late; the drug had already bonded
with and re-inscribed large segments of the addict's DNA. To stop
taking the drug would have killed Conover. The drug's street name
derived from its peculiar tendency to slow the oxidation of blood in
the user's system, giving the addict's skin a brittle, greenish-blue
quality.
The final irony was that Greenies turned out to be an
exceptionally effective life extender. Thus, the user could look
forward to decades (centuries?) of addiction and slow physical
disintegration. No one really knew how old Mr. Conover was, but
what he had become was obvious to all.
Conover's small grayish-green skull of a head bobbed between
narrow shoulders set above a thick torso. His nose was little more
than a mass of jagged scar tissue surrounded by livid clusters of red
tumors. He puffed constantly at gold-tipped Sherman clove cigarettes
which he held in a long mother-of-pearl holder, an affectation which,
like his clothes, was another symptom of his compulsion to
accentuate his own ugliness. When he smiled, which was often, his
thin lips stretched back from a stained jumble of teeth. His
appearance always gave Jonny the feeling that he was in
conversation with a well-dressed corpse.
The Cadillac moved swiftly along an all but abandoned stretch
of freeway. Sand was blowing in off the desert, carried to the city on
the backs of freak Santa Ana winds. Carbon arcs mounted on the roof
threw the cracked roadbed into stark relief, made the sand look like
static on a video screen. Jonny looked out the double-glazed
windows, but there was not much to see. They were driving through
hills northwest of the city, on the edge of the German industrial
sector, a bleak dead zone of strip mining equipment and halffinished bunkers housing the Krupp Corporation's experimental
tokamak. The leached hills depressed Jonny, reminded him of a
painting by Max Ernst that Groucho had shown him: Europe After the
Rain. The landscape brought back uneasy memories of evenings on
the Committee shooting speed with Krupp's young shock truppen.
The German's did not have Meat Boys, instead, it was common for
young recruits to display their machismo by replacing their limbs
with unfeeling myoelectric prosthesis. Jonny had the patchy,
drunken memory of a laughing boy holding a cigarette lighter to his
fingertips until they melted and dripped away, revealing the silicon
sensors and black alloy mesh beneath.
Jonny relaxed on the soft leather seat in the rear of the
limousine. Seated next to him, Conover pulled out an ornate silver
cigarette case and offered him a smoke. Jonny accepted the cigarette
and a light, pulling the harsh, sweet clove smoke deep into his lungs
and letting it trickle out through his nose.
It had been months since he last smoked a cigarette (Sumi had
guilted him into stopping when a Croaker working out of the back of
a taqueria told him he had a shadow on one lung), but his past
seemed to be catching up with him at such a rate that Jonny figured
he might as well get into the spirit of it. He coughed wearily as the
smoke caught in his throat. Resting his head on the seatback, he
watched the road slide by. Conover's chauffeur, a heavy-set exGuardia Nacional man, was skull-plugged into a radar/navigational
unit in the dashboard, following a trail of military sensors under the
road bed. Conover was one of the few men in the city Jonny trusted,
certainly the only lord. For the moment, he felt safe. Conover leaned
over and spoke to him quietly.
You seem to have brought down the wrath of god, old son. Or
at least you pissed off Zamora, which amounts to the same thing.
What in the world can you have done?
Jonny ran a hand through his hair. I wish I knew," he said.
Maybe I'd feel like I deserve all this special attention."
Much as he'd like to, the Colonel does not stage raids just for
fun. He must have had some reason for singling you out. Conover
put a hand on Jonny's arm. No offense, you're a charming boy, but--"
The man's insane. He thinks you and I are playing footsie with
the Alpha Rats, Jonny said. "I suppose that's assuming they have
feet. I don't know. This whole thing's crazier by the minute.
The Alpha Rats," Conover said, half as a question, half a reply.
He smoked his pastel Sherman, laughed mildly. The Colonel never
ceases to amaze me. Did he happen to mention what, specifically, you
and I were doing with the Alpha Rats?
No. He just said we'd had contact and that we're into some
kind of deal, Jonny explained. He gave up and ground out the
cigarette in an ashtray gouged from a crystal lump of Amazon quartz.
His throat burned.
And that's all he said?" Conover asked.
Yeah." Jonny hesitated before saying anything about Zamora's
demand that he turn Conover. Just saying the words, Jonny felt,
implied a kind of betrayal. But how will it look, he wondered, if I
don't say anything and he finds out? Zamora's really got the hots for
you, he said. "He cut me loose and told me I had to deliver you in
forty eight hours or---Or we get the little scene back at the warehouses. Tell me,
did Easy Money ever come up in your talk?
I don't think so."
Take a moment. I want you to be sure. Did Colonel Zamora
mention Easy Money?
No, never."
You didn't seem so sure a moment ago."
Well, I wasn't then; I'm sure now," said Jonny. He looked at the
smuggler lord.
Good," said Conover, nodding in satisfaction. Forgive me for
being insistent, but it's important that I get to Easy before the
Committee. He's made off with something of mine and I do not want
Zamora involved, on any level, with its recovery.
For what it's worth, Groucho, the Croaker, said Easy's gone to
work for Nimble Virtue.
Conover reached forward and picked up a bottle of tequila
from a well-stocked traveling bar set into the seatback before them.
Next to the bar was an array of sleek matte-black Japanese electronic
gear; Jonny recognized a Sony compound analyzer, a cellular
videophone and a voice-activated PC. Conover poured a shot of
tequila into a glass and handed it to Jonny.
I'd heard about Nimble Virtue," said Conover. In fact, I've
been trying to set up a meet with her, but the witch is on the run.
Paranoid,that woman is. My sources say she might have a pied a
terre in Little Tokyo, but only time will tell. Jonny finished his
tequila and Conover refilled his glass. Right now, though, why don't
you relax and tell me, from the beginning, everything that went on
with you and Zamora. Take your time, we have a bit of a drive ahead
of us.
Jonny took a gulp of the liquor, bracing himself with its cool
heat. He was not wild about the idea of reliving that night, but he
knew had known it was coming, ever since the smuggler lord had
picked him up. Conover, meanwhile, was using a tiny spoon to scoop
a fine white powder from a glass vial he pulled from the back of the
bar. That done, he cut the pile the into several neat lines with a gold
single-edged razor blade.
As the lord snorted up a couple of the lines, Jonny began to
talk, telling Conover everything he could remember, from the
moment Zamora had picked him up, until he had found himself alone
behind the prison, confused and outraged. It was painful; all that had
happened since came crashing down on him. Ice was gone. Sumi was
gone. Skid was dead. He even found Groucho's absence disturbing.
When he finished, Conover had him run through the whole
thing again, focusing on Zamora's theories about their connection to
the Alpha Rats. After going through it a second time, Jonny was
drained.
Conover patted his arm, and nodded. A very good job, Jonny.
Thank you, he said. "You look like you could use a break.
I could use a new life. But what about Zamora and the Alpha
Rats?
Conover handed the tube he had used to snort the coke to
Jonny. It all sounds fascinating. I never would have suspected the
Colonel of having an imagination. It almost makes me wish it were
true. Without you to pull out of the fire, Jonny, my life would be
unbearable. Don't let anybody try and sell you on immortality. There
simply isn't enough of interest to make it worthwhile. Do your time
and get it over with; that's the best way. It's not polite to be the last
one to leave a party.
Jonny snorted up the white lines and asked: Then there's
nothing to all this spaceman stuff?
Conover shook his head, his eyes fixed miles and centuries
away. No, nothing," he replied. Then he said something else; Jonny
thought it might be: Empty."
Jonny found himself beginning to feel a certain odd sympathy
for the smuggler lord. For all his power, Conover had trapped himself
in the decomposing body of a junky fop through a single
miscalculation-- his urgent will to live. On the other hand, Mr.
Conover was no fool. Had it really been a mistake? Jonny wondered.
Or was it a stage in some other, infinitely more complex and subtle
plan that Jonny and the rest, condemned to a pitiful handful of years,
could not see? If the smuggler lord was working on something else,
Jonny hoped it was very big. The price of it seemed high.
Conover lit another in his constant stream of cigarettes. Tossing
the match out the window, he let in a sudden blast of hot air and
dust. His mood seemed to have grown lighter.
I hope you don't mind, but I've a little side trip to make
before we can go home. Just some business, you understand. I have a
boat coming in from the south with some goodies on board: pituitary
extracts, frozen retinas, a few kilos of cocaine. We wouldn't want to
be late and give our neighbors the impression that we keep a sloppy
shop, eh? He laughed, amused by his own rambling. "Besides, I
believe these boys are going to try and burn me. And I wouldn't miss
that for the world.
Yeah? What would you do for the world?" Jonny asked, feeling
pleasantly numb and reckless, buzzing on the coke. Objects in the car
had taken on a warm internal glow.
Conover looked at him, not without affection. Only a lunatic
would want to run this dump, he said. "I'm content to farm my small
bit and be done with it. L.A. has been a very good investment for me,
in money and time.
I always wondered why you didn't move into someplace like
New Hope. I mean, those people have got to have some expensive
habits.
Conover raised his ruined eyebrows. More than you could
know, he said. "But New Hope is a ghost town. The corruption there
is a closed system. The same families have been running drugs and
data through there for generations. Old families, very powerful.
We're talking here about the Yakuza and the Panteras Aureo. The
families connected to the multinationals have their own internal
organizations to keep their people happy and restful. There's no
freedom in that sort of set-up. Little potential for growth. He
carefully ground out his cigarette and placed another in his mother
of pearl holder. Besides, like Lucifer in the poem, I much prefer to
rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.
Jonny grinned up at him. I thought you said you didn't want to
run this dump.
It's all semantics. You can't buy Heaven, either."
Outside, the sand had let up. Heat lightning crackled silently
across the horizon. Inside the Cadillac, they had passed into what
Jonny had come to think of as a pocket of silence, one of those odd
conjunctions of time and place where conversation vanished of its
own accord; at those moments, Jonny believed, all words became
dangerous and banal. He had come to attach a certain sacredness to
the silence. All things were at rest. It was a ritual from boyhood, no
different from stepping around cracks so that he would not break his
mother's back. Meaningless, he knew, but when the feeling passed,
he missed it and in trying to force it back, came up, instead, with the
twin images of Ice and Sumi.
Hey Mister Conover, anything in this stuff we're picking up
have to do with the new strain of leprosy?
No," said the smuggler lord. Why do you ask?"
I just figured you might be looking around for something. It's
getting pretty bad in some neighborhoods.
Have you seen the epidemic yourself?" asked Conover. You
know how these things can get blown out of proportion. With AIDS in
the last century and the new hepatitis strains at the beginning of this
one, people are very susceptible to rumors of a new plague. Then the
Link gets hold of the talk, and broadcasts it right into people's skulls,
reinforcing their belief in their own delusions. Couldn't this plague
just be some mass psychogenic reaction?
Yeah, I've seen it. People aren't really talking plague-- not yet.
The Croakers have a roomful of lepers quarantined. Say this new
strain is viral and that it kills, maybe through some kind of
secondary infection, said Jonny. "We're not talking about a few
hysterical whackos here. The whole city's in trouble.
Calm down, son," said Mister Conover, laying a hand on Jonny's
arm. Remind me not to give you stimulants in the future." He smiled.
Actually, I do know this new strain is real. Looks like a bacteria, acts
like a virus and all that, right? I was just trying to get an untainted
perspective. As I said, all I hear are rumors. Like in east L.A. they've
taken to burning their dead. That neighborhoods are beginning to
seal themselves off. The social effects of the disease are certainly real
enough. Tell me, have the Croakers had any success in isolating
reverse transcriptase from the virus samples?
You think it's a retro-virus?"
AIDS was. And that little fellow practically had the medical
community reading Ouija boards before they got anywhere.
What about going after it with a general virus-killer like
ribovirin or amantadine? asked Jonny.
The smuggler lord shook his head. That's been tried," he said.
Amantadine seems to have some preventative applications, but if
you're already infected, it's useless.
You know about this new strain, don't you, Mister Conover?"
It's my job."
You don't seem too concerned."
Personally? No. The Greenies took care of that long ago. I
doubt my blood would be very appetizing to these little bastards. He
rocked with some internal laughter. I haven't had a cold in over
forty years.
Then you don't know any treatments we could get hold of for
the new strain?
No one is even sure how it's transmitted," Conover said. And
without the disease vector, curing a few individuals isn't going to
stop an epidemic.
Seated beside the driver in the front of the car, a hawk-nosed
man with an oily pompadour turned to face the back. One of his eyes
was blackened, and his upper lip was swollen badly, drawing it
downward, giving him a childish, sullen look. Jonny recognized the
man as the one whose teeth he had loosened with his boots earlier
that evening. The man appeared to be slightly embarrassed. He
would not look at Jonny.
'Scuse me, Mr. Conover, but I read un transmissor en la auto,"
he said.
Jonny, my boy, you wouldn't be wired for sound, would you?"
asked the smuggler lord.
Jonny looked at him. Hey, you know me, Mister Conover."
Conover nodded and turned to the front. What do you say,
Ricos? You sure your little gadget's reading correctly?
Si, no cuestion. The maricon es only new baggage 'round here.
I'm not reading nothin' till he get in.
Friend, if you can read at all I'd be surprised," said Jonny.
Ricos made a quick grab for Jonny, but Conover shoved the man back
in his seat. That's enough, children. Jonny, could somebody have
planted something on you?
No," Jonny said. Those Committee boys never got near me and
these clothes are Croaker cast-offs. They'd have no reason to tail me
to their own hideout. He looked at Ricos, pointed to his skull "Tu
tener un tornillo flojo.
Conover puffed thoughtfully at his cigarette, leaned forward
and touched the driver's shoulder. Pull over up ahead," he said.
Ricos, bring your remote. Come on, Jonny."
The car stopped near an old dumpsite for a mining operation
that had flattened the surrounding hills. Conover slipped on a white
Panama hat as he led Jonny out and around to the back of the
Cadillac. Cottony tracers of gas clung to gummy, bitter smelling waste
pits. The smuggler lord pointed to Jonny with his cigarette holder.
Find it," he said to Ricos.
Ricos moved very close to Jonny and began moving a small
electromagnetic device over Jonny's clothing, tracing the outline of
his body. Jonny glanced over at Conover and wondered what was
going through the smuggler lord's mind, but it was impossible to read
that face. He concentrated, instead, in affecting a look of extreme
uninterest as Ricos studiously moved the device around his crotch.
Ai!" Ricos yelled. He held the box to Jonny's bandaged
shoulder. Got you, maricon."
Jonny looked at the man and then at the box in his hand.
Jesus," said Jonny miserably. Oh fucking hell--"
Jonny?" said Conover.
He slumped against the back of car, Ricos standing over him
delightedly. It took several seconds for the image to assemble itself;
it appeared to him much the way he imagined visuals formed
through skull-plugs: an out of focus mass of phosphenes settling
slowly, like a reverse tornado, around a central spiral. In truth, he
did not want to understand it, but in admitting that, he gave the
thought form and terrible substance.
Zamora did this," Jonny said. The image was clear. The prison
infirmary had fixed him up nicely and, all their doctors were
Committee recruits: bloodless and faceless; company men all the way.
It was obvious. He had lead the Committee to the Croakers. Right to
Ice's room. Now he was leading them to Conover. Oh fucking hell--"
What is it, Jonny?" ask Conover.
Jonny's hand moved involuntarily to his cast. I got shot
earlier, he said. "I got shot and Zamora had them wire me. It's in my
goddam shoulder.
Conover approached him, shaking his head sympathetically.
I'm truly sorry, son. It's an awful thing to have done," he murmured.
We'll have to cut it out, of course. You can't go around beeping the
rest of your life.
Jonny laughed, when he thought about it. Zamora could not let
him off that easily. The insult had been there all along; all that had
been required was for him to recognize it. There was, Jonny had to
admit, even a kind of twisted beauty to it.
Conover called the driver out, and spoke to him for some time
in quiet Spanish. When they parted, the driver opened the trunk and
unrolled a cloth-bound set of surgical instruments. He helped Jonny
off with his coat and pulled back the top of the Pemex jumpsuit.
When he removed Jonny's cast and xylocaine patch, he did it with
such sureness that Jonny was sure the man had been a medic at
some time.
Jonny felt a cool punch of compressed air on his arm as the
driver injected him with something from a pressurized syringe.
Seconds later, Jonny was flying. The driver set him on the rear
fender and hooked a small work light to the inside of the trunk lid.
Before Conover retreated inside the car, Jonny heard him say: When
you find it, bring it to me.
The driver held out a small device that looked like an old
fashioned tattoo needle, but which Jonny recognized as an Akasaka
laser scalpel. In Spanish, the driver told Jonny to concentrate on the
hanging light.
He did not feel a thing.
Later, when the car was moving and Jonny was sacked out on
the back seat, still high on whatever they shot him with, he heard
voices in the midst of conversation. His shoulder ached with each
heartbeat. But he seemed to recall that his shoulder always hurt,
didn't it? Eventually he recognized Conover's voice.
We each do our bit as best we can, of course. Zamora is a
vicious, greedy prick, but a sterling leader of men. I've seen him pull
many strange stunts in my time. However, I have never before
known him to betray a sense of humor. He glanced at Jonny. "Have
you?
Jonny just rolled away and fell asleep. I'd like to go home
now, he said, but nobody heard him.
A dark, sour smelling harbor glittering oily rainbows amidst
sluggish waves. Men talking in a circle some distance off, a litter of
shapes around their feet; another painting came to him, Tanguy, this
time. Sharks-- the bleached carcasses of dead sharks, stripped of
their flesh by birds and their jaws by souvenir hunters, strewn
across the sand like some hallucinatory crop ready for harvest. Down
the beach, a roofless merry-go-round, half-collapsed, dangling a
string of bloated wooden horses into the dirty water. The flares of
gas jets miles away.
Jonny rubbed grit from his eyes and tried to focus on the circle
of men outside on the beach. He had no idea how long he or they had
been here. He was very thirsty.
From what Jonny could see, only two men were doing all the
talking. One was Conover, who was easy to spot, towering above the
rest, the glowing dot of his cigarette tracing erratic patterns in the
air. Behind Conover stood Ricos, scowling into the ocean wind, his
pompadour flailing around his ears like a dying animal.
The man Conover was talking to was considerably shorter, but
very board, wearing the white dress uniform of a Mexican Naval
officer. A jet foil with the name Sangre Christi painted on the bow
floated a few meters out in the harbor, rolling gently with the surf.
Two small Zodiac crafts were beached nearby, one overloaded with
sealed metal containers. The identification numbers on the Sangre
Christi indicated that the ship was from the Gobernacion fleet
stationed in San Diego, but she was running no lights, and the flag on
her mast was Venezuelan, not Mexican. When the moon broke
through the heavy cloud layer, Jonny got a good look at her crew,
spread out in a semi-circle around the Zodiacs. About half wore naval
uniforms; the others were dressed variously in jeans and leathers,
pale gringos and dread-locked blacks numerous among the crew.
That's it then, Jonny thought. They're pirates.
Picking up the tequila from Conover's traveling bar, Jonny took
a drink. The pirate captain pointed back to his ship and shouted
something. Warmed by the tequila, Jonny's thoughts drifted back to
his own time as a dealer.
Jonny always picked up a buzz when he was pushing or setting
up a meet that was wholly divorced from the rest of his life. Part of
it was the thrill an ex-Committee boy felt at having gone over to the
other side." Another part of it had something to dowith vague
notions of changing the world, but he attributed this to youthful
folly, regarding it as a consequence of spending too much time sober.
Groucho's casual remark equating Jonny's dealing with revolutionary
politics had disturbed him. It saddled him responsibilities he had no
intention of trying to fulfill. The world (at least Los Angeles, which
was all he knew of the world), as Jonny perceived it, was little more
than the natural battle of competing organisms, like the virus he had
seen on the micrograph at the Croakers' clinic. Each viral unit was
incomplete until it had taken over a living cell and used that
organism to replicate itself, and the one-percenters and gangs of the
city followed the virus's pattern. Inertia swept them along in a
perpetual hustle, moving in time to the endless rhythm of commerce;
most knew nothing else. And, as was the way of nature, the strongest
viruses ate the weaker. The strongest viruses were the Committee,
the lords and the multinationals, Jonny thought, forces that were
overwhelming and, in the end, incomprehensible to him.
Did the Croakers really believe they could change a world run
by Zamora or Nimble Virtue? Even Conover was just a business man
who had his own reasons for being there. And Groucho was too
damned small to play Atlas, Jonny thought.
He wondered where Ice was at that moment. He felt certain
that she was all right; she seemed to have a talent for staying alive.
In his mind, however, Sumi had become one with the ruined
apartment. If Zamora really had her, she was lost. Jonny loved both
women (something which he was quick to point out as the single
distinguished feature of his character) but he felt he owed them
something more that.
The door opposite Jonny opened and Conover leaned in. Salt
mist sparkled on the smuggler lord's shoulders and the wide brim of
his hat. He smiled at Jonny. How are you feeling?" he asked. We'll
be through here in just a few minutes. These boys are playing it to
the last row. Hand me that box by your feet, will you?
Jonny looked at the floor of the Cadillac and found a small
black lacquered box with brass fittings in the shape of lotus petals.
His head spun as he picked the box up. Conover smiled as he took it.
Thanks, son. Sit tight. Have a drink," he said.
Watching the smuggler lord cross the colorless sand, Jonny was
overcome by a sudden and overwhelming sense of loss. As if he were
adrift in some vast and infinite ocean with no land in sight. He had
the strong urge to bail out right there, to run from the car and to
keep running. But for some reason he stayed. If he drifted long
enough, he thought, a landfall was bound to appear. Besides, he was
drugged silly. Where would I go if I ran, he wondered. On the beach,
the pirates were smoking and passing a bottle. Jonny raised his
tequila to them and decided to remain in the car. Drifting, he knew,
was what he was best at.
Outside, the pirate captain was nodding as Conover
ceremoniously handed him the small box. The pirate opened it for a
moment, waved briskly to a couple of men by the Zodiacs. They
made their way through the sand slowly with several containers,
setting them a few meters from Conover and Ricos. That done, they
retreated quickly from the smuggler lord's presence. Jonny caught a
quick movement of one pirate's hand. He had crossed himself,
Catholic-fashion.
Ricos flicked open a butterfly knife and slit the metal strips
that bound the top of one container. Reaching inside, he pulled out a
white brick wrapped in heavy plastic and handed it to Conover.
Jonny looked around the car, wondering where Conover's chauffeur
had gone. When he looked back at the beach, the pirates were
moving out, pushing their Zodiac's into the surf. The moon lit, briefly,
the rubber floats that flanked each craft, like twin torpedoes
wrapped in skin. Ricos carried the metal containers back to the
Cadillac, stacking them by the rear bumper as Conover got in.
Jonny nodded at the brick. Real cocaine?" he asked.
Theoretically."
That's an awful lot."
You would think so, wouldn't you?" The smuggler lord pushed
some bottles out of the way, and set the brick on the traveling bar.
With his thumb nail, he gouged a hole in the plastic. He touched the
finger to his tongue ad grunted, motioning for Jonny to have a taste.
Wetting the end of his middle finger, Jonny touched it to the pile.
What's wrong?" he asked, putting the finger gingerly to his tongue.
You tell me," said Conover as he spooned a small portion of the
powder into a test tube half-filled with a clear fluid. Swirling the
mixture together, the smuggler lord fastened the test tube into the
twin metal receptacles on the front of the compound analyzer. He
punched a switch and a beam of pale laser light lit up the sample
from the inside.
Jonny found the taste of the powder to be odd. Alkaloid
bitterness, with a sweet after-taste. There was a thickness and a
graininess that was wrong.
Feel anything?" asked Conover.
Nothing," said Jonny. They've cut the hell out of it."
Conover said Show," to the PC and the terminal's screen lit up with
the rainbow-bar that was a spectrographic read-out of the contents
of the test tube. A list of chemicals and percentages to five decimals
places was displayed on one side of the screen. The smuggler lord
snorted and snatched up the brick, spilling white grains onto the
seat.
Good god," Conover said. Milk powder, sugar and probably
baking soda. Christ, you could bake a cake with this stuff. It's been
cut, recut, and cut again. These lads have probably selling my drugs
to freelancers all the way up the coast and filling in the weight with
whatever was at hand. He shook his head sadly. "These people think
because they have that gun boat they're immune. He tossed the
brick onto the bar.
Something occurred to Jonny then. You gave it to them, didn't
you? he said.
Gave them what, dear boy?"
The transmitter. You put it in the box with the money, didn't
you?
Conover smiled, removed a cigarette from his case, and lit it. After
bringing the last two boxes to the car, Ricos got in the front seat.
I consider it a fair exchange. Loaded money for loaded coke,"
he said, chuckling. The hormones and the retinas?" he asked. Ricos
shook his head.
Paralizados. Look like they break the seal and go poking
inside. Es all spoiled.
The smuggler lord nodded. Let this be a lesson to you, Jonny:
there are always going to be assholes. Wherever you go, whatever
you do, you have to be on guard. If you're not, the fools and the tiny
minds of this world will drag you right down into the gutter with
them.
Jonny leaned back in the seat and felt a slight tingling begin on
the end of his tongue. It was not much, though. You think Zamora
will go after them? he asked.
Why not? That was a nice piece of hardware we dug out of
your shoulder. Hitachi, military issue. VHF for short-range
monitoring and neutrino broadcasting for long-range. The Colonel has
no way of knowing you're not international. He thinks you're buying
dope from moon men, remember?
Jonny made a face at that. This whole set-up was very-professional of you.
Conover looked at him curiously, one hand toying with the rip
in the white brick. You find my methods uncouth? Maybe you'd be
happier if the Colonel followed us back to my place. That would end
the party pretty quickly, wouldn't it?
Let's say I'm a little disillusioned, how's that? I mean, I was
kind of under the impression that the people running dope were on
our side, you know? Jonny bit the end of his tongue to see if it was
numb yet. It was not. Pretty stupid, right? You don't have to explain
it to me. I know how the song goes: it's all economics. It always is.
The smuggler lord picked up the brick and held it before Jonny.
'Get place and wealth, if possible with grace; if not, by any means
get wealth and place.' Alexander Pope. It's the algebra of need, son.
As long as the need exists, somebody is going to service it and take
advantage of it, like those gentlemen from the Sangre Christi. They
understood, or did until they got greedy.
It's mother's milk-- consumerism-- the Big Teat. The trouble
with you, Jonny, is that you're in business, but you're not a business
man.
Conover opened his door and turned the white brick upside
down, dumping its contents into the sand. In business, sometimes
you've got to take a loss in order to make a gain.
I'll try to remember that," said Jonny.
It would do you well."
Ricos shivered in the front seat. Conover found a bottle of
aguardiente, and poured him a glass. Soon, the driver returned,
wearing a dun-colored windbreaker and heavy pair of night vision
goggles. He was carrying a shoulder-held Arab mini-gun, its twelve
massive barrels running with condensed mist. Conover explained
that the man had been hiding in the dunes some distance away
waiting for the jetfoil to pull out. After the driver stowed the gun in
the trunk (scattering the ruined hormones and retinas on the beach
for the gulls) Conover gave him a drink and told him to take them
home.
SEVEN:
The Machine-gun in a State of Grace
They drove in silence. Jonny dozed in the back, waking every
few minutes when the Cadillac would hit a patch of broken concrete,
causing the car to shake violently. Then he would look out the
window and see hillsides covered with brightly-colored fabric or a
group of chrome palm trees constructed from stolen jet engines and
lengths of industrial piping. A gift from the Croakers, he thought,
giving the finger to the world. Closer to the city were squatter camps,
long walls of corrugated tin and dismantled billboards. Jonny could
make out a word here, a face there. A woman's eye. FLY. EAT. The
curve of a hip. LOVE.
Just outside Hollywood, they turned off the ruined freeway and
drove through an old suburban sector before starting a steep climb
into the hills.
The driver switched off the carbon arcs on the roof and skullplugged into an infrared array set into the car's headlight housings.
The only light visible to Jonny was the pale green mercury
vapor glow of the suburbs and the jittery firefly of Conover's
cigarette.
They passed through tunnels of rotted concrete where fungus
padded the walls. Even with the air conditioner on full blast, there
was a strong smell of decomposing vegetation. Outlines of burned-out
cars down the embankment, overgrown with weeds. As they gained
altitude, the road grew narrower and more hazardous. They passed
the ruins of the ancient Hollywoodland development, the New Hope
of its day. The well-heeled residents had tried to seal themselves off,
Jonny remembered, but it didn't work. They had brought all their
madness with them, into the hills. And when it all came crashing
down around their ears, no one had been surprised. The rot had set
in before the first foundation had been laid.
The car slowed, finally, and came to a stop. Looking out the
window, Jonny could see nothing but rocky hills and the ribbon of
leaf-cluttered road curving off into the distance. The driver punched
a code into a key pad on the dashboard (Paranoid reflexes had Jonny
leaning on the seatback, memorizing the digits as he read them out of
the corner of his eye.). Then portions of the hillside, perfect squares
of stone and grass, began to wink out. Jonny realized that he was
looking at a hologram.
After about a dozen of these segments had disappeared, Jonny
could see a paved driveway leading off the main road. The driver
turned them onto this new road, and the hologram hillside
reappeared behind them. A large cat, a cougar or jaguar ( Sentry
robot, Conover said.) paced the car as they passed a thick stand of
madrone and scrubby manzanita. There were men up there, too.
Jonny caught a glint of rifles slung over camouflaged shoulders.
Our security is quite tight up here," said Conover. The whole
hill is wired. We have motion detectors, infra-red and image
intensifiers in the trees. Neurotoxin microcapsule mines buried on
the blind side of the hill. Those men you saw? They're carrying rail
guns. Models that small are very new. Very expensive. They can
push a one hundred gram polycarbonate projectile at a thousand
kilometers an hour. It's like having a small mountain dropped on
you. He lit another cigarette and from his inside jacket pocket, took
a black silicon card. There were gold filaments on the card's face,
forming a bar code on its face. You need this, too. We run a magnetic
scan on every vehicle that comes through here. If the system doesn't
read the right code, it sets off every alarm in the place.
You expecting the Army?" asked Jonny.
I expect nothing," replied Conover. But I anticipate
everything.
Around an out-of-place bamboo grove, they came up on Conover's
mansion, stars hazy through the hologram dome. Jonny's first
thought was that the main building of the estate was surrounded by
smaller bungalows. When they get closer, however, he realized that
what he was looking at was a single massive, confusion of a building,
erupting over the top of the hill like a geometric melanoma. What
appeared to be the oldest wing of the mansion was built in a straight
Victorian style, while others were pseudo-Hacienda; the most recent
additions appeared to have been built along traditional Japanese
lines. Gracefully curled pagoda roofs abutted at odd angles with
Spanish arches, high-windowed garrets overlooking gilt temple dogs.
I've heard of this place. It's the old Stone mansion, isn't it?"
Jonny asked.
Conover nodded. The Cadillac stopped by a pond full of fat,
spotted carp, and he stepped out. Jonny followed him; a grinding pain
was building up in his shoulder beneath the anesthetics. Yes, this is
the Stone place. I'm surprised anyone still remembers it. Old Mister
Stone made a fortune selling tainted baby formula in Africa and the
Asian sub-continent (encouraging the mothers to stop breast-feeding
and use his poison). After he died, Mrs. Stone got it into her head
that the ghosts of all those little dead children were coming to get
her. She kept building onto the place, sleeping in a different room
every night for thirty years. The architects were given a free hand to
build in whatever style was popular at the moment. This, he
gestured toward the mansion, is the result. What do you think? Is
this a vision of insanity, made whole and visible, or just the
maunderings of a bored old bitty with too much money? Doesn't
really matter. The place is very comfortable. The old lunatic only
used the best materials.
It's a great set-up," said Jonny. You must suck an awful lot of
power up here. Aren't you afraid someone's going to trace it back to
you?
We're set up for solar and there are darius windmills on the
surrounding hills, said Conover. He gave Jonny a small smile. "The
rest of what we need I've had Watt Snatchers route through the
Police power grid.
Jonny laughed, slapped the hood of the car. I love it!" He felt
weak and hot. He wanted to sit down.
From the madrones came a series of long hysterical cries, rising
in pitch until they peaked, fell and started again. Answering calls
came from deeper in the trees.
What the hell was that?" asked Jonny.
Conover gestured toward the hills. Samangs," he explained.
Apes. We're right below Griffith Park. When the zoo was destroyed
during the Protein Rebellion, some of the animals escaped and bred.
It's not advisable to walk through these hills alone at night. The apes
won't bother you, but there are tigers.
Jonny nodded, watching the madrone branches move in the
light breeze. Kind of chilly out here, isn't it?"
Perhaps you'd like to see the inside of the house? I've picked
up one or two baubles from some local museums that you might find
interesting.
Art is my life," said Jonny, following the smuggler lord inside.
The Japanese wing of the mansion was almost empty; Jonny
was not sure if this was through style or neglect, but it smelled
pleasantly of varnished wood, incense and tatami mats. Many of the
rooms they passed were closed off by rice paper doors painted with
pale watercolors of cranes and royal pagodas. Conover took him deep
into the cluttered Victorian wing where artificial daylight shone
through stained-glass windows full of saints and inscriptions in Latin.
Carpeted staircases appeared suddenly around corners, behind urns
of blond irises and fat pussy willows, leading to corridors that
seemed to turn in on themselves in impossible ways. Jonny's room
was papered in a floral design, thousands of tiny purple nosegays,
and furnished with delicate French antiques: a walnut boudoir, small
idealized portraits painted on glass, white hand-carved chairs with
tapestry cushions and a canopied bed, all lace and gold leaf. He
smiled at Conover, but was inwardly revolted by the place. It was
like living in the underwear drawer of a very expensive prostitute.
When Conover left him, Jonny sat on the edge of the bed and
closed his eyes. He felt drained, both mentally and physically, but
could not relax. The long walk to his room, Conover's fairy tale about
his security and the wild animals in the hills had been obvious
warnings. Jonny was not to leave the grounds. That thought made
him uneasy. He was afraid to touch the antique furniture and had not
seen any signs of video or hologram viewers. Just these damned
paintings everywhere, he thought. They lined virtually all the walls
of the Victorian wing, set in carved wooden frames and lit by small
halide spotlights recessed into the ceiling. He's an art freak, too,
thought Jonny. Like Groucho. But the anarchist's art had effected him
differently. It had shown the process of the artist's mind and made
full use of his or her obsessions, revealing a wealth of personal
symbols that were the landscapes of dreams. Conover's paintings
reminded Jonny of grim family snapshots. Groucho's art (the art he
and the other Croakers had not created themselves) had also been
copies, cheap reproductions clipped from books.
Jonny looked above the desk at the portrait of a sorrowfuleyed man whose body was riddled with arrows. A small plaque
below the painting read: El Greco. It meant nothing to him. He went
out into the hall, touching each painting he came to, running his
hands across the still eyes, the centuries old canvas. They were all
alike. One-percenters commissioned by noble men to paint their
faces, he thought. Old masters, he had heard them called. Most of
Conover's paintings appeared to be portraits, although there were a
few landscapes, also meaningless to him. Pictures of men on
horseback wearing red jackets and chasing what reminded Jonny of
big rats. Names: Goya. Rembrandt. The faces in all the portraits had
the same leathery texture of old oil paint.
I'll take Aoki Vega or Mikey Gagarin videos any day," he said
to a Renaissance Madonna with child.
On the wall above a heavy dark wood Gothic table, was a
painting Jonny recognized. Blue Boy" by Thomas Gainsborough. He
remembered seeing a post card of the painting as a teenager, glued
by sweat to the bare buttocks of the young woman he was with in
the ruins of the Huntington Art Gallery. Jonny ran his fingers along
the boy's plumed hat.
Finely ridged plastic.
Jonny touched the painting again. When he leaned close to Blue
Boy's face he saw that the texture of the paint was an illusion. A
hologram, he said, very surprised.
So Conover does go for fakes, he thought. For some reason, that
made him feel better. Jonny touched the plastic face one more time
to reassure himself, then went back to his room. Inside, he undressed
and ran water for a shower. Before he got in, he took two Dilaudid
analogs that Conover had given him for the pain in his shoulder. He
stepped into the stall and stood for a long time under a spigot that
was a golden wrought-metal fish, turning the water on hard so that it
hit his back in a stream of warm stinging needles.
Back in his room, he found a maroon silk robe had been laid
out for him, and a silver tray with ice, gin and a bottle of tonic. The
analog was just coming on. Standing by the desk, surrounded by
antiques and the smell of clean sheets, he had a sudden vision of the
world as an orderly place. His teeth melted gently into his skull. He
poured himself a shot of gin and drank it down straight.
His shoulder hurt as he lay down on the bed, but the pain came
from somewhere deep underground, lost among dark roots and
grubs. He fell asleep and dreamed of Ice and Sumi. He found them at
the top of an ornate spiral staircase, but when he touched them, they
were plastic holograms.
Jonny woke in a sweat, hours later. Someone had turned off the
lights. He stumbled around the dark room until he found the gin. He
brought the bottle with him, setting it on the floor next to the bed.
He lost track of the days.
He slept a great deal. Conover had a private medical staff,
mostly Japanese and painfully polite. With many apologizes, a young
nurse called Yukiko stuck him with needles, antibiotics for the
wound in his shoulder, protein supplements and mega-vitamins for
his mild malnutrition. In a small, tidy lab in the Japanese wing, they
grafted new nerve tissue into the damaged area of his shoulder. They
hooked him to a muscle stimulator that used mild electric shocks to
tense and release his muscles, building back the strength in his
shoulders and arms. Yukiko spoke no English, but smiled a great deal.
Jonny smiled back.
In the mornings, he tried to do t'ai chi, but the movements felt
odd and unfamiliar, as if he had learned them in some other body. He
took the lace trimmed pillows from the bed and sat cross-legged on
them in one corner of the room, staring into the interface of two
flowered walls, trying to meditate. Despite the fact his sitting had
become haphazard over the years, he still held a certain belief in
meditation's power. He had once had a master, an ancient Zen nun
with creased olive skin like old newsrags and cheap second-hand
piezoelectric eyes that could only register in black and white. The
colors are here, she would say, and point to her skull. "All this is
illusion. She would point to the room. "But also important: so is this.
She would point to her head again and laugh delightedly.
But the emptiness always eluded Jonny, the void that was filled
when the self was lost. He remembered all the Zen words, all the
theories. He sat on the old French pillows, pain shooting like hot
wires down his knees, and chanted the Sutras, trying to imagine
himself as a bird. In the past, this had sometimes helped. Leave
yourself, become the bird. Leave the bird, become nothing. But his
concentration was gone, replaced with a wavering self-doubt
compounded of fear, drugs and guilt. He thought often of Ice and
Sumi.
Days came and went without any information about the
Croakers. They seemed to have disappeared en masse. What Conover
found out was that shortly after he had picked Jonny up, a second
group of Croakers had attacked the Committee boys at the
warehouse. There had been heavy losses on both sides. But he had no
information about the Croaker leader or Ice.
Jonny discovered that if he turned a stylized cloisonné elephant
on his desk counterclockwise, the wall would slide away and reveal a
large liquid crystal video screen. He decided then that bed was his
karma, the theme of this incarnation in the world of flesh, pain and
illusion. He did Dilaudid analogs and drank gin and watched Link
broadcasts. Learned experts still clogged the wires with panel
discussions on the Alpha Rats; Jonny flipped past these quickly,
finding himself drawn day after day to the Pakistani newscasts on a
restricted Link channel that Conover's satellite rig was somehow able
to un-jam.
Jonny was delighted to find that the thin Muslim spoke in the
same rapid and mock-smooth tones employed by western
newscasters. Although Jonny did not understand a word of Pakistani,
the look of the commercials was familiar and the music had a
universal sing-along jingle quality to it. The advertisements seemed
to be mostly about new fusion power projects and injured war
veterans.
Jonny's favorite part of each broadcast came at the end. That's
when the ritual flag burning always occurred. Sometimes the flags
they torched were American, sometimes Japanese. Jonny took to
toasting the young uniformed hashishin (each with a gray metal key
around their neck that was the key to heaven) until he remembered
that Muslims did not drink. Then he would simply cheer and pound
the bed, drunkenly singing with the battle songs.
The news show often featured pictures of the moon, fuzzy
satellite shots that showed ruined geodesic domes and the crystal
mounds of the Alpha Rats' ships on the barren lunar surface. On one
broadcast, Jonny saw a street that looked familiar. It was a jumpy
rolling shot, as if being shot from the window of a moving car or
truck. Polychrome marquees above crawling neon. Hollywood
Boulevard,
Jonny thought. The newscaster's face grew serious as he spoke
over the grim footage. Pictures of lepers in the streets; they seemed
to be everywhere: shots of gangs (he recognized the Lizard Imperials
right away), hookers and nine-to-fivers from the Valley. Burning
funeral ghats along the concrete banks of the Los Angeles River. A
quick-cut to people being loaded into the back of a Committee meat
wagon.
The show ended when the newscaster lowered his head and
pronounced, Al salaam." As he faded away, a caricature of Uncle
Sam and a samurai appeared on the screen. Both figures were yelling
Bonsai!," the samurai swinging a long sword, cutting a deep trench
into a map of the Middle East. Jonny's hands were shaking when he
turned off the screen.
Jonny sometimes ate dinner with Conover in a cavernous room
at the far end of the Hacienda wing. A cantilevered stucco ceiling
with bare wooden beams so old that they were probably real wood,
criss-crossed two stories above the dining area, a lighted island of
silver and crystal in a sea of plundered art. Sitting at the dining
table, the walls of the room were lost to Jonny. Old masters, bathing
scenes and hunts, orgies and crucifixions, some several meters long,
were stacked three deep along the base boards or perched on
aluminum easels between sixteenth century Roman warrior-angels
and Henry Moore bronzes. Buddha and Ganesh shared space with
porcelain clocks on the mantel above a bricked-in fireplace.
Jonny came to dinner dressed in one of Conover's black silk
shirts and a pair of light cotton trousers, He was drunk, but he had
given up on the Dilaudid. Although the analog was technically nonaddicting, it gave him the sweats and cramps when he did not take it
regularly. To counteract the symptoms, he had prescribed for himself
daily doses of Dexedrine. Despite all the drugs, he was aware that
Conover's medical staff had done a considerable repair job on him. He
felt healthier and stronger than he had since he quit the Committee.
Except for those times when Jonny joined him, Conover always
seemed to eat alone.
They were served their meals by an efficient and mostly silent
staff of ritually scarred Africans. The was French and Japanese, snow
peas or glazed carrots arranged with surgical precision around thin
and, to Jonny, mostly tasteless cuts of beef. When he commented on
this to Conover, the smuggler explained to him that the meat came
from Canadian herds that still consumed grain and grazed in open
fields, not the genetically altered beasts that hung from straps,
limbless and eyeless, in the Tijuana protein factories.
What you miss, son, is the taste of all those chemicals.
Plankton feed solutions and growth hormones.
Jonny shrugged. I'm just a cheap date," he said.
Conover laughed, sitting across the table in a chair of padded
aluminum piping. Wires trailed from his chest, ears and scalp (pale
tufts of sparse white hair) to a vital signs-monitor on his left. One of
his sleeves was rolled up and a tube ran from a rotating plasma
pump mounted on the side of the chair and under a strip of surgical
tape on his left arm. Twice a week I have to endure this," he
explained. Blood change and cyclosporin treatments. My body is
rejecting itself. Most of my organs are saturated with Greenies by
now. Those that aren't, my body no longer recognizes and tries to
destroy. The cyclosporin slows the rejection process. He took a sip of
wine from a fluted crystal glass. I clone my own organs. Have
transplants once or twice a year. Heart, lungs, liver, pancreas, the
works. Downstairs, I have everything I need to stay alive. That nerve
tissue in your shoulder? We grow that here, in the spinal columns of
lampreys. He took a mouthful of beef and wild rice, chewed
thoughtfully. I've endured all types of nonsense to prolong my stay
on this silly planet. I flew to Osaka once, let a quack remove my
pituitary gland and install a thyroxine pump in my abdomen. I was
told to gobble antioxidants, butylated hydroxytoluene and
mercaptoethylamine. I took catatoxic compounds to boost the
function of my immune system and now I take cyclosporin to inhibit
it. I still have daily injections of dopamine because the production of
certain neurotransmitters decreases with age. He shook his head.
My staff could cure me of Greenies addiction completely, of course.
A little tinkering with my DNA and it's done. The problem is that
afterwards, they'd practically have to boil me down and build a
whole new body for me. In the meantime, I'd be in some protein vat
while the other lords and the Committee carved up my territory. It's
strange, don't you think, he asked, "that we expend so much energy
trying to stick around a place we don't particularly like?
Jonny picked at a piece of asparagus. I think I could help your
people track down the Croakers, he said. "I've got some experience,
you know.
Conover continued chewing. You're drunk," he said.
That doesn't have anything to do with anything."
And what are you going to tell the Colonel when he picks you
up? Conover asked.
You think he can get to me again?"
There's no question of it. You are a commodity of some value
to him. Plus, your face is well known. He or one his informants will
find you.
Jonny grunted. With his fork, he moved the tasteless meat around his
plate until he could not stand to look at it anymore. So I wait here
forever, is that the plan? Well, forget that. I can take care of myself,
he said. Besides, what if I was picked up. What makes you think I'd
tell Zamora anything?
Conover set down his fork and glanced at the monitor. Jonny, I
understand your worry, believe me. You miss your friends and
you've been drinking. What I should have said was that it would be
very foolish for you to leave here. The Colonel wants you because he
wants me, and he is not careful with his prisoners. When he pumps
you full of Ecstasy and starts burning off your fingers, you'll tell him
everything he wants to know.
Jonny picked up a crystal carafe and slopped some wine into a
glass for himself. Conover pushed his glass forward, but Jonny
ignored it and the smuggler lord had to pour for himself.
In any case, you're better off staying away from the Croakers,"
Conover said.
What does that mean?"
Just what I said," Conover replied.
The Croakers are all right. They're just trying to help people."
Conover rang a silver bell by his plate. Young African men in white
jackets began clearing away the plates from the table. Why is it
Americans always insist on making everything into a cowboys and
Indians movie? Just because you label one group the Bad Guys, you
immediately assume that the group they are in conflict with are the
Good Guys. The world isn't that simple, son.
You think the Croakers are the Bad Guys?" Jonny asked.
I didn't say that. But they are destabilizing southern California
far more effectively than the Alpha Rats or the Arabs could ever
hope to.
Jonny leaned his elbows on the table. His dinner churned with
the liquor in his stomach. The Croakers are the only effective force
we have against the Committee.
Conover gestured to one of the waiters and dessert was served:
a raspberry torte like a lacquered sculpture. The Committee is a fact
of life. What we do, you and I, all the dealers and smugglers, is
poetry. Haiku. A form defined by its restrictions. The sooner you
learn to work within those restrictions, the happier you'll be.
Jonny tossed his fork onto the plate and stood up. Wisps of
vertigo floated around the inside of his skull. Thanks for dinner. I'm
going to get some sleep.
As Jonny started out of the dining room, Conover called to him.
You know I'm doing all I can, don't you?"
I know," said Jonny, without turning around.
And you believe me when I tell you I'm trying to locate your
friends.
Yes, I do."
And you have to know I'm right about the Colonel."
I know about all that," Jonny replied quietly. I just don't
know if I care anymore.
He drank from the bottle of gin he had taken from his room. He
stood in a darkened storage room, the third one he had explored that
night, a refuge from his latest failed attempt at meditation.
The room was silent; the air musty. Light danced on a circular
dais at the far end. A Camera Obscura, he saw. There was a worn
metal wheel mounted on the wall. When he spun it, the brilliant
panorama of Los Angeles swept across the dais like a video on fast
forward. He focused the image on Hollywood, moving the wheel until
the luminescent tent of his home slid into view, glowing beyond palm
trees and neon. For a while, he found it comforting, but soon he felt
pangs of self-consciousness, imaging himself a peeping-tom getting
his kicks.
Is this how we look to the Alpha Rats? Jonny wondered.
Padded Zero-G crates with five year old shipping codes from
some lunar engineering plant were stacked against the far wall.
Jonny took another pull from the gin, slid one of the crates to the
floor and opened the top. Inside were a dozen smaller boxes, each
packed with capsules in blister pack, two capsules to each blister.
The manufacturer's code indicated that the red capsules were an
inhalant form of atropine. The purple capsules were unmarked, but
Jonny had seen them before. His stomach tightened. It was a popular
combination in some circles: atropine and cobrotoxin nitrite.
Holy shit, he thought. What's an engineering company doing
with Mad Love?
He tore open one of the packs, slopping gin on floor, and
popped a purple capsule under his nose. The cobrotoxin came on like
a slow-burning volcano, boiling along the surface of his brain, not
enough to kill him or cause permanent damage, just enough to cop
the killing euphoria from the cobra venom. His body was molten
glass and treacle. No flesh, no bones, just a sizzling mass of plasma,
fried eyes and melting genitals. His brain bubbled like magma. Thirty
seconds later, he popped the atropine and the inside of his skull iced
over. The room exploded into negative as white glacier light blazed
behind his eyes and shot down his spinal column. His nerves (he
could feel each individual fiber, vibrating in harmony like some kind
of cellular choir) were cut crystal and gold. A las maravillas," he
said. This was it. Zen. Oneness. How could he have forgotten? Anger,
greed and folly were gone, replaced with a heightened awareness
that was what he had always imagined enlightenment to be like.
Then the feeling was gone.
When he could move, he tore two more capsules from the pack
and repeated the process. A few years before, Mad Love had been a
big problem for Jonny. He had avoided the stuff for years, neither
dealing nor using it. In some ways it had been easy; Mad Love was
almost impossible to find in the street, at any price, since the Alpha
Rat takeover of the moon. Yet, here he was with hundreds of hits.
He felt expansive, filled with love for his fellow man, wanting
nothing more than to share his good fortune with the world. Jonny
laughed. It was the drugs talking to him, he knew. He did not want to
share this with anybody. Stumbling to his feet (the atropine causing
his muscles to fire erratically) he pulled down more crates, taking a
quick inventory of his stash.
Thefirst three containers were empty, but the fourth held
another bonanza: twelve more boxes of Mad Love. He grabbed for
more crates, caught the glint of something shining dully on the wall.
Gilt wood. He pulled the boxes away, could see the carved frame.
Then-- Blue Boy. The original.
He ran his fingers over the old lizard skin paint, from the
plumed hat to the goldleaf frame. There was a catch at the edge. He
pushed it and the painting swung away from the wall with a faint
click. Behind it were shelves piled high with books and a bulging
manila folder. Jonny picked up the foxed folder, took it back to the
Camera Obscura and dumped the contents on the dais. It was several
seconds before Jonny understood exactly what he was looking at. He
fingered a yellowed Social Security card, shiny with wear. Then in
the pale Los Angeles nightscape, he turned the pages, rapt, reading a
collage version of the life of Soren Conover.
A driver's license from Texas, two thousand and ten. Discharge
papers from the United States Army, nineteen fifty-seven. Passports:
British, Belgian, Egyptian, all under different names. Ancient news
clippings concerning drug wars in Central America and the collapse
of the government's genetic warfare programs. Photos on some of the
older documents showed a handsome oval-faced man in his thirties,
with intelligent eyes and a nose that had been broken more than
once. Jonny double-checked any dated documents he came across,
trying to find the oldest. From what he had seen so far, he was
calculating Conover's age at around one hundred and fifty, possibly
one hundred and sixty years.
There were photostats of OSS documents, brittle with age.
Conover had apparently been involved with an operation to
assassinate the Russian head-of-state in the early nineteen-fifties.
The American president had canceled the operation and pensioned
Conover off. There was nothing from the nineteen-sixties or
seventies, but from the eighties, there were several letters on CIA
stationery bearing Conover's signature, along with a report marked
Confidential." The report carried no date, but detailed the workings
of a Honduran-based CIA drug operation helping to finance rightwing revolutionary and counter-revolutionary forces in Central
America. There was a black and white photo of men in jungle
fatigues standing before mortar tubes and M-60 machine guns. One
tall man held a cigarette in a short black holder. The hand-lettered
date on the back of the photo read: 1988. It occurred to Jonny that if
these documents were genuine, then Conover had been in the drug
business for close to one hundred years.
That's a long time to do one thing, Jonny thought. He continued
through the papers as the silent city light played over them, and
wondered at the process of the smuggler's life. How he had parlayed
those CIA drug contacts into his own private business. Jonny found
the gin bottle by the boxes of Mad Love, took a drink and laughed.
He and Conover had something in common, he now knew. Conover
was a smuggler lord now, but once he had been like Jonny, an agent
gone native.
Rogue elephant" they called it, right?
L.A. glimmered on the dais, just out of reach.
The atropine was still buzzing inside Jonny's skull. He picked
up handfuls of Mad Love packets and stuffed them into his pockets,
then returned to the dais, gathered up the contents of the folder and
put them back behind the painting. He restacked the Zero-G crates
and, just before leaving the room, he spun the wheel that adjusted
the Camera Obscura's lenses. The city blurred by on the dais, streaks
of light like a tracer rounds. The picture came to rest on the Japanese
wing of the mansion. A snow leopard was strolling gracefully down
the driveway.
Conover will understand, Jonny thought, popping another
atropine cap.
He went out through the kitchen. The African staff had a music
chip going full blast, some Brazilian capoeira band. A coltish young
woman who had been dancing as she stacked Wedgewood in a
cabinet, stopped to stare at him. Jonny crossed quickly to the door,
avoiding the Africans' eyes. Copper pots flashed bronze suns onto the
wall above his head.
Dad'll kill me if I don't get the trash out," he said to their
unmoving faces.
He found Ricos alone in the garage, the workings of a robot
rottweiler strewn across a wooden workbench. Rather than injure the
man, Jonny wrapped an arm around Ricos' neck and jammed a
knuckle into his carotid artery, cutting off the flow of blood to his
brain. When he was out, Jonny went through his pockets and found
the silicon identification card. He got into Conover's car, gunned the
engine and backed out.
He took the Cadillac at a leisurely pace down the drive, eyes
ahead, ignoring the men among the madrones. At the foot of the
drive, Jonny nervously punched the ten-digit code he had memorized
weeks before into the dashboard key pad. He was surprised and
relieved when he saw sections of the hologram disappear. When the
road was clear, he turned off the roof lights and drove slowly down
the hill.
The night was clear and hot.
He steered the Cadillac down the winding road, following a
series of rolling brown-outs through the suburbs, cracked solar
panels, Astroturf on the lawns, a deserted shopping mall that once
had served as a holding area during the Muslim Relocation programs
at the beginning of the century. The razorwire was still in place atop
double layers of hurricane fencing, a grim reminder of the war that
had never quite gotten off the ground.
Jonny popped another atropine cap and rode the high all the
way into Hollywood, confident that if called upon, he could count
each strand of muscle tissue in his body. He left the car behind a
Baby Face plastic surgery boutique on Sunset and made his way in
and out of the stalled traffic to Carnaby's Pit, taking a detour through
the weekend mercado. The smell of cook smoke and sweat greeted
him, scratchy Salsa disc recordings, all the familiar sensations. The
crowd was thick with Committee boys. Jonny kept his head down
while old women tugged at his sleeves and children ran after him
with broken electronic gear, an artificial heart of chipped milky
white plastic, ancient floppy disk drives. Jonny saw no Link
documentary makers and he took this to be a good omen, but he kept
mistaking women in the crowd for Ice and Sumi. There were a lot of
lepers in the mercado. He spotted them easily-- they were the ones
wearing gloves or scarves or long sleeved shirts of radio-sensitive
material, drawing eyes from their lesions to the random Link videos
bleeding across their clothing.
There were more lepers in the Pit's game parlor, frying in their
disguises. The air conditioning was down, leaving the air sauna-hot
and moist. Jonny felt as if he had stepped into an oven. The scarves
and gloves the lepers wore could almost be taken for some new
fashion, Jonny thought. Under other circumstances, they might have
been. A blonde woman plugged into Fun In Zero G wore a facial veil
and a long chador-like garment patterned with dozens of colorful
corporate logos, but the billowing material could not hide the
mottling along her hands.
All that atropine had left Jonny with a crushing thirst. He
pushed his way to the bar and ordered a Corona. Porn jumped and
jittered on the video screen, colors slightly out of register ( What
does that look like through skull-plugs? he wondered). Taking Tiger
Mountain was not playing. The music was a computer generated
recording in the style of numerous Japanese bubble gum bands. The
club was only half-filled and the crowd seemed edgy, voices louder
than usual. Random came back with his perpetual half-smile and set
down Jonny's Corona. Haven't seen you for a while," the bartender
said. You're looking exceptionally handsome and vital these days."
Thanks," replied Jonny. Took me a little out of town vacation.
Dude ranch in the hills. Had an oil change, lube-job, the works.
The bartender nodded. Vacation, huh? And you came back?
You must be a glutton for punishment. Random, too, was wearing a
scarf, folded cravat-fashion in the folds of his sweat-stained white
shirt, hiding something. He polished a glass absently on the front of
his spotted apron.
Crowd's looking a little abbreviated tonight," said Jonny.
Random nodded. Fucking A, man. You can thank the
Committee for that. They just passed an ordinance cutting the
number of people we can have in here in half. Supposed to get a
handle on the leprosy.
While keeping things convenient for themselves," said Jonny.
If it's illegal to get together, then the Committee can raid any gang
councils they get wind of.
Exactamente," the bartender said. He set down the glass he
had been rubbing. Through some method Jonny could never quite
understand, the bartender could polish glasses all night, and they
never seemed to get any cleaner. You hear that bit of nastiness just
came over the Link? Seems that some person or persons unknown
set off a small nuke a few kilometers above Damascus.
Jesus," said Jonny, was it us?"
Nah. Very high burst. Didn't cause any property damage, but
the EMP fucked up communications, computers, etcetera for a few
hours. Seems from the device's trajectory that it came from beyond
Earth orbit.
What, they think the Alpha Rats are dropping bombs on
people? Jonny asked. He took a long drink of the Corona.
Random shrugged, leaned his elbows on the bar. Buddha said
'Life is suffering.'
Then this must be life," said Jonny. He held up the empty
Corona bottle and Random bought him another. When the bartender
set it down, Jonny said: What do you hear about the Croakers?"
The bartender shook his head. Jonny could almost hear the
gears shifting. Business mode. Don't know if I've had the pleasure,"
said Random.
Jonny palmed a packet containing a half-dozen hits of Mad
Love and passed it to the bartender. When Random realized what he
was holding, he glanced at Jonny, registering genuine surprise. Jonny
was delighted; he had imagined the bartender incapable of any
emotions beyond a certain rueful irony.
If you had nicer legs, I'd marry you right now," Random said,
tucking the packet away under the bar. You're aware that I could
open my own place if I had a mind to sell what you've just given
me.
If you had a mind to sell it."
If I had a mind." Random leaned closer, running a soiled gray
towel across the old dashboards that formed the bartop. His breath
smelled of old tobacco. Word is, Zamora's cut their balls off. They're
gone, man. Closed up shop. Adios. All kinds of crazy talk about them.
Like they're trying to get arms from those New Palestine guys or
trying to steal a shuttle to go to the moon. Maybe they're the ones
that nuked Damascus. Random laughed, all air. "Like I said, crazy
talk.
That's it?" asked Jonny.
Hell no. That's the crazy talk. People with a few synapses left
say they're hold up somewhere up the coast, past Topanga Beach.
The Committee's coming down hard on all the gangs.
So I've heard," Jonny said, draining half of his beer. He glanced
at the tense faces around the bar. Anger, greed and folly."
Perhaps you've hit on it. Perhaps the Committee's nothing more than
an instrument of karma.
More like a stairway to the stars. If you're an ambitious prick."
Que es?" said the bartender, You think the Colonel wants to
addressed as 'Mister President'?
Jonny shrugged. He wouldn't be the first one."
What's the old joke? 'Don't vote. It only encourages them.' "
Random shrugged. Maybe it's not that funny. Anyway," he
continued, if I were you, I'd consider taking my act on the road.
Between the heat and the lepers, Last Ass ain't no place to be right
now. The bartender moved down the bar to serve a group of welldressed movie producers and their dates. They were drunk and tan
and radiated the slightly forced humor of store-bought youth, hard,
sleek bodies surgically sculpted into something as functional and
anonymous as next year's jets.
Jesus Christ," Jonny said. It makes you crazy."
Later, when he was working on his third Corona, Random
stopped in front of him. You think about what I said?"
About leaving?" Jonny asked. No way. I'm a business man. Got
deals to make. Grande deals. Enorme deals.
In that case," said the bartender, I think somebody over there
wants to talk to you.
Jonny turned in his seat and saw Nimble Virtue, the slunk
merchant, waving to him from a corner table. Thanks," he said to the
bartender.
It's your movie, man," said Random. Be careful."
Jonny picked his way through the crowd to the corner table
where Nimble Virtue sat by herself. She was dressed in a loosefitting kimono patterned with water lilies and delicate vines done in
gold and turquoise. Dropping into a seat across from the smuggler
lord, Jonny had a perfect view of a couple of her men, two tables
away, drinking iced vodka with some of the local Yakuza. Jonny
smiled and waved to them. One of the Yakuza men laughed and made
a made a circular motion with his finger to indicate madness.
Dear Jonny-san," began Nimble Virtue, First, allow me to
apologize for the uncomfortable circumstances under which we last
met. If I had any inkling as to Colonel Zamora's true intentions, I can
assure you that he would never have gained a single syllable of
information from myself or any of my people.
Nimble Virtue was small, a skeletal, middle-aged woman with a
flat nose and pale skin through which you could see the blue veins
around her skull. The way Jonny heard it, she had been born into
prostitution on one of the circumlunar sandakans that had serviced
the mining trade from the moon; it was not until the Alpha Rat's
invasion had destroyed the lunar mining business that she ever set
foot on Earth. Once there, she became the mistress of a powerful
Yakuza oyabun and thereby escaped the sandakan.
Having spent much of her life in zero-G or reduced-G
environments, on Earth Nimble Virtue was forced at all times to wear
a titanium alloy exoskeleton. This helped her move about, and a
ribbed girdle-like mechanism worked her diaphragm, her chest
cavity having grown too small for her lungs to breathe the thick air
of Earth's surface. It was also rumored that she never went
anywhere without a velvet lined case bearing the fetuses of her two
still-born sons.
You're a liar," Jonny said. You'd sell your grandmother for
sausage if you thought you could hide the wrinkles. The only thing I
don't understand is why nobody's ever put a bullet through your
brainpan.
Nimble Virtue covered her mouth with pale metal-wrapped
fingers, and giggled. Some have tried, Jonny-san, but, as you can see,
none have succeeded. Many people find it more pleasurable to work
with me rather than against me. Could you not? Nimble Virtue lifted
an empty wine glass and waved it at the table where her men sat.
One of them got up and went to the bar. Have a drink. They keep Tej
here for me. Have you ever tried it? It's an Ethiopian honey wine.
Wonderful.
I don't drink with people who sell my ass out from under me,"
said Jonny. But since you got me over here, you can at least tell me
why you turned me to Zamora.
Nimble Virtue ran her index finger around the rim of her glass
and licked off the remains of the wine. In the second of silence
between the pre-recorded songs, Jonny could hear the insect
humming of her exoskeleton. I gave you to him as a gesture of
goodwill. I thought the Colonel and I had a deal, but things have not
worked out for us. She gazed after her man at the bar. "A bit of free
advice, Jonny. Never develop a sweet tooth. It is much too expensive
a vice in a city like this.
What's this goodwill business you're talking about?" asked
Jonny.
I thought you would be the expert in that."
Don't be cute," said Jonny. I could snap that skinny neck of
yours before any of your boys even draws his gun.
Nimble Virtue smiled at him. And then we would both be
gone, and wouldn't that be a waste? No, much better that you should
hear me out, she said. "I have a business proposition for you. It's
very simple: I want you to forget the Colonel. Come and work for
me.
Jonny leaned back on his chair. What could I give you that you
can't buy already?
I know that Zamora had you picked up because he wanted
information about Conover. I also know that the Colonel is planning a
massive raid against all the smuggler lords. It only stands to reason
that you two have made a deal. That's why he let you go. Correct,
Jonny-san? She paused and took several deep, ragged breaths.
Talking, it appeared, put her out of synch with her breathing
apparatus. You are a dealer and can move freely among the lords.
You are gathering information about us for the Colonel: our strength
and our movements. I, too, wish to bid for your services. Work for
me. All I need is the date and time of the raids. For that information,
I will provide you with ample protection, as well as a permanent
place in my organization when we cut the Colonel down.
I don't know anything more about the raids than you do," said
Jonny. And I'm not working for Zamora, and if I was, I sure wouldn't
give you any information.
One of Nimble Virtue's men arrived, carrying a heavy green
bottle from which he poured a clear gold liquid. The man set down a
second glass and poured Tej for Jonny before heading back to the
other table.
Thank you, my dear," Nimble Virtue called after the man.
She took a sip of the syrupy liquid and looked at Jonny. Really,
Jonny-san, these threats and the names you call me mean nothing,
but do not insult my intelligence. I know that you have spent these
last weeks at Conover's mansion in the hills. Gathering evidence, yes?
I know all about Conover's hologram dome, and I know in my bones
that you are working for Colonel Zamora. She paused again to catch
her breath. In truth, I admire the subtle way you set up the
Croakers for the Colonel. Groucho is not a stupid man. You are to be
congratulated for taking him so thoroughly.
Keep talking. You're digging your own grave, asshole," said
Jonny.
Nimble Virtue crossed her hands on her lap and gave him an
indulgent, matronly look. Do you know the expression 'Little Tiger',
Jonny-san?
I've heard it."
You are the Little Tiger," she said. You make loud roars, but
you have little strength and no cunning. I like you because you make
me laugh. But circumstances force me to limit the amount of time I
can expend on any one enterprise.
Don't let me keep you," said Jonny.
She waited a moment. Then you are committed to the
Colonel?
I'll deal with Zamora in my own way," he said. I don't work
for him and I won't work for you. Jonny started to get up, but
Nimble Virtue laid a hand lightly on his arm.
I would think twice about leaving here if I were you," said the
smuggler lord. After betraying the Croakers, you have very few
friends left in L.A. I could make it ever so much hotter for you-Jonny swept his arm across the table, knocking glasses, bottles
and wine to the floor. You sell me like your goddam slunk and then
you want to make a deal with me? Fuck you, old lady. Nimble Virtue
made a fluttering gesture with her hand. Jonny turned and found
three of her men pointing Russian CO2 pistols at him, assassin
models, chambered for explosive shells. The men were young and
handsome, wearing tight black jeans and sleeveless t-shirts with
coiled dragons on the front. They were cool and expressionless,
mechanical in their movements and stance. But they were not ninja.
If they were, Jonny knew, he would be dead by now.
Nimble Virtue got to her feet and waved for her men to put
their guns away. As they did so, she turned and gave Jonny a small
bow. Her face was flushed and she was breathing heavily. I will be
going now. I wish you luck, and time to grow wise, Jonny-san. It
would be best if you stayed out of my way, she said.
He watched them as they left. Taking Tiger Mountain appeared
on the stage to indifferent applause. As Saint Peter kicked them into
their first number, Jonny pushed his way out the heavy fire door at
the rear of the Pit.
If he pressed his back against the wall of the alley, Jonny could
get a pretty good look at Sunset Boulevard and the entrance to
Carnaby's Pit. The repair job on the front of the bar had been a
sloppy one. Smears of resin and cheap construction foam covered the
bullet holes in the Pit's facade. The charm was definitely wearing off
the place, he decided. Hot wind brought the smell of frijoles and
burning carnitas down the alley from the mercado.
A scrape. A corpse's whisper: Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst
make me clean.
Jonny started to move. Metal, cold and sharp, bit into his neck.
Now, now," said Easy Money. Long time no see, Jonny, old pal, old
buddy. Easy and spun Jonny around. Satyr horns, tattooed knuckles
around the grip of a knife. You know what I hear? I hear you want
to do me.
Other feet shuffled up behind them; other hands gripped
Jonny's arms. Easy released him and lowered the knife. Bring the car
around, he said. Footsteps moved off. Then to the others: "This guy
wants to fuck me. But he's so simple you gotta love him, you know?
Jonny leaned back, supported by the grasping hands, and snapped
the steel toe of his boot up into Easy's groin.
Later, after they beat him and he was laid-out on the floor of
the car, their feet on his back and a canvas hood over his head, he
comforted himself with the image of Easy Money rolling up into a
fetal position on the pavement in the filthy alley.
EIGHT:
The Menaced Assassin
You're a very stupid boy, Jonny-san."
Water hit him and someone pulled the hood away. He found
himself face-down on the riveted steel floor of an abattoir. His shirt
was gone; the freezing water cut into him like knives.
How much of this have you taken?"
He stood and Nimble Virtue tossed a packet of Mad Love at his
feet. It came to rest by the toe of his boot, where the water was icing
up over a flaking patch of dried blood. Welding marks, like narrow
scars of slag. The slaughterhouse had been grafted together from a
stack of old Sea Train cargo containers. A cryogenic pump hummed
at the far end of the place, like a beating heart, pushing liquid
oxygen through a network of pipes that criss-crossed the walls and
floor. From the ceiling, dull steel hooks held shapeless slabs of
discolored meat. Jonny looked at the slunk merchant.
We found your pockets packed with this. From the size of your
pupils, I would guess you've snorted up a small fortune's worth. She
wore a bulky floor-length coat of some opalescent sea-green fur.
Shrugging, she turned away from him, a tense, mechanical gesture.
Her exoskeleton whirred. We could have extracted the information
we need painlessly, with drugs. But that seems impossible now. Who
knows what might happen when the mnemonics mixed with the
toxins you've ingested. We'll have to do it another way. But I want
you to remember, Nimble Virtue said, "You've brought this on
yourself (he heard her voice overlaid with Zamora's then: 'You beg
for it, Gordon--').
Easy Money and a thick-necked cowboy Jonny knew as Billy
Bump stepped into his field of vision. Easy was wearing a sleeveless
gray down jacket, Billy a surplus Army parka. Each held a Medusa.
Easy swung the whip end of his in a lazy arc before him. A bright,
almost luminous fury welled up in his eyes. So when is it, asshole?"
he asked.
When is what?" Jonny asked.
When's the raid?" snapped the cowboy. He spoke in a thick
south Texas drawl, the result of a quartz chip implanted in the
speech center of his brain. He spit a rust-colored stream of tobacco
juice onto the floor. Billy Bump had picked up his name as teenager,
when he had a habit of pushing people in front of moving cars for
their pocket change.
I can't hear you," Easy said in a mock sing-song fashion.
Why bother?" Jonny asked. You're not going to believe
anything I say.
Jonny, please tell me when Zamora is going to move against
us, said Nimble Virtue.
I don't know," Jonny told her.
Easy Money whipped his arm out. The charged copper tips of
his Medusa snapped into Jonny's chest, blinding him with sparks. The
water radiated the shock across his arms and down into his groin.
Jonny doubled up and came to, finding himself clinging to a side of
gray meat for support. He could barely breath.
When are the raids?" asked Nimble Virtue.
I don't know," he said.
Asshole," said Easy.
Jonny pushed himself from the meat and took off between the
stinking rows, but Billy was waiting for him. The cowboy jammed a
big boot into Jonny's stomach and brought the Medusa down across
his back. Jonny collapsed onto the metal floor.
Above him, Nimble Virtue's face appeared. Through his
confusion and pain she seemed as gray and lifeless as her slunk.
Hard bones beneath dead meat. Maybe that's her secret, Jonny
thought dreamily. No more Johns, she's found another way to sell
herself.
Easy Money kicked him in the ribs and shook the coils of his
Medusa over Jonny, sending sparks into his eyes. Jonny heard Billy
and Easy laugh. Well it's cryin' time again," Billy sang.
Do you know where you are, Jonny-san?" asked Nimble Virtue.
Jonny nodded. Meat locker," he said, trying to get his breath.
Correct. And there is a warehouse full of my men just outside.
There is no way out of here without my say-so.
No way out," echoed Easy Money.
I could have these young men beat you all week. Do you
understand that?
He sat up. Strange lights boiled around the edges of his vision.
Yes," he said.
Good," said the slunk merchant. Then why not be reasonable?
When are the raids?
Tuesday," he said. Then: Oh fuck, I told you: I don't know."
Easy and Billy were on him, snapping the coils of their Medusas
down on Jonny's back and stomach. Pain and the mad dance of
sparks overwhelmed him, merged with the flow of sensory data
along his nerves until he was unable to tell where the white storm of
agony ended and his body began. When they stopped, his muscles
continued to convulse.
When are the raids?" asked Nimble Virtue.
I don't know," said Jonny. Zamora didn't talk to me about
raids.
What did he talk about?"
I don't remember." Jonny crawled to his hands and knees.
Despite the cold, sweat was flowing from his arms and chest. My
life, he said.
What?" Nimble Virtue demanded. She waited until he was in a
kneeling position, then she slapped him hard across the face. Jonny
felt the metal around her fingers tear his skin.
Conover," said Jonny. Zamora wants me to turn Conover."
At a signal from Nimble Virtue, Billy hit Jonny from behind.
While he was stunned, Easy secured hard loops of white plastic
around Jonny's wrists. Then Easy and Billy lifted him from the floor,
Easy pushing Jonny's arms over his head so that when they released
him, he was hanging by his wrists from one of the heavy steel hooks.
The pain was instant and terrible. He screamed.
Nimble Virtue picked up the Medusa Easy had left on the floor
and approached Jonny. Answer me quickly and simply," she said.
She gathered the coils of the Medusa together and pressed the
charged tips into Jonny's side. He convulsed on the hook and went
limp. What is your name?" she asked.
Jonny Qabbala."
Your real name."
It took him a moment. Gordon Joao Acker."
Where were you born?"
The Hollywood Greyhound Station," he said. Easy and Billy
laughed again. It echoed. Jonny looked up; framed by the corroded
bulkhead around a ventilation shaft, he saw his hands, blood on his
arms.
What is your profession?" Nimble Virtue asked.
Dealer."
When did Colonel Zamora tell you to expect the raids?"
He didn't."
Liar!" yelled Nimble Virtue. She pressed the ends of the
Medusa into Jonny's stomach and held them there. You stupid boy, I
can keep you up alive for weeks! Cut off a piece everyday and sell
you in the mercado!
When Jonny came to, he realized that he had blacked-out again.
Nimble Virtue was muttering in Japanese and making unpleasant
sucking sounds as the exoskeleton breathed her. Jonny's arms and
shoulders had gone numb. He thought he could hear music in the
next room. When Nimble Virtue looked at him, he said, I can't tell
you what I don't know. Zamora just wanted to talk about the Alpha
Rats.
Jonny saw something flicker over Nimble Virtue's face. Take
him down, she said. Easy and Billy moved under him, lifted Jonny
off the hook and laid him out on the floor. Nimble Virtue moved
closer and put a hand on his leg. The fur of her coat tickled his
stomach. Say it again. Say it or I'll have them put you back up."
Jonny looked at her eyes. Fear or relief, he wondered. His head
swam. He wondered when the dream would be over and he would
wake up next to Ice and Sumi. There's a deal," he said and his head
fell back.
Wrap him up," Nimble Virtue told one of the men. But leave
his hands bound.
Jonny lay on the cold steel, hoping it had worked. Fear kept
him still, but he was satisfied that they had bought the fainting act. A
trickle of relief washed through him. He could hear the purring of
Nimble Virtue's exoskeleton as she moved around the abattoir. Get
the Arab back here, she said. "Tell him we can deal.
Jonny listened to the foot steps. Billy's heavy and flat-footed,
his cowboy boots coming down like open-handed slaps; Nimble
Virtue's, rapid and light, with insect hums and clicks. Easy Money
moved in quick bursts, his club foot dragging behind him. Jonny
knew he would have to wait at least until Easy or Billy had left the
room before he could make a break. He willed himself to remain still,
to use what time he had to rest and collect himself. The sweat on his
right arm was freezing to the slaughterhouse floor. Just as he was
beginning to worry about frostbite, he felt Billy (he caught a whiff of
chew) wrap a rough woolen blanket around his shoulders.
Don't want you croaking out on us, now," he heard the cowboy
say.
There was a loud buzz from the far end of the room. Jonny kept
his eyes closed, his breathing shallow. Movement, machine-like and
delicate. What is it?" came Nimble Virtue's voice.
Static. At first Jonny could not understand the voice. --spotter
picked up police vans headed this way. Looks like a raid, the
intercom sputtered.
Nimble Virtue cursed in Japanese. Not now. I'm not ready," she
said.
Jonny heard Easy Money: It's the cops, not the Committee. No
sweat.
Perhaps," she said. The coldness came back to her voice, the
hard suggestion of efficiency. Stay with him. You come with me." A
confusion of footsteps, all three of them moving around the room at
once. The abattoir door opened and closed. Then there was nothing.
Jonny could not stand it. He opened his eyes.
At the far end of the room, Easy Money was leaning against the
cryogenic pump, grinning at him.
Ollie, ollie oxen free," Easy said. He chuckled and steam from
his breath curled around his grafted satyr horns. Watching you's
like watching porn. I mean, you're so fucking trite, but I can't help it.
I still get off. Twisted, huh?
Jonny got up from the freezing floor and pulled the blanket
tight across his shoulders. You gonna tell the teacher I was bad
when she left the room?
Easy shook his head. Hell no," he said. You think I care about
the bitch? I'm just watching the parade go by. Besides, he said,
strolling toward Jonny, I know what you really want. You want the
stuff I took off Raquin. It's Conover's dope, isn't it? What is it? No,
don't tell me, you'd only lie, and I'd get pissed. Anyway, after we're
clear of this, maybe you and me, we can work out a deal. Meet me at
the Forest of Incandescent Bliss in Little Tokyo. Easy nodded toward
the door Nimble Virtue had just used. That's one of Yokohama
Mama's clubs.
The Forest of Incandescent Bliss. Right," said Jonny.
I assume you're in contact with Conover, and can get me a fair
price.
No problem."
Easy moved a little closer. He spoke to Jonny softly. Tell me
the truth, you were gonna blow me away that night at the Pit,
weren't you?
Who me? I was just stopping by to watch the movie stars."
Liar," said Easy Money. He smiled, We're gonna have to work
that out, too.
Whatever you say."
But later," Easy said. Through the slaughterhouse wall came
the muffled sound of automatic weapons fire. The lights in the
abattoir went out. A few seconds later, emergency flood lamps flared
to life over the doors throwing the room into brilliant arctic relief.
They'll be back in a minute. You better get back on the floor." Jonny
reluctantly lay back down and Easy bent over him. One more thing,"
he said. I'm not helping you, understand, but if I were you, I'd make
a real effort to get out of here. You don't want to deal with the bitch's
Arab friends.
Jonny nodded. Thanks." The meat locker shuddered. Nimble
Virtue and Billy hurried through the door.
Bring him!" shouted Nimble Virtue. It is the police, but I don't
want him found.
Jonny smelled tobacco again. He went limp as Billy grabbed
him around the chest and began hauling him toward the door. When
they hit warm air, Jonny dug his heels in and drove an elbow into
Billy's midsection. The cowboy groaned and fell back against a wall of
yellow fiberglass packing crates. Jonny spun, put a boot to Billy's chin
(just for fun, that) and took off running, Nimble Virtue shrieking
behind at him.
He made one corner and hid between a cluster of rubberized
storage cylinders and the angled steel wall supports. Men armed
with Futukoros ran past him. Jonny's hands, when he looked at them,
were blue and swollen. Running again, he saw police wearing
breathing apparatus, moving among the long rows of crates. Down
another row, and he was gasping and stumbling, knee-deep in carbon
dioxide foam. He tried to climb out over a wall of crates, but lack of
oxygen muddled him. Black things with glassy eyes and tubes for
mouths grabbed him. He swung his bound hands weakly, but missed.
His feet could not find the floor.
And the foam swallowed him.
It seemed to him that he was always waking up in strange
places. As if his whole life had been a series of dull, terrifying
discoveries-- trying to find some point of reference, finding it and
having it swept away at the next moment. The feeling frightened and
infuriated him even as he nursed it along, believing that if he ever
lost his terror and rage he might lose himself, flicker and disappear
like an image on a video screen.
Jonny woke up to a hot pain that extended from his shoulders,
across his back and down into his hands. When he moved his fingers,
pins and needles stabbed him. The familiar smell of prison (human
waste and disinfectants) turned his stomach.
Christ," he said, opening his eyes. Don't they know any other
color but green?
The door of his cell scraped open and a balding waxy-faced
young man peered at him from the hall. Evidently he had been
waiting there for some time and Jonny's voice had startled him.
Jonny was relieved to see that the man was wearing the blue
uniform of the police department, and not Committee black.
Hello?" said the cop.
Jonny swung his feet onto the floor and sat up on the pallet.
The cop tried to cover it, but Jonny saw his head snap back in
surprise. I was just commenting on the accommodations," said
Jonny.
They suck." Pain, like a tight cord, cut through his middle.
The cop frowned and closed the door. Jonny listened to his
footsteps as they faded down the corridor. Alone again, he pulled up
the stiff gray paper prison shirt and probed his ribs with the tips of
his fingers. Bruises and tender flesh there, but nothing seemed to be
broken.
Surveying the cell, Jonny felt relief and a quiet kind of joy.
Dealing with the police, he knew from experience, would be no
problem. They were wired for failure, ridiculed even by the city
government that supported them; in the street, they were considered
a notch below meter-maids as authority figures. Most of the
department was staffed by boys who could not cut it in the
Committee, had blown their chance through lack of cunning or nerve
or the inability to zero in on and take advantage of the fine edge of
madness that was absolutely essential in Committee work.
In their own odd way, the police were more vicious that the
Committee, a brutal down-scale version of their sister agency. Their
lack of power and the consequent pettiness of their concerns had,
over the years, become a kind of strength for them, a license to use
whatever savagery they thought required to complete the job at
hand. And the jobs took many forms; mostly, they concerned
shaking-down small-time smugglers, dealers and prostitutes for
protection from the gangs. These were often the same people who
were paying off one or more gang for protection from the police.
Jonny reflected that the cop who had looked in his cell was
typical of the department. Older than most Committee boys and
lacking the spark of youthful certainty that death, when it came,
would be looking for someone else. Jonny decided he would feel the
cop out when he returned. See exactly what kind of story he wanted,
cop a plea and get assigned to a road gang or one of the Mayor's
neighborhood renewal projects. Jonny knew that once he was
outside, he was gone. With any luck, he figured he could be back on
the street in a week.
It was about a half-hour, by his reckoning, before he heard
footsteps again. Two sets, walking with a purpose. The door of his cell
ground open and the cop he had seen earlier entered, followed by an
older man wearing a worn blue pin-stripe suit patched at the cuffs
with thread-jell, a cheap polymeric fiber that hardened when it came
into contact with air. The older man's tie was a shade too light to go
with his suit and was at least two seasons too thin. Jonny made him
for a bureaucrat. A public defender or maybe a social worker. He
would be the one to work on. Talk about his deprived childhood, the
violence in the streets...
Officer Acker," said the older man; his eyes were red and
anxious. His shoes were injection-molded polyvinyl, vending machine
numbers. I'm Detective Sergeant Russo, and this is Officer Heckert."
Jonny smiled and shook the hand Russo extended to him, but
his mind was kicking into overdrive. New tack, thinking: He called
me officer."
I wanted to let you know, personally, that we're on top of the
situation, said Detective Russo, smiling as he sat down next to Jonny
on the plastic sleeping pallet. You see, when you were brought in
with that bunch from the warehouse, Officer Heckert here ran retinal
scans on everybody to check for old and foreign warrants-- not
something we usually do until after arraignment, but considering the
volume of goods in the warehouse-- Then, when he saw Colonel
Zamora's note in your file, he crossed-checked your retinal print and
found your Committee record.
That's it, Jonny thought. This lunatic thinks I'm still in the
Committee. I can walk right out of here. Good work, Officer," Jonny
said. He nodded to Heckert. The cop nodded back, obviously happy
with his new-found status. How is it you happened to raid the
warehouse when you did?
Anonymous tip," said Heckert. A woman's voice synthesized
to sound male. We ran the call through the analyzer and got a good
print, but I guess she doesn't have a record. The cop smiled. (Playing
hard boy, Jonny thought. Type of guy fails Committee application,
becomes police department and swears up and down he wanted to
be a cop all along, not a stuck-up Committee boy.) Probably just
some chippie tryin' to get even with a boy friend.
Anyway," said Detective Russo, giving Heckert a disapproving
glance, we called Colonel Zamora and he'll be by to pick you up
soon-You what?" Jonny yelled. He was on his feet, feeling as if the
bottom had just fallen out of his stomach. Don't you know the
Committee's been compromised? He knew he had to give them
something. He made it up as he went along. Moles from the New
Palestine Federation penetrated the Committee months ago! I'm
undercover, investigating Arab terrorist cells operating in southern
California. They're insidious. Dumping mycotxins in the water table.
Releasing plague infested rats in the suburbs. This is strictly toplevel stuff, you understand. Eyes only. Washington and Tokyo are
involved, Sergeant Russo. None of this can leave this room.
Russo's gaze passed from Heckert to Jonny and back again. His
forehead was furrowed (unsure of his responsibility, his culpability,
Jonny thought, unsure, also, if he's being mocked). But surely you
can't suspect Colonel Zamora-Russo asked.
How do you know it was Zamora you were speaking to?" Jonny
yelled. He was angling closer to the door. He could see they were
buying the line of nonsense. It was there in the cops' eyes. Their
colorless bureaucratic blood was bubbling to the surface. He knew
they would let him gobecause they believed he was just like them:
another link in the chain of command that bound them and defined
them. But their gears shifted slowly, and Jonny felt he had to push
them along. Listen pal, you may have blown my cover but good," he
said. And if the Arabs get wind that I'm in here, with the data I've
got, we can all kiss our asses goodbye, 'cause they'll level this whole
complex, rather than have me get away.
Well then, we better get you someplace safe," said a gravelly
voice from the door. Jonny turned around. He had not even heard
Zamora coming, and now it was too late to do anything about it. He
turned back to the cops. Wait, I was lying. I'm not really a Fed," he
said. I'm a Croaker! An anarquista! Arrest me and I'll tell you
everything! Names and dates!
Detective Russo rose from the pallet and turned to Zamora. A
muscle jumped angrily along his quickly reddening jaw. Colonel
Zamora, I hope you can explain what's going on here, he said. "Is or
is this not one of your men?
Why Detective Sergeant Russo," said Zamora, of course he is."
The Colonel smiled at him and Jonny felt ill. Didn't you see my
notation in his record? Agent Acker has been under deep-cover for
some time now. Working among terrorists for so long, he's had a
breakdown. Convinced himself he's one of them. It happens
sometimes in these deep-cover cases. But we'll get him all the help
he needs.
Russo grunted. This man has wasted all our time, Colonel. And
put this department in an embarrassing position. I hope you get him
some help soon. He shook his head, jammed his hands into the
pockets of his shabby suit and started out of the cell. Colonel
Zamora, he said, in a tired voice, "The next time you're having
trouble with your men, I'd appreciate your notifying the Department.
I realize that the Police aren't held in quite the same regard as the
Committee, but really-You're absolutely right, detective," said Zamora. Communication. That's what it's all about.
Russo and Heckert left the cell (the younger man fixing Jonny
with a look of absolute loathing) and went one way down the
corridor, while Zamora and a couple of heavily-armed Committee
boys led Jonny in the opposite direction. In an a waiting area painted
in two tones of blistered green paint, Zamora grabbed Jonny (tearing
the cheap prison shirt) and punched him in the stomach. That's for
being a smart ass, said the Colonel.
Zamora shoved Jonny, still doubled-up, into an elevator.
Someone pushed a button and they started moving. Jonny saw his
reflection in one transparent wall, ghostly with receding rooftops and
cumulus clouds. The overcast sky burned muddily through the grime
and mirror-glazed Lexan that encased the rising car. Straightening,
Jonny looked at the Committee boys that flanked him. They appeared
to be about fourteen years old, radiating waves of amphetamine
tension. Both were skull-plugged into multiplexers set to coordinate
their Futukoros with the Sony targeting matrices that webbed their
chest and backs in tight diamond mesh. Each boy had a powerpack
around his waist and a datapatch, also jacked into the array, covering
one eye.
The best we have," said Zamora, indicating the boys. See all
the trouble I go through for you? he smiled sympathetically. "Look
at me, Gordon. I'm an avalanche. And I'm coming down hard on you
this time. You should not have blown our deal.
What deal?" asked Jonny. He rubbed his sore ribs. We never
had a deal. You put a gun to my head and gave me an order. Bullshit,
that's what that is.
Zamora shrugged. Call it anything you like. The fact of the
matter is you fucked me over and now you've got to pay the price.
He looked away and Jonny followed his gaze as it settled out over the
docks. White articulated-boom cranes were off-loading bright silver
boxcars from container ships, sliding on their induction cushions like
the skeletons of immense horses.
An old and familiar anger enclosed Jonny, like a fist tightening
in his chest. He choked; it reminded him of speed, the reckless and
undirected anger of the comedown.
He looked at the floor, trying to clear his mind. Strands of
plastic-coated copper wire coiled at angles from around the dull
service panel beneath the elevator button pad. Jonny gained some
small sense of control by telling himself that he had denied Zamora
the thing he wanted most-- Conover. But he's got me, thought Jonny.
And he knew that Zamora would eventually get Conover anyway.
That thought brought the anger back, stronger that ever.
I see right through you, Colonel," said Jonny.
Zamora raised an eyebrow, amused. Oh really?"
Damn straight," Jonny said. It came to me while I was up
there in the hills. I haven't worked out all the details, but I know
you're in bed with the Arabs. I saw broadcasts from L.A., on a
restricted Arab Link channel. Obviously, if there are Arabs operating
in the city, you know about it. And if you know about it, it means
you're being paid off.
What if I told you weren't even warm?"
You'd be lying. Cause it's that Arab connection that makes you
so nervous about Conover. He's got CIA connections that go back
decades. You're afraid he's onto you, that he'll cut a deal with the
Feds and that you'll end up in a sterile room somewhere with wires
in your head, spilling every thought you ever had.
What makes you think I'm not prepared to go up there and
drag Conover down by his skinny neck?
Because you don't want a war. Conover's not stupid. Obviously,
you know where he is. That hologram dome is just a carny trick to
impress the locals and the other lords, but he's got that haunted
house set up really nice against any kind of assault. You'd have to
flatten the whole hill to get him down. But if you did that, people
would start asking questions and you'd be back in the shit again.
That's why you told me that fairy tale about the Alpha Rats. You
thought I'd be all impressed and terrified of your heavy connections.
That I'd get Conover off that hill and come sucking around to you,
looking for table scraps.
Colonel Zamora shook his head, let go with his throaty lizard
laugh. God kid, you've really gone around the bend. Maybe we
should get you to a hospital after all, he said. "Naturally, there's
Arabs operating in Last Ass. Hell, Washington and Tokyo've got some
of the most influential Mullahs in Qom and Baghdad on the payroll.
It's the way of the world. (Economics, remember?) But these L.A
sand-scratchers are just a propaganda cell. Bureaucratic pussies that
couldn't keep me in lunch money.
The elevator was still climbing. Jonny knew then that they
were headed for the hoverport on the roof. He shook his head. I
know that you were lying that night back at the warehouse. You
don't have Sumi. If you did, you'd have brought her up already. Used
her to threaten me or something.
Zamora smiled. The elevator was gradually slowing its ascent.
You sure about that, Jimmy?" The Colonel reached out and gently
fingered the rip in Jonny's prison tunic. You ready to bet your life on
it?
You telling me I got anything to lose?" Jonny asked.
Zamora laughed again. No, probably not."
The elevator shuddered as magnetic bolts locked it into place
below the hoverport. They were still two floors from the roof. Like
most port-equipped buildings in L.A., this one had a special,
restricted-access elevator they would have to use to reach the port.
Get ready," Zamora told the Committee boys. Neither boy directly
acknowledged the order, but each moved, adjusting datapatches,
wiggling their shoulders to smooth the targeting webs. The boys
were living on a different level, Jonny knew, in the extended sensefield of the targeting matrix, experiencing a digital approximation of
expanded consciousness. For a moment, Jonny found himself envying
them. He shook his head at the absurdity of his own mind. Nothing to
lose there, he thought.
The elevator doors whispered open and Jonny was propelled
into the hall; Zamora came behind him, the Committee boys on either
side. The Colonel moved quickly to the other elevator, slid his
identification card into a slot under the key pad and pushed a button.
A few meters down the corridor, a prison maintenance worker was
using a caulk gun to apply a clear silicone sealant around the edges
of an observation window. The corridor itself was silent and
anonymous with beige walls and brown institutional carpeting; Jonny
was relieved to find that the vile prison smell did extend up to this
level.
Time was definitely slowing, Jonny decided. He felt as if he
were moving through some heavy liquid medium, acutely aware of
his surroundings, pulsing with the exaggerated senses of the dying
and the doomed. Objects had taken on an almost holy significance.
Potted palms by the windows. Dull chrome lighting fixtures. The blue
overalls of the maintenance worker, his mottled skin. Pink shading to
black. Something in his hand. Silver bolt in a crossbow pistol.
The name came out, involuntarily. Man Ray," Jonny said. But
by then it was over. The Committee boy on his right was dead, a
slender length of super-conductive alloy bursting through his chest,
glittering there like a bloody spider, the ribbed filaments bent back,
tangling and shorting the targeting web-- frying the boy in his own
sense-data.
The other boy was firing down the corridor, spraying the walls
with hot red tracers. Jonny spun and round-housed him in the
kidneys. An arm clamped around Jonny's throat, jerking him
backwards. No!" Zamora shouted; the Committee boy had turned on
them; stoned and red-faced with rage, he had his gun pressed to
Jonny's jaw. There was a subdued hiss. And the boy fell back, his
throat split with a spidery bolt.
The elevator doors opened and Zamora pulled Jonny through.
In death, the second Committee boy's eyes were like those of a
bewildered child. Jonny felt for him, but then his head was snapped
back savagely to meet the barrel of Zamora's Futukoro. It's not that
easy! the Colonel yelled. He flicked the barrel of his gun at Man Ray
and blasted between the closing doors, the sound thundering through
Jonny's head. Man Ray leaped the bodies of the dead Committee boys
and rolled clear of the shot. The elevator doors closed with a soft
thud and the car began to rise.
Nothing," Zamora whispered in Jonny's ear. Not a move, not a
breath, not a sound. The arm around Jonny's throat tightened,
threatening to lift him off his feet. You think your companeros are
cute? They're assholes. Got nothing going for them but card tricks.
Maybe," said Jonny, but your boys are still dead."
The car shivered gently to a halt and the doors opened under
the towering lighting gantries of the hoverport. The Colonel's
Futukoro pressed to his temple, Jonny crossed the tarmac, the Colonel
hugging his back. Smog-light bloodied the sky, the setting sun
burning feebly through hydrocarbon-laden mists. Heads up,
children! Zamora bellowed. "There's Croakers in the building! Boys
moved in the dusty desert light.
A dozen broad circles, were laid out evenly across the roof, like
illuminated manhole covers. The hovercar landing pads were
essentially waffled discs of carbon steel inset with guide lights, set on
a bed of leaking shock absorbers. At the moment, there was only one
car on the roof, resting on a pad at the far end of the port; Zamora
was pushing Jonny toward it as a dozen running Committee boys and
cops fanned-out behind them, preparing to lay down covering-fire
across the rooftop. Off to Jonny's left, a young cop with a lightning
bolt tattooed on each side of his bald scalp, was sending the aircraft
elevator to the basement, sealing the roof from the rest of the
building. Horns sounded and crimson warning beacons revolved. The
platform dropped about two meters and stopped. The roof lights
flickered and died.
Power's cut!" someone yelled.
Zamora shoved Jonny forward, into the arms of a couple of
slope-browed Meat Boys. The taller of the two, an acne-scarred
chollo, tall even by Committee standards, said, Where's Rick and
Pepe...?
Shut up," said the Colonel. They're gone. It's the asshole's
fault. Take him to the car.
At the moment the Meat Boys' brutal fingers death-gripped
Jonny's shoulders, something fluttered in the air. The Mitsui Pacific
Bank complex, dark a moment before, glowed a pale, snowy gray,
and a black and white hologram of a woman's face coalesced in the
air, gridded with windows and shining robot washers. The image
refocused, tightened until only the eye remained. And the profile of a
man with a straight razor in his hand. The gray eye covered ten
stories at the top of the bank as the razor slid through the cornea,
cutting it neatly in half. On every side of the roof, buildings flared
behind tides of phosphenes. Pale dustings of porn flesh. The wet red
of an autopsy instructional. Collaged ads, too fast to follow: shoes,
cars, new eyes, cloned pets.
From somewhere, a loudspeaker blared metallically: We are
the revolt of the spirit humiliated by your works. We are the spark
in the wind, but the spark seeking the powder magazine!
Get him out of here," said Zamora as the first concussion shook
the roof.
The Croakers were above the hoverport when Jonny saw them,
high enough to still be silent under the whirling blades of their
ultralights. He figured they had launched themselves from the
nearby buildings under cover of the holograms. They were circling
now, dropping garlands of roses, playing cards, flocks of mechanical
doves, which spun on convection currents to the roof below, where
they exploded, ripping steel and tarmac from under the boys' feet,
billowing choking pink clouds of CS gas. What'd I tell you?" Zamora
said. They're hotdogs. It's going to be a turkey shoot."
But the power cut in, and the carbon arcs atop the light
gantries glowed to life, blotting out the winged figures. Shit," Zamora
yelled, hurrying across the roof. Get him to detention," he yelled to
the Meat Boys. Lose him and it's your asses."
The shorter Meat Boy, a WASPish blonde with bad teeth,
nodded and pushed Jonny in the direction of the hovercar. Name's
Stearn, he said. "This is Julio. He jerked his thumb at the taller boy.
We'll break your back if you get cute." At about sixteen, Stearn was
nearly a meter taller than Jonny, his voice unnaturally deep, his
speech slurred by his distended acromegalic jaw.
At the base of the hovercar platform, Jonny panicked, knowing
what would be waiting for him when they reached Committee
headquarters. He twisted in Stearn's grip, the cheap paper shirt
splitting at the shoulders, and vaulted up and over the hovercar. He
caught a glimpse of the pilot inside, an amber death's head in the
backwash from the navigation console. Down on the other side, Jonny
leaped off the platform and ran for the edge of the roof, waving his
arms and yelling at the Croakers. Here! I'm here!"
A fist, the size of Jonny's head, caught him between the
shoulder blades and knocked him flat. A moment later, he was
dragged to his feet. The Meat Boys double-timed him back to the
hovercar. On the far end of the roof, Croakers were bringing their
ultralights down, coasting to a halt amidst a wash of tear gas and
Futukoro fire.
All right!" yelled Jonny. They're gonna use your balls for
paperweights, Ubu!
Stearn released him and Julio shoved Jonny, back-first, through
the canopy of the hovercar. He fell, staring up at the huge boot that
hovered above his face, and passed over him as Julio settled into the
seat on his right. The Meat Boy hauled him up as Stearn got in and
sat, boxing Jonny in on the left.
Outside, the amplified voices continued: I am here by the will
of the people and I won't leave until I get my raincoat back.
Stearn snapped down the canopy and tapped the pilot on the
shoulder, yelling Go!" The pilot hit the cut-in switch for the engines.
Sub-sonics rumbled in Jonny's guts as the hovercar's four Pratt and
Whitney engines burned to life. Ultralights settled to the roof a few
meters from the platform, and Croakers came scrambling for the car.
Go!Vamonos!" yelled Stearn.
Jonny jammed his leg between the forward seats and swung
his boot at the pilot's head. Keep still," mumbled Stearn, shoving an
elbow into Jonny's throat.
In a tear gas fog, the hovercar rose about two feet off the
platform. And banged down again. Something silver flashed by the
window. The pilot pushed the throttle forward, feeding more power
to the engines. The hovercar slowly began to rise, and swung out
over the street. Jonny saw Zamora below them, waving frantically.
One of the Meat Boy's cursed and Jonny looked up.
The sickle end of a kusairigama was wrapped around the light
rack atop the car. Flash of a face in the window. Noise from the roof.
Jonny whooped at the sight. Three Croakers were chained to the roof
as the hovercar flew unsteadily twenty stories above the city.
I can't keep it steady," the pilot said. There's something
wrong.
Julio, leaned forward. Look up, stupid," he said.
The pilot turtled his head forward as an ax cracked the
windshield just above him. He pulled back on the control stick,
rocking the hovercar violently from side to side. The sound of metal
and fragmenting plastic came from above. The Croakers were spread
out on the roof, methodically hacking away at the canopy.
Stearn had his gun out, pointing it up at the crotch of a Croaker
kneeling on the canopy above him. The pilot was still struggling with
the stick. The car pitched to the left, a complaining animal, and the
boy lost his aim.
Hold it still. I can't get a shot off," he yelled.
No!" screamed the pilot. You might hit the stabilizers! It's
hard enough to control now.
Then shake them off," said Stearn.
Right, hang on."
The pilot cranked the stick hard to the left and the hovercar
flipped. Jonny's feet left the floor. He reached out for the ceiling,
dangling a few centimeters above the seat by his safetybelt. The
Croakers were still outside, secured to the car by their chains.
I can't hold it," said the pilot. Load's too much."
Hold it," Stearn ordered. He took aim at the Croaker by his
window.
Jonny braced his back against the roof and rabbit punched the
Meat Boy with both fists, driving his face into the glass. The Futukoro
went off, blasting out the window. Shattered glass blew in on them
like a thousand flying knives. The sound of hot wind and the scream
of overworked turbines.
The pilot righted them. The Croakers clambered back onto the
roof and went to work, hacking away at the body of the hovercar.
Stearn turned and stared at Jonny, jagged wedges of glass embedded
around the boy's eyes and mouth, glittering there like savage jewels.
Stearn lunged and locked his thick fingers around Jonny's throat,
squeezing. Jonny went for the boy's eyes, but missed, felt muscles in
his neck tear, felt his breath stop, the world begin to slide away.
Stop it!" Julio's voice cut through the wind. We've got to get
him to detention, he said. "He's not yours!
But Stearn kept on squeezing. Jonny heard a muffled explosion,
and felt the fingers on his neck go slack. He struggled back. Stearn
had jerked upright, his shoulders twitching convulsively. Then he fell
forward, revealing a wet hole in his back.
Move!" yelled the Croaker with the gun. She was leaning in the
broken window, upside down, trying to get a shot at the other Meat
Boy.
Jonny threw himself down on Stearn's body, heat of gunfire
across his back. When he dared to look up, Jonny saw the Croaker out
the window, lifeless puppet, chain slipping from around her wrist,
dead already as she tumbled from the car.
Julio grunted some obscenity in Spanish. Jonny found him
stuffing a handkerchief into the hole in his shoulder. The Committee
boy smiled.
I won't kill you," he said, and pressed the barrel of his
Futukoro into Jonny's groin. But I'll make you wish you were dead."
We're near the detention center," shouted the pilot. I'm going
to set us down there.
Do it fast," Julio said. He pressed his back to the shattered
window and slid part-way out.
Jonny felt his skin prickle at the thought of returning to
Committee headquarters. The hovercar was skimming over the roofs
of blacked-out skyscrapers. They neared Union Bank Plaza, with its
dry fountains and dead, brittle trees. Jonny saw the freeway. If he
could get the pilot to put the hovercar down there, he thought, he
and the Croakers could hijack a car and disappear. Jonny glanced at
Julio and saw the boy occupied with a Croaker who refused to hold
still and get shot.
Using Stearn's body for cover, Jonny stamped his boot down
and drew out his long bladed knife. Leaning between the forward
seats, he touched the tip of the blade to the pilot's throat, pressing
just hard enough to draw blood. The pilot's head snapped back. Set
it down by that fountain, Jonny whispered.
Yes sir," he said, and started a slow bank toward the Plaza.
Jonny heard a voice: What the hell are you doing?"
He swung around. Julio was pulled his head in through the
window, and Jonny caught him on the chin with his boot heel. Two
leather clad arms shot in behind the Meat Boy, latching onto handfuls
of his hair, dragging him back out the window. Julio seemed to panic
then; he waved his Futukoro all around the cabin, pointing it one
moment at the Croaker who had him, then swinging the gun back at
Jonny. As the he disappeared out the window, he pulled the trigger.
The pilot's head exploded, and the hovercar angled forward, nosediving for the pavement.
Jonny reached under the body of the dead pilot and grabbed
the stick. Above him, he could hear Julio still struggling with the
Croakers. A shot went off through the roof. Jonny pulled back hard
on the stick, trying to forestall the crash. The hovercar banked
steeply, scraping down belly-first through the trees in Union Bank
Plaza.
Across the street, amidst a jumble of rotting patio furniture, sat
the mirrored bulk of the Bonaventure Hotel. Jonny looked up just in
time to watch his own reflection crash into the building across the
street.
NINE:
The Treason of Images
A light crusting of salt on his lips. The smell of damp cement
and fish.
Los Angeles closed over him like the wing of a bird, distorted
like the image of a diamond caught in the concave surface of a
parabolic mirror. Distended, the city shattered; it could not hold. All
the gleaming office towers and prisons, all the cars and guns, the
junkies and the dealers, the dead and the dying came raining down
on him from the back of a wounded sky. And everybody seemed to
know his name but him.
It occurred to Jonny that for someone who basically just
wanted to be left alone, he was spending an awful lot of time waking
up in bandages.
That he was alive at all was less a surprise to him than a
burden. He kept wondering if there was some reason for it, some
purpose other than for other people's amusement. The back of his
head felt as if it had been pried open with a can opener and filled
with dry ice. He laughed at something (not entirely sure what), found
the edge of the bed with his hand and sat up.
The smell of fish was stronger. There was a chittering, like the
voices of dolphins, rooms away. No light, though. He felt bandages on
his face, multiple layers of gauze and surgical tape. Scars on his
cheeks. He had surgery. Below the line of the dressing, he touched his
lips. They were swollen, his front teeth loose. His nose was probably
broken, too. Still, it could have been worse, he thought. His eyes
ached.
His eyes.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice was screaming. His
own: like the roar of turbines, like metal twisting on metal.
Eyes.
The world tilted then, burdened by the weight of a single word.
Blind," he said. It barely registered. He found he could hold it back,
if he tried, could examine the word from a distance, scan the
contours and convolusions of it, while never quite allowing it to take
on conscious meaning. But the weight of it was such that he could not
keep it away indefinitely; it fell, bringing memory crashing down on
him like the windshield of the hovercar. He was blind.
I am blind.
Jonny?" It was a man's voice. Amplified. Stay there. Don't get
up, it said.
Below his bare feet, the floor was cold. He felt damp concrete,
limp strands of kelp and a few steps later, the rusted grillwork of a
floor drain. He could hear the ocean, very close by. Something
skittered across his right foot. A tiny crab. He felt others move away
each time he brought his foot down. A wall. He needed a wall,
something substantial to hold onto. He started back to where he
thought the bed was, then stopped. Unsure. He turned in a circle,
shouting, his head thrown back, his hands reflexive claws tearing at
the gauze. When it was all gone he was still standing there, panting.
No light at all.
Jonny, don't move."
He started at the sound, took a step-- and was falling. A hand
closed on his shoulder and right arm, pulling him back. He lay on the
floor, his hands to his f ace, the dampness seeping through his pant
legs.
I told you to stay put. You almost walked into ten meters of
empty air just then. The voice was familiar.
Hey Groucho," Jonny said. Guess what. I'm blind."
I already knew. You didn't have to go to all this trouble to
prove it to me, he said. The anarchist hauled him to his feet and
walked him back to the bed, a distance Jonny judged to be no more
than fifteen meters.
Christ, I'm a fuckin' veg," said Jonny.
Don't be stupid," said the anarchist. Jonny felt the distribution
of weight on the bed change as Groucho sat down. You have your
hands; you have your mind. We sealed off what was left of your optic
nerves. There wasn't much more we could do.
Great," asked Jonny. What about implants?"
I don't know. We could probably rig something to give you
some kind of vision. Eventually, Groucho said. "Splice some nerve
cells from somewhere else in your body into your optic nerve tissue
and see if we can generate something to rebuild with. I'm not sure.
The trouble is, we're limited in what we can even attempt out here in
the hinterlands. We lost a lot of our equipment when the Committee
came down on us. Jonny felt him move. Some kind of gesture.
Sorry, man."
Jonny nodded. Yeah. So where are we?"
A fish farm. It's been out of business for years. That's what
you almost fell into, one of the drained feeding tanks. Before it was a
farm, the place used to be a marine mammal center. There are pens
outside where the dolphins still come looking for a free lunch. I'm
afraid we've been encouraging them, he said. "They're beautiful
animals.
Gee whiz, tell me all about it," said Jonny. He took a deep
breath and swallowed. Listen, I gotta know. Do I-- I mean, what do
I--?
Your face is fine," said Groucho. You may even consider it an
improvement. Although you have enough plastic and metal in your
skull now to qualify as a small appliance.
Jonny shook his head. He tried to conjure up the image of
Groucho sitting next to him on the bed. The bed itself was easy.
Running his fingers around the edge, he felt bare metal and soft
rubberized bumpers, locked wheels beneath. A specimen cart, he
thought, covered with a foam sleeping mat. However, Groucho's face
eluded him. Jonny could never recall people's faces unless he was
looking right at them. He tried to picture the room. Bare concrete,
enameled tanks with chrome ladders leading to the bottom, drains in
the floor-Forget it.
It was a shopping list, not a picture. He could imagine himself
(also faceless), Groucho and the bed, but beyond that was a void,
terra incognita. Nothing existed that was farther away than the end
of his arm. Get used to it, asshole," he mumbled.
What?"
So what happens now?"
We go back to plan one," said Groucho. The Croakers have
friends in Mexico. We should be able to get you down to Ensenada in
a couple of days, then over to the mainland. It's going to be a while
before we can do anything about your eyes.
Don't shit me, okay?" said Jonny. If my optic nerves are as
gone as you say, then we're just blowing wind talking about nerve
splices. Realistically, we're really talking about a skull-plug run
through a digitizer and some kind of micro-video rig. You, or any of
your people, got the chops to fix that up?
No. You've got to go to New Hope or some government clinic
for that kind of work.
Well, there you are," said Jonny flatly. The bed moved as
Groucho got up. Jonny studied the overlapping echoes of the
anarchist's footsteps as he moved around the room, counting the
number of beats between each heel click, imagining that this might
give him some sense of the room's layout or size. It did not. There
were other sounds: the white noise of surf, dolphins, the clicking of
crabs across the floor, all equally distant and unreal, as if, in the
absence of any visual stimulus, his brain were busily manufacturing
sensations for itself. Maya, man. Sometimes I think this is all just
smoke and mirrors.
I thought that was acknowledged," said Groucho. The
anarchist's voice came from across the room, a little off to his left.
It used to make me crazy," Jonny said. I roshis told me that
this was all an illusion. Well man, if this is all illusion, it must be
somebody else's, 'cause I wouldn't make up this shit. There was a
scraping on the concrete, a rustling of paper. Jonny thought Groucho
might be moving boxes.
That's just avoiding the issue," said Groucho. It also sounds
like am elaborate excuse for suicide. Do you want to die?
I don't know." Jonny shrugged. Sometimes. Yeah."
It's hard," said Groucho. We've become so numbed by the
presence of death that we toy with it, use it like a drug, building it
up in our minds as the great escape. The fallacy there, of course, is
that death is an illusion, too.
You're a three ring circus, man," said Jonny. But it's all just
words. The Catholics got half the city under their thumbs with cheap
lighting effects and stained glass, the Muslims tell the hashishin that
dying for Allah is a ticket to heaven and Buddha says life is
suffering, which means I shouldn't bring anybody down by pointing
out that being blind, that this whole situation is completely fucked.
Don't you see, that's what illusion means? You're blind, you
say? I say, there's no one seeing and nothing to be seen, Groucho
replied. How can you miss what never existed?"
That is such bullshit."
Ice told me you had a roshi once, that you used to sit. What
happened? Groucho's voice was close again. He pressed something
into Jonny's hands. Your boots. Sorry, somebody polished them.
They're black, again.
Jonny leaned over the edge of the bed and started to pull on
his right boot. He said, Yeah, I used to sit. I was young and it was
fashionable. Teeny-bopper Zen. Like lizard skin jackets or green
eyes.
You don't seem the type for that game."
Sure I am."
No, you like to think you are, because it's easy and it fits in
with an image you have of yourself, but, I think, you're not nearly
the cynic or fool you like to play at.
As Jonny pulled on his other boot, he said, That was you guys
tipped the cops to Nimble Virtue's warehouse, right?
Groucho sighed. Taking you from the cops was going to be a
breeze. We never dreamed the idiots would call in the Committee,
Groucho said.
Ice made the call, actually. She's safe, you know."
Jonny smiled. Thanks."
Sumi, too."
Jesus," he said, is she here?"
Yes. She practically rigged all the lighting out here singlehanded. She's running the juice through the transit authority's power
grid.
That sounds like her," said Jonny. Where is she? Take me to
her. He stood, but Groucho pushed him back on the bed.
You stay here. She and Ice are on a scavenging party to some
of the old oil platforms nearby. When they get back, I'll let them
know you've come around.
Thanks, man," Jonny said. He touched the neat rows of tiny
plastic staples they had used to close the incisions in his face. Tight
meridians of pain. He felt very tired.
The confidences of mad men. I would spend my life in
provoking
them, replied Groucho. "Take this. Jonny found a small cylinder of
soft plastic pressed into his hand. Auto-injector," said Groucho. It's
an endorphin analog. If the pain gets too bad, just remove the top to
expose the syringe, and hit a vein.
When the anarchist left the room, Jonny popped the top of the
injector with his thumb and pressed the needle into the crook of his
left arm. A spring-loaded mechanism pumped home the drug.
Immediately, the pain was gone, replaced with a gentle disembodied
warmth, as if his blood had been replaced with heated syrup. He lay
down on the bed, feeling his muscles uncoil, and let the drug and the
deeper darkness of sleep wash over him. He listened to the ocean
and the dolphins, licked the salt from his lips, and hoped he would
not dream.
Sleep did not stay long. The drug did its work well, holding the
pain an arm's length away, but the analog left too much of his brain
in working order. He was just aware enough to notice the ghosts as
they floated high above his bed. Hot red and electric blue, moving
fast, like falling rain or static on a video monitor. He swung at them
open-handed, but missed. They were not there. They were inside.
Inside his head.
A trick of the surgery, he told himself. Random signals twitched
from fried nerves, entering the visual center of his brain. Fireworks,
he thought. Great timing. Thank you very-fucking-much.
When he fell asleep again, he dreamed of machinery, an underground refinery, like a buried city. Cooling towers and steam and
choking clouds of synth-fuel fumes. He had run away from the state
school again. Jonny, ten years old, fat and out of breath, ran on
trembling legs and hid among the dull hills of cooling slag. A man
came after him. He wore a cheap plastic poncho and carried a gun.
Silent as death, half his face was hidden behind a pair of mirror
shades. When the man found him, all Jonny could do was raise his
blistered hands to cover his ears. At the last moment, he saw his
burned face reflected in the man's glasses. The refinery roared and
spat smoke. He cried, hoping he would not be able to hear the shot.
Wake up, Sleeping Beauty. Hey Jonny, come on, move your ass.
Somebody made little railroad tracks all over your sweet face.
Startled, he awoke. He could still see the ghosts, but there were
fewer of them now. His skull was full of cotton. Ice?" he said.
Who else, doll?"
He sat up in bed, reached out and touched wet leather, cool and
smelling of the ocean. Hiya, babe," she said, and kissed him with
salted lips. I got a present for you." She guided his hand to the right,
until it touched something. Graceful planes of skin and bone defining
cheeks, below that, a strong jaw and mouth. Something happened in
his chest, a jolt, like pain, that instead was pure pleasure. Later, he
thought if he had eyes, he probably would have made a fool of
himself by blubbering. Sumi," he said.
Can't put anything over on you," she replied.
He held her, held on to her to keep from falling. If he let go, he
knew the floor would open up and swallow him. But he felt Ice's arm
join Sumi's across his back. They stayed that way for some time,
huddled there together, Jonny's head on Sumi's shoulder. His drugged
brain could hardly handle the input. It kept misfiring, triggering
emotions and memories at random. Fear. Love. A melted circuit
board. Desire. Mirror shades. A gun.
Where the fuck have you been?" he asked, finally. They
relaxed and moved apart on the bed, but remained touching.
You know Vyctor Vector?"
Sure," he said. She's only el patron of the Naginata Sisters."
Well, I was setting up power out at her place; she's got this
squat in an old police station in Echo Park. The Sisters are using it as
their new club house. Built in security system, a gym, working
phones, you know? Anyway, when I finished up there, I went back
to home, but when I got there, the place was crawling with
Committee boys. I thought one of them might have spotted me, so I
high-tailed it through some movie crew downstairs, and back to
Vyctor's. The Sisters were cool. They put me up for awhile, then got
in touch with some smugglers they muscle for, who put me on to the
Croakers. And here I am.
Here you are," said Jonny. Christ, we probably missed you by
maybe a couple of hours. He shook his head. "I thought you were
dead.
And we thought you were dead," said Ice. 'Course, before that
Sumi thought I was dead, and I thought, oh shit-- She laughed.
Let's face it, everybody wrote off everybody these last few weeks.
But we made it. We foxed 'em.
We got lucky," Jonny said.
Maybe it's the same thing," said Sumi.
Maybe it doesn't fucking matter," Ice said.
I'm so out of touch," said Jonny. What's it like on the street?
The Committee's push still on?
Yeah. We thought with so many people sick, they'd forget
about it and back off, said Ice. "No such luck. They're just pumping
the boys full of amantadine and sending 'em out on search and
destroys, using the virus as an excuse to come down on anyone's
ever looked cross-eyed at the Committee.
That's why the Naginatas were moving," said Sumi. Vyctor
said the Committee closed the Iron Orchid, where they used to hang
out.
Public Assembly Laws they call them." Ice all but spat the
words. No gatherings of more than a certain number of people
within a kilometer of Los Angeles. The Colonel must be going nuts,
she said. He's getting positively medieval."
Does anybody have any ideas on how the virus is spreading?"
Jonny asked.
On a molecular level, the thing's just a lousy cold bug. A
rhinovirus. Vanilla as you can get, Ice replied.
What I saw on that micrograph at the clinic sure didn't look
like a cold virus, said Jonny.
Right," said Ice. It's like one of those Chinese puzzle boxes.
You know, open up one box and there's a little box inside, you open
up the next box, there's a smaller one inside that, and on and on. On
one level, this thing looks like a phage, on another level, it's just a
cold bug. But the levels keep going. The molecular structure of this
thing's dense. We know something else, too. At least, we're
reasonably sure.
Sure of what?" asked Jonny.
It's man-made."
How do you know?" Jonny wished he could see Ice's face as
she talked. He could usually learn as much from her expressions as
from what she said.
Partly it's just a hunch (She would be frowning now.), but
natural bonds just don't feel like this mess. It's like somebody tried
to squeeze ten pounds of ugly into an eight pound box.
Tell him about the war," said Sumi.
What war?" asked Jonny.
I'm coming to it," Ice said. It looks like what we got here is an
ultra-complex retrovirus, something back in the 'nineties they called
a layered virus. A primary bug attacks a system, in our case, the bug
is a viral analog of leprosy. It causes whatever damage it can, but
eventually the system's defenses kill it. Here's the tricky part,
though-There's another virus," said Jonny.
You got it, doll, " said Ice. At some point, we don't know what
triggers it, but a secondary virus is activated. It uses the damage
caused by the first virus to attack the already weakened system. In
our case, the secondary virus uses the peripheral nerve damage
caused by the leprosy to travel backwards, on a substrate of nerve
cell axons, up into the brain. Almost the exact reverse of neuroblast
migration. We think it might be modeled on that.
What's the pathology of the second virus?" Jonny asked.
Silence. Syphilis," Sumi said.
Jesus."
Parenchymatous neurosyphilis, to be exact," said Ice. A really
hyped-up version. Years worth of nerve damage get compressed into
a few days. Death occurs a week to two weeks after the symptoms
manifest. She took a breath. "It's a motherfucker, too. Physical,
mental and personality breakdown, epileptic attacks, lightning pains,
tremors; the full whack. Patient's pupils get small and irregular.
Argyll Robertson pupils," Jonny said.
Right. Looks like they got bugs in their eyes." Ice'svoice
trailed off, then it came back loud, full of frustration. And the
syphilis is an analog, too, of course. So none of our standard therapies
are worth shit. Personally, I wouldn't go through it-Who would?" asked Jonny.
I mean I wouldn't want to die that way," said Ice. I think if I
found out I had the bug, I'd do myself before I'd go through all that.
Yeah," whispered Sumi. He could feel the woman move,
leaning toward Ice to comfort her.
Jonny thought that it was probably night outside. Even in the
relative quiet of evening, the sounds and smells of the ocean lent a
subtle sense of life to the old fish farm that Jonny appreciated. Raw
sensory data, enough to keep from feeling completely disconnected
with the world, poured through the seaward vents, sounds and
scents changing radically with the passing of the day. There were no
chittering dolphins sounds now, just the quiet lapping of water and
the scratching of crabs in the empty pools. Farther away were human
sounds. Occasional hammering, voices, the momentary roar of a car
engine. It would not be unpleasant, thought Jonny, to spend the rest
of his life here.
Tell me about the war," he said.
Down by the port, we liberated this warehouse of some guns
and fuel, and ended up this case. Had some floppy discs full of
declassified military documents. The war was that Arab and Jap
thing back in the 'nineties, said Ice. "Seems NATO's bio-warfare arm
was working on something a lot like the layered virus we're looking
at now. Operation Sisyphus. Trouble was, back then, they couldn't
always trigger either virus and when they did, they couldn't always
protect their troops. A lot of people died. There's apparently still a
zone in northern France that's off limits to civvies. After all that, the
project got a bad name; the research was considered too expensive
and too dangerous, so when the war-talk cooled down, the project
died. And the techs went back to making the world safe for
conventional warfare.
You think our virus could be the same one they were working
on back then? asked Jonny.
A much more refined version, yeah. I'd be real surprised if in
the last seventy years, some of that original data didn't get walked
out of there from time to time, Ice replied. "I mean, we weren't even
looking for it.
Jonny nodded and his chin momentarily brushed Sumi's hand, which
rested his shoulder. It fits," he said. There's a New Palestine cell
operating in the city. They've been beaming leper videos to the folks
back home. Zamora told me they were just a propaganda unit, but he
was lying.
Hell, could be Aoki Vega or the goddamn Alpha Rats, for all
the difference it makes, said Ice.
She's right," said Sumi. If this is some germ warfare thing,
we're probably not going to find any easy treatments for it.
Fuck it, if the Arabs want this city, they can have it," said
Jonny.
Groucho already talked to me about Mexico. He says we
can be down there in a couple of days.
I'm not going," said Ice. Sumi'll take you, and I'll come later."
You still playing the artistic anarquista?" Jonny asked.
Fuck you," snapped Ice. I've got commitments here. I'm a
Croaker and that means I'm part of this revolution, no matter what
you think of it.
Jonny turned to her voice. Excuse me, but wasn't that you a little
while ago saying me how much you wanted us to be together again?
Well, here we are. He waited for her to say something and when she
did not he said, What's the matter? You bored already?"
He felt her get up and leave the bed; an emptiness developed
in her wake, a sense of loss that was more profound than the simple
lack of her physical presence. He put out his arm, but she was not
there and he could not find her. Ice's practiced steps were light and
almost silent from months of guerrilla raids and street warfare. Her
sudden absence reminded of his helplessness. Ice?" he said.
I'm doing this." Her voice was firm and low, the tone she
always used when she wanted to project assurance, but was afraid
her voice might crack.
You can help me or not, make this easy
or hard, but I'm in the for the duration.
Why are you being such a shithead, Jonny?" asked Sumi. She
shook his sleeve gently. What's the matter?" Shit. I'm afraid," he
said. I'm afraid for her and you. And I'm afraid for me. I don't want
to end up alone.
You won't be alone," said Sumi. I'm going with you. Ice will
come.
He's afraid I'm going to take a walk again," came Ice's voice.
Shouldn't I be?" he asked.
No."
He breathed deeply. His fingers picked idly at a paint blister on
the bed's molded metal handle. I hate politics. It's the lowest act a
human being can sink to.
Yeah," said Ice, drawing the word out to the length of a breath.
Why don't you come here?" Jonny said.
She came back to the bed and he kissed her for a long time.
Then he leaned back and kissed Sumi, and when he moved away,
found himself pressed in the warmth of two bodies as the women's
mouths met over his shoulder.
The undressing was a haphazard affair. Jonny yanked at the
boots he had just put on and tried to help each woman out of her
clothes. Without his eyes, though, he just succeeded in tangling them
in their shirts. Sumi pushed him down on the bed and held him
there, reminding him that a couple of days was not a very long time,
and that maybe he should not help them.
Eventually, they bent together, in one three-way kiss. Hands moved
in phantom caresses and scratches over Jonny's body. The women
pressed him to the bed, embracing each other on top of him, exciting
each other while moving in slow undulations over his body.
Occasionally their rhythm would change and he would feel a
tongue or hand would sweep over his belly or up his thigh. They
were teasing him, he realized. Making his blindness a part of their
lovemaking. He loved it.
The women changed places, moving back and forth across his
body. He lost track of them, could no longer tell one from the other.
One bent to his penis and he leaned back, shuddering pleasurably
against the other's breasts. The smell of their bodies overwhelmed
him.
While the one remained on his cock, he tilted his head back
into the sweet-sour folds between the other's legs. He and the one he
was tonguing (he thought it might be Sumi) came together-- in that
instant he felt his life drain out into both of them, as theirs' drained
into him.
The one on his cock stayed there until he was hard again and
mounted him from the top. The other woman moved between them
biting,
scratching, caressing the two of them as they moved together. Then
the women switched places and a new warmth enveloped him. He
felt one riding him (Sumi, he was sure.) lean across his chest and
brush her lips across the other's labia. Ice trembled to a climax as he
kissed her and the life moved between the three. The smells of
concrete and rust, sweat and sex flared and merged with his own
orgasm, lighting, for a moment, the vast and eyeless darkness in a
small act of binding.
And then the light was gone and he was blind again, but this
time he did not feel so alone.
Big trouble." It was Groucho's voice.
Jonny sat up in bed and fumbled for a light switch, then
remembered where he was. He felt Ice and Sumi stirring on either
side of him. What's wrong?" he asked.
Zamora," said Groucho. He's got the city sealed off. There are
goddamn jetfoils patrolling not a hundred yards out from here. Road
blocks on the freeways and secondary roads. Aerial recon on the
desert. Nobody's going anywhere.
How'd you hear about this?" asked Ice. Both women were up
now. Fabric rustled softly as they pulled on their clothes. Jonny
waited for someone to hand him his.
A rescue team just brought in a driver from up north," said
the anarchist. His voice was tired, hoarse. She was riding point for a
camel train moving down the coast from San Francisco, bringing in
antibiotics and amantadine. Seems that everything was clean and
clear until they hit Ventura. Some of Pere Ubu's boys were waiting
and all hell broke loose.
She going to make it?" asked Jonny. Someone dropped his
clothes in his lap and he started to dress.
I doubt it," said Groucho. She's shot up pretty badly. Gato just
shot her up with the last of our endorphins. I've been on the radio all
night. Ubu's got the town sealed up tight.
Think he's ready to move on the lords?" asked Ice.
No question about it," Groucho said. This driver said they
made a run on New Hope, hoping they could pick off a warehouse.
The place is deserted.
Then we're fucked," said Jonny. They've moved the heavy
money out of the way of war.
We're still safe out here, aren't we?" asked Sumi.
Not any more," said Jonny, pulling on his boots. It's standard
Committee procedure to let a few people get away from any raid, just
to see where they run. They probably had that driver tagged all the
way out here.
Which is why we're going back to the city," Groucho said. I
have people packing up anything we can use. The rest gets dumped.
We've got a few kilos of C-4 wired to pressure points all along the
superstructure of this building. When Ubu's boys get here, it will be
waiting for them.
What happens to Jonny?" Sumi asked.
Funny, that was my next question," Jonny said.
Groucho sighed. What can I say? We're pretty good for
weapons, but we have to coordinate with the other gangs before we
can hit the Committee. We can find something for you to do once we
get set up.
Like rolling bandages and hiding under beds when the
shooting starts? No thanks. I got other plans.
What?" asked Groucho.
Well, I don't mind telling you, Mister Conover was pretty
choked up when I took off from his place. He'll be glad to see me.
You sure you can trust him?"
Absolutamente," said Jonny. He always been right by me and,
besides, if there's any way to move stuff out of town, he'll know
about it. He stood up from the bed and pulled on his shirt. The
sounds of movement, clattering tools and footsteps, things being
dragged across concrete, echoed through the complex; there was
tension in the voices Jonny heard, a frenetic buzz that he recognized
as the prelude to combat. At that moment, he no longer had any
desire to remain at the farm, thinking, The Colonel's taken that away,
too.
I'll need a driver," he said.
That's me," said Sumi.
Jonny reached toward her voice and felt a hand close over his.
You should go with them," he said. They can use your help. If
Conover can't move me, it could mean sitting on our asses for a long
time.
We had a deal," said Sumi firmly. I don't see where this
changes anything but the location. I go with you now and Ice joins us
later.
When the girl's right, she's right," said Ice.
You sure?" asked Jonny.
Completely," Sumi replied. What about a car?"
No problem." Groucho's voice was farther away, near the noise
from the door. Be ready to go in thirty minutes," he said.
As the anarchist left, Jonny said, He says that like we got to
pack or something.
He just wants to give us time to say good-bye," said Ice.
Jonny laughed. I don't think a half-hour is going to be enough,"
he said.
Sumi took his hand, pulling Jonny through long and curving
corridors that buzzed with the staccato beat of voices (too many
languages at once, he could not understand any of it) and hurrying
feet. The smell of nervous sweat hung in the air, an undercurrent,
like a faint static charge.
Outside, a cool salt breeze lapped at his face. The sun warmed
him. Sumi took him down two switchbacks and then out over hard
sand that crunched like broken glass under their feet. It was a sound
from his childhood. Fused silicon. He knew where they were now,
could picture the scene in his head. The smell of burning fossil fuels
came from his right, along with the growling of primitive combustion
engines. The sun was dead ahead. Yes, he could see it. The vehicles
that had been hidden under the pylons of the fish farm, were being
rolled out onto the blackened beach, leaving feathery webs of cracks
in the dead glass of the Pacific Palisades shore. Jonny had visited the
beach before.
The summer of his twelfth birthday. He and a boy named Paolo
went over the wall from the Junipero Serra state school. In Santa
Monica they stole a small launch. Paolo piloted it up to the Palisades
and they weighed anchor at the sight of a wrecked
Venezuelan freighter. Liquid natural gas explosion, Paolo had said.
Wiped out the whole town. Jonny nodded, trying to look cool, but he
could barely keep his lunch down.
There was not much of the freighter left above the surface. In
the leaking wet suits and respirators they found on the launch,
swimming through the wreckage of the ship's engine room. It had
been blown, nearly intact, onto an outcropping of rock a few dozen
meters below the water level. The big furnaces were crusted with
bright streamers of coral and undersea plants, like some weird ice
castle. On their way back to the surface, Jonny spotted something. An
odd shape below the big mussel-studded steam pipes. He swam
closer. A skeleton, blackened with the sea and time. The back of the
skull and ribs had melted when the ship burned, flowing in the same
pattern as the bulkhead walls, fusing with them. Hermit crabs and
barnacles had claimed the skull.
Standing on the beach now, Jonny wondered if the sailor was
still out there, washed by the Pacific tides. He was the first dead man
Jonny had ever seen.
Sumi took his hand and placed it on the warm metal roof of a
car. Jonny felt his way along the smooth finish until he came to a
seam where the roof met the door. He pulled the door open (it swung
up, not out) as an arm slid around his midsection. You take care,
killer, Ice whispered. She pecked him below the ear.
Jonny nodded. You, too," he said. The sun was making the scars
on his face itch. He heard the women up by the headlights, speaking
in low tones. A rustle of fabric as they embraced. Then footsteps as
someone crunched away quickly across the sand. A hand touched his
arm. You have to step up to get in," said Sumi. Trying hard not to let
her voice crack.
Jonny put a leg up over the side of the low-slung car, and settled
onto rotten leather upholstery. When he touched the dashboard, he
felt weathered wood. His fingers smelled lightly of varnish and
mildew. As Sumi got in, he ran his hands over the stick shift and
instrument panel, felt an embossed logo. It reminded him of another
car he had been in. Something Italian. Lamborghini? he wondered.
There's a shoulder harness to your right," said Sumi quietly.
Buckling in, Jonny said, She's going to be all right."
Right."
Someone came running up to the car. Here, take this." It was
Ice, breathless. She put something in Jonny's hands. Half a meter long
and heavy, it smelled of cordite and machine oil, had two choppedoff cylinders mounted on a short wooden stock. A sawed-off shotgun.
Figure you can't use a pistol right now, but if someone gets close
enough, this'll modify their opinion.
Jonny weighed the gun in his hands. I love you, too," he said.
Need any amantadine?"
No, Conover'll be holding," said Jonny.
Right." Ice touched his shoulder. Gotta go," she said. And she
was running away again, off to where he could hear the other cars
warming up their engines.
Sumi gunned the Lamborghini and slipped the car into gear.
She's not coming back," Sumi said.
Just drive," said Jonny.
It began to rain as they entered the city. They were driving
along Wilshire Boulevard, right through the withered heart of the
financial district. Jonny imagined he could feel the heat of the lights
as they passed Lockheed's brilliant torus and the flat black sphere of
Sony International, Sumi trying to blend the old Lamborghini into
the hesitant flow of rush hour traffic. Groups of Croakers had
preceded them, heading north and south from the beach, hoping to
pull away any surveillance teams that had followed the camel train
driver.
Rain needled across the asphalt as they cruised through
Beverly Hills. Jonny thought it sounded like frying eggs. For the last
hour, a spring had been steadily working its way through the ruined
seat and into Jonny's back. He listened to thunder roll in the distance,
like a collapsing mountain, growing faint, until it faded completely
somewhere to the south. When they were in Hollywood, Jonny told
Sumi to head up into the hills.
Exactly, where are we going?" she asked.
Up high," said Jonny. We want to rattle Conover's cage so his
security'll come and check us out.
Great," said Sumi. How do you know they won't just blow us
away and ask questions later?
They won't."
How do you know?"
I know."
How?"
Actually, I don't. But I've still got this," he said. From his jacket
pocket, he pulled the black card with the gold bar code. Cops must
have left it when they decided I was still Committee meat. The card
transmits an identification code. They won't kill us if they scan us for
I.D.
If they scan us."
Right. If."
He told her to park the car in the driveway of one of the
derelict houses in the Hollywoodland development. They waited
there in the rain. Jonny popped the door on his side to let in a little
of the breeze the swept down through the hills. The air smelled of
sage and manzanita. The staples on his face alternately itched and
stung him. He thought about the endorphins Groucho had given him
back at the fish farm, wished he had some now. He consoled himself
with the thought that Conover would have all the drugs he needed to
feel better. Better than better, Jonny thought, remembering the stash
of Mad Love. Quite a mixed blessing, that. It would be a bad time to
bliss-out again, with Ice in trouble and Zamora's push so near. They
might have to move on a moment's notice. And he knew that Sumi
hated to see him wasted. It brought back bad memories for them
both. The Committee. Ice running away. Sumi doesn't need that crap,
he thought, not now. How are you feeling?" he asked.
Tired," said Sumi. My head hurts. Stomach, too. I wish we'd
had a chance to eat something today.
He wanted to tell her about the Mad Love, ask her to help him keep
clean. Conover's got these great cooks," he said. They really lay it
on. You'll feel better once you've eaten. He started to mention the
drugs. His lips moved, but the words would not come.
Folly, he thought. Greed and folly.
An hour passed. No contact with Conover or his people. Jonny
heard Sumi yawn. Her head settled on his shoulder, soft hair against
his cheek. He wondered if it was night yet. He was unaccustomed to
the sounds of the hills. Each gust of wind, each snap of a twig make
him jump. A part of him wished his hearing had gone with his sight.
Living by half-measures was getting to him. Sumi jerked her head
up.
What is it?" he asked.
Shh," she whispered. Something's moving."
Conover's men?" he asked.
No. An animal."
What kind--?"
Sumi screamed and something slammed into the front of the
Lamborghini like a truck. Then it was on the roof, clawing and
pounding on the canopy, trying to force it's way in through Jonny's
half-open door. He grabbed the handle and held on. What the hell is
it? he yelled.
A tiger!" screamed Sumi. She pounded on the glass. Get off,
fucker! Demasu! Demasu!
The cat growled like rolling thunder. Jonny's door lifted a few
centimeters and something slid in. He felt wind on his face, heard
claws tearing up the dashboard. Shoot it!" he yelled. Something cut
the air before his face. In his mind's eye he saw mad knives, bent
silver blades that smelled of musk and sweat coming for his scarred
face. Shoot it, goddamnit!" He pulled harder on the door, but could
not budge it.
Where's the gun?" yelled Sumi.
Jonny twisted in his seat, trying to keep his shoulder from the
ripping claws. He had slid the gun down between his seat and the car
wall. He felt along the rotten leather, coming up with spiderwebs and
dust. Then his hand fell on a wedge of polished wood. Something
sharp tore at his shoulder, scraped bone. He cursed once and fell
back against his seat, pulling the gun and letting off both barrels
through the window.
At first there was nothing. When the roaring in his ears died
down, he was aware of a gentle, but persistent hissing beneath the
sound of the rain. There was a peculiar chemical smell in the air.
Almost metallic.
Christ," said Sumi. It's a robot." Jonny heard her release the
latch and lift her door open. A creaking of springs as she stood in her
seat. Looks like you got it in the neck. Took it's head clean off. Jesus,
you ought to see this. Steam, fiber optics and circuit boards all over
the place. Some kind of super-cooled liquid. It's bubbling the paint
right off the car.
Get back in," said Jonny. They'll be coming soon."
I think they're here," said Sumi. Jonny heard he slide back into
her seat.
Footsteps ground on stone off to the left. They came right for
the car; it sounded like three of them, making no attempt to mask
their approach. They would be armed, Jonny knew. And nervous
when they saw the ruined cat. Conover's rail guns could turn the
Lamborghini to slag in a few seconds... A man barked harsh Spanish
near the front of the vehicle. Fuera! Fuera! Vamanos!"
Jonny held up his hands. Ricos! That you, man?"
Someone came around the car and raised the shattered door
over Jonny's head. A low laugh. Hey, maricon. I was all planned to
kick your ass, but I see somebody do it for me, no? Lucky for you.
Yeah, I must be about the luckiest guy in Last Ass," said Jonny.
Senor Conover es muy enojado, you take off like that," said
Ricos. He be happy to see you." The man moved closer. Quien es?"
That's Sumi," said Jonny. She's a Watt Snatcher. Friend of
mine.
Not bad, maricon," said Ricos.
You keep staring, ass-eyes, you're gonna find out how bad I
am, Sumi said. Jonny smiled.
Ricos tapped Jonny's shoulder. Come on," he said. Then, Hey
maricon, you bleeding.
Jonny put his legs over the side of the car and slid to the
ground. Sumi came around the front and took his arm. It's the story
of my life, he said.
We fix you up good," said Ricos, pushing Jonny toward the
trees. Watch your step."
Very funny," Jonny said.
A nasty piece of work, son," said Mister Conover, turning
Jonny's face in his hands. You're never going to have to learn to take
care of yourself, are you? The plastic surgery looks first-rate, though.
Tell me, what condition are the optic nerves in?
Shot," said Jonny. Sumi sat next to him on the plush sofa in the
Victorian wing of Conover's mansion. The room was warm ad the air
smelled of aged wood and patchouli. The smuggler lord had given
them Earl Grey tea spiked with Napoleon brandy. Jonny was working
on his third cup, rolling with the buzz, letting it build up slowly. He
was warm and despite everything, was feeling pretty good. Conover
was having one of his twice-weekly blood changes. Jonny could hear
the medical techs moving quietly around the room, mumbling to each
other, adjusting tubes and compressors. The optic nerves are sealed,
but they're pretty useless.
Interesting," said the smuggler lord. I'm sorry my tiger
mauled you tonight.
That's okay," said Jonny. He moved his shoulder, feeling the
tight weave of gauze where the techs had dressed his wound. Sorry
I had to blow its head off.
Completely understandable, given the circumstances," said
Conover. I'm sorry, too, in a larger sense, that any of this had to
happen. All this was avoidable, if you had just stayed put. But you're
still young and sometimes your energy outstrips your sense.
Considering what you've been through, I think could forgo the I-toldyou-so's.
I'd appreciate that," said Jonny.
The blood change took another hour. After that, Conover
announced that he was going to bed. On his way out, the smuggler
lord paused by the sofa and said, Nice to have you back, son," and,
Thank you for not hurting Ricos that night in the garage."
Jonny smiled toward Conover's voice. All I wanted was the car. Did
you get it back?
Of course," said Conover. I took the fact you didn'tdo Ricos
any real damage as a sign of your goodwill. That you were not
Zamora's man, after all. But please-I know--"
Don't run off like that, again." Conover's tone was friendly
enough, but there was something underlying it that chilled Jonny. He
nodded at the lord.
No problem," he said.
Good," said Conover. Fela, here, will take you to your room
when you're ready. I'm putting you in the same one you had last
time, Jonny. Since you're already somewhat familiar with the layout,
I thought you might be more comfortable there.
Yeah, thanks."
'Night all."
Good night," said Sumi.
After Conover left, they finished their tea in silence. At three,
dozens of clocks, porcelain and grandfather, cuckoo, music box and
free standing chimed, rang and called the hour, slightly out of sync,
so that the sound had the effect of a musical waterfall. When the
sound died down, Jonny asked Fela, a member of Conover's African
house staff, to take them to their room.
To his surprise, Jonny found that without his eyes to trick him,
the mansion was much less confusing than the last time he had been
there. He was learning the place by touch, sound and smell, not sight,
so the false doors and back-lit windows, the peculiar angles of the
floor and wall joints could not throw him off. He memorized as much
of their trip through the house as he could, mentally comparing what
he was touching to what he had remembered seeing in the mansion.
He knew when they reached the corridor where their room lay.
Inside, he was greeted with the familiar feel of filigreed wood on the
French antiques. He felt a kind of elation, a childish sort of pride,
completely out of proportion to what he had accomplished. He smiled
and staples stung him.
Fela left them (silently, as always) and Jonny took Sumi out into the
hall, walking her past the paintings, describing each he could
remember. That's a Goya, picture of a nude woman lying on a couch.
This is a Rembrandt, right? Dark portrait of an old man with no teeth.
On that table's a sculpture. I forget who did it. Bronze of ballerina.
Sumi made appreciative noises as they walked along. He could
not tell if she was admiring the art or his memory or neither. He did
not really care, either way. He had a surprise for her.
When Jonny felt the edge of a heavy gothic table, he stopped
and pointed to the wall above it. What do you see?" he asked.
A painting of some kid dressed all in blue. He's holding a big
feathered hat, Sumi said. "Am I supposed to like this guy or
something? He's not my type.
It's 'Blue Boy' by Thomas Gainsborough. And it's a fake," Jonny
said. The only one in the hall." He nodded back the way they had
come. Touch it. The texture's just a holographic trick." He waited a
moment. Well?"
Well what? What's supposed to happen?" asked Sumi.
It's plastic. Didn't you notice?"
She grunted. I don't think it's plastic."
Of course it is," insisted Jonny. I found the real one in a
storage room-His fingers brushed wormed wood, but where he
was expecting thin, ridged optical plastic, he felt fleshy mounds of oil
paint. Is this the right painting?" he asked.
It's a young boy dressed in blue," said Sumi.
Jonny shoved his hands in his pockets. He turned around in the hall,
confused, suddenly unsure in which direction their room lay. He
touched the painting again. Sumi took his arm and walked him back
to the room. He sat up the rest of the night brooding, wondering who
had changed the painting. Sumi tossed in her sleep. The brandy had
upset her stomach and she sweat with a low-grade fever. By dawn
(He could tell the sun was up by the warmth that came streaming
through the lace curtains. It made his face itch.), her fever had
broken. He lay down beside her on the damp sheets and fell asleep.
He dreamed, but there were no images, just darkness. Endless,
unbroken night.
It's the nineties all over again," Conover told Jonny and Sumi.
Silent waiters set bowls of what smelled like miso soup before them
on the low lacquered table. They were in the Japanese wing. Conover
had gone all out for the dinner, the third the three had shared. Silk
kimonos had arrived at Jonny and Sumi's room earlier that evening,
along with split-toe socks and wooden sandals. The scent of
sandalwood incense filled the house, along with koto music, fragile,
ancient, quarter-tone melodies, coming from the halls and every
room, flowing from speakers hidden in the walls. The three of them
sat cross-legged on tatami mats, firm, pumpkin-sized pillows resting
against their backs.
It was an exciting time. There was blood in the air then, too,"
the smuggler lord continued. Jonny thought he sounded a little
drunk. He had been celebrating by himself the completion of some
big business deal. It amazed Jonny how, in the midst of what seemed
to him to be absolute bug-fuck madness, Conover could calmly carry
on with business as usual. Earlier that evening he had mentioned this
to Conover and the smuggler lord had explained that it had mostly to
do with his age. Nothing much surprises me anymore. Or frightens
me, for that matter, he had said. "It's all re-runs now. Has been for
years.
Now, Conover said, Nineteen ninety six was the year of
reckoning. How good is your history, Jonny?
'Bout as good as my math," he said between sips of hot
soybean soup.
How about you, my dear?" Conover said to Sumi.
Ninety six? That's the year of the Saudi revolution. When the
oil ran out, right?
Conover, laughed and slapped the tabletop. An educated young
woman, how delightful, said the smuggler lord. "Yes, indeed, in
ninety six the oil ran out. For us. The west. Of course, it was still
there-- in the ground, but there was so little left that the New
Palestine Federation wanted to freeze all exports. That's what
brought down the House of Saudi. They opposed the embargo and
down they came, like a house of cards.
That's it?" asked Jonny. Someone took away his empty soup
bowl and set a plate before him. He sniffed. Pickled cabbage. That's
what that whole stupid non-war was about? They wouldn't sell us
their oil?
No, no, no," Conover said. That was part of it, to be sure. But it
goes much deeper than that, back years and years. If you read
histories of that period, they'll tell you the shooting started when
somebody blew-up the Malaga fusion reactor in southern Spain. The
CIA claimed the Arabs took it out with a surface to surface missile
from Tangier. For their part, the Arabs claimed that radical members
of the Green Party or some other environmental group did it without
knowing the damned thing was on-line.
Did they really blow up the reactor?" Sumi asked.
Yes indeed. Wiped out a hundred square kilometers of prime
Spanish real estate, too. But as to starting the war... It's like saying
the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand started World War One.
The event is true, the ultimate outcome is accurate, but the event
becomes meaningless when you remove it from its context.
Who's Archbishop Ferdinand?" asked Jonny.
It was Islam itself we had to kill," said Conover. Jonny heard
the smuggler lord sipping tea. He picked at his pickled cabbage,
waiting for Conover to continue. Even drunk, the man was
interesting.
This goes back to the nineteen seventies and the early oil
embargoes. When the Arabs first let the world know they were
aware of their own power. You have to understand, that world
communication was still at a very primitive stage. There was no
World Link, no skull-plugs. Your average westerner knew nothing of
the middle east. Muslims scared the hell out of middle America. All
most people knew of Islam came from the twentieth-century
equivalents of the World Link. Videos of hostage taking, flag
burnings, young men driving trucks full of explosives into the sides
of buildings. Utterly alien images. How were we frighten these
people? Intimidate them? We couldn't. There we were, the most
powerful country on earth and we were powerless to stop a handful
of radicals. 'Fanatics' we called them. 'Muslim extremists'.
Terrorists," said Jonny.
Oh yes. A very flexible word," Conover replied. Generally used
to describe anybody we don't like. But the Arabs-- after all the years
we had been shitting on these people, they were starting to shit back,
and that was unacceptable. It was bad for morale and, more
importantly, it was bad for business. We had to squash them. It was
going to be Central America all over again. Boom! Conover yelled.
Flat as a pancake."
Jonny set down his chop sticks and, not finding a napkin, licked
his fingertips. He had picked-up the habit of keeping one or two
fingers on his plate at all times. It was the only way he could find his
food.
You really think that old mess is heating up again?" he asked.
I was speaking metaphorically," Conover explained. I simply
meant to draw an analogy between that old war and our current
situation in L.A.
Who's the Arabs and who's the U.S.?" asked Jonny. I suppose
we'll figure that out when he see who wins. "The war in ninety-six
died down in a few days, right? asked Sumi. "Nobody really wanted
to start World War Three.
The war plans died, yes, but it was more like a few years,"
said Conover. Don't forget that's where our economy went, right
down the black holes of all those oil fields we didn't own. The
moment they signed the Reykjavik treaty, we were dead. All those
booming war-time industries collapsed overnight. Then, when the
Depression was at its worst, the Alpha Rats landed on the moon, cut
off the mines and our lunar research labs and finished us off. We're
probably the first country on record to ever go into receivership. The
Japanese picked us up for a song. The smuggler lord was silent, as if
remembering. Some people think it comes down to accumulated bad
karma. My dear-- Conover said suddenly-- "are you all right?
Jonny reached out and found Sumi's hand. It was hot and moist
with sweat. I'm fine," she said irritably, pulling from his grip. The
food up here's too rich for me. I can't keep it down.
She's been running a fever on and off for a couple of days,"
said Jonny. He touched her face. She was burning up.
Don't do that," she said.
Jonny heard Conover get up and move around to their side of
the table. Please," the smuggler lord said quietly. He was quiet for a
moment. Jonny knew the lord was checking Sumi's eyes. Hepatitis
was still common in the city, and the D strain was a killer.
Why, didn't you tell me about the fever sooner?" Conover
asked.
Jonny shrugged. We were out at that fish farm. It was wet. I
thought maybe she got a cold. It just didn't seem important, he said,
and saying it, he knew he was lying. He and Sumi had both been
afraid of the same thing when she became ill, and at moments of
stress it was easy to fall back on old habits. A year before they had
avoided talking openly about Ice's leaving and the daily knowledge
of it had eaten them up. Now they could not discuss Sumi's illness,
could not take the simplest measures to treat it because to treat it
would be to acknowledge its presence, and that was impossible. Sumi
could not be ill, not with what they both knew was loose in the city.
I'm going to have my techs check you out, Sumi," Conover said.
His heavy footsteps moved across the straw mat. A light door slid
back.
Please don't... Mister Conover?... Please... Jonny, make him stop.
I don't... want to know...
Jonny pulled her to him and she put her arms around his neck. She
shook with fever and wept quietly. Jonny found himself supporting
more and more of her weight. Hurry!" he yelled.
It was like waking up blind all over again. His mind was
working, racing, in fact, like an overheated engine, but nothing was
getting through. The information, the possibility that Sumi might be
fatally ill was utterly unacceptable. Bad dreams, bad data.
It's all right, babe," he whispered. Everything's gonna be all
right.
Medical techs were coming down the hall, preceded by the
smell of antiseptic. Something followed them. Jonny heard it
brushing against the rice paper walls, something that floated forward
steadily on an induction cushion. The techs pushed it up to sliding
doors and left it there, humming quietly. He felt Sumi being gently
lifted from him. Opening his arms, she slipped away, into a space
occupied by smooth, reassuring voices, the smell of scrubbed skin
and Betadine.
Jonny?" He heard her as they set her on whatever they had
brought with them. Don't let them take me, please. Jonny? They're
wearing masks. I can't see their faces. He sat there at the table as
they took her away. Jonny? I'm scared. Jonny?" Footsteps. The
buzzing of induction coils.
He cradled his head in his hands. Jesus-fucking-Christ." He
took deep breaths, pressed his fists to his temples. And hit himself.
And again. And again.
Stop it." Conover held Jonny's fists. You're not helping her
with that. We have to wait for the lab results.
You know what it's going to say," Jonny said.
No, I don't," said Conover. And neither do you, unless you've
developed some special sense you haven't told me about.
It's the virus," Jonny said. She's got the fucking leprosy."
This is a good med team. Russians," said the smuggler lord.
I'm moving them for a private clinic in Kyoto. Now they can earn
their keep.
She's been all over the city," Jonny said. It was her job. Watt
Snatcher goes anywhere people need power. She's been all over.
Probably been exposed to it a hundred times.
Conover sat down next to him. We'll know soon enough."
Jonny stretched his legs out on the tatami mat, running his
fingers over the scars on his face. He thought of the micrograph of
the virus he had seen at the Croakers' black clinic: the pseudophage's distorted head, its thin, insect legs holding it in place while it
pumped out its genetic material. Then the cloning of the plague. The
cell exploding. Poison in the bloodstream.
Mister Conover," Jonny began quietly, if I asked you a couple
of personal questions, would you be straight with me?
If I can." The smuggler lord's voice was deep, guarded,
rumbling from the depths of his belly.
I can't help thinking that you more about this leprosy analog than
you've been letting on. Let me ask you, that stuff Easy Money took
off you, was that connected with the virus? Maybe a specimen?
At first, Jonny did not think the lord would answer, but as he
was putting together another question he heard, Yes."
I've moved a few disease cultures and infected organs myself,"
said Jonny, to gangs into research. But this virus is something else.
It's like something a government lab or a multinational would come
up with.
I just move merchandise," said Conover. I have no idea who
the original owner is. The deal was conducted through a third party.
Any chance that original owner is Arab?" asked Jonny.
I have no idea," Conover replied.
Do you know if Easy Money has any Arab connections?"
Not to my knowledge."
But it is possible."
Easy Money would work for Colonel Zamora, the Arabs or
Mother Goose if she had cash, said Conover.
Right. And if Easy was moonlighting for the Arabs, what better
place to work than with you, using your connections and your
protection? Jonny said. "If he knew about that virus shipment and
was waiting for it, he could have been tipped by a go-between that
you had it, snatched it and taken off.
Conover dragged something across the table. The sound of
liquid being poured. Jonny felt a small cup was pressed into his hand.
He sniffed the liquid. Sake. He gulped the whole thing down. Easy
says he has a second vial from the shipment and he's willing to sell
it. Is it unreasonable to assume that if there are two vials involved,
one might be the virus and the other, something to kill it?
No. That's not unreasonable at all," said Conover. Do you know
where Easy is?
Maybe," said Jonny. What I can't figure, though, is that if Easy
is working for the Arabs, why he's willing to sell us the second vial?
Easy is greedy," said Conover. Why should he turn a single
profit when he can double his money by splitting the vials and
selling them individually?
Yeah. That's just the way he'd do it."
So what are we going to do about this?" asked the smuggler
lord. It's obvious you know where Easy is hiding, but you won't tell
me.
I didn't say I wouldn't tell you. I just want to make a deal
first.
Conover laughed. Why didn't I see this coming?" he said. Jonny
heard him pour out more sake. A cup was pushed into his hand.
Your terms?" Conover asked.
If Sumi has the new leprosy," Jonny said, when I get this stuff
from Easy, she's the first one to get a shot.
I have no problem with that."
There's more," said Jonny.
My," said Conover appreciatively, you're growing up, son.
You're finally beginning to think like a business man.
The second part is that I'm in on the pick-up. I want to be
right there when the deal goes down. I want to hold the vial in my
hand and know it's safe.
You of all people should know how stupid an idea that is," Conover
said. The last time you left here you were healthy. Now you have a
face that's half plastic and no eyes at all.
It's a yes or no proposition," said Jonny. No go, no show."
Jonny could sense the smuggler lord thinking. He sipped his
sake and waited, confident that he knew what the lord's answer
would be. He felt an odd, distant amusement at having bested
Conover in a business deal. Below them, behind re-inforced concrete
doors, layers of steel and EMP shielding was Conover's underground
clinic. Jonny knew that the techs were down there studying Sumi's
blood, running tubes into her arms, down her throat, taking tissue
samples and watching her on video monitors from distant rooms,
manipulating diagnostic devices with nursing-drones, checking her
for signs of infection, but keeping well away from her. There was a
ball of acid burning in the pit of his stomach.
I'll accept your deal," Conover said, finally. But before we can
proceed, I have a deal of my own that you must accept. "
What is it?" Jonny asked.
It's simple, really, and not terribly unpleasant. I just want
your word that you and Sumi, when she is well, will remain here as
my guests, with complete run of the house and grounds, for as long
as I deem necessary.
That's it?" asked Jonny.
That's it," Conover replied.
There were footsteps coming down the corridor. Jonny picked
at a loose piece of tatami as Conover went to the sliding door. Low
voices. Thank you," Conover said, and sat down again next to Jonny.
It's the test results."
I don't want to hear it. If it was good news you'd have said so
from the door, Jonny said. "Shit. People like me, we spend our whole
lives tripping over our feet. But Sumi, she doesn't deserve this. He
tried to conjure her face, but he could not find it. The inside of his
head felt hollow, as if someone had scooped his brains out and
chromed the inside of his skull. You've got a deal, " Jonny said.
Excellent," said Conover. He poured them each another cup of
sake. A drink to seal the deal, and off to bed for you. You're going to
need strength tomorrow.
Yeah, dealing with Easy's a real drain."
You won't be cutting any deals tomorrow, I'm afraid.
Tomorrow, you're going under the knife.
What do you mean?"
I mean," said the smuggler lord, draining his
his lips in satisfaction, that at this time tomorrow,
surgery. If you're going back down into that madhouse,
me the best way to make sure you find your way back up
fix you up with a new pair of eyes.
cup and smacking
you'll be in
it seems to
here is to
TEN:
Second Sight: An Adventure in Optics
He could not sleep. He spent the night listening to the World
Link viewer in his room, restlessly changing the channel every few
seconds, program to program (Damned Alpha Rat documentaries, he
thought.), language to language, and pacing. The old house creaked,
settling deeper into the earth on its century-old foundation. Jonny
tried not to think of Sumi and Ice, tried to keep his mind numb. He
felt his way into the hall once, found Blue Boy and ran his fingers
over the uneven layers of paint. He knew that he was probably on
somebody's security camera, but he did not care. Jonny wondered
what would happen if he put his fist through the damned painting.
Later, in his room, when the little enameled clock on his desk chimed
seven times, they came for him.
They injected him with something and, against his will, he felt
himself relaxing. He was pushed through the halls on a padded chair
that hovered a few centimeters off the parquet floor on an induction
cushion, wondering if it was the same chair they had used to take
Sumi away. Conover walked behind him, smelling of clove cigarettes.
You have good timing, son," said the smuggler lord. In another
week, these techs would be gone. Off to Japan. My own staff is good,
but these people are special. And expensive, too. I'm turning a nice
profit on this deal. They're Russians, did I tell you? I had them
brought in from a sharaska near Leningrad. You wouldn't have
believed the state they were in when they got here. Pathetic. The
Russians had stuck neural scramblers in all their heads. One hundred
meters beyond the prison walls, their brains went into vaporlock. It's
not easy, you know, taking a neural scrambler out of a brain, and
having anything but Spam left over. The Japs developed the
technique. My staff performed the actual surgery. We lost two of the
Russians, but the rest came through with flying colors. Jonny was
pushed into an elevator. He heard the doors hiss closed, experienced
the slight vertigo of descent. Then the doors opened and they pushed
him to a room where the smell of antiseptic hit him like a slap in the
face. Doctor Ludovico is the prize, the reason the Japanese financed
the operation. The others are his staff. Ludovico is a specialist in
xenograftology. He'll be doing your surgery.
The techs elevated the chair a half meter and let down the
back, sliding Jonny onto a narrow table in a single, practiced motion.
Someone began covering him with small sheets of sterile cloth,
moving up his body to his throat, leaving his head bare. Fingers
touched his forehead, pulled the lids back from his empty eye
sockets. Jonny gasped.
Relax," said Conover. It's Ludovico. He just wants to have a
look at what he has to work with. Ludovico, Conover explained,
spoke no English. He smelled of expensive cigars and cheap cologne.
Jonny did not like the man, did not like having a stranger's fingers
prying into his head, did not like the idea of a bunch of possibly
brain-damaged ex-cons cutting him open, and he was about to say so
when a needle hit him in the arm and an anesthetic mask slipped
down over his nose.
I'll be seeing you," said Conover. And with any luck, you'll be
seeing me.
It hurts," Jonny said. Two days later, his hair was just
beginning to come back in. The Russians had removed the staples
from his face, sealing the scars with a protein glue. A lightshow
played in Jonny's head. No images, just silent fireworks. He had not
had any contact with Sumi since the surgery. She was in quarantine,
and from the noises Conover was making, Jonny thought she might
on life-support. Unconsciously, he found himself relying on the old
wisdom to keep going. It was a matter of accepting each moment as a
unique entity, allowing observer and the observed to merge and thus
keep the panic and horror from overwhelming him. The Buddhists
were right in that, at least, Jonny thought. He found that he was able
to meditate for short periods of time and that seemed to help.
Now, something was tickling his eyes; ants crawled up his optic
nerves, marched through his skull to his brain where they laid tiny
eggs that burst into super novas, scattering colors he could not name.
He was downstairs again, in a different room, sitting up this
time. Ludovico was there, mumbling to his assistants and operating a
Cray mini-computer, trying to calibrate the frequency response of
Jonny's new eyes. Exteroceptors, someone had called them. The front
of Jonny's head felt huge, bulging with the new hardware. The techs
had assured him that the feeling would wear-off in a few days, but
Jonny had his doubts. He was convinced that he would look like a
bug for the rest of his life.
It's a bridge he's built," said Conover. That's the key to this
procedure. Ludovico's by-passed your optic nerves completely, and
implanted silicon sensors in your sight centers. The chips receive
data from a broadcast unit at the back of the exteroceptors.
Your retinas are really modified Langenscheidt CCD's. Any pain
or unusual light patterns you are experiencing are the effects of the
electrical field around the graft stimulating what's left of your optic
nerves.
Jonny laughed. People've been telling me I ought to get a
skull-plug for years.
Now you've done them all one better. An entire digitized
sense.
I don't know," said Jonny, squirming in the exam chair, trying
to find a comfortable spot, I've always been a little afraid of grafts
and implants, you know? Like maybe I'd forget where the machinery
ended and I started.
Conover breathed heavily, making a sound that could have
been a sigh. It's all a gamble," he said. Every moment you're alive.
Would you rather be blind?
No way," Jonny said. He shook his head. Some choice."
Ludovico said something and a woman with a heavy Japanese accent,
translated. The doctor is going to bring up the exteroceptors now. He
wants you to describe everything you see.
Jonny settled back in the chair, consciously controlling his
breathing. Burning violet rimmed his field of vision.
Keep your eyes open," someone said.
Hot fear. Something was moving up his throat.
Give me anything, he thought. Just a little light. A little light.
Over and over until the words lost all meaning and it became a chant,
a mantra-Then it flowed into him, obliterating all else, a flood of
sensations, solid mass of bent spectrum, vague things moving within.
He turned his head, letting the colors blur across his vision. His
vision. He was seeing children's blocks, a rainbow chess board-- no-a grid, like fine wire mesh. Each individual segment was throbbing
neon. Then shapes. A man was seated before him. His right hand
appeared to be burning.
There's a lot of colors coming through a grid," Jonny said.
Looks like some kind of pixel display. There's someone there. His
hand-- it's like it's on fire. The woman translated into Russian.
The man-shape typed something into the Cray and the colors
dropped suddenly in intensity, replaced with more distinct shapes.
The burning hand was no longer burning, but remained faintly
aglow, splashes of pastels shading the fingers and wrist like an old
map, different colors indicating geographic regions. The hand
belonged to a fat man, Jonny could see, and the burning, he realized,
had come from a pencil-sized flashlight the fat man had been shining
into his eyes.
The pixels had the effect of distancing Jonny from what he saw.
He felt that he was watching the room from a video monitor, shooting
through thousands of individual squares of beveled glass.
Something flared off to his right. Jonny turned and saw
Conover. The smuggler lord was lighting a cigarette, the flame on his
lighter burning red and ludicrously large.
These eyes have thermographic grids," said Jonny. Some kind
of computer-enhanced infrared scan. "A bonus, said Conover, a
variegated skull, dead patches of skin registering as holes in his face.
There are some other sub-programs in there, too. You'll find them
and learn to control the sensitivity of the pixels.
I can make out shapes pretty well, right now," Jonny said. Are
the colors going to be like this all the time?
No, you're just registering infrared because the lights are out."
Well fire them up. This heat-vision is weird," Jonny said.
Is that all right, Doctor?" Conover asked. A woman spoke to
Ludovico, whom Jonny recognized as the fat man. The Russian
nodded, extra chins spilling over his collar. Da," he said, and
someone turned on the lights. Normal spectrum canceled out the
infrared. Jonny looked at the room, the people, the blinking lights on
the diagnostic devices. The colors were just a shade or two hotter
than normal.
Fucking beautiful," Jonny said. He was laughing. It was all he
could do.
Conover put a hand on his shoulder. It all right now, isn't it?"
he asked.
It's incredible, man," Jonny said. When can I go see Easy?"
Soon. Tonight, maybe, depending on how you feel. Before you
go, though, there's something we have to talk about.
Yeah, I know. You want one of your people to go with me."
That's right. Ricos. But that's not what I want to talk about."
Conover dropped his cigarette to the floor and ground it out. There
was something wrong with the techs' faces. They were not looking
like him like someone they had just cured. More like someone they
had just saved from meningitis only to find cancer. Jonny recognized
a woman in the corner as Yukiko, a member of Conover's private
medical staff. She had been kind to him when he was here before, he
remembered, but now she would not look at him. What's going on?"
asked Jonny.
You know," Conover said gently, living out here in the fringes,
we sometimes find ourselves forced fall back on raw ingenuity and
imagination. He picked a set of forceps off a metal tray table,
turning them over in his hands. We learn to improvise."
What did you improvise?"
You have your sight again."
What's wrong with me?" He scanned the room again. Have I
got the virus? he asked.
Nothing like that," said Conover. I just want you to
understand the context of your operation.
By then Jonny was up, pushing the Russians out of his way,
looking for something. Near the scrub sink, a chrome cabinet on the
counter. Leaning on the Formica (white flecked with gold) he pressed
his face close to the metal. And cursed, his fist denting the side of the
cabinet before he could think. What have you done to me?" he
yelled.
We gave you back something you had lost."
Jonny looked back at the dented metal, searching for his face,
but it was not there. Sockets black and threaded with the purple and
red of broken blood vessels. Something alien stared back at him.
Yellow-eyed, with pupils that ran vertically from lid to lid. At certain
angles, there were flashes of light, green and metallic. Tapetums, he
thought.
That tiger I blew away," Jonny whispered, feeling the strange
machinery in his head. You gave them to me."
We had no choice," Conover said.
Jonny turned to him. Great trade, man. One short hop. Cripple
to freak.
You're no more a freak than I," Conover said. His face
tightened, smoke trailing from the scar of his nose. Do you think I
always looked like this? You learn to live with it.
Jonny kept staring. Look at me. I ought to be in a fucking
carnival.
Conover moved up beside him. You wanted eyes, you have
them.
Jonny walked numbly back to the examination chair, fell into
the seat, covering his face with his hands. Oh, man--"
It was the best we could do," the smuggler lord told him. He
smiled. And you have to admit-- in this city, they're really not such
a strange sight. In a few weeks, they'll be old friends.
Oh Christ." Jonny looked at his hands. Don't get the idea I'm
sorry about the operation, he said. The grid was still visible, subtly,
clipping the tips of his fingers straight across. He looked at Conover.
I'm glad I can see again, really. It's just kind of a shock."
Conover nodded. I understand." He looked at his watch.
Listen, I'm going to have to leave for a business meeting. You should
go to your room and try to get some rest. I'll send Ricos by later. You
can tell him then if you want to go tonight or wait.
Right," said Jonny. As Conover started to leave the room, he
called out. Mister Conover--"
The smuggler lord stopped in the door. Yes?"
Jonny shrugged. Thanks," he said.
My pleasure."
Think you could do me one more favor?"
What is it?" Conover asked.
Could you have somebody take the mirrors out of my room?"
Conover smiled. Done," he said, and left.
Jonny leaned on the counter, letting his nearly bald head fall
back against the laminated cupboard doors, and stared at the
Russians staring at him. Yukiko brought him tea in a white
styrofoam cup. With a little effort, she looked at him and smiled.
Thank you," he said.
The trip back to his room was a nightmare. He kept his head
down, but the peculiar layout of the house forced him to look up
frequently and his reflection seemed to always be there, waiting for
him in the glazing on a Ming vase, in the glass front of an antique
china cabinet, the polished chrome of a seismic meter.
Golden-eyed monster.
He had refused the induction chair; a couple of the Russian
techs followed him from the clinic, keeping a respectful distance.
When he got to his room, he closed the door in their faces.
Inside, he remained by the door and looked the room over,
checking for any reflective surfaces. When he found none, he went
straight to the bed and lay down.
The transparent lameness of Conover's story had been so
obvious to Jonny that he knew it had to be deliberate. That meant
that giving him the freakish eyes was, to one degree or other, a
calculated move. The smuggler lord had obviously planned to show
his displeasure with Jonny in some way, and Jonny's blindness
presented him with a convenient method. The eyes were a
punishment and a warning. Punishment for stealing the car and
running away, and a warning that he had better not do it again. Like
a Yakuza ritual, Jonny thought. Make a mistake, lose a finger joint.
Look for the guys with no fingers, they're the real fuck ups.
What does that make me? he wondered.
It surprised him, but he felt no real anger toward Conover for
what he had done. He could have done a lot worse, Jonny knew. And
the smuggler lord had been right all along. The moment Jonny had
left the hill, he had set himself on a course that led right back into
Zamora's hands. Living with funny eyes, he thought, would be a hell
of a lot easier than living with whatever the Colonel had planned for
him.
Hey, maricon."
Jonny sat upright in bed. He had no memory of falling asleep
and feeling himself shaken awake, the loss of control it implied,
frightened him. Jonny looked at Ricos and saw that he was not the
only one who was startled.
Joder, man," Ricos whispered. He was wearing a red
motorcycle jacket and stripped leather pants. What you let them do
that to you for? Ricos was staring at Jonny as he might have stared
at an open sore or a road kill, not trying to hide his disgust. For that,
Jonny was grateful.
I didn't have a lot of choice," said Jonny, swinging his legs off
the bed and getting up.
Carajo. I kill anyone do that to me."
Your boss included?"
Anyone."
Jonny smiled at the man. You're really full of shit. You know
that? He went to the dresser, found a pair of black slacks his size
and started to put them on. We're going to need ID," he said.
Something corporate. Multinational."
No problem," said Ricos.
On the top of the dresser somebody had left a dozen pairs of
sunglasses, laid out neatly in horizontal three rows. Their sleek
designs, so out of place against the pale wood of the French antiques,
reminded Jonny of one of the Croakers' strange sculptures. Without
thinking, he picked up the mirrored aviators and put them in the
breast pocket of the gray tweed jacket he had taken from the closet.
All right," Jonny said. We'll pick up the ID, get you some
better clothes and be on our way.
What's wrong wi' my clothes?" asked Ricos, offended.
Nothing man, if we were going to Carnaby's Pit." He headed out
the door, Ricos a few steps behind him.
So where you takin' me, maricon?"
Jonny spun and jammed a finger into the man's stomach. Little
Tokyo, he said. "Where they shoot people like you and me on
sight.
The car was an old alcohol-powered Brazilian coupe, modeled
on a turn-of-the-century Mercedes design. Ricos drove; he wore a
powder blue Italian suit and tugged constantly at the collar of his
pearl-gray shirt. Jonny and he were carrying the ID chips of dead
men.
They abandoned the car near Union Station, an art deco hulk,
sprouting cracked brick and I-beams like exposed ribs. A ruin of
stripped cranes and power generators surrounded it, heaps of ferroceramic track turning black under the moon, under the Alpha Rats'
gaze, waiting for the bullet train that never arrived.
A maintenance shaft beneath the battered transformers of an
out-of-commission Pacific Gas and Electric sub-station ended in a
short crawl-space that gave out at the false bottom in a section of
vent, part of the massive air re-circulation system that served the
Little Tokyo arcology. Jonny removed the loose bottom panel from
the vent and he and Ricos crawled inside, careful not to get their new
clothes dirty. The dimensions of the vent were such that they were
able to duck-walk their way to an access hatch, a hundred meters or
so upwind from where they entered. It was like strolling into a
tornado the whole way.
Manipulating the lock from the inside, Jonny opened the hatch
and they jumped down to the floor of the re-circulation plant. The
place was fully automated, Jonny remembered, the human crew
making no more than a cursory round of the place once or twice a
night. Jonny could hear Ricos behind him, breathing above the din of
the air-circulators. The man was tense and jittery, starting at every
grunt and hiss of the equipment. Jonny led him into a corridor that
rose in a slow spiral toward the surface. Cinder block walls painted
the teal and orange of the Hundred Dynasty Corporation bulged with
rot.
They found the ladder Jonny was looking for behind a wall of
fifty-five gallon drums stacked on modular racks, pushed away a
grating at the top and emerged behind a French discotheque, La
Poupee.
In the pastel half-light that bled over the rooftops, the skeletal
superstructures supporting neon graphics and holo-projectors, Jonny
took a last quick look at the dead man's ID. Jonny was Christian van
Noorden, a Dutch-born systems analyst for Pemex-U.S.; Ricos had a
chip identifying him as Eduardo Florentino, a security coordinator for
Krupp Bio-Elektronisches. Jonny slipped on his mirrored aviators and
headed for the boulevard, Ricos on his heels, and merged unnoticed
into the crowd of strolling tourists, the cream of the multinationals'
crop.
Walking just ahead of Jonny and Ricos was a group of young
Swedish aerospace techs. They were fair and slender, strikingly
attractive, each with the same narrow jaw and delicate, long-fingered
hands. Jonny wondered if they might be clones. They were all
shirtless and the hard muscles of their torsos were exposed, flexing
as they moved, beneath transparent polycarbonate bodysheaths.
Their muscles had been dyeddifferent colors to accentuate the
movement of various groups. They were like living anatomy charts.
Across the street, high in the air, appeared the parting lips of a
hologram vagina, a pink, idealized orchid, a toothless mouth that
seemed to engulf the image, becoming a roller coaster flesh-tunnel,
the glistening walls blurring by.
At the corner, Jonny had to stop. He pretended to watch the
animated menu display outside a Burmese restaurant. The menu
explained the meals in different languages depending on where you
stood, but Jonny hardly noticed it. His hands were shaking.
It was an impossible psychic leap. He was a kid again, seeing
Little Tokyo for the first time, nailed in his tracks by the light, the
air, the impossible wealth and beauty of the place, the blatant and
cherished waste of energy. Little Tokyo was a transcultural
phenomenon, its name having long since been rendered meaningless,
indicating a city geosector and giving hints to the place's history, but
little else. It was Japanese and European chic filtered through
American sleaze, through generations of exported television, video
and Link images, visions of Hollywood and Las Vegas, the cheap
gangster dreams of the Good Life, haven and playground for the
privileged employees of the multinationals. Little Tokyo was loud
and it cost the corporations dearly, but they loved it and, in the end,
came to need it. What had once been their plaything, now defined
them.
There were clubs offering all varieties of sexual encounters,
death-fetish clubs, where controlled doses of euphoria-inducing
poisons had replaced drugs as the high of choice (It was in one of
these clubs when he was seventeen that Jonny had first tried Mad
Love. Right now, he thought, he would kill for a hit.). There were the
computer-simulation clubs, offering those with skull-plugs close
encounters with violence, madness and death. A block ahead was the
Onnogata where members of various cartels gambled time in the regeneration tanks for data on next year's computers, synth-fuels and
pharmaceuticals.
Other clubs offered similar opportunities, and anyone could
play. Hit a losing streak, and you could leave parts of your body
scattered all over the boulevard. Organ removal and installation were
all part of the standard hotel services. Those who lost badly enough
were put on life-support systems, sometimes gambling even those
away before the company jet could arrive to take them home. No one
had died in Little Tokyo for over a century. Not permanently.
Ricos was staring at Jonny. You want to eat now?" he asked.
Jonny looked at the man, then back at the menu which was
describing a chicken and rice dish in over-eager French. No," he said,
just thinking."
He took off across the clean broad street, walking, wanting to
get the feel of the place before he got down to business. He had not
been Little Tokyo in years. Warm breezes carried the faint smell of
orange blossoms, a wholly contrived sensation. Jonny had seen
drums full of the scent back in the re-circulation plant.
Conover had been right about the eyes, Jonny noticed. Halfconsciously, he had begun to manipulate them, changing their focus
at first by mistake, then by repeating the mistake until he could
control it. He turned to Ricos, who seemed unaffected by the place,
colors slurring slightly off-register in his peripheral vision. You see
it? asked Jonny.
Que es, maricon?"
No one's sick here. No one's old," he said. They were walking
by a man-made lake. One and two-person robot hover-vehicles were
cutting up the glassy surface of the water, shuttling between the
shore and a five-story pagoda on a small island near the lake's
center, wings of jewel-like foam spreading from beneath the little
disc-shaped crafts, setting off the tailored evening gowns and tuxes
of the riders. Not a leper, not a liver spot, not a paper cut in sight."
Si," Ricos replied, nodding toward a young couple displaying
their customized genitalia to some friends. Chrome winked from
between their thighs. Estos carajoes, they come in kits. Comprende?
Cut 'em, they don' bleed.
The entrance to the Japanese club was flanked by two mansized temple dogs carved from some dark supple wood. Ricos walked
past the place, but Jonny stopped, drawn by something, perhaps the
odd angle at which one dog's head had been craved, realizing at the
moment he stopped that the dogs were not statues but were, in fact,
alive. The dogs, pure-bred Tosas, sat on their haunches, watching the
crowd with the impassiveness of sunning lizards, the pink of a
tongue appearing now and then to lick massive jaws, their necks and
backs bulging with muscle, the end-product of controlled breeding
and genetic manipulation. As Jonny looked at the animals, a frozen
image of the bodysheathed Swedes imposed itself on his vision, the
street by La Poupee clear in the background. Then it was gone. Jonny
blinked, tensing the muscles around his eyes. The image of the
Swedes flashed back. He held it this time, made it move slowly,
forward and backward. It made perfect sense that the eyes would
have a recording chip, he thought. Couple of days ago, they were part
of a security system. Download pictures of intruders for the law. He
blinked off the image and said, In here," to Ricos.
The uniformed Japanese doorman bowed and held the door for
them as they went in, touching a hand to his right temple as Jonny
and Ricos walked past. Scanning for weapons, Jonny knew. He cursed
silently, wondering if they had been made already.
Inside the club, it was very dark, the architecture traditional:
tatami mats, low tables glowing with buttery yellow light of painted
lanterns, white-faced geishas serving pots of hot sake to the mostly
male, mostly Japanese and American middle-management crowd.
There was a lot of noise coming from a room beyond the bar. Jonny
slipped his hand to the small of his back as if to hitch up his pants,
and touched the grip of a small SIG Sauer handgun. The body of the
weapon was of a liquid crystal polymer, impossible, he had been told,
to pick up on metal detectors. The shells were a Gobernacion
standard issue, commonly known as Rock Shot. Each bullet had a
synthetic quartz tip. When it struck an object and compressed, the
minute charge from the quartz was conducted through a medium of
liquid polypyrrole where it ignited suspended particles of C-4
plastique. Ricos was carrying a similar weapon in his jacket.
Jonny ordered sake and motioned for the geisha to bring it to
them in the next room. She bowed. He smiled uncomfortably at her,
unsure if he was supposed to bow back or not. He bowed, and the
geisha giggled at his gaijin stiffness. Keep your eyes open for Easy
Money, he told Ricos.
They split up in the next room, climbing opposite sides of a
flat-topped pyramid constructed of multiple tiers of polished
mahogany beams. The smell of sweat and blood was heavy in the
smoky booze-air, but Jonny was still shocked by what he saw when
he reached the top tier, pushed his way to the front and peered
down into the wooden pen.
The winning dog was just receiving its award (outline of a
golden lotus on a small banner of purple satin) from a pale doughyfaced man in shirt sleeves. One of the dog's front paws was twisted
and badly mangled. Jonny watched the losing dog's body being
dragged out of the enclosure, its humiliated owner and assistant
careful not to get blood on their white shirts.
A moment later, the whole thing was starting again. The doughyfaced man made an announcement in rapid-fire Japanese and
blessed each corner of the arena with salt. Then two more dogs,
enormous Tosas again, bigger than the previous pair, easily a
hundred and fifty kilos each, were lead in from opposite sides of the
pen at the end of heavy carbide steel chains. The money chips were
out; Jonny caught the flash of silicon embossed with gold phoenixes
as the crowd surrounded the house bookmakers, touching their chips
to the little multiplexer he carried, hoping to get their bets in before
the dogs were released and the odds started dropping. Jonny looked
around for an exit and found one, down by the far end of the
enclosure. He was just starting for it when he heard the dogs hit, the
dull thud of meat on meat, low-throated animal grunts, primal
death-talk. He looked around for Ricos, nodded when he saw the man
on the other side of the pen, eyes wide, watching the animals tear
each other apart. Jonny smiled. Ditching Ricos had been easier than
he had ever expected.
Heading down the tiers toward the exit, Jonny heard one of the
dogs yelp frantically, the sound of it painful through the club's P.A.
system. Jonny was almost to the floor when he turned and darted
back into the crowd. Sometime during the few seconds it had taken
him to find Ricos and walk down the steps, a Meat Boy had stationed
himself at the exit. Jonny shouldered his way through the screaming
mob, moving back the way he had come, eyes on the gambler's faces,
trying to keep the dog fight out of his sight. Animal screams and
human cheers. He spotted another Meat Boy by the entrance to the
bar. The giant was talking to someone. The doorman. Jonny looked
around, hoping that maybe there was an exit he had missed. But he
found none, and when he turned back the way he had come in, he
saw the doorman-- pointing right at him. Jonny ducked back into the
crowd, scrambling along the top tier, the Meat Boy moving through
the crowd like a pock-marked ice breaker.
Up, one leg over the rim of the dog pit. For an instant, the
crowd fell silent. Then he had the gun out and the noise came back,
shrill and frantic this time. He fired twice, but the stampede was
already underway, and when the shells hit, blasting away one end of
the dog pen, the frightened Tosas took off, all teeth and claws,
headed for only way out. The Meat Boy chasing him, big as he was,
was helpless, dragged back by the press of bodies. The last Jonny
saw of Ricos, he, too, was being swept along by the human tide. His
gun was out, his eyes wide and furious. Jonny did not stick around to
see what happened.
He headed for the rear of the club, which was nearly deserted,
and made it out the rear exit. Down the alley for the rest of the block.
When he came out onto the street again, he fell in with a crowd that
was staring back at the club. Dark-suited men were still pouring out
the front. The Tosas were headed down the sidewalk, scattering
pedestrians and snarling the evening traffic.
Jonny took the long way around the block, just make sure he
did not run into anybody from the dog club. Eventually, he ended up
back at the man-made lake. Small hovercrafts churned-up the water.
The pagoda glittered on its small island, its finial a solid chunk of
carved rose quartz, twenty meters high. Around the pagoda's base
was a grove of crystal trees, a tangled thicket of prisms. The Forest of
Incandescent Bliss.
No more screwing around. It was time to find Easy Money.
ELEVEN:
Object to be Destroyed
Good evening," said the little hovercraft as Jonny stepped
aboard. For your safety and comfort, please hold onto the handrail
provided. The trip across will take two minutes. Under normal
circumstances, Jonny would have ignored the synthesized voice, but
for some reason, tonight, the obsequious tone of the warning
annoyed him.
Fuck you," he told the machine.
Very good, sir," it said. The non-skid rubberized matting on
the passenger platform vibrated softly through the soles of his feet
as the craft's engine rose faintly in pitch, lifting him and the vehicle
out and over the water. A light mist of warm water blew up from the
sides of the craft, settling on his skin. The feel of Sumi's fevered
body, Groucho's theories on art and revolution came back to him as
he skimmed toward the bright pagoda in the distance. Flashes of carp
and fat prawns below the surface of the lake. His thoughts of Sumi
disturbed him. The images revolved around plastic tubes and pumps,
dumb machines that could never know or understand her, that
might, in their ignorance, fail, not perceiving her value, the absolute
need he had for her to be alive. Revolution, when he considered it,
was a phantom pain, nothing more. Like his eyes. He felt them itch,
but he knew that they were plastic and unreal, and therefore, they
could not itch, yet his desire to rub them was constant. Revolution
was like that. A delusion, a pipe-dream that when the lid closed over
the eye, it could be rubbed and the itch would go away, that the flesh
would be restored, the machinery vanished.
Before he had run into the Croakers, Jonny had known a
number of revolutionaries. Bomb-throwers and pamphleteers,
graffiti artists and assassins. Some of them had meant it, others were
revolutionaries of fashion, of convenience. In the end, they had all
failed. Jonny had already spotted a dozen of the old faces in the
corporate crowds of Little Tokyo. Maybe they were the smart ones,
he thought. The ones who went over. Maybe they were the ones who
were dead before they started. He could not decide.
The crystal trees at the base of the pagoda grew in detail and
complexity (molten glass light webbed through with burning
diamonds) as the hovercraft approached. A battery of white-gloved
attendants shaped the trees, carving the branches and leaves from a
base of modified aluminum sulfate crystals. Easy Money was
somewhere in the structure beyond, Jonny knew. He would get the
second vial from Easy, kill him if he got the chance (because he had
not forgotten Raquin's murder). That was all the revolution he could
expect. As for the other, Groucho's anarchist dreams, there wasn't a
chance in hell for those. The best that could be hoped, Jonny decided,
was for Sumi to get better and for Ice to come back, to not get hurt
for delusions, for dreams of old eyes.
Once inside the Forest of Incandescent Bliss, he went straight to
the bar. It was a low affair, horse shoe-shaped, attempted art deco,
with gilded mirrors behind the bottles and ridged tiles that glowed
with a soft internal illumination. The two bartenders, an Asian male
and a blonde caucasian female, were each under a meter tall, but
perfectly proportioned. Everything behind the bar, bottles and corks,
sponges and mixing utensils, was scaled down to their size.
Everything except the glasses in which they served the drinks; these
were meant for someone Jonny's size and looked absurdly large in
the bartenders' child-like hands.
Jonny ordered gin and tonic, watched as the little man
retrieved a hundred year old bottle of Bombay gin that had been
sealed, at sometime in its past, in dull blue wax. Jonny sipped his
drink and handed the man his ID chip. It failed to register the first
time the bartender tried to call up the account, and when it failed a
second time, Jonny started to get nervous. On the third try, though,
the transaction went through, the computer deducting the amount of
the drink and a large tip from the dead man's company account.
Swirling the cool antiseptic-tasting gin in his mouth, Jonny swallowed
one of Conover's endorphin tabs. His new eyes were hurting, a
constant pain cutting right through his head to the back of his skull.
Something was moving in the gilded mirror behind the bottles.
Jonny turned to the darkened lounge which took up most of the
pagoda's ground floor. Aged oyabuns playing endless games of Go,
moving with the ancient and deliberate grace of mantises, younger
men talking earnestly, toasting each other, skull-plugged into tabletop translators. Mostly Japanese faces, but many American and
Mexican, too. Jonny knew a few, had seen others in the newsrags.
Many of the Japanese were missing finger joints. Yakuza. Must be
their hang-out, he thought. Neutral ground. Mafia, the Panteras
Aureo, Triad families, they were all there, criminals in a league
beyond anything Jonny had ever known or experienced. They were
like him, but, he understood, their immense wealth had insulated
them, enabled them to live far enough removed from ordinary life
that they were almost mythological figures, shaping the course of
nations with their wealth.
Kaleidoscoping in the air above the gangsters' heads was a
crystalline holographic light display, like a sculpted cloud. It seemed
to follow the shifting mood of the room, colors brightening when the
voices rose, muting when the talk was low. The man next to Jonny
addressed the bartender in Portuguese. He wore an Irezumi jacket-tanned skin of a heavily tattooed man, cut bomber-style, with fur
around the collar, one of the most expensive garments in the world.
He was not the only person wearing such a jacket.
In the end, Jonny thought they were not very much like him at
all. So where the fuck was Easy Money?
He turned, seeing her at the same moment she saw him. Quick
eyes, face the color of night.
Hey gaijin-boy, you lookin' for a date?" she said.
What the fuck are you doing here?" he asked. Ice smiled,
looped an arm in his and drew him away from the bar. She wore a
tight brown pin-striped dress, cut like a man's suit at the neck,
tapering to a pleated skirt that fell just above her knees. Her legs
were bare. On her feet she wore rolled-down white socks and strapon Mary Janes. Jesus Christ, you turning tricks for the revolution?"
Relax," Ice said, holding the smile. She took him to a corner of
the bar below a spiral staircase whose railings were mahogany
dragons, curled around each other in battle. Soft quarter-tone
melodies came from a wall-mounted Klipsch speaker above their
heads. Now," she said, apparently satisfied that no one could hear
them. Keep smiling, babe. I'm not turning tricks for nobody. See?"
She showed him the cork-bottomed tray she carried. I just serve
drinks. These Yakuza boys like to be around gaijin girls. 'specially us
dark exotic types.
But-- " he began.
But that doesn't mean they can have us."
Fuck," he said. He could not pinpoint who or what he was
angry with, the club, Ice or himself. So what are you doing here?"
I was going to ask you the same thing," she said. Where's
Sumi?
He touched her shoulder, smiled for the first time. She's fine,"
he lied. I left her up at Conover's. I'm supposed to meet Easy Money
here.
Por que?"
Deal I made with Conover," he said. I've got to get some of his
merchandise back for him.
Ice looked at him and her smile wavered. You okay?" she
asked.
Fine."
Something's wrong. Is it Sumi?"
She's fine." He bit off the sentence abruptly enough that he
knew Ice could tell he was lying. You shouldn't be here," he told her.
She shrugged. I'm undercover," she told him. There's other
Croakers and some Naginatas, too. We've staked this place for
months. Zamora comes here sometimes.
Zamora?"
Yeah. This is where we first got wind of the raids. Figure the
next time he comes in, she pressed two fingers into his ribs, "boom!- Buenos noches, Colonel. She pulled a wad of bills from her pocket.
Besides, the tips are great."
He shook his head in wonder. I'm glad to see you."
Ditto, babe."
I know this is sick," he said, but you're making me incredibly
horny.
It's the club," she said. Subliminals in that holo display. They
pump some kind of sex pheromone-analog through the air
conditioning system. Her hands were up before he could stop her.
Later, when he was alone, he would replay the picture of her face,
studying the emotions there as she saw his new eyes: fear,
bewilderment, concern.
Oh baby," she said. Jonny felt her hand on his cheek. He turned
his head, caught a distorted image of himself in the upturned lenses
of the aviators. Yellow eyes. Vertical pupils glinted chrome green. He
had forgotten about them, unconsciously adjusting the exteroceptor's
photo-sensitivity to compensate for the mirror shades. He took the
glasses from her and started to put them on, but she reached out and
stopped him. Oh baby," she repeated. Then abruptly: What's wrong
with Sumi?
Seeing right through me, Jonny thought. He took a breath. Not
wanting to lie, he chose to remain silent. She would not let go of his
hands. I have to see Easy Money," he said, finally.
Tell me about Sumi."
Please," he said. She's going to be all right." Ice's face changed
with that. Rigid. He knew she understood. Easy has the cure," he
offered.
There's a cure?"
That what Easy took when he killed Raquin. Conover didn't
know what it was. He was moving it for some third party.
She shook her head, releasing his hands at the same time.
Hard to concentrate sometimes," she said. Makes you wonder what
we're doing here.
A particular head in the crowd caught his eye. You going to be
all right? he asked her.
She nodded, her jaw silently working, trying to contain the rage
and frustration. Jonny had felt it often enough to recognize it. Yeah."
Then: Liked your eyes, I did. Your eyes and Sumi's hands. She has
these calluses. Gives her character. I liked that.
Yeah, me too," Jonny said. He looked past her. The head was
moving. The one with the horns. He's over there."
Get moving," she said and kissed him, deeply, biting his lower
lip as she released him. Against club rules, you know, but what the
fuck-- It's probably my last night here anyway, right? She smiled at
him.
I'll get you on the way back."
You better."
He left her then, feeling lousy at abandoning her full of halfdigested, half-understood information, but he concentrated on the
head moving through the crowd before him. It was odd seeing Easy
in a suit. The tuxedo jacket fit him badly across his narrow shoulders.
Jonny caught up with the man and tapped him on the shoulder.
We've got business," Jonny said.
Easy turned at the sound of his voice, curling his lips in the
distant approximation of a smile. Love the new hardware, Jonny," he
said. I never thought you had it in you. We could get you a job
upstairs any time.
Jonny looked at his hands and realized that he was still holding
the mirror shades. He slipped them on and followed Easy up the
spiral staircase.
Upstairs were the prostitutes. The Water Trade, a tradition in
Japan for a thousand years, had provided for their presence. They
were part of the decor, like the dwarf trees and the straw mats; an
accepted style, part of the Floating World. And, as the pleasure girls"
had reflected their own time in the previous centuries of the trade,
so the prostitutes in the Forest of Incandescent Bliss reflected theirs.
They lounged about the halls on benches covered in thick brocades
depicting double helices. They waited in doorways and on the
railings of the stairways. Some of them were clothed in kimonos,
most were partially nude, showing off their tattoos and grafts. A few
wore nothing at all and those were the ones that disturbed Jonny the
most. Don't bother trying to guess their sex," Easy advised him. Half
of 'em can't even remember which way they started out.
At first, Jonny saw nothing special about the prostitutes, but
that, he realized was because he had not been prepared to
understand them. Mouths like vaginas, vaginas and anuses like
mouths. Hands that sprouted silicone elastomer penises instead of
fingers. Each of the prostitutes seemed to have at least one extra set
of genitalia, most (apparently) had moved or replaced their originals.
Easy giggled and stroked the odd breast, the occasional scrotal sac as
Jonny followed him. At one point, Easy snorted something from a
plastic inhaler. Jonny caught a glimpse of the label: It was a cheap
mass produced interferon nasal spray, Oki Kenko-- Big Health-- a
common cold preventative.
Sniffing loudly, Easy said; Now what was that deal we were
talking about? They were on the upper floor of the pagoda.
The second vial you took off Raquin," Jonny said. Conover's
authorized me to pay cash for it.
Oh yeah. That." Jonny wondered if Easy was stoned. The
horned man made a vague gesture with his hands, laughed drowsily.
There were two other men in foreign-cut suits at the far end of the
corridor. Funniest damn thing, man," said Easy. Remember back at
the meat locker when you and me, we first talked about the deal?
Well, the bitch had the place wired. Ain't that a scream? Heard every
word of it. She's smarter than I thought. By now, Jonny had stopped
in his tracks and Easy was holding a Futukoro on him. I'll take you
apart, man. Easy reached behind Jonny, took his gun, then pushed
him down the corridor. Nimble Virtue's got the stuff now. I had to
give it to her, you know? Get back on her good side. It's not like I can
go back to Conover. The two men ahead (actually boys, Jonny saw; in
different clothes they could have passed for Committee recruits with
no problem at all), Jonny recognized the cut of their suits now. Like
the Pakistani broadcaster on the restricted Link channel, long, almost
knee-length jackets and baggy wide-waisted pants. Neo-Zoot, a
current Arab style. Anyway, you've got to deal with her now," Easy
said. The Arabs never took their eyes off Jonny. The younger one, a
handsome boy of about fifteen with black eyes and hair, gave him a
wide feral smile and opened the door before him. Muchas gracias,
boys, said Easy, pushing Jonny through.
Inside, Nimble Virtue looked up, a tiny glazed tea cup poised
before her lips. My goodness," she said, her respirator sucking the
words back down her throat. We have a visitor." She sat behind an
oversized desk constructed of opaque sheets of black glass supported
by a frame of etched gold cylinders. An older man with salt and
pepper hair was sitting across from her, also sipping tea and eyeing
Jonny skeptically, as if contemplating the purchase of a used car.
This is the man?" the gray-haired man asked Nimble Virtue.
He was quite handsome, with hard, angular features, long graceful
hands and the easy manner of someone used to being listened to. His
suit was of better material than those of the boys in the hall (he had
the same restless dark eyes as the one with the feral smile), but the
style and the cut were definitely Arab.
Yes," Nimble Virtue said, pouring more tea, her exoskeleton
whirring softly under her kimono as she raised and lowered her arm.
Easy set Jonny's gun on the dark glass before her and leaned on an
elaborate air purification system: ionizers, charcoal filter rigs,
dehumidifiers. The room was very cold. Jonny thought of Nimble
Virtue in the abattoir, the orbiting sandakan, unconsciously
recapitulating her childhood in her office, constructing within it a
low-key approximation of the frozen vacuum of space.
So whose little doggie are you?" Jonny asked the Arab.
Jonny!" hissed Nimble Virtue.
The Arab smiled, turned to Nimble Virtue and laughed. You
were right. His mouth works much faster than his mind, he said.
Still, this is no problem. It is his presence we require, not his
intellect.
You don't say. Who is this guy?" Jonny asked Nimble Virtue.
Jonny, please," she said. Sheik al-Qawi is a guest in my house.
More than that, he and I have entered into certain business
arrangements on behalf of the New Palestine Federation, of which he
is a field representative. The words were clear, but her inflection
was sing-song. An act for the new money, Jonny thought. Helpless
geisha-girl.
I thought it smelled funny when I came here. That bad meatpolitical smell. He looked at Nimble Virtue. "You've finally found
your place. You, Zamora, this clown, I hope you'll be very happy
together.
Nimble Virtue's hand came to rest on a squat lacquered box
that stood open on its end near the far corner of her desk. Not
political
at all. Just the opposite, she said. A single jar sat in each side of the
ox. Embalmed things floating there, surrounded by dark purple
velvet. Fetuses. Her unborn sons. Sheik al-Qawi made me a very
generous offer for the acquisition of-- what?-- an artifact. A bauble.
I am merely acting as his agent in this matter.
Right. And tell me those boys in the hall aren't hashishin,"
Jonny said. These people consider going to the toilet a political act."
It's funny that you should raise the question of political
philosophies, Mister Qabbala, said al-Qawi, "since yours seem rather
vague.
That's because they don't exist," Jonny said. He checked his
watch. The passing of time had begun to weigh on him. Sumi was
back on the hill. He thought of the second virus moving through her
blood, waiting there like a time bomb. You know, you guys slay me.
Corporate types. Politicos. If I put a bullet through your fat face right
now, they'd have you in a vat in ten minutes. And they'd keep you
there till they could clone or construct or repair a body for you.
That's the difference between your people and mine. We don't get a
second chance. We're just dead.
The sheik brightened. Then you are political!" he said. Those
are not the sentiments of an amoral man. Your manner and the
company you keep bespeak a strong sense of purpose, even if you
refuse to name it.
Look pal, I'm just here to pick up some dope--"
But surely you must agree that the imperialist forces now at
work in Tokyo and Washington must be shown that plotting against
the peoples of other sovereign nations cannot be tolerated.
You want to deal or not?" Jonny asked Nimble Virtue. She
turned her eyes up at him, still doing her little-girl act. Not now,"
she said.
Then I'm out of here." Jonny headed for the door. Easy had his
gun at the back of Jonny's head before he had taken two steps. Hey,
just a joke. I'd love to stay.
al-Qawi stood and slammed his fist down on Nimble Virtue's
desk. Her hand moved reflexively to the case containing her sons,
steadying it. I cannot believe such behavior," the Sheik yelled. That
you can make jokes in the face of the hideous conspiracy in which
your government is embroiled. That you, yourself, are a part of.
Jonny-san," Nimble Virtue purred, what Sheik al-Qawi is
referring to are diabolical plans hatched by certain war-loving
officials in Tokyo and Washington to launch a sneak attack against
the united Arab nations and bring about a terrible third world war.
Jonny looked at the two of them. He almost smiled, certain he
was being gas-lighted. Nimble Virtue was not above setting up such a
game just to confuse him and drive up the price of Conover's dope.
However, there was something in al-Qawi's manner, a weariness
around the eyes that was either very good acting or genuine anxiety.
Do you actually have the drugs?" Jonny asked.
Yes," right there, said Nimble Virtue, pointing to a spot on the
floor before a screen inlaid with mother-of-pearl cranes.
Let me see it." No!" shouted al-Qawi. No more drug talk. As a
man of god, I cannot permit it. His long hands cut the air in tense,
rapid bursts. Thanks to the good work of Madame Nimble Virtue,
my trip to this sickening city has been a short and fruitful one. As
you may have inferred, sir, you are the artifact I came here to find.
He pushed a finger in Jonny's face. Mister Qabbala, it is my duty and
honor to arrest you in the name of the New Palestine Federation and
the people of all oppressed nations everywhere.
Great. Swell." To Nimble Virtue, Jonny said: Did you sell this
idiot my dope?
Do not play the fool with me, sir!" shouted al-Qawi. Surely
even you cannot endorse so mad an adventure as your government's
alliance with the extraterrestrials!
Jonny looked at the Sheik, blinked once and inadvertently
scrambled the resolution of the exteroceptors' pixel display. When
the Sheik's face came back, it had been reduced to a moving matrix
of black and sand-colored squares. Easy Money sniffed loudly from
his interferon inhaler. I'll tell you exactly what I told the last lunatic
that tried to tie me to the Alpha Rats: I don't know what the fuck
you're talking about!
I do not believe you. I have studied your records, however.
You live in the drugged ignorance of a man with a heavy burden, alQawi said. It may interest you to know that the New Palestine
Federation has intercepted a series of communiqués between
broadcast stations in southern California and the moon. We now
know that using you as a go-between, your eastern masters plan to
link forces with the Alpha Rats (as you callthem) and launch a sneak
attack on Arab territories simultaneously from the Earth and the
moon.
Look, I've heard this moon-man song before," said Jonny
wearily. The last time it was about dope. Now it's war. Why don't
you people get your stories straight? He shook his head, finally
correcting the pixel display. Easy Money was behind him, sniffing
and laughing to himself. What's your story? You suddenly develop a
political conscience?
Easy shrugged, the hand with the gun resting by his side. Don't
ask me. You're the one hangs out with anarchists.
I am, Mister Qabbala, prepared to offer you a deal," al-Qawi
said.
A deal?"
Yes. Negotiate with the extraterrestrials on behalf of the New
Palestine Federation. Convince them to turn their weapons on your
puppet masters in the east. For this, the Federation will grant you a
full pardon for crimes against the Arab people and-- He smiled at
Jonny, -- return to you a reasonable profit for your services."
You're crazier than Zamora," Jonny said. He only accused me
of being a gofer for a smuggler lord. You think I'm hanging fast and
true with the Alpha Rats myself.
Aren't you?"
No!"
The Sheik shook his head. This world is an unkind place,
Mister Qabbala. I am attempting to extend to you the hand of
friendship.
Why? So you people can finish that stupid war?" asked Jonny.
Don't get me wrong-- I don't think this place would be any worse
under Arab rule, but any dirty little wars you guys start, it's the
people in the street-- we're the ones that get hurt. He pointed out
the window. Not your people, mine."
al-Qawi nodded gravely, hands clasped behind his back. In
that case, Mister Qabbala, you are my prisoner. You have obviously
deserted your own government to work for terrorists and anarchists,
however, you will not shirk your responsibility to the New Palestine
Federation.
Jonny, knowing Easy was watching him, kicked his boot into
Nimble Virtue's desk, knocking off the false heel. The Futukoro went
off precisely where Jonny was not. He was rolling across his
shoulders away from Nimble Virtue's desk, scooping up his own gun
on the way. He kept it low, sending a round into the floor near Easy.
A sheet of flame hit the ceiling as the shell exploded in the
hyper-oxygenated air. Easy landed in a heap across the room, over
by the air purification set-up. Jonny sprinted to the door and threw
the security bolts, then he turned his gun on Nimble Virtue. Give me
that dope, goddammit!
What have you done?" she screamed. Shaking, Nimble Virtue
rose from behind her desk and went to where al-Qawi lay, his legs
twisted under him, his neck bent at a peculiar angle. Her respirator
was clicking rapidly beneath her kimono; Jonny could hear the air
being forced in and out of her withered lungs. He was taking me
with him! she shouted. Then quietly: "He was taking me with him. It
was part of the deal.
Jonny moved over to the floor safe. Give me the dope," he said.
Someone was pounding frantically on the office door.
Nimble Virtue ignored him, touching the stretched-out body of
the Arab, attending him with quick bird-like movements. I was
going away, she said, covering her face with her hands. No act this
time, Jonny knew.
Listen to me," he told her. A friend of mine is sick. She needs
this stuff badly.
Nimble Virtue turned and looked at him. Good!" she said. I
hope she dies. Rots and dies like me-- like I have to stay here. In this
city. She stood and walked to the far side of the desk, rubbing at her
red-rimmed eyes. Zamora will kill me."
Please, give me the dope."
No."
The pounding on the door got louder. Jonny grabbed one of the
bottles from the desk and held it over his head. The little fetus,
disturbed in its fluid, bumped gently against the side. Give it to me."
Go to hell."
His arm snapped out and Nimble Virtue screamed. There was
no crash. Jonny held out his hand, showing her the palmed bottle.
All right," she said, and moved shakily toward him, dropping
stiffly to her knees, her exoskeleton whining with the unaccustomed
motion.
Jonny held his gun on her as she removed a segment of
polished wood from the floor and entered a code on a ten-key pad.
The soft hiss of pneumatic bolts withdrawing. As Nimble Virtue
reached into the safe, Jonny stopped her. He pushed his hand past
her's and found the old pistol lying near the top. A tarnished
Derringer two-shot, yellowed ivory grips with over and under
barrels, each holding a single .38 hollow point shell. He pocketed the
gun and reached in again, coming up this time with a brushed
aluminum Halliburton travel case. Inside was a small black vacuum
bottle. Taking it, he backed away from the safe, keeping his back to
the wall. Nimble Virtue was standing over al-Qawi again, staring
down at the Sheik, her eyes flat and dull, like blank video monitors.
Over by the air purifier, Easy Money moaned.
A shot, then two more from the hall splintered the wood and
metal of the office door. Jonny took a wide-legged stance and fired at
it twice. What was left of the door exploded, peppering the room
with burning wood and metal. He heard Nimble Virtue breathe in
sharply. Over by the safe, the velvet-lined case lay on the floor, the
two little bottles shattered amidst the glassy black wreckage of the
collapsed desk, old alcohol reek filling the room. Nimble Virtue's
mouth was open; a moment later, she screamed-- a single note, high
and keening. Running down the stairs, Jonny could still hear her.
Pour gasoline on an ant hill; light it. Watch the insects pour
from the mound, crazed and sizzling: That was the main floor of the
Forest of Incandescent Bliss. At the sound of the first shot, paranoid
gangster reflexes had kicked in. Half the club was making for the
doors, sure the cops or the Committee (somebody in uniform) was
raiding the place. Old frightened men threw wads of cash and drugs
at anybody who came near them.
The other half of the club had stubbornly stayed where they
were, convinced that they had been led into a trap. Yakuza and
Panteras Aureros lay bloody and dying across Go boards and tea pots
where they had blown holes in each other at point blank range.
Prostitutes, orifices flexing in silent convulsive screams, scrambled
down the stairs. Jonny fell into step with them, hitting the main floor
behind a curtain of manufactured flesh.
Ice was by the bar, signaling to someone. Rapid variants of
Amerslan, fingers on lips, brushing the back of a hand. She spotted
him when he waved and ran over. They huddled by the spiral stairs.
You got the stuff?"
He held up the vacuum bottle. Right here."
Great. Zamora never showed. We gotta rendezvous with the
others. She looked over his shoulder-- "No! -- and pushed him to the
ground as the gun went off.
There was a smoking hole on the center of Ice's chest, but no
blood, the Futukoro shell having cauterized the wound even at is
made it. Give me the dope, Jonny." He swore the voice had come
from inside his head. He looked at Ice, insane for that moment, and
knew he had killed her. A black metallic wind blew through his
bones and he heard the voice again. Hand it over like now, man."
Outside him that time. Easy Money. He was above them on the stairs,
one satyr horn broken off at the scalp, his left elbow stiff, dribbling
blood down his arm.
I need that dope, man." Down a step. The bitch's gone nuts.
Gotta have Conover's juice to stake myself. Comprende? This time
Jonny did not aim for the feet, but Easy's head. He missed anyway.
The explosion brought down a good portion of the staircase, and Easy
jumped clear on the far side.
Jonny kicked at the wreckage of carved wood, dragons in
splinters, pig iron reinforcement rods sticking like bones from the
pile. He knelt beside Ice who was staring down at the hole in her
chest, gingerly touching the blackened skin around the edges.
I always wondered what this felt like," she said, drunken
wonder slurred in her voice. He cradled her head in his lap,
gangsters, gunsels and hangers-on still massingfor the door, clawing
at each other. She looked at him and a shiver passed through her
body. You're a big boy now, Jonny, whether you like it or not. Sumi
can't cover your ass like I can. Blood, through tiny cracks (like
miniature lava flows) was beginning to seep from her wound. You
gonna help us, Jonny? You're a Croaker. Always have been. You walk
away, though, you're one of them. And they'll do us like this forever.
She looked at her wound, touched a bloody hand to his cheek. Sweet
Jonny. You and Sumi-- my babies-He let her still head slide off his lap and stood, trembling and
crying. His new eyes did not permit tears, but kept flashing him
stored images of the last few hours. The dead fetuses. Dogs, massive
and terrified, tearing at each other. The clockwork movement of
multi-colored muscles. Feral smile of the hashishin.
Illusion, he thought. Folly. Maya.
For the first time in his life, shaking and blubbering in the club,
Jonny had a clear mental picture of what the Alpha Rats looked like.
They looked like al-Qawi, like Zamora and Nimble Virtue, the pimps,
the politicians, the wheeler-dealers. The Alpha Rats were the perfect
excuse, the ultimate evasion. It had been that way for a thousand
years; Jonny knew that much of history. The powers that be required
enemies as much as they needed friends, and they could not live
without scapegoats to keep their propaganda machines working. In
earlier centuries it had been the Jews, the blacks, the homosexuals,
the Hispanics. But the closed economic systems of their world had
made old fashioned bigotry impractical. Like technology, commerce
and travel: the big lie had expanded outward to embrace the rest of
the galaxy. And why not, Jonny thought. It's in our blood by now.
He looked at his hand and to his horror, realized that the vacuum
bottle was no longer there. Sometime after Ice had been shot, he had
let it go. He dropped to his hands and knees, moving frantically
between the gangsters' running feet. And spotted it across the room- wedged under the skirt of a Link screen showing Aoki Vega in a
Kabuki-porn version of Casablanca."
Between the shadows and the feet, the angry voices and
breaking glass, Jonny dove for the bottle, surprising himself when he
felt it in his grip. And then as quickly, it was gone. Shattered in his
hands, a clear sticky liquid dripping onto his lap, gray fragments of
industrial glass all around him. In the hills, machines skipped a beat.
Sumi convulsed. Jonny looked up at Easy and the smoking gun as the
one-horned man said: Now nobody has it." And limped out the door.
Jonny followed him, pushing his way through the thinning
crowd, the German pistol before him. Easy was just turning the
corner at the far end of the pagoda. The Forest's private security was
out. Two men moved through the crowd to intercept Jonny. He
waited until they were a few meters away and calmly blew them to
pieces. At the lake's edge, he took a hovercraft and headed back to
shore, ran until his sides ached, filthy and red-eyed, to La Poupee. In
the air re-circulation plant, he collapsed beneath two enormous filter
cylinders and retched. Outside, he found a motorcycle in the
employees' parking lot. A lithium battery powered BMW. The owner
had hooked an air compressor to the exhaust outlet; the bike roared
and sputtered like an old-style piston engine model. Jonny gunned
the bike and took off.
TWELVE:
Death and Revelation in a Dark Bar on
a Bad Night at the End of the World
Sand was blowing in from the desert, flaking paint from parked
cars, filling the bottoms of drained swimming pools. Death owned the
streets. Two AM, November second, two hours into the Day of the
Dead: Dia de los Muertos. Processions filled the thoroughfares of
Hollywood, like some graveyard Mardi Gras. Lepers danced together
in papier-mache skulls behind white-robed bishops carrying
enormous chrome crucifixes, hologram Christs floating a few
centimeters above the crossbars, writhing in agony for all their sins.
Behind the hills, orange flared and lit the sky from the burn-off
towers at the German synth-fuel plant north of the city. Jonny licked
sand from his lips. He had never seen so many people in one place.
Zombie Analytics flashed the crowd images of dead pop stars,
superimposing the outlines of their own bones on the famous faces.
Even the Piranhas were there, apparently untouched by the plague,
drawn from their internal exile by the docks to the more inviting
lights of the boulevard.
When he first saw Death lingering at the back of the parade,
skull molded from old newsrags and clutching a crude sickle of
pounded metal, Jonny charged, gunning the big BMW up onto the
sidewalk. But he never connected. Never killed Death. It always saw
him coming or Jonny had to turn the bike at the last minute when he
heard human voices screaming from inside the paper skulls. And
each time he rode away, he grew more desperate, more furious,
knowing that Death had fooled him again.
Somehow, he ended up at Carnaby's Pit. The parade was
moving quickly down the boulevard. Jonny was alone before the
chained entrance, reading a notice that was printed in six languages
plastered across the rusted and pock-mocked metal doors.
WARNING
Public buildings, except those constructed
exclusively for the use of religious expression, are
OFF LIMITS to gatherings of three persons or more.
Emergency Ordinance #9354A-- By authority of:
The Committee For Public Health
The parade was blocks away now, the sound of music and
voices fading fast. Everything was dying. He looked around for the
mercado (No way those people would miss a night like this.), but all
he could find were glassy scars in the asphalt where the grills had
sat, an ancient scratch-pattern indicating the placement of tent poles.
Jonny pulled the SIG Sauer from his jacket pocket and blew the doors
to Carnaby's Pit off their hinges. The pistol's breech remained open
this time, meaning he had run out of bullets. He tossed the gun away.
Clouds of green, metallic flies buzzed loudly into the night through
the Pit's ruined doors.
Inside, the game room stood silent, all dust shadows and hints
of greasy fingerprints where light from the street struck glass. Jonny
had never seen the club like this before. In the weak mercury vapor
light, without the sound and the colors of the games to distract him,
the place seemed small, pathetic even. Lengths of frayed copper
wires covered the walls, broke up the ceiling into a water-stained
grid behind the dead holo projectors.
In the main room, a stack of Saint Peter's KruppVerwandlungsinhalt amps had fallen over. To Jonny's exteroceptors,
the Freon leaking from around the speaker cones appeared to
shimmer in turquoise pools. The air was damp and stale, close
around him. Jonny shivered, looked back the way he had come in
and watched sand sift in through the open doors. Death was in the
club with him. Jonny could feel its presence. He pulled Nimble
Virtue's Derringer from his pocket and went into a crouch, stalking
Death through the jungle of abandoned chairs and broken glasses,
finally spotting it behind the bar. Jonny recognized Death from his
dreams. The mirror shades gave it away.
The kick from the little Derringer, when he fired, nearly broke
his wrist, but Death was gone. The sound of the mirror shattering
behind the hollow point shell caught him off guard. By the time he
scrambled behind the bar and understood what he had done, he was
shivering again, realizing he had wanted to do it for a long time.
If death was a illusion, as the roshis had told him, then, Jonny
reasoned, he had just proved the lie of his own existence. He kicked
at shards of the broken mirror with the toe of his boot and decided
he needed a drink to celebrate the discovery of his true nature.
Shelves behind him held all manner of liquor: domestic,
imported and bootleg. Jonny selected an unopened bottle of Burmese
tequila and drank deeply. Gin, he reflected, would have served him
better at this point, but he could not stand the taste of the stuff neat.
He laughed at the idea of taste.
What is taste when you don't exist?
There's this old man, comes to a Buddhist priest, see," Jonny
said to the empty room. Turns out he's the ghost of another
Buddhist priest whose been reincarnated five hundred times as a
fox. He took another pull from the bottle. "In life, he'd argued that
the laws of cause and effect do not apply to enlightened beings. So
here the poor fucker is, you know, five hundred times-- pissing in
the woods, freezing in the winter and eating raw squirrel. And the
other priest says: 'Schmuck, of course cause and effect applies to
enlightened beings.' And the ghost disappears, suddenly enlightened.
He doesn't have to be a fox anymore. Jonny moved around to the
front of the bar, dropped onto a stool and propped the bottle on his
knee, the tequila already half gone.
I have swallowed every kind of shit," he said.
Across the room, near the pile of fallen German amplifiers, a
swarm of flies was moving over the carcass of some dead animal.
Massed together like that in the dark bar, the insects looked to Jonny
something like waves kicked up on the shore of some crazy-quilt
ocean. He giggled and lurched to his feet, threading his way
drunkenly through the club, deliberately kicking over chairs and
tables as he went.
Jonny approached the body slowly. From the bar it had looked
pretty big for a rat, but that it could be human had not occurred to
him until he was right up on it. Batting at flies that buzzed around
his face, Jonny edged around the corpse, noting the discolored tumors
on its arms, the leonine welling of the face, all the obvious symptoms
of the virus's mock-leprosy. The corpse's limbs were twisted, back
arched until the body was bent almost double, fingers splayed, hands
turned back on themselves at the wrists in the spastic posture of
advanced neuro-syphilis. Jonny forced himself to lean closer and look
into the half-opened mouth. Standing up, he momentarily fingered
the edge of the soiled apron, thinking that the body did not look
much like Random any more.
Jonny did not turn when he heard the footsteps, expecting it to
be Zamora or some Committee boy come to take him away. When the
steps came to a stop a few meters off, he turned and saw Groucho
brushing sand from his English schoolboy jacket. He swallowed his
tongue, Jonny told the anarchist.
I'm sorry," Groucho said. I've seen a lot like this these last
few weeks. Gonna to be a lot more, too.
You come looking for me?"
Groucho nodded. Yeah. I figure I've got a vested interest in
you. 'Course, so do lots of people these days.
Jonny took a drink from his bottle. How'd you know I'd be
here?
Isn't this where you always end up?"
Yeah. I guess." Jonny shrugged. Kind of shabby little place to
run and hide, huh? He took another drink and threw the empty
bottle back toward the bar, listening to it shatter. Ice is dead," he
said quickly.
I heard. I'm sorry, man," said Groucho. So what are you going
to do now?
I don't know," Jonny mumbled, crouching down near Random's
body. Lotta bottles to work through," he said, gesturing back toward
the bar.
Yeah, always the clear thinker. I knew we could count on you."
Just save that shit for your own people, okay?" said Jonny.
Groucho leaned under a nearby table and picked up a small
silver bell from the floor; he rang it softly as he spoke. I heard you
were at the Forest of Incandescent Bliss tonight, he said. "What for?
There's a cure for the virus. I was supposed to pick it up, only
Easy Money blew away the container it was in and now it's gone,
said Jonny. Bending, he touched one of Random's arms, disturbing the
flies which rose, droning, into the air. Sumi's infected, you know.
Gonna die just like Random. Pretty surreal way to go, huh? Turning,
he swung a drunken fist at Groucho, but the anarchist danced out of
the way. What would your fucking surrealists say about that?"
Jonny shouted.
So you're just going to let her die like that?" Groucho asked. He
bent again and came up with a toy switchblade, about the length of
his thumb.
What are you talking about?" Jonny asked.
I'm saying that if you love her, you're going to take some
responsibility. With his long fingers, Groucho snicked the tiny knife
open closed a couple of times. Ever since we left the fish farm, I've
been thinking how all these little bits, how all the shit that's been
floating around you is possibly related. I heard from some people
that Conover was the one that was moving that layered virus that got
loose. Then, when Zamora picked you up, he starts talking about
space men and how he wants to you turn Conover for him. All the
time, though, he's planning a raid to take out all the lords and the
gangs with them. And this is happening at the same time the city's
going balls up from this plague.
You think Zamora might have planned all this?"
I don't know yet," said the anarchist. Doesn't really sound like
him, though. A bit subtle.
Jonny stood, brushed away some flies that had landed on his
aviators. There was this Arab at the Forest tonight, he was talking
about the Alpha Rats. Said something about a war.
Well man, we got our own war right here," Groucho told him.
When he leaned over this time, he was holding a key ring with a
plastic Ganesh on top; cheap paste rhinestones glittered in the
elephant god's eyes. He dropped the key ring and switchblade into
his jacket pocket. I wanted to tell you-- Zamora's moving on the
lords tonight, guess he figures it's a holiday, so half the city'll be
blasted. We're moving, too. All the gangs. Viva la revolucion.
Jesus," Jonny said. Are you guys ready?"
Vyctor Vector's waiting out in the van with Man Ray, so we've
got the Naginata Sisters and the Funky Gurus, tambien. We're
stronger than Zamora realizes, said Groucho and he smiled.
Besides, amantadine supplies're running pretty thin around here. If
the Committee doesn't get you, seems like the virus will. Nobody's
got much to lose anymore.
What about going to the lords for help?"
The lords?" Groucho said. Are you really that naive? The lords
protect themselves. Period. They're no better than Zamora.
What are you talking about?" demanded Jonny. Not all the
lords are sell-outs like Nimble Virtue.
Sure they are," replied Groucho. This is big business, Jack. The
ultimate fix. The architecture of need. The anarchist gestured as he
spoke, his hands open wide. I mean, if you're in the desert, you sell
the natives ice water, right? Nimble Virtue, Conover and the rest
have a captive market here, and they like it that way. This
underground market drives the prices of their goods right through
the roof. The lords aren't dealers, they're vampires. They live on
pain. And you're as much a part of it as they are.
Jonny frowned. I sold medicine, asshole. People needed me."
You're just afraid to face the real issue," Groucho said. By
selling Conover's shit you are just another part of the drug
organism. And when I say drugs, I mean anything people need, that
they'll pay money for. Food, data, booze, medical supplies. People
don't need you. They need to be free of this ridiculous cycle of drugs
and pain. Free from the Committee and the lords because they're two
sides of the same coin. One can't exist without the other. This whole
city is built on bones. You're a vampire, too, Jonny. That's what I
mean about taking responsibility.
Jonny walked back to the bar and started sorting through the
various bottles. At the back of the bottom shelf he found a halfempty quart of mescal and set it on the bar. The small hallucinogenic
worm inside bobbed momentarily to the top of the golden liquor.
Dead fetuses. He saw Nimble Virtue's children floating in alcohol.
Releasing the bottle, Jonny shouted to Groucho: If I'm such puke,
what the hell are you doing here?
I'm here because in the end, I don't think you are one of
them, said Groucho. He came to the bar, still ringing the silver bell in
his left hand. You're what those old warriors used to call Dragon
head-Snake body. You're intelligent; you've got courage and integrity,
but you keep sabotaging yourself through fear and stupidity. The
anarchist picked up something the size of a playing card from the
bar. When he touched it, the card flashed a series of animated views
of Japanese casinos and resorts, spewing hard-sell patter in tinny
German. Also, I thought you might be able help the revolution. Ice
liked you and I wanted to keep her happy. Zamora was interested in
you and so was Conover. I thought maybe we could make use of that
somewhere along the way. He looked up at Jonny. "Revolution's a
hard nut. See what happens to us? I guess I was using you, too.
If I go back to Conover's, will you go with me?" Jonny asked.
Groucho shook his head. There's no time. We've got a lot to set up if
we're gonna take on the Committee tonight.
Sorry. A silly question."
I know where Conover's place is," Groucho said. I'll meet you
there later if I can.
Jonny nodded, took the mescal bottle and set it back on the
shelf behind the bar. Removing his mirror shades, he turned to
Groucho, making sure the man got a good look at his new eyes. The
anarchist raised his eyebrows a fraction of a centimeter, but that was
all. These exteroceptors are funny," Jonny said. It's like watching a
movie or something. Kind of a detached feeling. I don't know what to
do anymore.
Here," Groucho said, and handed him the little silver bell. For
luck. And remember: thought is an illusion. He touched his chest,
This is an illusion. Fear, confusion, dread-- the worst elements of
your life can lead to enlightenment as easily as the best. When the
time comes to act, you'll do all right.
The silhouette of a tall woman was framed in the door of the
club. She wore tight leather pants and boots, a racing top crossed by
studded leather straps; in her hand was some kind of heavy wooden
staff that was almost as tall as she. Her skin shone silver in the street
light, a heavy layer of metal-based make-up covering all her exposed
skin, except for a band around her eyes. Naginata war paint.
Groucho, we gotta hit it," said the woman. Hi ya, Jonny."
How're you doing, Vyctor?" he called.
The woman shrugged. Getting ready to die right," she said.
Heard about Ice. Sorry, man. I gotta tell you, though, I was kinda
jealous when she moved in with you and Sumi. I really went for her.
You got good taste, Vyctor."
You know it. Groucho, I'll see you outside." She went out then,
her shadow curving over the small drifts of sand that were collecting
around the fallen doors.
Jonny left the mirror shades on the bar and followed Groucho
out of the club. In the game parlor, he said to the anarchist: So what
are you, anyway? You really an anarquista or just some loco with a
bodhisattva complex?
They continued out under the awning, through the falling sand
to the van parked across the street. Finally, Groucho grinned. Tell
you the truth, he said, "I spend most of my time feeling like
everybody's mother. Man Ray nodded as Jonny came over. The
Funky Guru's new van was as big as his old one, with the same uglybeautiful lines. Something like a mechanical claw protruded from one
side, hydraulic digits tense against the body of the vehicle. Groucho
pointed to Jonny's motorcycle. You have fuel?" Jonny nodded,
walked over to the bike and climbed aboard. You take care, Jonny,"
called Vyctor. Jonny waved and kicked the bike awake. Then he and
the van moved off in opposite directions.
From the desert, the wind was picking up, hard-blown grit
biting into the backs of his hands, grinding between his teeth. The
heat of the night and the tequila came down hard on him. Jonny felt
himself moving through a dream-time, no longer trusting or quite
believing in anything he saw. Heading north out of Hollywood, he
watched bands of junkies roaming the streets eating piles of sugar
candy skulls they had stolen from merchants below. Monks hiding
their tumors behind things like fencing masks took the confessions of
lepers squatting in Griffith Park while nearby, Neo-Mayanists cut the
beating hearts out of captured Committee boys, offering them up to
gods whose names they had forgotten, begging for forgiveness and
an end to the plague. Writers had been busy with their canisters of
compressed acid, turning the walls outside the park into a fair
representation of the skull walls at Chichen Itza. They had left
messages behind, too.
BOMB TOKYO NOW
BOMB NEW YORK NOW
BOMB EVERYTHING
Jonny swerved to avoid some animal in the road and almost
succeeded in flipping the bike before he realized that there was
nothing there. He kept flashing on recordings of Ice's face: the
moment she saw his cat eyes, when she kissed him in the Forest, as
she lay dying. He had not yet accepted that she could really be dead
and he knew that was good. Barely functional as he was now, Jonny
understood that some animal survival mechanism in his brain had
cut in during the course of the last few hours, pumping him full of
specific neural inhibitors, preventing him from accepting the true
nature of her loss. He knew it was there, though. The loss. He
imagined that he could feel it, like a sac of poison lodged at the back
of his skull, ready to burst when all this was over.
He throttled up on the bike and skidded around a section of
asphalt that was jutting at an angle from the narrow roadbed. The air
compressors attached to the BMW's exhaust obliterated all sound but
their own, while the thermographic display in Jonny's exteroceptors
glazed the park into a series of slick surfaces like the ones he had
seen in a Dali landscape.
Nearing the top of the hill, Jonny began to consider the notion
of payback. It seemed to him that if he was to take the responsibility
he had been avoiding all this time, others ought to do the same.
There was blame here to be laid at somebody's feet. But whose? Ice
was dead, and Skid and Raquin before her. Soon Sumi would be gone,
too. Because of his failure to salvage her cure? Because Easy Money
had stolen Conover's virus? Or was it because he had left Sumi alone
for so long while running from Zamora?
Yes, to all those questions. But was that enough? Jonny sensed
it went deeper than any of that, but the chain of responsibility and
blame, when he tried to trace it back to its source, seemed endless,
extending beyond any of their lifetimes.
How many will die tonight? he wondered.
How many have died already?
Jonny tried to count up the bodies, the friends and
acquaintances
that had snuffed it or disappeared over the years. He could not
remember them all. Again the chain-- one face always leading to
another. For a few, he could remember no name just the movement
of a hand, the tilt of a head or a panther tattooed shoulder.
Jonny thought of Ice, in many ways just another one-percenter,
living the same foolish life as any of them, dying the same senseless
death, and all the while being unaware that it had all been laid for
her in advance. Like a ship's course computed, entered and executed,
she had lived according to the strange process that seemed to take
them all in the end, Random, Skid and the rest. They were the dead
wandering the streets on Dia de los Muertos. Drifting their whole
lives through the city, living by rules they never really understood.
The cops had been part of it. The Committee. And yeah, Jonny
thought, the dealers, too. He had been a part of it as much as anyone,
supplying the medicine and the dope that kept the people docile.
Groucho's city of bones became more real, more palpable each time
he considered it.
Lights on the hill above startled him. Jonny swung the BMW
onto the driveway leading to Conover's mansion, wondering why the
hologram dome was down. Sand whispered through the trees. He left
the bike in the drive and made his way to the house through the
bamboo grove, hoping that the billowing sand was dense enough to
confound the smuggler lord's surveillance equipment.
The front door of the Japanese wing was open. Sprawled face-
down in the walk-way was one of the smuggler lord's medical techs,
a hole from what looked like a Futukoro shell burned in the man's
back. Inside the house there were more bodies, techs and security
staff, some lying in groups, others meters away where they had been
gunned down trying to run. In the art-glutted dining room in
Victorian wing, soft Elizabethan music was coming from the hidden
speakers; the sound chip on the stereo read: William Williams:
Sonata in Imitation of Birds. He found the African staff dead in the
kitchen and the service corridors.
Working his way back through the house by feel, Jonny located
the elevator he had used the day they had given him his new eyes.
Not certain of exactly where he was going, he punched in the
code for the lowest level. He pulled the Derringer from his pocket,
turned it over in his hand once, and put it away. It would not do him
a hell of a lot of good against a Futukoro.
In the clinic area were more dead techs. The hall was littered
with overturned drug carts, Pyrex culture dishes and leaking drug
vials. Jonny saw Yukiko's body, recognized a couple of the Russians
that had assisted on his eye surgery. A security man lay dead on his
back, most of one shoulder and his lower jaw had been shot away. He
was holding a small cardboard box. Scattered around the guard's
head like a plastic nimbus were dozens of interferon inhalers similar
to the one Easy had been using. Jonny knelt by the guard's body and
stole his Futukoro. The man had not even gotten it out of the holster.
It did not take Jonny long to find Sumi's room.
At a bend in the garbage-strewn corridor was a door marked
with diamond-shaped warning signs: orange biohazard marker,
color-coded symbols for flammable liquids and cryoprotectants.
The door was locked and when he could not kick it open, he
shot the lock off. Inside, he passed through a short retrofit airlock,
ignoring neat piles of sterile paper gowns and caps, to a dust-free
clean room beyond. Inside, the sterile chamber echoed with the
steady whining of malfunctioning life-support units and the gurgling
of protein vats. Near the circular vats, four male bodies were laid-out
on what looked like stainless steel autopsy tables. From the sour
smell of the place, Jonny guessed that it had been at least twentyfour hours since the life-support had shut down.
Looking into the protein vats, Jonny found what at first he took
to be several dead eels, drifting limply in the swirling solution like
individual strands of sea weed. The animal's had been dissected
bilaterally, exposing the entire length of each spinal column. When
he saw the delicate Toshiba micro-manipulators poised over each
open back, Jonny realized that the animals were lampreys. He
remembered Conover telling him that the nerve tissue his techs had
spliced into Jonny's injured shoulder had come been grown in a
specially bred variety of the animal. Seeing them now, Jonny was
glad the poor fuckers were dead.
He touched one of the manipulators, running his fingers along
the rows of microscopic lasers that sliced intact tissue from the
lampreys' backs. A bundle of mil-thin wires ran from the base of
each manipulator and was secured to node points along the exposed
spines. He touched one of the bundles. A tail twitched. Jawless mouth
gaped. Shit," Jonny said and released the manipulator, realizing (and
the realization turned his stomach) that the animals were still alive,
swimming in their absent way, against the whirling current of the
protein solution, alien tissues taking root in their backs.
That's when he found Conover, chest neatly lasered open, lying
on one of the autopsy tables. Jonny had turned in disgust from the
lamprey tank and froze, staring down at the body of the smuggler
lord lying under ten centimeters of clear liquid. But it was not the
Conover Jonny knew. It was the Conover he had seen in photos in the
storage room that earlier night. The Conover from Central America in
the nineteen-eighties: healthier, before the Greenies addiction had
set in. Jonny checked the other tables and found Conovers lying on
each of them, sunk in the same fluid, torsos neatly split from crotch
to chin. All the bodies were wired into a complex array of lifesupport unit. They were all missing certain organs, livers, stomach,
hearts and pancreases, mostly. He knew then that what he was
looking at was essentially a farm.
Conover had become a parasite, feeding on himself. Somewhere
in his drug-ruined body, his techs must have found some cells that
Greenies had not yet invaded. They had used these to clone copies of
the smuggler lord to use for patch jobs. The liquid in which they
floated would be some kind of perflourocarbon, Jonny guessed, to
keep the bodies oxygenated. He just stared. It was amazing; suicide
and murder all rolled into one package. The taste of tequila and bile
was strong in his throat. Jonny fled through a door beyond the tables,
away from the butchered young men.
The room he entered was still and very cold. The
thermographic read-out in his eyes showed it to him as an almost
seamless blue surface, broken here and there by neon-red patches of
warmer electronic equipment. Some kind of gas vapor was crusting
on cryogenic pipe inlets, drifting in white clouds to the floor. A dozen
gray laminated tanks (he thought of coffins or sealed specimen cases)
stood against the walls. Jonny spotted her in the only tank that was
occupied, near the far end. When he tried to wipe a layer of frost
from the Lexan faceplate, his fingers froze to it instantly. He jerked
his hand away, stifling a small cry of pain as he left some skin
behind. Using his jacket sleeve, he rubbed at the port until he could
see her face clearly.
Sumi appeared to be asleep in the cryogenic tank. A VDT inset
at chest-level in the gray laminate displayed her life readings as a
series of slow-moving horizontal lines, hills and valleys indicating
her body's various autonomic functions. The top of the screen was
dominated by an animated 3D display of some growing crystal. For
some reason, it reminded Jonny of a cocoon; he kept expecting to see
some new form of plant or animal life to burst suddenly from the
fragile egg shell facets that the crystal kept unfolding from within
itself. Someone had written L VIRUS" on a strip of surgical tape and
stuck it to the VDT just below the crystal display. Jonny nodded,
recognizing the animation as a growth sequence. He had a pretty
good idea just what the programmers had been modeling when they
created the display. The lesions around Sumi's mouth confirmed this.
Jonny backed away from the cylinder, spun and kicked
savagely at the door to the clean room, his face hot. All the halfconscious illusions of a daring rescue he had been nursing up the hill
were dying fast. He prowled the edges of the frigid room, cursing to
himself, punched a Sony monitor off a work station and kicked it into
a wall, shattering the screen.
A minute later, he was standing in front of the tank in which
Sumi slept. They never told us how it worked," he explained. So
naturally it got all fucked up. It was an apology of sorts.
The concussion from the first Futukoro round cracked the
Lexan plate above Sumi's face. Steam from the super-cooled liquid
inside screamed through the broken plastic, condensing in the air as
a miniature whirlwind of ice. Jonny kept on firing, pumping round
after hot round through the walls of the cylinder until the room was
full of freezing white vapor and the life readings on the tank
registered as a series of flat, unwavering lines.
When some of the vapor had cleared and he could see again,
Jonny peered through the cracked Lexan to find that Sumi's face had
remained unchanged. He was aware, on some wordless level, that
from that moment on, he would be utterly alone. But he found
himself comforted by Sumi's face, the lines of her cheeks, the set of
her lips. There was no hint at all of pain or betrayal in her smooth
features. Jonny stepped back. Calmly, gratefully, he placed the barrel
of the Futukoro between his teeth and aimed for the back of his
head. Closing his eyes, he was filled with an odd sense of euphoria,
thinking: From now on, we make our own rules.
He pulled the trigger.
The gun clicked once.
Jonny shouted and threw the thing across the room. Behind
him, the door to the clean room slid open and Conover came in. Not
one of the pretty boys on the autopsy slabs, Jonny saw, but the redeyed death's head he knew. He was sure the smuggler lord had been
watching him. Listen, son-- " Conover began.
You pig!" Jonny shouted. How could you do that to her? Treat
her like a piece of meat!
I never intended for you to see this," Conover said. He opened
his hands in a gesture of sympathy. Really, we had not choice. She
could have infected everybody here.
Jonny looked back at Sumi in the cryogenic tank. Most of the
fluid had evaporated, leaving a few feeble streams of vapor trailing
from holes the Futukoro shells had made. Did you kill all those
people upstairs? Jonny asked.
I'm afraid so," Conover said. He moved to sit on the edge of a
disconnected Hitachi CT scanner. Jonny noticed that the smuggler
lord was holding a Futukoro loosely at his side. In a sense, though,
they were already dead, Conover said. "Between the virus and
Zamora, if they didn't die now, they would be gone very soon. He
shrugged. Besides, I'm leaving. The life's gone out of it. L.A.'s no
place for me anymore.
What are you talking about? You're leaving Last Ass?"
Conover lit one of his brightly-colored Sherman's and nodded.
Yes, my ride ought to be here in a few hours. You interested in
coming?
Where are you going?"
Conover smiled. New Hope."
What?"
I think you should come," the smuggler lord said. In fact, I
insist on it. Conover had moved the Futukoro so that it was lying
across his legs, pointing casually in the direction of Jonny's midsection.
Jonny felt his brain frosting over, as if he were asleep and
dreaming in one of the cases next to Sumi. Mister Conover, what the
fuck is going on here?
It's the end of the world, son."
Great. Think anyone'll notice?" Jonny asked. He looked at Sumi
and shook his head, thinking that once again, he had failed her.
Conover got up, dropped an avuncular arm around Jonny's
shoulders and said: Don't sweat it, son. We've got big plans for you."
He steered Jonny out the clean room, upstairs and through the
Victorian wing toward the roof. There's so much to say over before
our ride gets here, but if we hurry, I think we might just have time
to give you the fifty-cent tour of the universe.
THIRTEEN:
The Fifty-Cent Tour of the Universe
Yes, the end of the world, son, can't you smell it?" asked
Conover. No finer time to be alive." He chuckled reflectively, moving
Jonny along a dark and narrow service staircase, idly jabbing him in
the back with the barrel of the Futukoro.
It's the war, isn't it?" asked Jonny. The Tokyo Alliance and
New Palestine. They're finally going to do it.
Conover nodded sleepily. What else?" he asked, shivered. He
mumbled: Need a shot," then louder: Yes, the war. Don't look so
surprised, son. Historically speaking, it's long overdue.
Jonny shook his head. Christ, then that Arab was telling the
truth.
Arab?"
There was this Arab at the Forest of Incandescent Bliss. Said
that Tokyo and Washington were getting ready to launch a sneak
attack on New Palestine, said Jonny. "When he said the Alpha Rats
were involved, I thought he was just spaceman-happy, like Zamora.
Conover laughed heartily at that. Oh, that's delightful; they
must have partially decoded one of the transmissions. The poor
bastards don't have a clue.
To what?" asked Jonny.
That we are the Alpha Rats." said the smuggler lord.
Jonny turned on Conover who casually flicked his gun up at
Jonny's face. Jonny just ignored it. I knew it," he told the lord. It's
all a ruse, isn't it? There are no Alpha Rats; there never were any
extraterrestrials. It's been the government all along using the Alpha
Rats as an excuse for the rationing programs and the damned war
preparations.
Bravo!" yelled Conover, clapping his left hand against the one
holding the Futukoro. Well done Jonny. What remarkable deductive
powers. He smiled apologetically. "Of course, you're wrong on most
of it. But it was a good try. Keep moving and I'll straighten you out.
Before they continued up, Conover lit another Sherman, the flame on
his lighter briefly illuminating the wreckage of his face. He had
developed a slight tic in the cracked skin under one eye. His lips
were moist and slack. Getting thin, thought Jonny as the smuggler
lord nudged him up the stairs.
Of course there are Alpha Rats," Conover told him. Do you
really think the Tokyo Alliance would put itself in such a dangerous
economic position intentionally? The extraterrestrial's ship crashed
on the moon fifteen years ago. Yes, crashed. They're dead, you see.
All the Alpha Rats on board. It was a plague ship, son, on auto-pilot,
packed full of dead Alpha Rats.
Think about it, Jonny. The odds are staggering. The Alpha Rats
drifting through empty space for god knows how long, getting caught
in the moon's gravity and crashing there. I don't think that it would
be far-fetched to think that in some way they were sent there for us
to find. We're just lucky a Canadian team got to the site first. If the
Arabs had made it, they would have discovered what we did;
eventually, they would have analyzed it and figured out how it
worked.
The layered virus," Jonny said. He stumbled on loose carpet,
felt Conover's gun in his back before he found his footing.
See? Your history's not so bad," said Conover. Of course, what
killed the Alpha Rats had very little resemblance to NATO's layered
virus, but it was during the early research we did on the bodies of
the Alpha Rats, breaking down the genetic structure of the plague
that killed them, that we finally found the key on how to make the
damned virus work.
Funny," said Jonny. I thought for awhile that maybe you'd
gotten some surplus virus juice from somebody and decided to let it
loose in L.A. so you could peddle the cure through us dealers.
You think too small, Jonny. I keep telling you: You're in
business, but you're not a business man. This is government work,
boy. Multinational dollars.
But all the rationing for all these years, that was a put-on
wasn't it? Keep the Pentagon fat and happy.
Yes and no. After the Alpha ship was located, we couldn't very
well have people trampling all over the moon, could we? The local
military authorities took the opportunity to burn the Arab bases and
mining operations. Naturally, we had to take out a few of our own to
make it look good, but the circumlunar labs are still operating. You
didn't know that, did you? Yes, that's where the Alpha Virus was
synthesized. All we did was blow-up a few non-essential orbiters
and dress the ones we needed with debris from the surface.
So the government's got their virus and their war. What do
you get out of this?
Freedom. From this," said Conover, touching his chest. They're
going to give me a new body, Jonny. With the government's bankroll
I can leave this place and not have to worry about territory disputes
or watered down drugs or the rabid dogs that run this city breathing
down my neck.
They must have given you a bundle for releasing that virus,"
said Jonny.
Not at all. Raquin, as the Colonel no doubt told you, was
working for the Committee. He stole the virus from me to turn over
to the Colonel, but before he had the chance, Easy stole it from
Raquin. No son, I'm afraid what Washington is paying me for has
nothing to do with releasing the Alpha Virus. I'm being paid to
deliver you. Conover sighed. "I was hoping you might figure this
part out on your own. That's why I set up that little game with 'Blue
Boy' and the cases of Mad Love. I thought maybe if you knew who I
was, you'd see some of this coming. Maybe I'm getting eccentric in
my oldage. Playing too many games. After a century or so it's easy
to forget how ordinary people think. And it was probably too much
to expect of you with all you've had on your mind lately. They came
around a sharp turn and started up another flight of stairs. Along one
wall was a stained glass fresco depicting men in armor carrying
Christian banners into battle. Why would you put that in a stairway
with no lights? Jonny wondered. You going to tell me why the
Federales want me, or should I just assume it's my magnetic
personality? he asked the smuggler lord.
Actually, they'd prefer your grandmother, but she
disappeared years ago. Then when your mother OD'd in Mexico City,
it left you as heir-apparent to the throne, explained Conover. "See,
your grandmother was a child of the streets, much like you and your
friends. She sold blood, breathed polluted air for pay in university
experiments, you know the routine. Then in nineteen ninety-five she
volunteered for a series of injections at UCLA. Of course, she didn't
know it was one of the Defense Department's genetic warfare
projects. The school told her they were testing a new hepatitis
vaccine.
Tokyo and Washington were still thinking of war strictly in
terms of atomic weapons back then. Some Pentagon bright-boy had
the idea that through genetic engineering he could increase the
general population's tolerance to certain wavelengths of radiation.
Like the rest of the research programs, it eventually ran out of
money, but not before your grandmother and a few dozen others
were doped with an experimental retro-virus. The doctors had
removed key sections of the virus's genetic code, so it could not hurt
her, but the retro-virus was very efficient in entering her bone
marrow. There, it bonded successfully with her red blood cells,
producing a sort-of anti-radiation antibody.
As I said, the project ran out of money, and the subjects were
dismissed, but not before they were re-examined. The little viruses
really took to a few of them; your grandmother was one. But the
project leaders had no hold over her or the others, no money to keep
them around. Like most of the research subjects, she simply drifted
away.
So now the Federales think because my abuela had lead in her
veins that something in my blood is the cure for the layered virus?
Apparently so."
Then if there is no cure, why the hell did you let me go to
Little Tokyo after Easy Money? Jonny shouted. "What were you
setting me up for?
Oh yes, Easy," said Conover. He looked tired; the junk flesh
around his eyes was drawn and brittle. Well, I couldn't take a
chance on Nimble Virtue finding out what she had. It was a second
batch of the virus, of course. Ricos had orders to kill her and Easy
when she turned it over.
Beautiful. Fucking beautiful, "Jonny mumbled. Then I'm it as
far as this cure goes? I mean, with all of the government's resources,
they couldn't come up with one other person connected with those
tests?
It's been a long time, Jonny. Records get lost; discs get erased.
When you ran away from the state school as a boy, they we sure
they'd lost contact with the program for good. Then you turned up on
the Committee. You couldn't hide that blood from them for long.
Jonny laughed mirthlessly. Serves me right."
At the top of the stairs, they came out into an immense
geodesic solarium. Through the bullet-proof glass, Jonny could makeout the tattered edge of the HOLLYWOOD sign, crawling neon of the
movie district below. Overhead, the moon was obscured by billowing
waves of sand, like hordes of locusts moving across the sky.
You know, Mister Conover, you really piss me off," Jonny said.
I mean, I expect this kind of chickenshit behavior from Nimble
Virtue, but I thought you were my friend.
I am your friend, Jonny. Understand, there's nothing personal
in any of this.
Right, I know. Don't tell me. It's business. Economics, it always
is.
You're looking for someone to blame again," Conover said. I
told you once: life's more complicated than cowboy and Indian
movies. You think the Arabs wouldn't use the virus if they had the
opportunity? Or your friends the Croakers? What if Groucho had a
weapon like this?
You know what's funny?" Jonny asked. What's really funny is
even though you're telling me all this now, I keep thinking that
maybe I'm hearing it wrong. I keep thinking, 'Maybe Mister Conover
got sucked into this deal by mistake, just like everybody else.' But
that's not how it is, is it? Outside the solarium was a sculpture
garden. Jonny could make out smooth Greek marbles and Indian
bronzes laid out along the severe geometry of Victorian flower beds.
When we were driving out to Santa Monica to pick up your dope
from those Gobernacion boys, I asked you about the new leprosy.
You just laughed and told me you hadn't had a cold in forty years.
But it wasn't until a few days ago that the Croakers found out that
the layered virus was attached to a cold bug. That means you knew
all along exactly what this virus was, which means you've been lying
to me ever since this mess got started. Or was it just another clue in
your game? Am I supposed to be flattered that you decided to fuck
with my head all this time? His voice was growing shrill; he took a
step toward the lord.
Conover nodded toward the statues. Come outside. I want you
to see the garden before we leave.
Fuck you, old man."
Conover casually raised the Futukoro a few centimeters. Jonny,
consider that from my point of view, the simplest thing for me would
be to shoot you and put your body on ice until my ride arrives. But
I'm giving you a chance to stay alive. These people don't want to hurt
you, they just need your blood.
How are you going to get us to the desert, man? The roads
between here and New Hope are gonna be full of Committee boys
and gangs. You can't fly over it; a hovercar can't make it that far.
There's no reason to go to the desert," said Conover tiredly.
There's nothing out there. New Hope is on the moon, safe and out of
harm's way. That structure in the desert is little more than a
grandiose movie set. This is Hollywood, boy. A crew from CineMex
put it together for us. It might have blown the Alpha Rats' image if
the general public knew about all that old money sitting right next
door.
Jonny took a deep breath. Between the tequila and the bombs
Conover kept dropping on him, he could hardly see straight. Ever
since Zamora asked me to turn you, I've been trying to figure out
who was lying to me and who was telling the truth. Now I find out
that you're the only one that was lying. Everybody else, including
Nimble Virtue and that sheik, was telling me whatever part of the
truth they knew. That situation never even crossed my mind.
Don't be such a pussy, Gordon," said a gravelly voice from the
garden. Come outside and have a drink."
Jonny looked at Conover That makes the evening perfect," he
said. The smuggler lord shrugged.
I couldn't realistically keep the Colonel out of it forever," said
Conover apologetically.
Of course he couldn't," said Colonel Zamora from the doorway
to the sculpture garden. I've got contacts in government circles, too,
you know. I put enough of it together to see what Conover was up
to.
Jonny followed Zamora out to the garden. Conover followed. A
light scrim supported by a network of poles sheathed in some lightabsorbing material kept out most of the blowing sand; the scrim
fluttered in the storm, beating like the wings of grounded birds.
You're an asshole, Colonel," Jonny said.
And you got funny eyes, kid." Zamora set down his drink.
Jonny tensed, ready to intercept the blow he knew would come-- but
the Colonel just smiled at him. You should be nice to me, Gordon.
We're partners now.
Did you have your brains surgically removed or something?"
Jonny asked. Don't you know this guy's talking about war?"
You think I don't know about war, Gordon?" The Colonel went
to a portable teak bar, poured amber liquid into a glass and brought
it back to Jonny (quietly laughing his breathy laugh). After tonight,
with Conover gone and the gangs squashed, I'll own this city. Take a
look down there, the Colonel said, steering Jonny to the edge of the
roof.
The Hollywood Hills fell sharply away from Conover's mansion,
forming a featureless black lake whose shore was a million burning
lights. Straight ahead was Hollywood and the translucent tent where
Jonny had once lived. Off to the right was the business district,
Lockheed's glowing torus and the all but invisible silicon sphere of
Sony International. Jonny glanced back at Conover and caught him
tying off with a length of green surgical tubing, a loaded syringe in
his other shaky hand.
Listen," said Colonel Zamora.
Jonny turned back to the lights. He could not hear it at first
above the hissing of the falling sand, and when he did hear it, it was
as an echo. Faint backslap of an explosion from below. His ears,
having found the sound, could identify other explosions, the garbled
reverberations of amplified voices barking stern warnings in several
languages.
Zamora was resting his elbows on the top of the low garden
wall. You think I don't know about war?" he asked. I've lived in
this city all my life. I eat, drink, sleep, and shit war. Jonny looked at
the man and would have laughed, had he not been so sure the
Colonel was absolutely serious.
Jonny walked to the bar and set down his drink, untouched.
Conover was resting against the base of a bronze of Shiva (face lost in
the Destroyer's shadow), green surgical tubing dangling from one
hand, the Futukoro from the other, breathing deeply as the Greenies
came on. Something moved by a ripped section of scrim at the far
end of the roof. Jonny moved back to the garden wall, not wanting to
be in the open if it was one of Conover's sentry robots.
It's the end of your world down there, Gordon."
That's what Conover keeps telling me," Jonny said.
Don't get me wrong, the gangs were ballsy bastards, especially
the Croakers, Zamora said. "But they're a bunch of romantic idiots.
Junkies with zip guns and rocks cannot stand up to a well-organized
fighting unit like the Committee.
Really Pere Ubu, if you keep talking like that I'm going to
think you're an idiot, and what fun is it beating an idiot? There was
a crackle of Futukoro fire from down below as from the top of the
scrim, a crystal gecko fell and burst into a fountain of flame, spewing
a stream of fish, flowers, birds and all five of the Platonic solids
straight up into the air. Sections of the netting burst into guttering
flame where the fountain touched it, the wind and sand blowing
down on the garden through widening holes.
What would you say if I told you your boys were going to lose
tonight? The voice came from right behind them, low on the garden
wall. Crouching there all in black, Futukoro in hand, Groucho flashed
Jonny a quick smile. Told you I'd come if I could. Besides, I thought
you might have run off again. Glad to see you didn't.
Me too," said Jonny.
Zamora half-turned in Groucho's grip, gazing up at the anarchist
good-humoredly. Nice stunt kid, but you aren't going to win this
thing with card tricks.
I'm not worried about the Committee right now, Ubu," said
Groucho, hopping lightly off the wall. I'm here for you."
I see. And this is the part where I fall apart and see the error
of my evil wasted life? Zamora laughed. "Come on kid, wise up. In
the morning I'm going to be running this town. You want to make a
deal?
You guys are just full of deals, aren't you?" Groucho said.
Come on, Groucho, Figure it out. Everybody does exactly what
they have to get the job done. Now what do you want? A piece of the
city for the Croakers? A cut of the drug action? You can have it.
It's not enough," said the anarchist. We are the revolt of the spirit
humiliated by your works. We live on our dreams. We can't settle for
anything less than everything.
Zamora shrugged and leaned against the garden wall. Then
you're dead, asshole.
Admit it, Colonel: It's over," said Groucho.
Boy, it's never over."
Zamora's old lizard flesh was fast. He moved to the right,
feinting a back knuckle to the head, and drove a knee up at the
anarchist's mid-section. Groucho, however, was faster. He slipped the
Colonel's kick and swept his foot, knocking Zamora onto his back.
Jonny saw Conover then, emerging from Shiva's gloom. Down!" he
yelled, but the anarchist was already falling, Conover's Futukoro still
smoking as he emerged into the light.
By the time Jonny got there, Zamora was on his feet, rubbing at
one uniformed shoulder. Groucho's eyes were wide, bubbles fringing
an exit wound in his chest, matching his breathing. Groucho gripped
Zamora's trouser leg, not recognizing the man. I am here by the will
of the people, he said, "and I will not leave until I get my raincoat
back. The bubbles on his chest were smaller and fewer each time
they appeared. Gradually, they disappeared altogether.
He stopped moving. Zamora bent and pried the anarchist's hand
from his trouser leg. Nickel and dime asshole," the Colonel mumbled.
Didn't have a clue."
Zamora started back to the bar. Jonny calmly took Nimble
Virtue's Derringer from his pocket and blew the back of the Colonel's
head off. Zamora stiffened as the hollow point hit. Then he collapsed,
a solid reptilian waterfall of flesh, joints loosening from the ankles
up.
Conover was on Jonny before he had a chance to move. That's
all, son. It's over, the smuggler lord said, and touched his gun to the
base of Jonny's spine. It's time to go." Conover pulled him way from
the bodies, directing him to the far edge of the garden where a set of
wrought-iron stairs wound down to the bare hillside. At the top of
the stairs, Jonny looked back. The scrim was no longer burning, but
large black-rimmed holes allowed the sand through. It was squalling
in great gusts all over the garden, already beginning to cover the
bodies of the dead anarchist and Colonel Zamora. Jonny walked down
the metal stairs and started off across the pale scrub grass, Conover
right behind him.
They walked with the storm to their backs. To their left, part of
the city was on fire.
Jonny's ears became quickly accustomed to the steady rattle of
far-off gunfire. The explosions seemed to take on a strange rhythm
of their own, playing counter-point to his footsteps. Black smoke
from the burning buildings was whipped up by the Santa Ana winds;
mixing with the blowing sand, the smoke closed over the city, taking
on the appearance of a solid structure, as if Jonny were seeing the
lights through the walls of a dirty terrarium. Hovercars cut back and
forth through the mist like glowing wasps.
They walked for some time without speaking. Then Conover
said: Down the hill here." Scrambling through the nettles and fallen
branches, they eventually hit a rise and Jonny saw the rusted
skeleton of the dome, the grimy white walls. He knew then that they
were headed for Griffith Observatory. Years before, after a sevenpoint quake that dropped most of Malibu below sea level, the
observatory's corroded dome had fallen in on itself like the shell of a
rotten egg. Since then, various religious groups had claimed the place,
performing secret rites in the husk of the old building under the full
moon.
Scattered through the courtyard of the old observatory in
rough concentric circles were shrines to dead technology, useless
mementos of the collective unconscious of the city. The gear box from
a gasoline powered vehicle; a German food processor; a Nautilus
exercise machine; pelvic x-rays of forgotten movie stars; piles of
pornographic video cassettes, dressing dummies and primitive Sony
tube televisions.
Jonny left Conover's side and touched the yellowed keys of an
ancient upright piano. It had been outside for so long that the
lacquer was coming off it in great chocolate ribbons, revealing the
weathered grain of some badly warped wood beneath. Jonny hit a
chord and to his surprise, the thing still worked. He picked out a onefingered melody, his off-key singing masked by the sour notes of the
out-of-tune piano.
As I passed Saint James Infirmary
I saw my sweetheart there
All stretched out on a table,
so pale, so cold, so fair
As I passed Saint James Infirmary-Come on," called Conover, let's get out of this storm." He
gestured at the open doors of the observatory with the Futukoro.
A few steps inside the high-vaulted chamber, Jonny was
swallowed up by absolute darkness. It was like walking down the
gullet of some enormous animal, he thought. He breathed the hot air
(sour with the reek of oxidizing metal) deeply, relaxing in his sudden
blindness. Since leaving Sumi, Jonny had refused to let his
exteroceptors see for him in any but the most ordinary way. He felt
comfortable in the darkness of the observatory because he had been
waiting for it; it or something just like it. He had not felt the same
since the gun had failed to kill him in the clinic. He understood then
that he was still waiting for the bullet he had been denied. Each time
he turned around, Jonny expected to see Conover raising the
Futukoro to firing position. But it did not happen.
There were things hanging from the ceiling of the observatory.
They rang softly, like the tinkling of small bells or wind chimes.
Occasionally, a tiny flash would catch his eye. Something cool touched
Jonny's face. He batted it with the back of his hand, and it swung
away into the darkness. A few steps further, he bumped into a
narrow railing that circled a sunken section of the floor, and waited
there for Conover.
The smuggler lord came into the observatory, his head cocked
to one side, as if listening for something. It occurred to Jonny for the
first time that Conover might be insane. What proof had the lord
offered him of rich people slumming on the moon or dead
extraterrestrials? Just some fairy tale about his grandmother renting
out her blood. Not having contracted the layered virus meant
nothing. Luck or natural resistance could account for that, Jonny told
himself. There were a lot of people left in the city who were not
infected.
However, if Conover were insane, he might insist that they wait
in the observatory for his spaceship all night. It seemed pretty likely
to Jonny that a structure this size would eventually attract fire from
below.
And if Conover is insane, he thought, what will he do when his
spaceship does not arrive?
Outside, the sand storm was slacking off. Through gaps in the
twisted metal of the dome, Jonny could see the pale curve of the
moon. He thought of the celebration in the city, disrupted now by
gunfire. The Day of the Dead. Illuminated in the weak moonlight,
Jonny finally saw the room in which he was standing, and decided
that if Conover was not crazy, whoever had re-built the observatory
was.
A bank of ultra-sensitive photo-cells ringed the ceiling above a
parabolic mirror cradled in a steel lattice nest; the structure
supporting the mirror had been bolted beneath a section of dome
open to the sky. When the pale lunar light came down through the
fallen girders, the walls began to flicker; gears shifted ponderously
underground and a dozen blurry moons suddenly circumscribed the
room. Video images, three meters tall; old NASA footage Jonny
remembered from his childhood. Car mirrors suspended from the
ceiling on nylon lines picked up the pale images, flashing them back
and forth like cratered stars. Narrow rows of low-voltage track lights
shone through prisms and beam-splitters, bathing the highest parts
of the room in tentative rainbows.
It's wonderful, isn't it? Absolute madness," Conover said. A
brightly painted Virgin Mary, part plaster of Paris and part jet
engine components, revolved on a creaking turntable-- a technocratic
moon goddess.
You've been here before?" asked Jonny.
Many times. I come here to think." In the wasted gray video
light, Jonny thought Conover looked like one of the masked dancers
from the procession below. The smuggler lord pointed to a spot in the
southern hemisphere ofone of the video moons. In case you're
interested, this is where we're headed. A Japanese station a few
clicks to the west of Tycho.
Jonny slumped back against the rail. Mister Conover, there's
no spaceship coming here tonight.
Of course there is. We're going to Seven Rose Base." Bullshit.
All that's going to happen is we're going to hang around here till
somebody decides to put a mortar shell through the wall.
Conover shook his head, smiled indulgently at Jonny. Don't go
thinking I've lost my mind, dear boy, he said. "The fact is, I haven't
let you in on all my reasons for wanting to get to the moon.
Jonny opened his eyes in mock surprise. Oh gosh, then you
haven't been absolutely straight with me? I'm really hurt, Mister
Conover.
What would you say if I told that you we have had contact
with the Alpha Rats directly?
I thought you said they were dead."
The one's on the ship were, yes. But I mean others."
Other Alpha Rats? Where?"
Ah, so now you're interested." The smuggler lord walked along
the curving edge of the chamber, passing before each of the twelve
grainy moonscapes. Earth's shadow followed him, leaving each video
panel dark as he moved beyond it. They've spoken to us, Jonny.
>From a ship, maybe an orbital broadcasting station. Three words,
clear as day. Three words repeated three times. Once in English; Once
in Japanese and once in Arabic.
Wait, I think I know this joke. They said 'Send more Chuck
Berry,' right?
Conover waited before one of the screens, time-lapse dawn
bursting over his shoulder. They said: 'We are coming.' "
Jonny looked down at his hands and found dried blood on the
backs of his knuckles. His stomach fluttered. He rubbed the knuckles
on his jeans. That's it?" he asked.
Isn't that enough?"
Jonny shrugged. Well, I mean, I don't want to rain on your
parade or anything, but so what? They're coming. What does that get
you?
A chance," Conover said. One last chance for something new.
You can't imagine what it feels like living on pure reflex, half-awake,
but still functioning. And then something jars you conscious and you
realize that another five years have passed but it doesn't mean
anything because the next five will be exactly the same as the ones
that preceded it.
Jonny nodded. So basically you're fucking everybody over
because you're bored.
The smuggler lord grinned. Well, if you choose to look at it
that way-I do," Jonny said.
I'm sorry to hear that." Conover stepped away from the
videos.
Still, there's not much to be done about it."
Sure there is," Jonny said, leaping the handrail to the sunken
observatory floor. Kill me now."
Don't be an ass."
Jonny went to the slowly-revolving Virgin Mary, took hold of
something by her feet, and came away with a meter-long piece of
heavy chrome pipe. He held it before him, testing the balance in his
hands, then went to Conover. Come on, fucker. Kill me."
The smuggler lord held the Futukoro before him, but did not
point it at Jonny. You're being an idiot."
Jonny swung the pipe like a baseball bat, circling the lord on
the floor of the dim chamber. Shoot me. Shoot me or I'll cave you're
goddamn head in.
I might just have to do it, Jonny."
Go ahead." He swung the pipe wide, letting the smuggler lord
jump out of the way.
Stop this right now," Conover said. Jonny swung again, forcing
the lord back on his heels.
I knew it!" Jonny yelled. I'm not worth squat to you dead, am
I? They don't want me if I'm dead. All that stuff about giving me a
chance to stay alive was just another line. If I'm dead, you haven't
got anything to trade for your new skin, have you? He swung the
pipe at the lord's head.
You're acting like a child--"
Then shoot me!"
No!"
This time Jonny connected, snapping his wrists down, driving
the end of the pipe into Conover's shoulder. The smuggler lord
gasped and dropped to his knees. Jonny threw the pipe, rolled under
the circular railing and headed for the door. Futukoro shots hissed
past his ear, bringing mirrors and bits of pulverized marble down on
his head. He darted to the left, more shots following him, cutting off
his way to the door.
Conover was on his feet, heaving himself over the railing. The
smuggler lord kept sweeping the room with the Futukoro as he
pressed his back to each of the observatory's doors, grinding them
closed over a thin layer of sand.
Where are you going to go, Jonny?" Conover yelled. You're
friends are gone. It can be a bad place out there when you're all
alone.
Jonny kept to the floor behind a gutted exhibit case, barely
breathing. He watched the smuggler lord walk back to the sunken
center of the chamber, gun in his hand. Come on out, son. This is
insane, Conover said. "We're both going to lose this way. Jonny cut
his fingers picking up a wedge of glass from the wrecked case.
Moving into a crouch, he waited for the smuggler lord to get into just
the right position, and threw the glass edge-first across the room,
scrambling for the door at the same time.
He knew it was a lost cause within three steps. The pounding of
his heavy boots gave him away. Conover turned away for a fraction
of a second when the glass hit, but snapped his gun back the instant
Jonny began his run. Jonny heard the smuggler lord's gun go off
twice.
Consider that I don't have to kill you, son. A shot through each
kneecap will keep you still until the ship arrives.
Jonny was lying in the shadows, in the dirt, hands crabbed at
the edges of worn floor tiles. One side of his face was hot and wet
where shrapnel, fragmented marble or wood from the door, had
slashed his cheek. His mind was a blank, watching Conover move
about the center of the chamber, keeping to the light. For a moment,
when consciousness imposed itself upon him, he felt his will drain
away. He did not understand why he was running so hard from
death when it was what he had been looking for all along. He pressed
his back against the wall.
Clinging is not acceptable, he reminded himself. Clinging to
anything, including life (or death), was the sign of a weak mind. One
of the floor tiles came loose in his hand.
Anger; greed; folly. Hearing the words in his mind, he almost
laughed. They had been the cornerstones of his existence, as had
illusion. Before he had left her, Jonny's roshi had told him to picture
himself as a man crossing a river, moving from one slippery rock to
the next, knowing that each step could send him plunging into the
rapids.
Moving from illusion to illusion he assumed he had found
himself. Now he was not so sure. Perhaps, he thought, he had just
found more illusions.
Conover was moving in slow circles before the video screens.
Jonny froze where he was, watched the smuggler lord scanning the
room. When Conover's gaze moved over and beyond him, Jonny sat
up, throwing the floor tile high, watching it spin and shatter the
parabolic mirror at the top of the chamber. The lord covered his head
as the glass came down on him, firing wildly, tearing up the ceiling
and the edges of the room. The muzzle flash from the Futukoro lit
him like a broken strobe as the video moonscapes went dark at his
back. When Conover stopped shooting, the room was quiet and very
dark. Belly to the floor, Jonny could feel the underground gears
winding down. He blinked once. Shapes became solid in the gloom.
Then he was up, his body moving by itself, one foot coming down on
the circular rail, the other swinging over, whole body hanging for an
instant in mid-air, unprotected meat, house of illusions, hate and
fear. Conover was below, slow-motion turning, Jonny's new
exteroceptor's showing the man as a brilliant neon scarecrow with
holes in his face.
And then he hit, driving Conover hard into the floor. Jonny
hauled him up, holding the wrist that held the gun, so close to the
man that when his breath hesitated for a moment, Jonny felt the
absence of it on his face.
Something happened then.
Sand whispered down through the roof and the moon emerged
from a bank of clouds. Conover looked up. Bathed in the milky light,
his face went slack, hung on his cheeks like melting putty. The birdthin arms fell to his sides, and when the smuggler lord looked at him,
for the first time, Jonny glimpsed the true face of the man.
It had cost him his eyes to see it. Groucho had an inkling of it,
but had died without a look; Ice and Sumi had been spared it; no
junkie or leper would have suspected it. Zamora had recognized its
essence immediately, was drawn to it, but had probably never
witnessed the thing itself. Only Jonny, with second-hand eyes stolen
from some rich man's gaudy toy, would ever know the smuggler
lord's true face.
Blank.
Without expression.
A Halloween spook; a candy skull, dead as the hills when the
brush fires claimed them, dead as the sailor in the boiler room of a
sunken ship, skull fused to the melted plating of her hull.
There was nothing else he could do. He moved the hand with
the gun under Conover's chin. The smuggler lord never took his hand
from the weapon, never tried to struggle. Sand fell on their
shoulders. When Jonny looked into the other man's eyes and saw his
own, he understood their common desire.
Jonny decided to make him a gift of it. And pulled the trigger.
It had not occurred to Jonny that he was not breathing. The
kick of the gun triggered a spasm in his lungs and he sucked in a
long breath, tasting ozone and the fear-smell of his own sweat.
Conover's body went down lightly, seemingly without weight, as if, in
those last few seconds of life, the smuggler lord had used up
everything he was.
Jonny was shaking all over, covered in blood and filth. He
crawled under the railing and scraped open the doors. Stepping
outside, he stood for some minutes in the falling sand, rubbing it into
his face and arms, letting it rasp away the stink of death and
illusions.
Later, as he was wandering among the circular shrines in the
courtyard of the observatory, Jonny saw something skimming low
and fast over the tops of the hills. At first he thought it might be a
hovercar flying without its running lights, but as the craft got closer
he could tell that it was much too big for that. From what Jonny could
see of its outline, it appeared to have the razor-edged fuselage and
stubby graphite-composite wings of a Daimyo vacuum shuttle.
Something prickled along his spine. There would be a bigger ship up
there, he knew, waiting just beyond the stratosphere-The shuttle came down low over the observatory, and leveled
off, circling the ruin, a matte-black scavenger. From its belly
extended shafts of metallic blue light, sensitive fingers probing the
body of the dead building. Jonny hunkered down behind the pile of
Sony televisions, listening to the ship's engine's whine in the
overheated air. It was waiting for something. A signal? he wondered.
But the man who would have signaled it was dead on his back, fifty
meters away.
After more than a dozen passes, the hum of the shuttle's
engines took a sudden jump in frequency, the fingers of light
disappearing one by one, leaving the observatory dark. Veering off
down the hill, the ship banked sharply to the left and started a rapid
climb back the way it had come. Jonny crawled to the edge of the
pile of televisions to watch the firing of the shuttle's engines, twin
stars. A couple of hovercars detached themselves from formation
over Hollywood and buzzed up the hill behind the larger ship, firing
their banks of heat-seeking missiles.
The shuttle disappeared on the far side of the hills. The flash of
the explosion bleached the sky bone-white before the sound hit him.
It rolled like distant thunder, over the hills and on into the city. The
hovercars turned off and headed back to Hollywood, merging into the
mass of lights that was Los Angeles.
Below, the city was burning. The wind had changed direction;
the sand was coming down harder, but behind it was a hint of rain.
Jonny wondered if the weather patterns would ever stabilize. He
removed the bottom panel from the front of the old piano and
crawled inside. Something exploded on Sunset Boulevard below.
Sizzling fireworks and a choir of hologram angels, enormous lavender
lizards, skulls, women's shoes, dice and playing cards rose from the
flames, glowed mad and beautiful, spiraled, screamed, clawed at the
buildings and finally faded into the sky.
The city burned all night.
EPILOGUE:
The Unconsciousness of the
Landscape becomes Complete
The city was inside him, its windblown streets and alleys as
much a part of him as the air he breathed, the blood in his veins.
What roots he had were sunk deep in its hard soil. It formed the
walls and foundation of his soul, a thing of which he possessed little
knowledge, but which he had lately begun to consider.
He would never leave the city behind.
Los Angeles lay white and still beneath the sun. The winds that
had carried in the sand were now blowing smoke from the
smoldering buildings out to sea, leaving the sky a nearly
unblemished dome of aquamarine. In the distance, Watts and Silver
Lake seemed to still be burning. However, since dawn a crystalline
calmness had invaded the city. It happened as the sun rose,
shimmering off the centimeters of desert sand that covered every
flat surface. The light gave Los Angeles the pure, hard look of a
newly minted coin or surgical instrument.
Jonny spotted the first refugees just before daybreak. A small
group of them were making their way over the nearby hills, heading
for the Ventura Freeway and parts north. Later, he spotted hundreds
of people following the highways out of Hollywood. At first, he had
wondered where they were all going, but as he asked the question,
the answer seemed obvious.
Anywhere else.
The revolution was done. From what a young Zombie Analytic
girl told him, the Croakers had won. In a sense. They're not in
control of the city, but neither's the Committee, so I guess they won,
she said. They won or they lost in such a way that the Committee
can't win; take your pick.
By noon, the hills were full of refugees, winding in ragged lines
around the observatory and the HOLLYWOOD sign, moving Jonny as
he sat on the keyboard of the piano, and on over the hills. Many
people were still wearing their costumes from the night before. In
the bright sun, newsrag skeletons were hardly more menacing that
the flat-footed Meat Boys, hookers and merchants that followed.
No more fighting, Jonny thought. Let them have it. Let them try
to rule an empty city.
What's so funny, Jonny?"
He had not realized that he was laughing out loud. Easy Money
stood a few meters away within the ring of circular shrines, pale and
filthy, shielding his eyes from the sun. The arm he had injured at the
Forest of Incandescent Bliss was wrapped in tangled layers of dirty
gauze.
That's going to get infected," Jonny said.
I tanked up on ampecillin in Little Tokyo," Easy replied. There
was a subtle irregularity in skin color of the arm he was using to
shield his eyes, a burning or mottling. It could be anything, Jonny
thought. He looked for other signs of the virus, but under all that
dirt, there was no way to be sure.
So, like I said, 'What's so funny?' "
Everything," Jonny said. It's over, man. They killed us. We're
dead and they can't hurt us anymore.
You know the Committee's still holding parts of the city?
They've sent for the Army.
Let them. You can't shoot ghosts and that's all that's left down
there.
Easy Money lowered his hand and Jonny saw heavy bruising
across the man's forehead where one of his horns had broken off.
You going back?"
Jonny shook his head. Let the rats have it," he said. You?"
Where would I go?"
There's lots of places."
Easy looked over his shoulder at the smoke and the sand. No."
A dozen Mexican teenagers walked by, nylon athletic bags
emblazoned with colorful corporate decals and backpacks full of
clothes and food hanging from their shoulders. They were singing
together, an ancient melody, low and steady like a hymn, wholly
unselfconscious. They were moving against the general flow of
traffic, heading south and, Jonny knew, home. When they moved out
of ear-shot, he found himself missing their song.
Easy was pointing at something. You planning to use that or
what?
Jonny looked down at his hand and found Conover's Futukoro
there. He had a vague memory of having sneaked back into the
observatory during the night and taking the thing, though he could
not remember why. Jonny looked at Easy. It's gone a little beyond
that, don't you think? He shrugged. "Besides, I miss your head and
hit something important.
Easy smiled. You are a classic asshole, you know that? I'd have
blown you away on sight.
Maybe that's the difference between us. I don't have to kill
you; you're doing that just fine by yourself.
But I won't die an asshole."
I don't know if either of us has much choice in that matter."
Jonny laughed. You know what I can't stop thinking about? Those
poor ignorant idiots on the moon. Sitting up there thinking how safe
they are from this little war they've dreamed up for us, not knowing
about the little green men that are coming to see them. I mean, it's
enough to make you think that maybe there is a god and that maybe
the fucker has a sense of humor.
I don't the slightest idea what you're talking about, but that's
okay, said Easy. "Seeing as how you're in such a good mood-- you
wouldn't happen to be holding, would you?
Got a lot of pain?"
Think I cracked some ribs when I fell."
That's rough." Jonny pulled one of his pockets inside out. I
seem to be all tapped out. Easy just nodded. "You might check
Conover's place. His security's down for good and there's a room
there stacked eyeball-high with Mad Love.
Easy shaded his eyes again, frowned at Jonny from under his
arm. Why you telling me about this?"
'Cause I'm a right guy," said Jonny. 'Cause I'm Dragon headSnake body, and I know that all thought is illusion, that any event in
our lives, the worst and the best, can lead us toward enlightenment.
Also, I don't really give a fuck.
You're lost in space, man." Easy shook his head. They're gonna
come after you with nets and needles.
Goodbye Easy."
Adios, asshole."
Easy made his way awkwardly up the hill, limping on his
clubfoot in the direction of Conover's place. Jonny watched him as the
man followed the same squatter's trail Conover had lead him down
last night. It seemed a long time ago. The sun flashed off Easy's one
remaining horn, then he was gone behind a stand of withered oaks.
Jonny stepped off the piano, weighing the Futukoro in his hand,
marveling that at any other time in recent memory he would have
given anything to have Easy Money and a loaded gun at the same
time. The feeling was gone, all echoes now. He had moved on. To
where, he was not sure. Jonny took off his jacket and wrapped the
gun inside. Just before he dropped the bundle into the piano,
something fell from one of the pockets.
He picked it up and rang it gently, remembering that the
Groucho had given him the small bell for luck in the deserted club.
Jonny considered the notion of enlightenment.
Everybody he cared about was gone. Ice and Sumi, Random,
Groucho, all dead. Yet he felt their presence strong within him. It was
a corny sentiment, something you would read on a greeting card, and
he would have dismissed it entirely if the feeling had not been so
powerful, so genuine.
Enlightenment.
Jonny still did not know what it really meant, was certain it
was not what he was feeling now. All he knew for certain was that
although he did not feel good, in some odd way, he felt a hell of a lot
better.
He held the bell in his left hand, letting it ring as he walked.
The way to Ensenada would be a long one, so he sang himself
through the city. As I passed Saint James Infirmary
I saw my sweetheart there,
All stretched out on a table,
so pale, so cold, so fair
As I passed Saint James Infirmary--
THE END
************************************************************************
Cyberia
Douglas Rushkoff
Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace
Introduction
Surfing the Learning Curve of Sisyphus
On the most rudimentary level there is simply terror of feeling like an
immigrant in a
place where your children are natives--where you're always going to be behind
the
8-ball because they can develop the technology faster than you can learn it.
It's what I
call the learning curve of Sisyphus. And the only people who are going to be
comfortable with that are people who don't mind confusion and ambiguity. I look
at
confusing circumstances as an opportunity--but not everybody feels that way.
That's
not the standard neurotic response. We've got a culture that's based on the
ability of
people to control everything. Once you start to embrace confusion as a way of
life,
concomitant with that is the assumption that you really don't control anything.
At best
it's a matter of surfing the whitewater.
--John Barlow, lyricist for the Grateful Dead and cofounder of the Electronic
Frontiers Foundation
The kid who handed me the brightly colored flyer must have figured I was younger
or
at least more open-minded than I really am. Or maybe he had me pegged from the beginning.
Sure, I had done a little experimenting" in college and had gotten my world view a bit
expanded, but I was hardly ready to immerse myself in a subculture as odd, or as
influential,
as this one turned out to be.
The fractal-enhanced map-point" leaflet announced a giant, illegal party -- a
rave,"
where thousands of celebrants would take psychedelics, dance to the blips of
computer-generated music, and discuss the ways in which reality itself would soon conform
to
their own hallucinatory projections. No big deal. Bohemians have talked this way for
years,
even centuries. Problem is, after a few months in their midst, I started believing them.
A respected Princeton mathematician gets turned on to LSD, takes a several-year
sabbatical in the caves of the Himalayas during which he trips his brains out, then
returns to
the university and dedicates himself to finding equations to map the shapes in his
psychedelic
visions. The formulas he develops have better success at mapping the weather and even the
stock market than any have before.
Three kids in San Francisco with a video camera and a broken hotel magnetic key
encoder successfully fool a bank cash machine into giving them other people's money.
A new computer conferencing system immerses people so totally in their virtual
community" that an alterego takes over a man's willpower, and he finds himself out of
control, randomly propositioning women who happen to be online."
A science fiction writer, after witnessing the spectacle of a child in hypnotic
symbiosis
with a video arcade game, invents a fictional reality called Cyberspace -- a consensual
hallucination" accessed through the computer, where one's thoughts manifest totally, and
reality itself conforms to the wave patterns.
Then, in a bizarre self-fulfilling prophecy, the science fictional concept of a
reality that
can be consciously designed begins to emerge as a held belief--and not just by kids
dancing
at all night festivals. A confluence of scientists, computer programmers, authors,
musicians,
journalists, artists, activists and even politicians have adopted a new paradigm. And
they want
to make this your paradigm, too.
The battle for your reality begins on the fields of digital interaction. Our
growing
dependence on computers and electronic media for information, money, and communication
has made us easy targets, if unwilling subjects, in one of the most bizarre social
experiments
of the century. We are being asked to spend an increasing amount of our time on a very
new
sort of turf----the territory of digital information. While we are getting used to it by
now, this
region is very different from the reality we have grown to know and love. It is a
boundless
universe in which people can interact regardless of time and location. We can fax
paper''
over phone lines, conduct twenty-party video-telephone conversations with participants in
different countries, and even "touch'' one another from thousands of miles away through
new
technologies such as virtual reality, where the world itself opens to you just as you
dream it
up.
For example, many of these computer programs and data libraries are structured
as
webs, a format that has come to be known as hypertext.'' To learn about a painter, a
computer user might start with a certain museum. From the list of painters, he may select
a
particular portrait. Then he may ask for biographical information about the subject of
the
portrait, which may reveal a family tree. He may follow the family tree up through the
present, then branch off into data about immigration policies to the United States, the
development of New York real estate, or even a grocery district on the Lower East Side.
In a
hypertext video game, a player might be a detective searching a room. In the room is a
chest
of drawers. Select a drawer. The drawer opens, inside is a note. Point to the note, and
text
appears. Read the note, see a name. Select the name, see a picture. One item in the
picture is
a car. Select the car, go for a ride through the neighborhood. See an interesting house,
go
inside...
Maybe this isn't all that startling. It has taken several decades for these
technologies
take root, and many of us are used to the way they work. But the people I met at my first
rave in early 1990's San Francisco claimed they could experience this same boundless,
hypertext universe without the use of a computer at all. For them, cyberspace can be
accessed
through drugs, dance, spiritual techniques, chaos math, and pagan rituals. They move into
a
state of consciousness where, as if logged onto a computer, the limitations of time,
distance,
and the body are perceived as meaningless. People believe that they move through these
regions as they might move through computer programs or video games--unlimited by the
rules of a linear, physical reality. Moreover, they say that our reality itself, aided by
technology, is about to make a wholesale leap into this new, hypertextual dimension.
By handing me that damned rave promotional flyer, a San Franciscan teenager made
it
impossible for me to ignore that a growing number of quite intelligent, if optimistic,
people
are preparing themselves and the rest of us for the wildest possible implications of our
new
technologies. The more time I spent with these people, the less wild these implications
seemed to me. Everywhere I turned, the conclusions were the same. Quantum physicists at
the
best institutions agree that the tiniest particles making up matter itself have ceased to
behave
with the predictability of linear equations. Instead, they jump around in a discontinuous
fashion, disappearing, reappearing, suddenly gaining and losing energy. Mathematicians,
likewise, have decided that the smooth, geometric model of reality they have used since
Euclid first drew a triangle on papyrus is obsolete. Instead, using computers, they churn
out
psychedelic paisley patterns which they claim more accurately reflect the nature of
existence.
And who appears to be taking all this in first? The kids dancing to electronic
music at
underground clubs. And the conclusion they have all seemed to reach is that reality
itself is
up for grabs. It can be dreamt up.
Now this all may be difficult to take seriously; it was for me--at first. But we
only
need to turn to the arbiters of reality--mainstream scientists--to find this confirmed.
The
ability to observe phenomena, they now believe, is inextricably linked to the phenomena
themselves. Having lost faith in the notion of a material explanation for existence,
these
quantum physicists and systems mathematicians have begun to look at the ways reality
conforms to their expectations, mirroring back to them a world changed by the very act of
observation. As they rely more and more on the computer, their suspicions are further
confirmed: This is not a world reducible to neat equations and pat answers, but an
infinitely
complex series of interdependencies, where the tiniest change in a remote place can have
systemwide repercussions.
When computers crunch data from real-world observations, they do not produce
simple, linear graphs of an orderly existence but instead churn out phase maps and
diagrams
whose spiraling intricacy resembles that of an ancient mosaic, a coral reef, or a
psychedelic
hallucination. When the entire procession of historical, biological, and cosmological
events is
reanalyzed in the light of modern mathematical discoveries like the fractal and feedback
loops, it points toward this era--the turn of the century--as man's leap out of history
altogether
and into some sort of timeless dimension.
Inklings of what this dimension may be like come to us through the experience of
computer hackers and psychedelic tripsters, who think of themselves not as opposite ends
of
the spectrum of human activity but as a synergistic congregation of creative thinkers
bringing
the tools of high technology and advanced spirituality into the living rooms of the
general
public. Psychedelics can provide a shamanic experience for any adventurous consumer. This
experience leads users to treat the accepted reality as an arbitrary one, and to envision
the
possibilities of a world unfettered by obsolete thought systems, institutions, and
neuroses.
Meanwhile, the cybernetic experience empowers people of all ages to explore a new,
digital
landscape. Using only a personal computer and a modem, anyone can now access the
datasphere. New computer interface technologies such as virtual reality promise to make
the
datasphere a place where we can take not only our minds but our bodies along for the
ride.
The people you are about to meet interpret the development of the datasphere as
the
hardwiring of a global brain. This is to be the final stage in the development of
Gaia,'' the
living being that is the Earth, for which humans serve as the neurons. As computer
programmers and psychedelic warriors together realize that "all is one,'' a common belief
emerges that the evolution of humanity has been a willful progression toward the
construction
of the next dimensional home for consciousness.
We need a new word to express this boundless territory. The kids in this book
call it
Cyberia.
Cyberia is the place a businessperson goes when involved in a phone
conversation, the
place a shamanic warrior goes when traveling out of body, the place an acid house''
dancer
goes when experiencing the bliss of a techno-acid trance. Cyberia is the place alluded to
by
the mystical teachings of every religion, the theoretical tangents of every science, and
the
wildest speculations of every imagination. Now, however, unlike any other time in
history,
Cyberia is thought to be within our reach. The technological strides of our postmodern
culture, coupled with the rebirth of ancient spiritual ideas, have convinced a growing
number
of people that Cyberia is the dimensional plane in which humanity will soon find itself.
But even those of us who have never ventured into a house club, physics lab or
computer bulletin board are being increasingly exposed to words, images and ideas that
shake
the foundations of our most deeply held beliefs. The cyberian paradigm finds its way to
our
unsuspecting minds through new kinds of arts and entertainment that rely less on
structure
and linear progression than on textural experience and moment-to-moment awareness.
Role-playing games, for example, have no beginning or end, but instead celebrate the
inventiveness of their players, who wind their way through complex fantasies together,
testing
strategies that they may later use in their own lives, which have in turn begun to
resemble the
wild adventures of their game characters. Similarly, the art and literature of Cyberia
have
abandoned the clean lines and smooth surfaces of Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey in
favor of the grimy, posturban realism of Batman, Neuromancer, and Bladerunner, in which
computers do not simplify human issues but expose and even amplify the obvious faults in
our systems of logic and social engineering.
Not surprisingly, the reaction of traditionalists to this expression has been
harsh and
marked by panic. Cyberians question the very reality on which the ideas of control and
manipulation are based; and as computer-networking technology gets into the hands of more
cyberians, historical power centers are challenged. A bright young hacker with enough
time
on his hands can break in to almost any computer system in the world. Meanwhile,
do-it-yourself technology and a huge, hungry media empire sews the seeds of its own
destruction by inviting private citizens to participate through 'zines, cable shows, and
interactive television. The hypnotic spell of years of television and its intense public
relations
is broken as people learn to deconstruct and recombine the images intended to persuade
them.
The result is that the population at large gains the freedom to reexamine previously
accepted
policies and prejudices.
Using media viruses,'' politically inclined cyberians launch into the
datasphere, at
lightning speed, potent ideas that openly challenge hypocritical and illogical social
structures,
thus rendering them powerless.
A new scientific paradigm, a new leap in technology, and a new class of drug
created
the conditions for what many believe is the renaissance we are observing today. Parallels
certainly abound between our era and renaissances of the past: the computer and the
printing
press, LSD and caffeine, the holograph and perspective painting, the wheel and the
spaceship,
agriculture and the datasphere. But cyberians see this era as more than just a rebirth of
classical ideas. They believe the age upon us now might take the form of categorical
upscaling of the human experience onto uncharted, hyperdimensional turf.
The people who believe all this, so far, are on the outermost fringes of popular
culture.
But, as we witnessed in the 1960s, the beliefs of fringe cultures can trickle up through
our
youth into the mainstream. In fact, we may soon conclude that the single most important
contribution of the 1960s and the psychedelic era to popular culture is the notion that
we have
chosen our reality arbitrarily. The mission of the cyberian counterculture of the 1990s,
armed
with new technologies, familiar with cyberspace and daring enough to explore unmapped
realms of consciousness, is to rechoose reality consciously and purposefully.
This book is meant to provide a guided tour through that vision: Cyberia. It is
an
opportunity to take part in, or at least catch up with, a movement that could be
reshaping
reality. The cyberian explorers we will meet in the next chapters have been depicted with
all
their human optimism, brilliance, and frailty. Like the first pioneers of any new world,
they
suffer from the same fears, frustrations, and failures as those who stay behind and watch
from
the safety of familiarity. These are not media personalities but human beings, developing
their
own coping mechanisms for survival on the edges of reality.
Whether or not we are destined for a wholesale leap into the next dimension,
there are
many people who believe that history as we know it is coming to a close. It is more than
likely that the aesthetics, inventions, and attitudes of the cyberians will become as
difficult to
ignore as the automatic teller machine and MTV. We all must cope, in one way or another,
with the passage of time. It behooves us to grok Cyberia.
is much
"being''
biology
ecology
Most people think it's far out if we get virtual reality up and running. This
more profound than that. This is the real thing. We're going to find out what
is. It's a philosophical journey and the vehicles are not simply cultural but
itself. We're closing distance with the most profound event that a planetary
can encounter, which is the freeing of life from the chrysalis of matter. And
it's never
happened before--I mean the dinosaurs didn't do this, nor did the procaryotes
emerging. No. This takes a billion years of forward moving evolution to get to
the
back
place where information can detach itself from the material matrix and then look
on a cast-off mode of being as it rises into a higher dimension.
--Terence McKenna, author, botanist, and psychedelic explorer
PART 1
Computers: Revenge of the Nerds
Chapter 1
Navigating the Datastream
Craig was seven when he discovered the catacombs.'' His parents had taken him
on a
family visit to his uncle, and while the adults sat in the kitchen discussing the prices
of sofas
and local politics, young Craig Neidorf--whom the authorities would eventually prosecute
as a
dangerous, subversive hacker--found one of the first portals to Cyberia: a video game
called
Adventure.
Like a child who wanders away from his parents during a tour of the Vatican to
explore the ancient, secret passages beneath the public walkways, Craig had embarked on
his
own video-driven visionquest. As he made his way through the game's many screens and
collected magical objects, Craig learned that he could use those objects to see''
portions of
the game that no one else could. Even though he had completed whatever tasks were
necessary in the earlier parts of the game, he was drawn back to explore them with his
new
vision. Craig was no longer interested in just winning the game--he could do that
effortlessly.
Now he wanted to get inside it.
I was able to walk through a wall into a room that did not exist,'' Craig
explains to
me late one night over questionably accessed phone lines. "It was not in the
instructions. It
was not part of the game. And in that room was a message. It was a message from the
creator
of the game, flashing in black and gold...''
Craig's voice trails off. Hugh, my assistant and link-artist to the telephone
net, adjusts
his headset, checks a meter, then acknowledges with a nod that the conversation is still
being
recorded satisfactorily. Craig would not share with me what the message said--only that
it
motivated his career as a cyberian. This process--finding something that wasn't written
about,
discovering something that I wasn't supposed to know--it got me very interested. I
searched in
various other games and tried everything I could think of--even jiggling the power cord
or the
game cartridge just to see what would happen. That's where my interest in playing with
that
kind of thing began ... but then I got an Apple.''
At that point, Cyberia, which had previously been limited to the other side of
the
television screen, expanded to become the other side of the computer screen. With the
help of
a telephone connection called a modem,'' Craig was linked to a worldwide system of
computers and communications. Now, instead of exploring the inner workings of a packaged
video game, Craig was roaming the secret passages of the datasphere.
By the time he was a teenager, Craig Neidorf had been arrested. Serving as the
editor
of an on-line magazine'' (passed over phone lines from computer to computer) called
Phrack,
he was charged with publishing (legally, "transporting'') a dangerous, $79,000 program
document detailing the workings of Bell South's emergency 911 telephone system
(specifically, the feature that allows them to trace incoming calls). At Neidorf's trial,
a Bell
South employee eventually revealed that the program'' was actually a three-page memo
available to Bell South customers for less than $30. Neidorf was put on a kind of
probation
for a year, but he is still raising money to cover his $100,000 legal expenses.
But the authorities and, for most part, adult society are missing the point
here. Craig
and his compatriots are not interested in obtaining and selling valuable documents. These
kids
are not stealing information--they are surfing data. In Cyberia, the computer serves as a
metaphor as much as a tool; to hack through one system to another and yet another is to
discover the secret rooms and passageways where no one has ever traveled before. The web
of interconnected computer networks provides the ultimate electronic neural extension for
the
growing mind. To reckon with this technological frontier of human consciousness means to
reevaluate the very nature of information, creativity, property and human relations.
Craig is fairly typical of the young genius-pioneers of this new territory. He
describes
the first time he saw a hacker in action:
I really don't remember how he got in; I was sitting there while he typed. But
to see
these other systems were out there was sort of interesting. I saw things like shopping
malls--there were heating computers you could actually call up and look at what their
temperature settings were. There were several of these linked together. One company ran
the
thermostat for a set of different subscribers, so if it was projected to be 82 degrees
outside,
they'd adjust it to a certain setting. So, back when we were thirteen or so, we talked
about
how it might be neat to change the settings one day, and make it too hot or too cold. But
we
never did.''
But they could have, and that's what matters. They gained access. In Cyberia,
this is
funhouse exploration. Neidorf sees it as like when you're eight and you know your
brother
and his friends have a little treehouse or clubhouse somewhere down in the woods, and you
and your friends go and check it out even though you know your brother would basically
kill
you if he found you in there.'' Most of these kids get into hacking the same way as
children
of previous generations daringly wandered through the hidden corridors of their school
basements or took apart their parents' TV sets. But with computers they hit the jackpot:
There's a whole world there--a whole new reality, which they can enter and even change.
Cyberia. Each new opening leads to the discovery of an entirely new world, each connected
to countless other new worlds. You don't just get in somewhere, look around, find out
it's a
dead end, and leave. Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher were fascinated by a few winding
caves; cyberkids have broken through to an infinitely more complex and rewarding network.
Each new screen takes them into a new company, institution, city, government, or nation.
They can pop out almost anywhere. It's an endless ride.
As well as being one of the most valuable techniques for navigating cyberspace,
hacking the vast computer net is the first and most important metaphor in Cyberia. For
the
first time, there is a technical arena in which to manifest the cyberian impulses, which
range
from pure sport to spiritual ecstasy and from redesigning reality to downright
subversion.
Crashing the System
David Troup gained his fame in the computer underground for a program he wrote
called The Bodyguard, which helps hackers maintain their chain of connections through a
long series of systems breaches. Through another ingeniously exploited communications
system glitch, we spoke as he relaxed on his living room couch in Minnesota. From the
sound
of his voice I knew he was using a speaker phone, and I heard several of his friends
milling
about the room, popping open beers, and muttering in agreement with Troup, their local
hero.
The fun of hacking lies in the puzzle solving. Finding out what lies around
that next
corner, around the next menu or password. Finding out just how twisted you can get.
Popping
out of a computer-based network into a phone-based network and back again. Mapping
networks that go worldwide. We watched a system in Milwaukee grow from just two systems
into a huge network. We went with them. By the end, we probably had a more detailed map
of their network than they did. ''
The Bodyguard has become an indispensable part of the hacker's daytrip survival
kit.
It's kind of a worm [a tunneling computer virus] that hacks along with you. Say I'm
cruising
through fifteen Unixes [computers that run Unix software] to get at some engineering
firm.
Every time I go onto a Unix, I will upload my Bodyguard program. What it does is watch me
and watch the system. It's got the names of the system operators. If a system operator
[''sysop,'' the watchdog for illegal penetrants] or somebody else who has the ability to
check
the system logs on [enters the network through his own computer], the Bodyguard will
flash
an error flag [warning! danger!] and terminate you at that point. It also will send you a
number corresponding to the next place down the hierarchy of machines that you've
penetrated. You'll have your last connection previous to the one where you got canned. It
will
then reconnect you to where you were, without using the system that knocked you off.
It'll
recreate the network for you. It takes about four or five minutes. It's nice because when
you're
deep in a group of systems, you can't watch everything. Your Bodyguard gets you off as
soon
as a sysop signs on, before he even knows you're there. Even if they just log in, you hit
the
road. No need to take any chances.''
While the true hacker ethic is not to destroy anything, most young people who
find
themselves in a position where it' possible to inflict damage find it hard to resist
doing so. As
Troup explains, Most kids will do the most destructive thing they know how to do.
There's
nothing in there that they need, or want, or even understand how to use. Everybody's
crashed
a system now or then.''
Someone at Troup's end coughs in disagreement and paranoia. David corrects
himself.
No need to admit he's ever done anything illegal, now, is there? I'd say 90 percent of
everybody. Everybody's got that urge, you know? `God, I've got full system control--I
could
just do a recursive rm [a repeated cycle to begin removing things] and kiss this system
goodbye.' More likely, someone will create a small bug like putting a space before
everyone's
password [making it impossible for anyone to log on] and see how long it takes the system
operator to figure it out.'' The passwords will appear correct when the system operator
lists
them--except that each one will have a tiny space before it. When the sysop matches the
user's password with the one that the computer says the user should have, the operator
won't
notice the extra space before the computer's version.
This is the phony phone call'' to the nth power. Instead of pranking one person
on the
other end, the hacker incapacitates a big company run by "nasty suits.'' Hard to resist,
especially when it's a company known to keep tabs on us. The events that frightened Troup
out of hacking for a while concerned just such a company. TRW is the Holy Grail target
for
hackers. They're into everything, which is why everyone wants to get into them. They
claimed
to be impenetrable, which is half the reason why everyone wants to get in. The more you
look into it, the more security holes they have. They aren't so bad.'' One of Troup's
friends in
the background chortles with pride. "It's difficult, because you have to cover your
tracks, but
it's not impossible. Just time-consuming,'' Troup explains.
I remember TRW used to have those commercials that just said `TRW, making the
world a better tomorrow.' That's all they did. They were getting us used to seeing them.
Because they were into everything. They sent Tiger Teams [specialized computer commando
squads who establish security protocol in a system] into every system the government has,
either to improve the system's security or to build it in the first place. They have back
doors
into everything they've ever worked on. They can assume control over anything they want
to.
They're big. They're bad. And they've got more power than they should have, which is why
we were after them. They had Tiger Teams into airport security, aerospace security. And
the
government gets software from TRW, upgrades from TRW [also, potentially, with back
doors].
When we got all the way up to the keyhole satellite, we said `That's enough.'
We
have really good resources. We have people that can pose as nonpeople--they have Social
Security numbers, tax IDs, everything. But we all got kind of spooked by all this. We had
a
continuation of our plan mapped out, but we decided not to go through with it. We ditched
all
the TRW stuff we had. I gave it to a friend who buried it underwater somewhere along the
Atlantic shelf. If I tell him to get it back, he will, but if I tell him to get it back
using a
slightly different phrase, he will disappear ... for obvious reasons.''
Most purposeful hacking is far less romantic, and done simply to gain access to
systems for their computing power. If someone is working on a complex program or set of
computations, it's more convenient to use some corporation's huge system to carry out the
procedure in a few minutes or hours than to tie up one's own tiny personal computer for
days.
The skill comes in getting the work done before the sysop discovers the intrusion. As one
hacker explains to me through an encrypted electronic mail message, They might be on to
you, but you're not done with them yet--you're still working on the thing for some
company
or another. But if you've got access to, say, twenty or thirty Unix systems, you can pop
in
and out of as many as you like, and change the order of them. You'll always appear to be
coming from a different location. They'll be shooting in the dark. You're untraceable.''
This hacker takes pride in popping in and out of systems the way a surfer raves
about
ducking the whitewater and gliding through the tube. But, just as a surfer might compete
for
cash, prizes, or beer endorsements, many young hackers who begin with Cyberia in their
hearts are quickly tempted by employers who can profit from their skill. The most
dangerous
authoritarian response to young cyberian hackers may not be from the law but from those
hoping to exploit their talents.
With a hacker I'll call Pete, a seventeen-year-old engineering student at
Columbia
University, I set up a real-time computer conference call in which several other hackers
from
around the country could share some of their stories about a field called industrial
hacking.''
Because most of the participants believe they have several taps on their telephone lines,
they
send their first responses through as a series of strange glyphs on the screen. After
Pete
establishes the cryptography protocol and deciphers the incoming messages, they look like
this (the names are mine):
#1: The Purist
Industrial hacking is darkside hacking. Company A hires you to slow down,
destroy,
screw up, or steal from company B's R&D division [research and development]. For example,
we could set up all their math wrong on their cadcams [computer aided design programs] so
that when they look at it on the computer it seems fine, but when they try to put the
thing
together, it comes out all wrong. If all the parts of an airplane engine are machined 1mm
off,
it's just not going to work.
#2: The Prankster
There was a guy in Florida who worked on a cadcam system which used pirated
software. He was smart, so he figured out how to use it without any manuals. He worked
there for about a year and a half but was fired unfairly. He came to us get them shut
down.
We said Sure, no problem.'' Cadcam software companies send out lots of demos. We got
ahold of some cadcam demos, and wrote a simple assembly program so that when the person
puts the disk in and types the "install'' or demo'' command, it wipes out the whole hard
disk.
So we wrapped it up in its package, sent it out to a friend in Texas or wherever the
software
company was really from, and had him send it to the targeted company with a legit
postmark
and everything. Sure enough, someone put the demo in, and the company had to end up
buying over $20,000 worth of software. They couldn't say anything because the software we
wiped out was illegal anyway.
The Purist
That's nothing. That's a personal vendetta. Industrial hacking is big business.
Most
corporations have in-house computer consultants who do this sort of thing. But as a
freelancer
you can get hired as a regular consultant by one of these firms--say McDonnell Douglas-get
into a vice president's office, and show them the specs of some Lockheed project, like a
new
advanced tactical fighter which he has not seen, and say, There's more where this came
from.'' You can get thousands, even millions of dollars for this kind of thing.
#3: The Theorist
During the big corporate takeover craze, companies that were about to be taken
over
began to notice more and more things begin to go wrong. Then payroll would get screwed
up,
their electronic mail messages aren't going through, their phone system keeps dying every
now and then in the middle of the day. This is part of the takeover effort.
Someone on the board of directors may have some buddy from college who works in
the computer industry who he might hire to do an odd job now and again.
The Purist
I like industrial hacking for the idea of doing it. I started about a year or so
ago. And
William Gibson brought romance into it with Neuromancer. It's so do-able.
#4: The Pro
We get hired by people moving up in the political systems, drug cartels, and of
course
corporations. We even work for foreign companies. If Toyota hired us to hit Ford, we'd
hit
Ford a little bit, but then turn around and knock the hell out of Toyota. We'd rather
pick on
them than us.
Most industrial hackers do two hacks at once. They get information on the
company
they're getting paid to hit, but they're also hacking into the company that's paying
them, so
that if they get betrayed or stabbed in the back they've got their butts covered. So it's
a lot of
work. The payoffs are substantial, but it's a ton of work.
In a real takeover, 50% of the hacking is physical. A bunch of you have to go
and get
jobs at the company. You need to get the information but you don't want to let them on to
what you're doing. The wargames-style automatic dialer will get discovered scanning. They
know what that is; they've had that happen to them many times before.
I remember a job that I did on a local TV station. I went in posing as a student
working on a project for a communications class. I got a tour with an engineer, and I had
a
notebook and busily wrote down everything he said. The guy took me back where the
computers were. Now in almost every computer department in the United States, written on
a
piece of masking tape on the phone jack or the modem itself is the phone number of that
modem. It saves me the time and trouble of scanning 10,000 numbers. I'm already writing
notes, so I just write in the number, go home, wait a week or so, and then call them up
(you
don't call them right away, stupid). Your local telephone company won't notice you and
the
company you're attacking won't notice you. You try to be like a stealth bomber. You sneak
up
on them slowly, then you knock the hell out of them. You take the military approach. You
do
signals intelligence, human intelligence; you've got your special ops soldier who takes a
tour
or gets a job there. Then he can even take a tour as an employee--then he's trusted for
some
reason--just because he works there, which is the biggest crock of shit.
DISCONNECT
Someone got paranoid then, or someone's line voltage changed enough to suggest a
tap, and our conversation had been automatically terminated.
Pete stores the exchange on disk, then escorts me out onto the fire escape of
his
apartment for a toke and a talk. He can see I'm a little shaken up.
That's not really hacking,'' he says, handing me the joint. I thank him with a
nod but
opt for a Camel Light. "That's cracking. Hacking is surfing. You don't do it for a
reason. You
just do it.'' We watch a bum below us on the street rip a piece of cardboard off an empty
refrigerator box and drag it away--presumably it will be his home for tonight.
That guy is hacking in a way,'' I offer. "Social hacking.''
That's bullshit. He's doing it for a reason. He stole that cardboard because he
needs
shelter. There's nothing wrong with that, but he's not having such a good time, either.''
So what's real hacking? What's it about?''
Pete takes a deep toke off his joint and smiles. It's tapping in to the global
brain.
Information becomes a texture ... almost an experience. You don't do it to get knowledge.
You just ride the data. It's surfing, and they're all trying to get you out of the water.
But it's
like being a environmental camper at the same time: You leave everything just like you
found
it. Not a trace of your presence. It's like you were never there.''
Strains of Grateful Dead music come from inside the apartment. No one's in
there.
Pete has his radio connected to a timer. It's eleven o'clock Monday night in New York,
time
for David Gans's radio show, The Dead Hour. Pete stumbles into the apartment and begins
scrounging for a cassette. I offer him one of my blank interview tapes.
It's low bias but it'll do,'' he says, grabbing the tape from me and shoving it
into a
makeshift cassette machine that looks like a relic from Hogan's Heroes. "Don't let the
case
fool you. I reconditioned the whole thing myself. It's got selenium heads, the whole nine
yards.'' Satisfied that the machine is recording properly, he asks, You into the Dead?''
Sure am.'' I can't let this slip by. "I've noticed lots of computer folks are
into the
Dead ... and the whole subculture.'' I hate to get to the subject of psychedelics too
early.
However, Pete doesn't require the subtlety.
Most of the hackers I know take acid.'' Pete searches through his desk drawers.
"It
makes you better at it.'' I watch him as he moves around the room. Look at this.'' He
shows
me a ticket to a Grateful Dead show. In the middle of the ticket is a color reproduction
of a
fractal.
Now, you might ask, what's a computer-generated image like that doing on a Dead
ticket, huh?''
CHAPTER 2
Operating from Total Oblivion
The fractal is the emblem of Cyberia. Based on the principles of chaos math,
it's an
icon, a metaphor, a fashion statement, and a working tool all at the same time. It's at
once a
highly technical computer-mathematics achievement and a psychedelic vision, so even as an
image it bridges the gap between these two seemingly distant, or rather discontinuous,''
corners of Cyberia. Once these two camps are connected, the real space defined by
"Cyberia''
emerges.
Fractals were discovered in the 1960s by Benoit Mandelbrot, who was searching
for
ways to help us cope, mathematically, with a reality that is not as smooth and
predictable as
our textbooks describe it. Conventional math, Mandelbrot complained, treats mountains
like
cones and clouds like spheres. Reality is much rougher'' than these ideal forms. No
real-world surface can accurately be described as a "plane,'' because no surface is
absolutely
two-dimensional. Everything has nooks and crannies; nothing is completely smooth and
continuous. Mandelbrot's fractals--equations which grant objects a fractional
dimensionality--are revolutionary in that they accept the fact that reality is not a
neat, ordered
place. Now, inconsistencies ranging from random interference on phone lines to computer
research departments filled with Grateful Deadheads all begin to make perfect sense.
Mandelbrot's main insight was to recognize that chaos has an order to it. If you
look
at a natural coastline from an airplane, you will notice certain kinds of mile-long nooks
and
crannies. If you land on the beach, you will see these same shapes reflected in the rock
formations, on the surface of the rocks themselves, and even in the particles making up
the
rocks. This self-similarity is what brings a sense of order into an otherwise randomly
rough
and strange terrain. Fractals are equations that model the irregular but stunningly selfsimilar
world in which we have found ourselves.
But these discontinuous equations work differently from traditional math
equations,
and challenge many of our assumptions about the way our reality works. Fractals are
circular
equations: After you get an answer, you plug it back into the original equation again and
again, countless times. This is why computers have been so helpful in working with these
equations. The properties of these circular equations are stunningly different from those
of
traditional linear equations. The tiniest error made early on can amplify into a
tremendous
mistake once the equation has been iterated'' thousands of times. Think of a wristwatch
that
loses one second per hour. After a few days, the watch is only a minute or so off. But
after
weeks or months of iterating that error, the watch will be completely incorrect. A tiny
change
anywhere in a fractal will lead to tremendous changes in the overall system. The force
causing the change need not be very powerful. Tremendous effects can be wrought by the
gentlest of "feedbacks.''
Feedback makes that loud screeching sound whenever a microphone is brought close
to its own speaker. Tiny noises are fed back and iterated through the amplification
system
thousands of times, amplified again and again until they are huge, annoying blasts of
sound.
Feedback and iteration are the principles behind the now-famous saying, When a butterfly
flaps its wings in China, it can cause a thunderstorm in New York.'' A tiny action feeds
back
into a giant system. When it has iterated fully, the feedback causes noticeable changes.
The
idea has even reached the stock market, where savvy investors look to unlikely remote
feedbacks for indications of which way the entire market might move once those tiny
influences are fully iterated. Without the computer, though, and its ability to iterate
equations,
and then to draw them as pictures on a screen, the discovery of fractals would never have
been possible.
Mandelbrot was at IBM, trying to find a pattern underlying the random,
intermittent
noise on their telephone lines, which had been causing problems for their computer
modems.
The fact that the transmission glitches didn't seem to follow many real pattern would
have
rendered a classical mathematician defenseless. But Mandelbrot, looking at the chaotic
distribution of random signals, decided to search for signs of self-similarity--that is,
like the
coastline of beach, would the tiny bursts between bursts of interference look anything
like the
large ones? Of course they did. Inside each burst of interference were moments of clear
reception. Inside each of those moments of clear reception were other bursts of
interference
and so on. Even more importantly, the pattern of their intermittency was similar on each
level.
This same phenomenon--self-similarity--can be observed in many systems that were
previously believed to be totally irregular and unexplainable, ranging from the weather
and
the economy to the course of human history. For example, each tiny daily fluctuation in
the
weather mirrors the climatic record of the history of the planet. Each major renaissance
in
history is itself made up of smaller renaissance events, whose locations in time mirror
the
overall pattern of renaissances throughout history. Every chaotic system appears to be
adhering to an underlying order of self-similarity.
This means that our world is entirely or interdependent than we have previously
understood. What goes on inside any one person's head is reflected, in some manner, on
every
other level of reality. So any individual being, through feedback and iteration, has the
ability
to redesign reality at large. Mandelbrot had begun to map the landscape of Cyberia.
It Is the Mind of God
The terrace of the Applied Sciences Building overlooks what students at
University of
California at Santa Cruz call Elf Land''--a dense section of woods where psychedelically
enhanced humans meet interdimensional beings. Back in the corridor of the building,
posters
of computer-generated fractal images depicting the "arithmetic limits of iterative
nonlinear
equations'' line the walls. The pictures nearest the terrace look like the ferns on the
floor of
the forest. The ones farther back look more like the arrangements of the trees above
them.
Posters still farther seem like aerial maps of the forest, seen from above.
The mathematician residing in this self-similar niche of academia and
psychedelia is
Ralph Abraham, who broke through to Cyberia on his own, and in a very different manner.
He abandoned Princeton University in favor of U.C. Santa Cruz in 1968, during what he
calls
the apex of the counterculture.'' It was while taking psychedelics in huge barn "beins'' with
his newfound friends that Abraham became familiar with what people were calling the
emotional reality'' of numbers, and this led him to the hills and caves of the Far East
where
he spent several years meditating and hallucinating. On returning to the university and
his
computer, he embarked with renewed vigor into hyperspace to churn out the equations that
explain his hallucinations and our existence.
While it seems so unlikely to the modern mind that psychedelics could contribute
to
real progress in mathematics and science, cyberians, for the most part, take this
connection
for granted. In the sixties,'' Abraham explains, "a lot of people on the frontiers of
math
experimented with psychedelic substances. There was a brief and extremely creative kiss
between the community of hippies and top mathematicians. I know this because I was a
purveyor of psychedelics to the mathematical community. To be creative in mathematics,
you
have to start from a point of total oblivion. Basically, math is revealed in a totally
unconscious process in which one is completely ignorant of the social climate. And
mathematical advance has always been the motor behind the advancement of consciousness.
What's going on now is at least as big a thing as the invention of the wheel.''
The brief kiss'' Abraham witnessed was the marriage of two powerful
intellectual
communities, both of which had touched Cyberia--one theoretically and the other
experientially. And as cyberian mathematicians like Abraham tripped out further, they saw
how this kiss was itself a fractal event, marking a point in human history from which the
underlying shape or order of existence--the very "roughness'' of reality--could be
inferred.
They had conceived and birthed their own renaissance.
Abraham has since dedicated himself to the implications of this rebirth. He sees
the
most important, seemingly sudden, and non sequitur events in human history--of which the
kiss above is one--as part of an overall fractal curve. It's happened before. The
Renaissance
was one. Christianity is one. The troubadors in the south of France; agriculture; the new
concept of time that came along with the Old Testament--they are all actually revivals.
But
they are more than revivals. It's sort of a spiral model where there's a quantum leap to
a new
level of organization and complexity.''
Today, Abraham is in his Santa Cruz office, wearing a sweatshirt, drawstring
pants,
and Birkenstocks. He does not sport a slide rule or pocket protector. He is Cyberia's
Village
Mathematician, and his words are reassuring to those who are living in a world that has
already taken this quantum leap. Just as the fractal enabled Mandelbrot to comfort IBM
executives about the ultimately orderly nature of their line interference, Abraham uses
fractals
to show how this uncharted island in history on which we have found ourselves fits into a
larger picture.
There is this fractal structure of discontinuity. If you look at the biggest
discontinuities in human history, you will see they all seem to have very similar
structures,
suggesting a mathematical model behind the evolution of civilization.''
Abraham argues that cyberian interest in the pagan, psychedelic, spiritual, and
tribal is
not in the least contradictory to the advances in computer technology and mathematics.
Historically, he points out, renaissance periods have always involved a resurgence of
archaic
elements along with the invention of new technologies and mathematical systems. The
success
of Cyberia, according to the bearded technosage, will depend on our ability to put these
disparate elements together. We have emphasized integration and synthesis, trying to put
everything together in one understanding, using mathematical models only as one tool. We
are also open to various pagan elements like astrology, telepathy, the paranormal, and so
on.
We're an interesting network.''
For younger cyberians, Abraham's network provides an invaluable template by
which
they can direct their own activities. As Ralph would say, he groks'' their experience;
he
understands how these kids feel responsible for reshaping not only their own reality but
the
course of human history.
We have to consciously interact with the creation of the future in order for it
to be
other than it was.'' In past renaissances, each creative birth, each intimation of what
we can
call "fractal reality,'' was buried by a tremendous counterrevolutionary force. What
happened
with the Renaissance? Within 200 or 250 years, it was dead again.'' Society refused to
cope
with Cyberia then. But the invention of the computer coupled with the undeniable
usefulness
and profound beauty of the fractal has made today's renaissance impossible to resist.
Valley of the Nerds
Two men are staring into a computer screen at Apple's research and development
branch. While the first, a computer nerd straight out of Central Casting, mans the
keyboard,
beside him sits the other, John Barlow, lyricist for the Grateful Dead, psychedelics
explorer,
and Wyoming rancher. They watch the colorful paisley patterns representing fractal
equations
swirl like the aftervisions of a psychedelic hallucination. Tiny Martian colonies forming
on an
eerie continental coastline. The computer operator magnifies one tiny piece of the
pattern, and
the detail expands to occupy the entire screen. Dancing microorganisms cling to a blue
coral
reef. The new patterns reflect the shape of the original picture. He zooms in again and
the
shapes are seen again and again. A supernova explodes into weather system, then spirals
back
down to the pods on the leaf of a fern plant. The two men witness the creation and
recreation
of universes.
Barlow scratches his whiskers and tips his cowboy hat. It's like looking at the
mind
of God.''
The nerd corrects him: It is the mind of God.''
And as the latest kiss between the worlds of science and spirituality continues,
the
fractal finds its way into the new American psychedelic folklore--as evidenced by that
fractal-enhanced Grateful Dead ticket.
It's the morning after a Dead show, in fact, when the young man who designed
that
famous concert ticket unveils his latest invention for a small group of friends gathered
at his
Palo Alto home. Dan Kottke, who was one of the original Apple engineers, left the company
and sold off his stock to launch his career as an independent computer graphic designer.
He
has just finished the prototype for his first effort: a small light-up LED device that
flashes
words and pictures. He plugs it in and the group watches it go through its paces. It's
not as
trippy as a fractal, but it's pretty mesmerizing all the same. So is Kottke, who
approaches the
psychedelic-spiritual search with the same patience and discipline he'd use to assemble
an
intricate circuit board.
When I was a freshman in college,'' he carefully removes the wires from the
back of
his invention, "I would take psychedelics and sit by myself for a whole day. What I
arrived at
was that cosmic consciousness was a completely normal thing that one day everyone would
arrive at, if they would just sit and think clearly.''
Kottke, like many of the brilliant people at his home today, sees Cyberia as a
logical
result of psychedelics and rationality. That's how I became friends with Steve Jobbs. We
used to take psychedelics together and talk about Buddhist philosophy. I had no idea he
was
connected with Woz [Steve Wozniak] or selling blue boxes [telephone dialers that allow
you
to make free calls] at the time. We just talked about transcendentalism and Buddhism and
listened to Bob Dylan. It must have been his alter ego.''
Until Jobbs and Wozniak created the Apple personal computer, cyberian computer
exploration was limited to the clunky and essentially unusable Altair brand. It appealed
to
the soldering iron kinds of hackers,'' explains Dan, "but not the spiritual kind.'' So
the very
invention of the personal computer, then, was in some ways psychedelics-influenced. Maybe
that's why they called it Apple: the fruit of forbidden knowledge brought down to the
hands
of the consumer through the garage of a Reid College acid head? In any case, the Apple
gave
computing power and any associated spiritual insights to the public and, most important,
to
their children.
It's easy to understand why kids are better at learning to use computers than
adults.
Just like in the immigrant family who comes to America, it is the children who learn the
new
language first and best. When mainframe computers appeared in high schools around the
country, it was the students, not the administrators, who became the systems operators.
This
set into a motion a revenge of the nerds'' on a scale we haven't yet fully comprehended.
But
when the computer industry was born and looking desperately for skilled programmers and
developers, these kids were too young to be hired. The companies turned instead to the
acid
heads.
When your brain is forming,'' explains Kottke, using his long fingers to draw
pictures
in the oriental rug, "it makes axons that are long, linear things, feeling their way to
some part
of the brain very far away to get connected. Your consciousness develops the same way.
The
middle teen years are about making connections between things in your mind like computers
and psychedelics and fractals and music.'' Everyone is staring at the impression Dan's
fingers
have left in the rug, relating the pattern he's drawn to the design of the colorful weave
underneath.
Kottke's soft voice grounds the group in reality once again. But this kind of
thinking
is very easily discouraged. The quelling of creativity is like a virus that gets passed
down
generation to generation. Psychedelics can break that cycle.'' So, according to
firsthanders like
Kottke, everything old becomes new again, and the psychedelics user's mind is rejuvenated
to
its original ability to wander and wonder. The frames and systems of logic one has been
using
to organize experience fall away. What better language to adopt than computer language,
which is also unfettered by prejudices, judgments and neuroses?
Consciousness is binary,'' poses Kottke, from a casual lotus position. "It's
essentially
digital.'' At least this is the way computers think.'' When information is stored
digitally rather
than in a picture, on a record, or even in a book of words, it is broken down into a
series of
yes/no's or dot/dashes. Things must be spelled out explicitly. The computer functions
purely
in duality but, unlike the human mind, has no interpretive grid.
One of the primary features of the psychedelic experience as it relates to the
human
computer hardware, believes Ron Lawrence, a Macintosh expert from Los Angeles who
archives Tim Leary's writing, is that it reformats the hard disk and clears out the
ram.'' That
is, one's experience of life is reevalutated in an egoless context and put into a new
order. One
sees previously unrecognizable connections between parallel ways of thinking, parallel
cultures, ideologies, stories, systems of logic, and philosophies. Meanwhile, trivial
cares of the
moment are given the opportunity to melt away (even if in the gut-wrenching crucible of
intense introspection), and the tripper may reenter everyday life without many of the
cognitive
traps that previously dominated his interpretation of reality. In other words, the
tripper gains
the ability to see things in an unprejudiced manner, like the computer does.
Just like the great chaos mathematicians, great programmers must be able to come
from a point of total oblivion'' in order to fully grok cyber language, and in the mid1970s
and early 1980s, psychedelics users were the only qualified, computer-literate people
available
to rapidly growing companies trying to develop software and hardware before their
competitors. In the field of pure research, no one cares what an employee looks like or
what
kinds of drugs he eats--it's creative output that matters. Steve Jobbs felt this way,
which is
why his Macintosh project at Apple was staffed mostly by tie-dye---wearing young men.
Today, even executives at the more establishment-oriented computer companies have been
forced to include psychedelics-influenced developers in their ranks.
Chris Krauskopf, manager of the Human Interface Program at Intel, admits, Some
of
the people here are very, very, very bright. They were bored in school, and as a result
they
hung out, took drugs, and got into computers.'' Luckily for them, the drug tests that
defense
contractors such as Intel are required to give their employees cannot detect
psychedelics,
which are taken in microdoses. As for marijuana tests, well, it's gotten pretty easy to
predict
when those are coming, and a phone call or two from personnel executives to the right
people
in Research and Development can easily give, say, forty-eight hours' notice. ...
A high-level personnel executive from a major Southern California defense
contractor
admits that the company's biggest problem now is that alternative culture members'' are
refusing to work for them. In a secret, off-the-record lunch talk, the rather elderly
gentleman
said, between sips of Earl Grey, that the "long hairs we've hired have the ability to
attack
computer problems from completely different angles. It would be interesting to take the
plans
of a stealth bomber and trace back each innovation to the computer it was drawn on. I bet
the
tie-dyes would win out over the pocket-protectors every time.'' According to him, the
company's biggest problem now is finding programmers willing to work for a defense
industry contractor. They're all against the idea of making weapons. We may not be able
to
meet our production schedule--we may lose contracts--because we can't get enough of them
to
work for us.''
Marc de Groot, a programmer and virtual-reality designer from San Francisco,
understands why companies in the defense industry might depend on cyberians. My question
to you is: Which is the less moral of the two propositions: doing drug testing on your
employees, or doing defense contracting in the first place? That's the real question: Why
are a
bunch of acid heads working for a company that makes weapons?'' De Groot's two-bedroom
apartment in the hills is modestly appointed with furniture that looks like leftovers
from his
college dorm room. Trouble is, de Groot didn't go to college. After three tries, he
realized he
could learn more about computers by working for his university as a programmer than by
taking their classes, so he dropped out as a student and dropped back in as an employee.
I think that people who like to expand their minds with things like higher math
and
computers and media are fundamentally the same people who would want to expand their
minds with anything available. But this is a very bad political climate for talking about
all
this. You can't mix a thing like drugs with any intellectual endeavor and have it stay as
credible.'' Yet, de Groot's apartment--which has one small bedroom dedicated to life's
comforts and the rest filled with computer hardware--shows many signs of the alternative
culture he prefers to keep out of the public eye. Dan Kottke's fractal Grateful Dead
ticket is
pinned to the wall next to the computer on which de Groot designed sound systems for VPL,
the leading "virtual reality'' interface design firm.
Psychedelics are a given in Silicon Valley. They are an institution as
established as
Intel, Stanford, marriage, or religion. The infrastructure has accommodated them. Word of
which companies are cool'' and which are not spreads about as rapidly as Dead tickets.
De
Groot finds his "user-friendly'' employment opportunities on the WELL, an acronym for
Whole Earth `Lectronic Link, or on other bulletin board services (BBSs).
One of the articles that goes around on a regular basis is a list of all the
companies
that do urine testing in the Silicon Valley. So you can look it up ahead of time and
decide
that you don't want to apply. Computer programmers have set up this information service
because they know that a lot of their friends and they themselves use these drugs.''
De Groot pauses. He is careful not to implicate himself, but his emotions are
running
high. And even more than that, people who don't use the drugs are outraged because of
the
invasion of privacy. They just feel like it's an infringement on civil liberties. And I
think
they're right. I have a friend who applied simultaneously at Sun Micro Systems and Xerox
Park, Palo Alto Research Center. And he found out--and he's someone who uses drugs--he
found out that Xerox Park was gonna do a urine test so he dried out and he went in and
did
the urine test and passed and then they offered him the job, and he said, `I'm not taking
the
job because you people do urine testing and I'm morally opposed to it,' and he went to
work
for Sun. Sun does not do urine testing. They're very big on not doing it. I think it's
great.''
Not surprisingly, Sun Micro Systems' computers run some of the most advanced
fractal graphics programs, and Intel--which is also quite Deadhead-friendly,'' is an
industry
leader in experimental technologies like virtual reality. The companies that lead in the
Valley
of the Nerds are the ones that recognize the popularity of psychedelics among their
employees. Still, although they have contributed to or perhaps even created the computer
revolution, psychedelics-using cyberians feel like a persecuted sect in an oppressive
ancient
society that cannot see its own superstitious paranoia. As an engineer at a Microsoft
research
facility complains, drug testing makes her feel like the "target victim of an ancient
voodoo
spell.''
From the cyberian perspective, that's exactly what's going on; so computer
programmers must learn not to give any hair or bodily fluids to their employers. The
confiscated parts are being analyzed in scientific rituals'' that look into the
employee's past
and determine whether she has engaged in her own rituals--like smoking pot--that have
been
deemed heretical by the dominating religious body. In this case, that dominating body is
the
defense industry, and the heretics are pot smokers and psychedelics users, who have
demonstrated a propensity to question the justifiability of the war machine.
CHAPTER 3
The Global Electronic Village
computer
Persecution of psychedelics users has fostered the development of a cyberian
subculture. De Groot is a model citizen of the cyber community and dedicates his time,
money, and equipment to fostering the Global Electronic Village.'' One system he
developed,
which takes up almost half his apartment, is an interface between a ham radio and a
computer.
He eats an ice cream from the shop downstairs as he explains how his intention
in
building the interface was to provide ham radio operators with access to the electronic
mail
services of UNIX systems to other sites on the Internet. My terminal is up twenty-four
hours
a day. It was never done before, it was fun to do, it gave me the ability to learn about
electronic mail, and it provided a service.'' No profit? "You could make money off of it,
I
suppose, but my specific concern was to advance the state of the radio art.''
It's hard to keep in mind that young men like de Groot are not just exploring
the
datasphere but actively creating the networks that make it up. This is not just a hobby
or
weekend pastime; this is the construction of the future.
De Groot views technology as a way to spread the notion of interconnectedness.
We
don't have the same distance between us anymore. Camcorders have changed everything.
Whenever something happens in the world, chances are that someone's around with a
camcorder to tape it. We're all neighbors in a little village, as it were.'' Even de
Groot's more
professional endeavors have been geared toward making computers more accessible to the
community at large. The success of the cyberian paradigm is dependent on regular people
learning to work with the technologies developed by vanguard, countercultural
entrepreneurs
and designers.
If you don't adhere to the new paradigm then you're not going to survive.'' De
Groot
puts down his ice cream spoon to make the point. "It's sink or swim. People who refuse to
get involved with computers now are hurting themselves, not anybody else. In a very loose
sense, they are at a disadvantage survival-wise. Their ability to have a good-quality
life will
be lessened by their reluctance to get with the program.''
Getting with the program is just a modem away. This simple device literally
plugs a
user in to cyberspace. Cyberspace, or the datasphere, consists of all the computers that
are
attached to phone lines or to one another directly. If a computer by itself can be
likened to a
cassette deck, having a modem turns it into a two-way radio. After the first computer
nets
between university and military research facilities went up, scientists and other
official
subscribers began to post'' their most recent findings to databases accessible to
everyone on
the system. Now, if someone at, say, Stanford discovers a new way to make a fission
reactor,
scientists and developers around the world instantly know of the find. They also have a
way
of posting their responses to the development for everyone to see, or the option of
sending a
message through electronic mail, or "E-mail,'' which can be read only by the intended
recipient. So, for example, a doctor at Princeton sees the posting from Stanford. A list
of
responses and commentary appears after the Stanford announcement, to which the Princeton
doctor adds his questions about the validity of the experiment. Meanwhile, he E-mails his
friends at a big corporation that Stanford's experiment was carried out by a lunatic and
that
the corporation should cease funding that work.
The idea of networking through the computer quickly spread. Numerous public
bulletins boards sprang up, as well as information services like Compuserve and Prodigy.
Information services are large networks of databanks that a user can call through the
modem
and access everything from stock market reports and Macintosh products updates to back
issues of newspapers and Books in Print. Ted Nelson, the inventor of hypertext, an early
but
unprecentedly user-friendly way of moving through files, has been working for the past
decade or so on the ultimate database, a project aptly named Xanadu.'' His hope is to
compile a database of--literally--everything, and all of the necessary software to
protect
copyrights, make royalty payments, and myriad other legal functions. Whether or not a
storehouse like Xanadu is even possible, the fact that someone is trying, and being
supported
by large, Silicon Valley businesses like Autodesk, a pioneer in user-interface and
cyberspace
technology, legitimizes the outlook that one day all data will be accessible from any
node--any single computer--in the matrix. The implications for the legal community are an
endless mire of property, privacy, and information issues, usually boiling down to one of
the
key conflicts between pre- and postcyberian mentality: Can data be owned, or is it free
for
all? Our ability to process data develops faster than our ability to define its fair use.
The best place to watch people argue about these issues is on public bulletin
boards
like the Whole Earth `Lectronic Link. In the late 1970s, public and private bulletin
board
services sprang up as a way for computer users to share information and software over
phone
lines. Some were like clubs for young hackers called kødz kidz, who used BBSs to share
anything from Unix source code to free software to recently cracked phone numbers of
corporate modems. Other BBSs catered to specialized users' groups, like Macintosh users,
IBM users, software designers, and even educators. Eventually, broad-based bulletin board
services, including the WELL, opened their phone lines for members to discuss issues,
create
E-mail addresses, share information, make announcements, and network personally,
creatively,
and professionally.
The WELL serves as a cyber-village hall. As John Barlow explains, In this
silent
world, all conversation is typed. To enter it, one forsakes both body and place and
becomes a
thing of words alone. You can see what your neighbors are saying (or recently said), but
not
what either they or their physical surroundings look like. Town meetings are continuous
and
discussions rage on everything from sexual kinks to depreciation schedules.''
The discussions on the WELL are organized into conferences. These conferences
are
broken down into topics, which themselves are made up of individual responses. For
example,
there's a conference called EFF, which is dedicated to discussing issues related to
Electronic
Frontiers Foundation, a group that is attempting to develop legal frameworks for
cyberactivities. If you browse the topics on the EFF conference, you will see a list of
the
conversations now going on. (Now is a tricky word. It's not that users are continuously
plugged in to the conference and having a real-time discussion. Conversations occur over
a
period of days, weeks, or months.) They might be about Copyright and Electronic Mail,''
or
"Sentencing of Hackers,'' or even Virtual Sex!''
Once you pick a topic in which to participate, you read an opening statement
that
describes the topic or issues being discussed. It may be as simple as, I just read The
Turbulent Mirror by Briggs and Peat. Is anyone interested in discussing the implications
of
chaos math on Western philosophy?'' or, "I'm thinking of buying a hydroponic system for
growing sensemilla. Any advice?'' Other interested participants then enter their
responses, one
after the other, which are numbered in the order entered. Conversations can drift into
related
or unrelated areas or even lead to the creation of new topics. All participants are
required to
list themselves by name and user identification (userid) so that someone may E-mail a
response directly to them rather than post it on the topic for everyone to see. The only
rule on
the WELL is, you own your own words,'' which means that anything someone posts onto the
WELL remains his own property, so to speak, and that no one may exploit another user's
words without permission.
But the WELL is not a dry, computery place. Once on the WELL, there's a tangible
feeling of being plugged in'' to a cyber community. One develops a cyber personality
unencumbered by his looks and background and defined entirely by his entries to topics.
The
references he makes to literature, the media, religion, his friends, his lifestyle, and
his
priorities create who he is in cyberspace. One can remain on the sidelines watching
others
make comments, or one can dive in and participate.
Cyberspace as Chaos
The danger of participation is that there are hundreds or even thousands of
potentially
critical eyes watching every entry. A faulty fact will be challenged, a lie will be
uncovered,
plagiarism will be discovered. Cyberspace is a truth serum. Violations of cyber morality
or
village ethics are immediately brought to light and passed through the circuits of the
entire
datasphere at lightning speed. A store with a bad returns policy that cheats a WELL user
has
its indiscretions broadcast globally within minutes. Information about crooked
politicians,
drug conspiracies, or other news stories that might be censored from sponsored media
outlets
finds an audience in cyberspace.
The cyber community has been made possible by the advent of the personal
computer
and the telecommunications network. Other major contributors include television and the
satellite system as well as the appearance of consumer-grade video equipment, which has
made it more than likely for police indiscretions to occur within shooting range of a
camcorder. The cyber revolution has made the world a smaller place. Just as a company
called TRW can expose anyone's economic history, links like the WELL, UseNet, or even
CNN can expose TRW, too. Access to cyberspace--formerly reserved for the military or
advanced scientific research--now alters the context in which many individuals relate to
the
world.
Members of the Global Village see themselves as part of a fractal event. The
virtual
community even incorporates and promotes many of the principles of chaos mathematics on
social and political levels. A tiny, remote voice criticizing the ethics of a police
action or the
validity of an experimental result gets heard and iterated throughout the net.
Ultimately, the personal computer and its associated technologies may be our
best
access points to Cyberia. They even serve as a metaphor for cyberians who have nothing to
do with computers but who look to the net as a model for human interaction. It allows for
communication without the limitations of time or space, personality or body, religion or
nationality. The vast computer-communications network is a fractal approach to human
consciousness. It provides the means for complex and immediate feedback and iteration,
and
is even self-similar in its construction, with giant networks mirroring BBSs, mirroring
users'
own systems, circuit boards, and components that themselves mirror each participant's own
neural biocircuitry. In further self-similarity, the monitors on some of these computers
depict
complex fractal patterns mirroring the psychedelics-induced hallucinations of their
designers,
and graphing--for the first time--representations of existence as a chaotic system of
feedback
and iteration.
The datasphere is a hardwiring of the planet itself, providing ways of
distributing and
iterating information throughout the net. To join in, one needs only to link up. Or is it
really
that easy?
Arbitrating Anarchy
David Gans, host of The Grateful Dead Hour (the national radio program that our
Columbia University hacker taped a few nights ago) is having a strange week. The proposal
he's writing for his fourth Grateful Dead book is late, he still has to go into the
studio to
record his radio show, his band rehearsal didn't get out until close to dawn, and
something
odd is occurring on the WELL this morning. Gans generally spends at least several hours a
day sitting in his Oakland studio apartment, logged onto the WELL. A charter member of
the
original WELL bulletin board, he's since become host of dozens of conferences and topics
ranging from the Grateful Dead to the Electronic Frontiers Foundation. In any given week,
he's got to help guide hundreds or even thousands of computer interchanges. But this week
there are even more considerations. An annoying new presence has made itself known on the
WELL: a user calling himself Stink.''
Stink showed up late one night in the Grateful Dead conference, insisting to all
the
Deadheads that Jerry Garcia stinks.'' In the name of decorum and tolerance, the
Deadheads
decided among themselves to ignore the prankster. "Maybe he'll get bored and go away,''
Gans repeatedly suggested. WELLbeings enjoy thinking of the WELL as a loving, anarchic
open house, and resort to blocking someone out completely only if he's truly dangerous.
Stealing passwords or credit card numbers, for example, is a much more excommunicable
deed than merely annoying people with nasty comments.
But today David Gans's electronic mailbox is filled with messages from angry
female
WELLbeings. Stink has begun doing sends''--immediate E-mail messages that appear on the
recipient's screen with a "beep,'' interrupting whatever she is doing. People usually use
sends
when they notice that a good friend has logged on and want to experience a brief, live''
interchange. No one "sends'' a stranger. But, according to Gans's E-mail, females logged
on to
the WELL are receiving messages like Wanna dance?'' or "Your place or mine?'' on their
screens, and have gotten a bit irked. Anonymous phone calls can leave a girl feeling
chilly, at
the very least. This is somehow an even greater violation of privacy. From reading the
girl's
postings, he knows her name, the topics she enjoys, how she feels about issues; if he's a
hacker, who knows how much more he knows?
David realizes that giving Stink the silent treatment isn't working. But what to
do? He
takes it to the WELL staff, who, after discussing the problem with several other
distressed
topic hosts, decide to put Stink into a problem shell.'' Whenever he tries to log on to
the
WELL, he'll receive a message to call the main office and talk to a staff member. Until
he
does so, he is locked out of the system.
Stink tries to log on and receives the message, but he doesn't call in. Days
pass. The
issue seems dead. But topics about Stink and the implications of his mischievous presence
begin to spring up all over the WELL. Many applaud the banishment of Stink, while others
warn that this is the beginning of censorship. How,'' someone asks, "can we call
ourselves an
open, virtual community if we lock out those who don't communicate the way we like? Think
of how many of us could have been kicked off the WELL by the same logic?'' What are we,
Carebears?'' another retorts. "This guy was sick!''
David lets the arguments continue, defending the WELL staff's decision-making
process where he can, stressing how many painful hours were spent deliberating on this
issue.
Meanwhile, though, he begins to do some research of his own and notices that Stink's last
name--not a common one--is the same as another user of the WELL called Bennett. David
takes a gamble and E-mails Bennett, who tells him that he's seen Stink's postings but
that
there's no relation.
But the next day, there's a new, startling addition to a special confession''
conference:
Bennett admits that he is Stink. Stink's WELL account had been opened by Bennett's
brother
but never used. Bennett reopened the account and began using it as a joke, to vent his
"alter
ego.'' Free of his regular identity, he could be whoever he wanted and act however he
dared
with no personal repercussions. What had begun as a kind of thought experiment or acting
exercise had soon gotten out of hand. The alter ego went out of control. Bennett, it
turns out,
was a mild-mannered member of conferences like Christianity, and in his regular persona
had
even consoled a fellow WELLbeing after her husband died. Bennett is not a hacker-kid; he
has a wife and children, a job, a religion, a social conscience, and a fairly quiet
disposition.
He begs for the forgiveness of other WELLbeings and says he confessed because he felt so
guilty lying to David Gans about what had happened. He wants to remain a member of the
cyber community and eventually regain the trust of WELLbeings.
Some WELLbeings believe Bennett and forgive him. Others do not. He just
confessed
because he knows you were on to him, David. Good work.'' Some suggest a suspension, or
even a community service sentence: "Isn't there some administrative stuff he can do at
the
WELL office as penance?''
But most people just wonder out loud about the strange cyber experience of this
schizoid WELLbeing, and what it means for the Global Village at large. Was Bennett like
this all the time and Stink merely a suppressed personality, or did Cyberia affect his
psyche
adversely, creating Stink where he didn't exist before? How vulnerable are the rest of us
when
one goes off his virtual rocker? Do the psychology and neurosis of everyday real-life
human
interactions need to follow us into cyberspace, or is there a way to leave them behind?
Just
how intimate can we get through our computers, and at what cost?
CHAPTER 4
Interfacing with the Technosphere
The evolution of computer and networking technology can be seen as a progression
toward more user-friendly interfaces that encourage hypertext-style participation of both
the
computer illiterate and those who wish to interact more intimately in Cyberia than can be
experienced by typing on a keyboard. DOS-style printed commands were replaced by the
Macintosh interface in the late 1970s. Instead of typing instructions to the computer,
users
were encouraged to click and drag icons representing files across their screens and put
them
wherever they wanted, using the now-famous mouse. But this has all changed again with the
development of virtual reality, the computer interface that promises to bring us into the
matrix--mind, body, and soul.
VR, as it's called, replaces the computer screen with a set of 3-D, motionsensitive
goggles, the speaker with a set of 3-D headphones, and the mouse with a glove or tracking
ball. The user gains the ability to move through a real or fictional space without using
commands, text, or symbols. You put on the goggles, and you see a building, for example.
You walk'' with your hand toward the doorway, open the door, and you're inside. As you
do
all this, you see the door approaching in complete perspective. Once you open the door,
you
see the inside of the building. As you turn your head to the left, you see what's to the
left. As
you look up, you see the ceiling. As you look to the right, let's say, you see a painting
on the
wall. It's a picture of a forest. You walk to the painting, but you don't stop. You go
into the
painting. Then you're in the forest. You look up, see the sun through the trees, and hear
the
wind rustle through the leaves. Behind you, you hear a bird chirping.
Marc de Groot (the Global Village ham radio interface) was responsible for that
behind you'' part. His work involved the creation of 3-D sound that imitates the way the
body detects whether a sound is coming from above, below, in front, or behind. To him, VR
is a milestone in human development.
Virtual reality is a way of mass-producing direct experience. You put on the
goggles
and you have this world around you. In the beginning, there were animals, who had nothing
but their experience. Then man came along, who processes reality in metaphors. We have
symbology. One thing stands for another. Verbal noises stand for experience, and we can
share experience by passing this symbology back and forth. Then the Gutenberg Press
happened, which was the opportunity to mass-produce symbology for the first time, and
that
marked a real change. And virtual reality is a real milestone too, because we're now able
for
the first time to mass-produce the direct experience. We've come full circle.''
Comparisons with the Renaissance abound in discussions of VR. Just as the 3-D
holograph serves as our cultural and scientific equivalent of the Renaissance's
perspective
painting, virtual reality stands as a 1990s computer equivalent of the original literacy
movement. Like the printing press did nearly five hundred years ago, VR promises pop
cultural access to information and experience previously reserved for experts.
De Groot's boss at VPL, Jaron Lanier, paints an even rosier picture of VR and
its
impact on humanity at large. In his speaking tours around the world, the dredlocked
inventor
explains how the VR interface is so transparent that it will make the computer disappear.
Try
to remember the world before computers. Try to remember the world of dreaming, when you
dreamed and it was so. Remember the fluidity that we experienced before computers. Then
you'll be able to grasp VR.'' But the promise of virtual reality and its current level of
development are two very different things. Most reports either glow about future
possibilities
or rag on the crudeness of today's gear. Lanier has sworn off speaking to the media for
precisely that reason.
There's two levels of virtual reality. One is the ideas, and the other is the
actual gear.
The gear is early, all right? But these people from Time magazine came in last week and
said,
`Well, this stuff's really overblown,' and my answer's like, `Who's overblowing it?'--you
know? It reminds me of an interview with Paul McCartney in the sixties where some guy
from the BBC asked him if he did any illegal activities, and he answered, `Well,
actually,
yes.' And the reporter asked `Don't you think that's horrible to be spreading such things
to the
youth of the country?' and he said, `I'm not doing that. You're doing that.' ''
But the press and the public can't resist. The promise of VR is beyond
imagination.
Sure, it makes it possible to simulate the targeting and blow-up of an Iraqi power plant,
but
as a gateway to Cyberia itself, well ... the possibilities are endless. Imagine, for
example, a
classroom of students with a teacher, occurring in real time. The students are from
twelve
different countries, each plugged in to a VR system, all modemed to the teacher's house.
They
sit around a virtual classroom, see one another and the teacher. The teacher explains
that
today's topic is the Colosseum in ancient Rome. She holds up a map of ancient Rome and
says, Let's go.'' The students fly over the skyline of the ancient city, following their
teacher.
"Stay together now,'' she says, pointing out the Colosseum and explaining why it was
positioned across town from the Forum. The class lands at the main archway to the
Colosseum. Let's go inside ...'' You get the idea.
More amazing to VR enthusiasts is the technology's ability to provide access to
places
the human body can't go, granting new perspectives on old problems much in the way that
systems math provides planners with new outlooks on currents that don't follow the
discovered patterns.
Warren Robinett, manager of the Head-Mounted Display Project at the University
of
North Carolina, explains how the strength of VR is that it allows the user to experience
the
inside of a cell, an anthill, or the shape of a galaxy:
Virtual reality will prove to be a more compelling fantasy world than Nintendo,
but
even so, the real power of the head-mounted display is that it can help you perceive the
real
world in ways that were previously impossible. To see the invisible, to travel at the
speed of
light, to shrink yourself into microscopic worlds, to relive experiences--these are the
powers
that the head-mounted display offers you. Though it sounds like science fiction today,
tomorrow it will seem as commonplace as talking on the telephone.''
One of these still fictional interface ideas is called wireheading.'' This is a
new branch
of computer technology where designers envision creating hardware that wires the computer
directly to the brain. The user literally plugs wires into his own head, or has a
microchip and
transmitter surgically implanted inside the skull. Most realistic visions of wireheading
involve
as-yet univented biological engineering techniques where brain cells would be coaxed to
link
themselves to computer chips, or where organic matter would be grafted onto computer
chips
which could then be attached to a person's nerve endings. This "wetware,'' as science
fiction
writers call it, would provide a direct, physical interface between a human nervous
system on
one side, and computer hardware on the other. The computer technology for such an
interface
is here; the understanding of the human nervous system is not.
Although Jaron Lanier's company is working on nerve chip'' that would
communicate
directly with the brain, he's still convinced that the five senses provide the best
avenues for
interface.
There's no difference between the brain and the sense organs. The body is a
continuity. Perception begins in the retina. Mind and body are one. You have this
situation
where millions of years of evolution have created this creature. What is this creature
aside
from the way it interfaces with the rest of creation? And how do you interface? Through
the
sense organs! So the sense organs are almost a better defining point than any other spot
in the
creature. They're central to identity and define our mode of being. We're visual,
tactile, audio
creatures. The whole notion of bypassing the senses is sort of like throwing away the
actual
treasure.''
Still, the philosophical implications of a world beyond the five senses are
irresistible,
and have drawn into the ring many worthy contenders to compete for the title of VR
spokesperson. The most vibrant is probably Timothy Leary, whose ride on the crest of the
VR
wave has brought him back on the scene with the zeal of John the Baptist preparing the
way
for Christ, or a Harvard psychology professor preparing the intelligentsia for LSD.
Just as the fish donned skin to walk the earth, and man donned a space suit to
walk
in space, we'll now don cyber suits to walk in Cyberia. In ten years most of our daily
operations, occupational, educational, and recreational, will transpire in Cyberia. Each
of us
will be linked in thrilling cyber exchanges with many others whom we may never meet in
person. Fact-to-face interactions will be reserved for special, intimate, precious,
sacramentalized events.''
Leary sees VR as an empowerment of the individual against the brainwashing
forces
of industrial slavedriving and imperialist expansion:
By the year 2000, the I.C. (inner city) kid will slip on the EyePhone, don a
form-fitting computer suit, and start inhabiting electronic environments either selfdesigned or
pulled up from menus. At 9:00 a.m. she and her friend in Tokyo will meet in an electronic
simulation of Malibu Beach for a flirtatious moment. At 9:30 a.m. she will meet her
biology
teacher in an electronic simulation of the heart for a hands-on `you are there' tutorial
trip
down the circulatory system. At 10:00 a.m. she'll be walking around medieval Verona with
members of her English literature seminar to act out a scene from Romeo and Juliet. At
11:00
A.M. she'll walk onto an electronic tennis court for a couple of sets with her pal in
Managua.
At noon, she'll take off her cyberwear and enjoy a sensual, tasty lunch with her family
in
their nonelectronic kitchen.''
What was that part about Malibu Beach--the flirtatious moment? Sex, in VR?
Lanier
readily admits that VR can provide a reality built for two: It's usually kind of
shocking how
harmonious it is, this exposure of a collective energy between people. And so a similar
thing
would happen in a virtual world, where there's a bunch of people in it, and they're all
making
changes at once. These collective changes will emerge, which might be sort of like the
Jungian level of virtual reality.'' Users will literally "see'' what the other means.
Lanier's trick
answer to the question of sex is, I think everything in virtual reality is sexual. It's
eroticizing
every moment, because it's all, like, creative.'' But that answer doesn't satisfy true
cyber
fetishists. If a cyber suit with full tactile stimulation is possible, then so should be
cyber sex!
A conversation about teledildonics, as it's been called, gets VR enthusiasts quite heated
up.
Loading Worlds
We're at Bryan Hughes's house, headquarters of the Renaissance Foundation, a
group
dedicated to fostering the growth of the VR interface for artists and educators. Bryan
has just
unpacked some crates from Chris Krauskopf at Intel, which include a computer, a VR system
designed by Eric Gullichsen called Sense8, and the prototype of a new kind of helmetgoggles
combination. As Bryan searches through the crates for an important piece of connective
hardware, the rest of us, who have been invited to try out the potentially consumer-grade
VR,
muse on the possibilities of virtual sex.
Dan, an architecture student at Berkeley with a penchant for smart drugs,''
begins.
"They're working on something called `smart skin,' which is kind of a rubber for your
whole
body that you slip into, and with gel and electrodes it can register all your body
movements
and at the same time feed back to you any skin sensations it wants you to feel. If you
pick up
a virtual cup, it will send back to you the feeling of the texture of the cup, the
weight,
everything.''
So this skin could also imitate the feeling of ... ?'' I venture.
A girl,'' answers Harding, a graphic designer who makes hand-outs, T-shirts,
and
flyers for many of the acid house clubs in the Bay Area. "It would go like this: you
either
screw your computer, or screw someone else by modem. If you do your computer, you just
call some girl out of its memory. Your cyber suit'll take you there. If you do it the
phone-sex
way, the girl--or guy or anything out there, actually--there could be a guy who's virtual
identity is a girl or a spider even--''
You could look like--be anyone you wanted--'' Dan chimes in. "And then--''
Harding nods. Every command you give the computer as a movement of your body is
translated onto her suit as a touch or whatever, then back to your suit for the way her
body
feels, the way she reacts, and so on.''
But she can make her skin feel like whatever she wants to. She can program in
fur,
and that's what she'll feel like to you.''
My head is spinning. The possibilities are endless in a sexual designer
reality.... But
then I begin to worry about those possibilities. And--could there be such a thing as
virtual
rape? Virtual muggings or murder through tapped phone lines?... These scenarios recede
into
the distant future as Bryan comes back into the room. The chrome connector he has been
searching for is missing, so we'll have to make do with masking tape.
We each take turns trying on the new VR helmet. Using the latest sonar
technology, it
senses the head position of the operator through a triangular bar fitted with tiny
microphones.
The triangle must be mounted on a pole several feet above the helmet-wearing user--a
great
idea except the little piece that connects the triangle thing to the pole is missing. But
Bryan's
masking tape holds the many-thousand dollar strip of hardware safely, and I venture into
the
electronic realm.
The demo tour is an office. No virtual sex. No virtual landscape. But it looks
3-D
enough. Bryan hands me the joystick that is used in this system instead of VPL's more
expensive glove controller. Bryan's manner is caring, almost motherly. He's introduced
thousands to VR at conventions with Tim Leary across the country and even in Japan, yet
it's
as if he's still sensitive to the fact that this is my first time.'' It seems more like
a video game
than anything else, and I flash on Craig Neidorf wandering through mazes, looking for
magical objects. Then Bryan realizes that I haven't moved, and gently coaxes me to push
forward on the joystick. My body jolts as I fly toward the desk in front of me. Bryan
watches
my progress through a TV monitor next to the computer, which displays a two-dimensional
version of what I'm seeing.
That's right,'' he encourages, "it only needs a little push.'' I ease back on
the virtual
throttle and guide myself around the room. You can move your head,'' he suggests with
calm
reassurance. As I turn my head, the world whizzes by in a blur, but quickly settles down.
"The frame rate is still slow on this machine.'' That's what accounts for the strobelike
effect
as I swivel my head too quickly. The computer needs to create a new picture every time I
move, and the illusion of continuity--essentially the art of animation--is dependent on
flashing
by as many pictures per second as possible. I manage to work my way around the desk and
study a painting on the wall. Remembering what I've been told about VR, I walk into the
painting. Nothing happens. Everything turns blue.
He walked into the painting,'' remarks one of the peanut gallery watching my
progress. "Push reset.''
That's not one of the ones you can walk into,'' Bryan tells me as he punches
some
commands into the computer. "Let's try a different world.''
'LOADING WORLD 1203.WLD'
blinks on the screen as the hard drive grinds a new set of pictures into the RAM
of
the machine.
Now I'm in an art gallery, and the paintings do work. I rush toward a picture of
stars
and galaxies, but I overshoot it. I go straight up into the air (there is no ceiling
here), and I'm
flying above the museum now, looking at the floor below me. With Bryan's guidance, I'm
back on the ground. Why don't you go into the torus,'' he suggests. "It's neat in
there.'' A
torus is a three-dimensional shape from systems math, the model for many different chaos
attractors. Into the doughnut-shaped VR object I go.
Even the jaded VR veterans gather around to see what the torus looks like from
inside,
I steer through the cosmic shape, which is textured in what looks like a galactic
geometry of
clouds and light. As I float, I feel my body making the movements, too. The illusion is
working, and an almost out-of-body sensation takes over. I dive then spiral up. The stars
swirl. I've got it now and this world is mine. I glide forward and up, starting a loop de
loop
when-Blue.
Shit.'' Bryan punches in some commands but it's no use. There's a glitch in the
program somewhere.
But while it lasted, the VR experience was like getting a glimpse of another
world--one which might not be too unlike our own. The illusion of VR worked better the
more I could control my movement. As scientists have observed, the more dexterity a
person
experiences in a virtual world, the sharper he will experience the focus of the pictures.
The
same computer image looks clearer when you can move your head to see different parts.
There is no real reason for this phenomenon. Lanier offers one explanation:
In order to see, you have to move your head. Your head is not a passive camera
mount, like a tripod or something holding your eyes up. Your head is like a spy
submarine:
it's always bobbing and looking around, performing a million little experiments a second,
lining things up in the environment. Creating your world. That level of interactivity is
essential to the most basic seeing. As you turn on the head-tracking feature in the
Head-Mounted Display [the feature that allows you to effect where you're looking] there's
a
subjective increase in the resolution of the display. A very clear demonstration of the
power
of interactivity in the lowest level of perception.''
And a very clear demonstration of the relationship of human perception to the
outside
world, casting further doubt on the existence of any objective physical reality. In
Cyberia at
least, reality is directly dependent on our ability to actively participate in its
creation.
Designer reality must be interactive rather than passive. The user must be part of the
iterative
equation. Just as Craig Neidorf was most fascinated by the parts of his Adventure video
game
that were not in the instructions, cyberians need to see themselves as the source of
their own
experience.
Get Virtual with Tim!
Friday. Tim Leary's coming to town to do a VR lecture, and the Renaissance
Foundation is throwing him a party in cooperation with Mondo 2000 magazine--the voice of
cyber culture. It's downstairs at Big Heart City, a club south of Market Street in the
new
warehouse/artist district of San Francisco, masterminded by Mark Renney, cyber culture's
interface to the city's politicians and investors. Entrance with or without an invite is
five
dollars--no exceptions, no guest list. Cheap enough to justify making everyone pay, which
actually brings in a greater profit than charging fifteen dollars to outsiders, who at
event like
this are outnumbered by insiders. Once past the gatekeepers, early guests mill about the
large
basement bar, exchanging business cards and E-mail addresses, or watching Earth Girl, a
colorfully dressed cyber hippy, set up her Smart Drugs Bar, which features an assortment
of
drinks made from neuroenhancers dissolved into fruit juice.
Tim arrives with R. U. Sirius, the famously trollish editor of Mondo 2000, and
is
immediately swamped by inventors, enthusiastic heads, and a cluster of well-proportioned
college girls. Everyone either wants something from Tim or has something for Tim. Leary's
eyes dart about, looking for someone or something to act as a buffer zone. R. U., having
vanished into the crowd, is already doing some sort of media interview. Tim recognizes me
from a few parties in LA, smiles, and shakes my hand. You're, umm--''
Doug Rushkoff.'' Leary pulls me to his side, manages to process the entire
crowd of
givers and takers--with my and a few others' help--in about ten minutes. A guy from NASA
has developed 3-D slides of fractal pictures. Leary peaks through the prototype
viewfinder,
says "Wow!'' then hands it to me. This is Doug Rushkoff, he's writing a book. What do
you
think, Doug?'' Then he's on to the next one. An interview for Japanese TV? "Sure. Call me
at
the hotel. Bryan's got the number.'' Never been down to Intel--it's the greatest company
in
the world. E-mail me some details!'' Tim is "on,'' but on edge, too. He's mastered the
art of
interfacing without engaging, then moving on without insulting, but it seems that this
frequency of interactions per minute is taking a heavy toll on him. He spews superlatives
( That's the best 3-D I've ever seen!''), knowing that overkill will keep the suitors
satisfied
longer. He reminds me of the bartender at an understaffed wedding reception, who gives
the
guests extrastrong drinks so they won't come back for more so soon.
As a new onslaught of admirers appears, between the heads of the ones just
processed,
Bryan Hughes's gentle arm finds Tim's shoulder. The system's ready. Why don't you come
try it?''
In the next room, Bryan has set up his VR gear. Tim is escorted past a long line
of
people patiently waiting for their first exposure to cyberspace, and he's fitted into the
gear.
Next to him and the computer stands a giant video projection of the image Tim is seeing
through his goggles. I can't tell if he's blown away or just selling the product--or
simply
enjoying the fact that as long as he's plugged in he doesn't have to field any more of
the
givers and takers. As he navigates through the VR demo, the crowd oohs and ahhs his every
decision. Let's get virtual with Tim! Tim nears the torus. People cheer. Tim goes into
the
torus. People scream. Tim screams. Tim dances and writhes like he's having an orgasm.
This is sick,'' says Troy, one of my connections to the hacker underworld in
the Bay
Area, whom I had interviewed that afternoon. "We're going now. ...'' Troy had offered to
let
me come along with him and his friends on a real-life crack'' if I changed the names,
burned
the phone numbers, etc., to protect their anonymity.
Needles and PINs
Troy had me checked out that afternoon through the various networks, and I guess
I
came up clean enough, or dirty enough to pass the test. Troy and I hop into his van,
where
his friends await us. Simon and Jack, a cracker and a videographer respectively, are
students
at a liberal arts college in the city. (Troy had dropped out of college the second week
and
spent his education loan on army surplus computer equipment.)
Troy puts the key in the ignition but doesn't crank the engine. They want you
to
smoke a joint first.''
I really don't smoke pot anymore,'' I confess.
It proves you're not a cop,'' says Jack, whose scraggly beard and muscular
build
suddenly trigger visions of myself being hacked or even cracked to death. I take the
roach
from Simon, the youngest of the trio, who is clad in an avocado green polyester jumpsuit.
With the first buzz of California sensemilla, I try to decide if his garb is an
affectation for the
occasion or legitimate new edge nerdiness. Then the van takes off out of the alley behind
the
club, and I switch on my pocket cassette recorder as the sounds of Tim Leary and Big
Heart
City fade in the night.
I'm stoned by the time we get to the bank. It's on a very nice street in Marin
County.
Bank machines in better neighborhoods don't have cameras in them,'' Jack tells me as we
pull up.
Simon has gone over the scheme twice, but he won't let me tape his voice; and
I'm too
buzzed to remember what he's saying. (Plus, he's speaking about twice the rate of normal
human beings--due in part to the speed he injected into his thigh.) What he's got in his
hands
now is a black plastic box about the size of two decks of cards with a slit going through
it.
Inside this box is the magnetic head from a tape deck, recalibrated somehow to read the
digital information on the back of bank cards. Simon affixes some double-stick black tape
to
one side of the box, then slides open the panel door of the van and goes to the ATM
machine. Troy explains to me how the thing works:
Simon's putting our card reader just over the slot where you normally put your
card
in. It's got a RAM chip that'll record the ID numbers of the cards as they're inserted.
It's thin
enough that the person's card will still hit the regular slot and get sucked into the
machine.''
Won't people notice the thing?'' I ask.
People don't notice shit, anymore,'' says Jack, who is busy with his video
equipment.
"They're all hypnotized.''
How do you get their PIN number?'' I inquire.
Watch.'' Jack chuckles as he mounts a 300mm lens to his Ikegami camera. He
patches
some wires as Simon hops back into the van. "I'll need your seat.''
I switch places with Jack, who mounts his camera on a tiny tripod, then places
it on
the passenger seat of the van. Troy joins me in the back, and Jack takes the driver seat.
Switch on the set,'' orders Jack, as he plugs something into the cigarette
lighter. A
Sony monitor bleeps on, and Jack focuses in on the keypad of the ATM machine. Suddenly,
it all makes sense.
It's a full forty minutes until the arrival of the first victim at the machine-a young
woman in an Alpha Romeo. When she gets to the machine, all we can see in the monitor is
her hair.
Shit!'' blurts Simon. "Move the van! Quick!''
We'll get the next one,'' Troy reassures calmly.
After a twenty-minute readjustment of our camera angle, during which at least a
dozen
potential PIN donors'' use the ATM, we're at last in a position to see the keypad,
around the
operators' hair, shoulders, and elbows. Of course, this means no one will show up for at
least
half an hour. The pot has worn off and we're all hungry.
A police car cruises by. Instinctively, we all duck. The camera sits
conspicuously on
the passenger seat. The cop doesn't even slow down.
A stream of ATM patrons finally passes through, and Troy dutifully records the
PIN
numbers of each. I don't think any of us likes having to actually see the victims. If
they were
merely magnetic files in a hacked system, it would be less uncomfortable. I mention this
to
Troy, and Simon tells me to shut up. We remain in silence until the flow of bankers
thenin to
trickle, and finally dies away completely. It is about 1:00 a.m. As Simon retrieves his
hardware from the ATM, Troy finally acknowledges my question.
This way we know who to take from and who not to. Like that Mexican couple. We
won't do their account. They wouldn't even understand the withdrawal on their statement
and
they'd probably be scared to say anything about it to the bank. And a couple of hundred
bucks makes a real difference to them. The guys in the Porsche? Fuck `em.''
We're back at Simon's by about two o'clock. He downloads his card reader's RAM
chip into the PC. Numbers flash on the screen as Simon and Jack cross-reference PIN
numbers with each card. Once they have a complete list, Simon pulls out a white plastic
machine called a securotech'' or "magnelock'' or something like that. A Lake Tahoe hotel
that
went out of business last year sold it to a surplus electronic supply house, along with
several
hundred plastic cards with magnetic strips that were used as keys to the hotel's rooms.
By
punching numbers on the keypad of the machine, Simon can write'' the appropriate numbers
to the cards.
Troy shows me a printout of information they got off a bulletin board last
month; it
details which number means what: a certain three numbers refer to the depositor's home
bank,
branch, account number, etc. Within two hours, we're sitting around a stack of
counterfeit
bank cards and a list of PIN numbers. Something compels me to break Troy's self-satisfied
grin.
Which one belongs to the Mexican couple?''
The fourth one,'' he says with a smirk. "We won't use it.''
I thought it was the fifth one,'' I say in the most ingenuous tone I've got.
"Couldn't it
be the fifth one?''
Fine,'' Suddenly Troy grabs the fourth and fifth cards from the stack and
throws them
across the room. "Happy?''
I hold my replies to myself. These guys could be dangerous.
But no more dangerous or daring than exploits of Cyberia's many other denizens,
with
whom we all, by choice or necessity, are becoming much more intimate. We have just peered
through the first window into Cyberia--the computer monitors, digital goggles, and
automatic
teller screens that provide instant access to the technosphere. But, as we'll soon see,
Cyberia
is made up of much more than information networks. It can also be accessed personally,
socially, artistically, and, perhaps easiest of all, chemically.
PART 2
Drugs: The Substances of Designer Reality
CHAPTER 5
Seeing is Beholding
Terence McKenna--considered by many the successor to Tim Leary's psychedelic
dynasty--couldn't make it to Big Heart City Friday night for the elder's party. The
bearded,
lanky, forty-somethingish Irishman was deep into a Macintosh file, putting the finishing
touches on his latest manuscript about the use of mind-altering plants by ancient
cultures. But
by Saturday morning he was ready to descend from his small mountaintop ranch house to
talk
about the virtual reality that has his fans so excited.
We're backstage with McKenna at a rave where he'll be speaking about drugs,
consciousness, and the end of time. The luckiest of friends and mentees hang out with him
in
his dressing room as he prepares to go on.
VR really is like a trip,'' one boy offers McKenna in the hopes of launching
into him
one of his lyrical diatribes. Terence ponders a moment and then he's off, sounding like a
Celtic bard.
I link virtual reality to psychedelic drugs because I think that if you look at
the
evolution of organism and self-expression and language, language is seen to be some kind
of
process that actually tends toward the visible.'' McKenna strings his thoughts together
into a
breathless oral continuum. "The small mouth-noise way of communicating is highly
provisional; we may be moving toward an environment of language that is beheld rather
than
heard.''
Still, assembled admirers hang on McKenna's every word, as if each syllable were
leaving a hallucinatory aftervision on the adrenal cortex. They too dream of a Cyberia
around
the corner, and virtual reality is the closest simulation of a what a world free of time,
location, or even a personal identity might look like. Psychedleics and VR are both ways
of
creating a new, nonlinear reality, where self-expression is a community event.
You mean like ESP?''
Terence never corrects anyone--he only interpolates their responses. This would
be
like a kind of telepathy, but it would be much more than that: A world of visible
language is
a world where the individual doesn't really exist in the same way that the print-created
world
sanctions what we call `point of view.' That's really what an ego is: it's a consistently
defined
point of view within a context of narrative. Well, if you replace the idea that life is a
narrative with the idea that life is a vision, then you displace the linear progression
of events.
I think this is technically within reach.''
To Terence, the invention of virtual reality, like the resurgence of
psychoactive drugs,
serves as a kind of technological philosopher's stone, bringing an inkling of the future
reality
into the present. It's both a hint from our hyperdimensional future and an active,
creative
effort by cyberians to reach that future.
I like the concept of the philosopher's stone. The next messiah might be a
machine
rather than a person. The philosopher's stone is a living stone. It is being made. We are
making it. We are like tunnelers drilling toward something. The overmind is drilling
toward
us, and we are drilling toward it. And when we meet, there will be an enormous revelation
of
the true nature of being. I think every person who takes five or six grams of psilocybin
mushrooms in silent darkness is probably on a par with Christ and Buddha, at least in
terms
of the input.''
So, according to McKenna, the psychedelic vision provides a glimse of the truth
cyberians are yearning for. But have psychedelics and virtual reality really come to us
as a
philosopher's stone, or is it simply that our philosopher's stoned?
Morphogenetic Fields Forever
Cyberians share a psychedelic common ground. To them, drugs are not simply a
recreational escape but a conscious and sometimes daring foray into new possible
realities.
Psychedelics give them access to what McKenna is calling the overmind and what we call
Cyberia. However stoned they might be when they get there, psychedelic explorers are
convinced that they are experiencing something real, and bringing back something useful
for
themselves and the rest of us.
Psychedelic exploration, however personal, is thought to benefit more than the
sole
explorer. Each tripper believes he is opening the door between humanity and hyperspace a
little wider. The few cyberians who haven't taken psychedelics still feel they have
personally
experienced and integrated the psychedelic vision through the trips of others, and value
the
role of these chemicals in the overall development of Cyberia. It is as if each
psychedelic
journey completes another piece of a universal puzzle.
But, even though they have a vast computer net and communications infrastructure
at
their disposal, psychedelic cyberians need not communicate their findings so directly.
Rather,
they believe they are each sharing and benefiting from a collective experience. As we'll
see,
one of the most common realizations of the psychedelic trip is that all is one.'' At the
euphoric peak of a trip, all people, particles, personalities, and planets are seen as
part of one
great entity or reality--one big fractal.
It may have been that realization that led Cambridge biologist Rupert Sheldrake
to
develop his theory of morphogenetic fields, now common knowledge to most cyberians. From
morph, meaning forms,'' and genesis, meaning "birth,'' these fields are a kind of
cumulative
record of the past behaviors of species, groups, and even molecules, so that one member
of a
set can learn from the experience of all the others.
A failed animal-behavior test is still one of the best proofs of Sheldrake's
idea.
Scientists were attempting to determine if learned skills could be passed on from parents
to
children genetically. They taught adult mice how to go through a certain maze, then
taught
their offspring, and their offspring, and so on for twenty years and fifty generations of
mice.
Indeed, the descendants of the taught mice knew how to get through the maze very quickly
without instruction, but so did the descendants of the control group, who had never seen
the
maze at all! Later, a scientist decided to repeat this experiment on a different
continent with
the same mouse species, but they already knew how to go through the maze, too! As
explained by morphic resonance, the traits need not have been passed on genetically. The
information leak was due not to bad experimental procedure but to the morphogenetic
field,
which stored the experience of the earlier mice from which all subsequent mice could
benefit.
Similarly, if scientists are developing a new crystalline structure, it may take
years to
coax'' atoms to form the specific crystal. But once the crystal is developed in one
laboratory,
it can be created instantly in any other laboratory in the world. According to Sheldrake,
this is
because, like the mice, the atoms are all "connected'' to one another through
morphogenetic
fields, and they learn'' from the experiences of other atoms.
Sheldrake's picture of reality is a vast fractal of resonating fields.
Everything, no
matter how small, is constantly affecting everything else. If the tiniest detail in a
fractal
pattern echoes the overall design of the entire fractal, then a change to (or the
experience of)
this remote piece changes the overall picture (through the principles of feedback and
iteration). Echoing the realizations of his best friends, Ralph Abraham and Terence
McKenna,
Sheldrake is the third member of the famous Trialogues'' at Esalen, where the three
elder
statesmen (by cyberian standards) discuss onstage the ongoing unfolding of reality before
captivated audiences of cyberians. These men are, quite consciously, putting into
practice the
idea of morphogenetic fields. Even if these Trialogues were held in private (as they were
for
years), Cyberia as a whole would benefit from the intellectual developments. By
pioneering
the new "headspace,'' the three men leave their own legacy through morphic resonance, if
not
direct communication through their publishing, lectures, or media events.
Likewise, each cyberian psychedelic explorer feels that by tripping he is
leaving his
own legacy for others to follow, while himself benefiting from the past psychedelic
experiences of explorers before him. For precisely this reason, McKenna always advises
using
only organic psychedelics, which have well-developed morphogenetic fields: I always say
there are three tests for a drug. It should occur in nature. That gives it a morpogenetic
field of
resonance to the life of the planet. It should have a history of shamanic usage [which
gives it
a morphogenetic field of resonance to the consciousness of other human beings]. And it
should be similar to or related to neurotransmitters in the brain. What's interesting
about that
series of filters, is that it leaves you with the most powerful hallucinogens there are:
psilocybin, DMT, ayahuasca, and, to some degree, LSD.''
These are the substances that stock the arsenal of the drug-using cyberian.
Psychedelics use among cyberians has developed directly out of the drug culture of the
sixties. The first tripsters--the people associated with Leary on the East Coast, and Ken
Kesey
on the West Coast--came to startling moral and philosophical conclusions that reshaped
our
culture. For today's users, drugs are part of the continuing evolution of the human
species
toward greater intelligence, empathy, and awareness.
From the principle of morphogenesis, cyberians infer that psychedelic substances
have
the ability to reshape the experience of reality and thus--if observer and observed are
one--the
reality itself. It's hardly disputed that, even in a tangible, cultural sense, the
introduction of
psychedelics into our society in the sixties altered the sensibilities of users and
nonusers alike.
The trickle-down effect through the arts, media, and even big business created what can
be
called a postpsychedelic climate, in which everything from women's rights, civil rights,
and
peace activism to spirituality and the computer revolution found suitable conditions for
growth.
As these psychoactive plants and chemicals once again see the light of day, an
even
more self-consciously creative community is finding out about designer reality. While
drugs
in the sixties worked to overcome social, moral, and intellectual rigidity, drugs now
enhance
the privileges of the already free. Cyberians using drugs do not need to learn that
reality is
arbitrary and manipulable, or that the landscape of consciousness is broader than normal
waking-state awareness suggests. They have already learned this through the experiences
of
men like Leary and Kesey. Instead, they take chemicals for the express purpose of
manipulating that reality and exploring the uncharted regions of consciousness.
Integrating the Bell Curve
LSD was the first synthesized chemical to induce basically the same effect as
the
organic psychedelics used by shamans in ancient cultures. Psychedelics break down one's
basic assumptions about life, presenting them instead as arbitrary choices on the part of
the
individual and his society. The tripper feels liberated into a free-form reality, where
his mind
and point of view can alter his external circumstances. Psychedelics provide a way to
look at
life unencumbered by the filters and models one normally uses to process reality.
(Whether
psychedelics impose a new set of their own filters is irrelevant here. At least the
subjective
experience of the trip is that the organizing framework of reality has been obliterated.)
Nina Graboi, the author of One Foot in the Future, a novel about her own
spiritual
journey, was among the first pioneers of LSD in the sixties. Born in 1918 and trained as
an
actress, she soon became part of New York's bohemian an subculture, and kept company with
everyone from Tim Leary to Alan Watts. She now works as an assistant to mathematician
Ralph Abraham, and occasionally hosts large conferences on psychedelics. She spoke to me
at
her Santa Cruz beach apartment, over tea and cookies. She believes from what see has seen
over the past seven decades that what psychedelics do to an individual, LSD did to
society,
breaking us free of cause-and-effect logic and into an optimistic creativity.
Materialism really was at its densest and darkest before the sixties and it did
not
allow us to see that anything else existed. Then acid came along just at the right time-I really
think so. It was very important for some people to reach states of mind that allowed them
to
see that there is more, that we are more than just these physical bodies. I can't help
feeling
that there were forces at work that went beyond anything that I can imagine. After the
whole
LSD craze, all of a sudden, the skies opened up and books came pouring down and wisdom
came. And something started happening. I think by now there are enough of us to have
created a morphogenetic field of awareness, that are open to more than the materialists
believe.''
But Graboi believes that the LSD vision needs to be integrated into the
experience of
America at large. It's not enough to tune in, turn on, and drop out. The impulse now is
to
recreate reality consciously--and that happens both through a morphogenetic resonance as
well
as good old-fashioned work.
I don't think we have a thing to learn from the past, now. We really have to
start
creating new forms, and seeing real ways of being. This was almost like the mammalian
state
coming to a somewhat higher octave in the sixties, which was like a quantum leap forward
in
consciousness. It was a gas. The end of a stage and the beginning of a new one. So right
now
there are still these two elements very much alive: the old society wanting to pull
backward
and keep us where we were, and the new one saying, `Hey, there are new frontiers to
conquer and they are in our minds and our hearts.'''
Nina does not consider herself a cyberian, but she does admit she's part of the
same
effort, and desperately hopes our society can reach this higher octave.'' As with all
psychedelics, "coming down'' is the hardest part. Most would prefer simply to bring up''
everything else ... to make the rest of the world conform to the trip.
The acid experience follows what can be called a bell curve: the user takes the
drug,
goes up in about an hour, stays up for a couple of hours, then comes down over a period
of
three or four hours. It is during the coming-down time--which makes up the majority of
the
experience--that the clarity of vision or particular insight must be integrated into the
normal
waking-state consciousness. Like the Greek hero who has visited the gods, the tripper
must
figure out how the peak of his Aristotelian journey makes sense. The integration of LSD
into
the sixties' culture was an analogous process. The tripping community had to integrate
the
truth of their vision into a society that could not grasp such concepts. The bell curve
of the
sixties touched ground in the form of political activism, sexual liberation, the new age
movement, and new scientific and mathematical models.
Cyberians today consider the LSD trip a traditional experience. Even though
there are
new psychedelics that more exactly match the cyberian checklist for ease of use, length
of
trip, and overall intensity, LSD provides a uniquely epic journey for the tripper, where
the
majority of time and energy in the odyssey is spent bringing it all back home. While
cyberians may spend most of their time surfing their consciousness for no reason but fun,
they take acid because there's work to be done.
When Jaida and Cindy, two twenty-year-old girls from Santa Cruz, reunited after
being away from each other for almost a year, they chose LSD because they wanted to go
through an intense experience of reconnection. Besides, it was the only drug they could
obtain
on short notice. They began by smoking some pot and hitchhiking to a nearby beachtown. By
the time they got there, the girls were stoned and the beach was pitch black. They spent
the
rest of the night talking and sleeping on what they guessed was a sand dune, and decided
to
drop'' at dawn. As the sun rose, the acid took effect.
As the girls stood up, Jaida stepped on a crab claw that was sticking out of the
sand.
Blood flowed out of her foot. As she describes it now:
The pain was just so...incredible. I could feel the movement of the pain all
the way
up to my brain, going up the tendrils, yet it was very enjoyable. And blood was coming
out,
but it was incredibly beautiful. At the same time, there was still the part of me that
said `you
have to deal with this,' which I was very grateful for.''
Once Jaida's foot was bandaged, the girls began to walk together. As they walked
and
talked, they slipped into a commonly experienced acid phenomenon: shared consciousness.
It's the only time I've ever been psychic with Cindy. It's like one of those things that
you
can't believe ... there's no evidence or anything. Whatever I was thinking, she would be
thinking. We were making a lot of commentary about the people we were looking at, and
there'd be these long stretches of silence and I would just be sort of thinking along,
and then
she would say word for word what I was thinking. Like that. And then I would say
something
and it would be exactly what she was thinking. And we just did that for about four or
five
hours. She's a very different physical type from me, but it reached the point where I
could
feel how she felt in her body. I had the very deep sensation of being inside her body,
hearing
her think, and being able to say everything that she was thinking. We were in a reality
together, and we shared the same space. Our bodies didn't separate us from each other. We
were one thing.''
But then came the downside of the bell curve. The girls slowly became more
disjointed.'' They began to disagree about tiny things--which way to walk, whether to
eat.
"There was this feeling of losing it. I could feel we were moving away from it with every
step. There was a terrible disappointment that set in. We couldn't hold on to that
perfect
attunement.''
By the time the girls got back to their campsite on the sand dune, their
disillusionment
was complete. The sand dune was actually the local trash dump. As they climbed the
stinking
mound of garbage to gather their sleeping bags, they found the crab claw'' on which
Jaida
had stepped. It was really a used tampon and a broken bottle. And now Jaida's foot was
beginning to smart.
Jaida's reintegration was twofold: She could no more bring back her empathic
ability
than she could the belief that she had stepped on a crab claw. What Jaida retained from
the
experience, though, came during the painful crash landing. She was able to see how it was
only her interpretation that made her experience pain as bad, or the tampon and glass as
less
natural than a crab claw. As in the experience of a Buddha, the garbage dump was as
beautiful as a sand dune ... until they decided it was otherwise. Losing her telepathic
union
with her friend symbolized and recapitulated the distance that had grown between them
over
the past year. They had lost touch, and the trip had heightened both their friendship and
their
separation.
Most acid trippers try to prolong that moment on the peak of the bell curve, but
to do
so is futile. Coming down is almost inevitably disillusioning to some degree. Again,
though,
like in a Greek tragedy, it is during the reintegration that insight occurs, and progress
is
made--however slight--toward a more all-encompassing or cyberian outlook. In order to
come
down with a minimum of despair and maximum of progess, the tripper must guide his own
transition back to normal consciousness and real life while maintaining the integrity
whatever
truths he may have gleaned at the apogee of his journey. The LSD state itself is not an
end in
itself. While it may offer a brief exposure to post-paradigm thinking or even
hyperdimensional abilities, the real value of the LSD trip is the change in
consciousness, and
the development of skills in the user to cope with that change. Just as when a person
takes a
vacation, it is not that the place visited is any better than where he started. It's just
different.
The traveler returns home changed.
Eugene Schoenfeld, M.D., is the Global Village Town Physician. A practicing
psychologist, he wrote the famous Dr. Hip'' advice column in the sixties; he now treats
recovering drug addicts. The doctor believes that the desire to alter consciousness,
specifically
psychedelically, is a healthy urge.
I think what happens is that it allows people to sense things in a way that
they don't
ordinarily sense them because we couldn't live that way. If our brains were always the
way
that they are under the influence of LSD, we couldn't function. Perhaps it is that when
babies
are born--that's the way they perceive things. Gradually they integrate their experience
because we cannot function if we see music, for example. We can't live that way.
Part of the reason why people take drugs is to change their sense of reality,
change
their sensation, change from the ordinary mind state. And if they had that state all the
time,
they would seek to change it. It seems that humans need to change their minds in some
way.
There's a reason why people start talking about `tripping.' It's related to trips people
take
when they physically change their environment. I'm convinced that if there were a way to
trip
all the time on LSD, they would want to change their reality to something else. That is
part
of the need.''
The sense of being on a voyage, of tripping,'' is the essence of a classic
psychedelic
experience. The user is a traveler, and an acid or mushroom trip is a heroic journey or
visionquest through unexplored regions, followed by a reentry into mundane reality. Entry
to
the psychedelic realm almost always involves an abandonment of the structures by which
one
organizes reality, and a subsequent shedding of one's ego--usually defined by those same
organizational structures. On the way back, the tripper realizes that reality itself has
been
arbitrarily arranged. The voyager sees that there may be such a thing as an objective
world,
but whatever it is we're experiencing as reality on a mass scale sure isn't it. With the
help of
a psychedelic journey, one can come back and consciously choose a different reality from
the
one that's been agreed upon by the incumbent society. This can be manifest on a personal,
theoretical, political, technological, or even spiritual level.
As Dr. Schoenfeld, who once served as Tim Leary's family physician and now
shares
his expertise with cyberians as co-host of the DRUGS conference on the WELL, explains,
that quality--that nonjudgmental quality could be carried over without the effects of
the drug.
After all, one hopes to learn something from a drug experience that he can use afterward.
(All
this interest in meditation and yoga, all these various disciplines, it all began with
people
taking these drugs and wanting to recreate these states without drugs.) So, to the extent
that
they can, that is a useful quality. And this nonjudgmental quality is something I think
that can
be carried over from a drug experience.''
Over There
So, the use of psychedelics can be seen as a means toward experiencing freeflowing,
designer reality: the goal, and the fun, is to manipulate intentionally one's objectivity
in order
to reaffirm the arbitrary nature of all the mind's constructs, revealing, perhaps,
something
truer beneath the surface, material reality. You take a trip on which you go nowhere, but
everything has changed anyway.
To some, though, it is not the just the change of consciousness that makes
psychedelics so appealing, but the qualitative difference in the states of awareness they
offer.
The place people go'' on a trip--the psychedelic corridors of Cyberia--may even be a
real
space. According to Terence McKenna's authoritative descriptions of that place, it is
quite
different from normal waking-state consciousness:
The voyager journeys into an invisible realm in which the causality of the
ordinary
world is replaced with the rationale of natural magic. In this realm, language, ideas,
and
meaning have greater power than cause and effect. Sympathies, resonances, intentions, and
personal will are linguistically magnified through poetic rhetoric. The imagination is
invoked
and sometimes its forms are beheld visibly. Within the magical mind-set of the shaman,
the
ordinary connections of the world and what we call natural laws are de-emphasized or
ignored.''{EN1}
As McKenna describes it, this is not just a mindspace but more of a netherworld,
where the common laws of nature are no longer enforced. It is a place where cause-andeffect
logic no longer holds, where events and objects function more as icons or symbols, where
thoughts are beheld rather than verbalized, and where phenomena like morphic resonance
and
the fractal reality become consciously experienced. This is the description of Cyberia.
As such, this psychedelic world is not something experienced personally or
privately,
but, like the rest of Cyberia, as a great group project. The psychedelic world each
tripper
visits is the same world, so that changes made by one are felt by the others. Regions
explored
by any traveler become part of the overall map. This is a hyperdimensional terrain on
which
the traditional solo visionquest becomes a sacred community event.
This feeling of being part of a morphogenetic unfolding is more tangible on
psilocybin
mushrooms than on LSD. McKenna voices Cyberia's enchantment with the ancient organic
brain food: I think that people should grow mushrooms. They are the real connector back
into the archaic, even more so than LSD, which was largely psychoanalytical. It didn't
connect you up to the greeny engines of creation. Psilocybin is perfect.''
Like LSD, mushrooms provide an eight-hour, bell-curve trip, but it is
characterized by
more physical and visual hallucinations'' and a much less intellectual edge. Users don't
overanalyze their experiences, opting instead to revel in them more fully. Mushrooms are
thought to have their own morphogenetic field, which has developed over centuries of
their
own evolution and their use by ancient cultures. The mushroom trip is much more
predictable, cyberians argue, because its morphogenetic field is so much better
established
than that of acid, which has only been used for a couple of decades, and mostly by
inexperienced Western travelers.
As a result, mushroom experiences are usually less intensely disorienting than
LSD
trips; the place'' one goes on mushrooms is more natural and user-friendly than the
place
accessed on acid or other more synthetic psychedelics. Likewise, `shroomers feel more
tangibly a part of the timeless, locationless community of other users, or even animals,
fairies,
or the "greeny engines'' of the spirit of Nature herself.
For this feeling of morphic community and interconnection with nature to become
more tangible, groups of 'shroomers often choose to create visionquest hot spots.
Students at
U.C. Santa Cruz have developed a secret section of woods dedicated to mushroom tripping
called Elf Land (the place just behind Ralph Abraham's office). Some students believe
that
fairies prepared and maintain the multidimensional area of the woods for 'shroomers. Some
students claim to have found psilocybin mushrooms--which these fairies are said to leave
behind them--growing in Elf Land. Most of all, Elf Land serves as a real-world reference
plane for the otherworldly, dimensionless mushroom plane. And, like the morphogenetic
mushroom field, Elf Land is shared and modified by everyone who trips there, making the
location a kind of cumulative record of a series of mushroom trips.
Mariah is tripping in Elf Land for the first time. A sophomore at U.C. Santa
Cruz, the
English major had heard of Elf Land since she began taking mushrooms last year, but never
really believed in it as a real, physical place. She eats the mushrooms in her dorm with
her
friends Mark and Rita, then the trio head out to the woods. It's still afternoon, so the
paths are
easy to follow, but Rita--a much more plugged-in, pop-cultural, fashion-conscious
communications major than one would expect to find tripping in the woods of Santa
Cruz--suddenly veers off into a patch of poison oak.
Mark, a senior mathematics major and Rita's boyfriend, grabs Rita by the arm,
afraid
that she's stoned and losing her way.
It's a pathless path, Mariah,'' Rita assures the younger girl, without even
looking at
Mark. Rita knows that Mariah's fears are the most pressing, and that Mark's concerns will
be
answered by these indirect means. Rita has made it clear that this trip is for Mariah.
It's the perfect place to trip.'' Rita puts her arm around Mariah. "People
continually
put things there. Some of it's very subtle, too. Every time you go there, there's
different stuff
there. And it's all hidden in the trees up past the fire trails, up in the deep woods
there.'' She
points a little farther up the hill.
Then Mariah sees something--a little rock on the ground with an arrow painted on
it.
Lookee here!'' She stops, picks it up, and turns it over. Painted on the back are the
words
"This way to Elf Land.''
Someone left this for me?'' Mariah asks, the mushrooms taking full effect now,
and
the fluorescent words on the gray rock beginning to vibrate.
Just for you, Mariah,'' Rita whispers, "and for everyone. Come on.''
Here's another one!'' Mark is at an opening to the deeper woods, standing next
to
another sign, this one carved into the side of a tree: "Welcome to Elf Land.''
As the three pass through the opening, they walk into another world. It's a
shared state
of consciousness, not just among the three trippers but among them and everyone else who
has ever tripped in Elf Land or anywhere else.
Mariah is thinking about her name; how she got it, how it's shaped her, how it's
like
the name Mary from the Bible, but changed somehow, too. Updated. At the same moment as
these thoughts, she comes upon a small shrine that has been set up in a patch of ferns
between two tall trees. The two-foot statue is of the Virgin Mary, but she has been
decorated--updated--with a Day-Glo costume.
How'd that get there?'' Mariah wonders out loud.
Meanwhile, Mark has wandered off by himself. He's been disturbed about his
relationship with Rita. She seems so addicted to popular culture--not the die-hard
Deadhead
he remembers from their freshman year. Should they stay together after graduation? Get
married, even?
He stands against a tree and leans his head against its trunk, looking up into
the
branches. He looks at the way each larger branch splits in two. Each smaller branch then
splits in two, and so and so on until the branches become leaves. Each leaf, then, begins
with
a single vein, then splits, by two, into smaller and smaller veins. Mark is reminded of
chaos
math theory, in which ordered systems, like a river flowing smoothly, become chaotic
through
a process called bifurcation, or dividing by twos. A river splits in two if there's a
rock in its
path, the two separate sections preserving--between the two of them--the order and
magnitude
of the original. A species can bifurcate into two different mutations if conditions
require it.
And a relationship can break up if ...
As Mark stares at the bifurcated pairs of branches and leaves, he realizes that
bifurcation is the nature of decision making. He's caught in the duality of a painful
choice,
and the tree is echoing the nature of decision-making itself.
Making a decision?'' Mariah asks innocently. She has read the small sign nailed
into
the side of the tree: "Tree of Decision.''
I wonder who left that there?'' Mark wonders aloud.
Doesn't matter,'' answers Rita, emerging from nowhere. "Someone last week, last
year. A tripper, an elf ... whoever.''
As if on a visionquest, Mark and Mariah were presented with a set of symbols in
material form that they could analyze and integrate into a pattern. They were
beholding''
their thoughts in physical form. The reality of their trip was confirmed not just by
their
fantasies but by the totems and signs left for them by other trippers experiencing the
same
things at different times.
Mushrooms very often give users the feeling of being connected with the past and
the
future. Whether the 'shroomers know about morphogenetic fields, they do feel connected
with
the spirit of the woods, and everyone who has traveled before in the same space. Going up
is
the voyage to that space, peaking is the un-self-conscious experience of the new world,
and
coming down is the reintegration during which the essence of the peak experience is
translated into a language or set of images a person can refer to later, at baseline
reality.
CHAPTER 6
Making Connections
Distribution and Manufacture
For some cyberians, making sense of things and feeling the connections with
other
trippers is not enough. They use psychedelics to forge new connections between cultures,
people, or even individual atoms. It is important to them that the real world, and not
just the
psychedelic space, consciously reflect the interconnectivity that underlies reality. Just
as a
fractal exhibits self-similarity, the psychedelic subculture should reflect the quality
of a single
trip.
LSD distributors, in particular, believe that acid functions as a twentiethcentury
psychic grease, allowing modern people to move their mental machinery through the
ever-increasing demands of an information-based society. (Acid, unlike mushrooms, can be
mass-produced, too.) Leo is an LSD dealer from the Bay Area who believes that his
distribution of psychedelics is a social service. One of his favorite distribution points
is the
parking lot at Grateful Dead shows, where thousands of people mill about, looking for
doses.''
Tonight's concert has already begun, but most of the crowd of young merchants
who
follow the Dead don't have tickets for the show. Instead, they wander about the lot,
smoke
pot with one another, and prepare for the concertgoers who will exit the arena in two or
three
hours.
Leo is well into his own acid trip of the evening (he says he's been tripping
every day
for several months) and sits in a makeshift tent, explaining his philosophy to a young
couple
who make falafel and beaded bracelets. While his rationale is the result of a few years
in the
military and a few others with skinheads, he does express the psychedelic concept of
interconnectivity and networking from a modern cyberian standpoint. The Deadheads (who
many cyberians feel are still caught in the sixties) are deep into a conversation about
how
they can feel their third eye'' while tripping, and how it makes them feel connected to
everything in the world. Leo shakes his head scornfully.
The sixth sense of society as a whole also lies in its connectivity and its
ability to
intercommunicate. When society becomes enlightened, its third eye happens to be that
connectivity. That's the evolutionary factor.''
Leo tries in vain to get them to understand the concepts of feedback and
iteration, and
how they relate to human society connecting through telephones and the media. The bong
gets passed around again, and Leo tries a different tack.
I'm attempting to work this on a subversive level by distributing a large
amount of
LSD throughout the U.S. and trying to reach other countries, too.'' One of the Deadheads
laughs, just liking the sound of breaking the law. Leo rolls his eyes and stresses the
global
significance of his subversion.
LSD's definitely an interconnectivity catalyst for the countercultures and
subcultures
that we're tuned in to. We're able now, with our information-age technologies, to know
about
groups and countercultures who are communicating together and sharing common resources
and information--like all you Deadheads living in this parking lot. As these groups
develop
their own identities, they gain a certain amount of awareness about themselves as a
collective
conscious. That offers a channel for catalytic tools like LSD to be exchanged, putting
all
these groups on the same wavelength.''
The falafel merchant shrugs, too stoned or too straight to understand Leo's
point. I
don't get it. Is LSD making this happen, or is it happening so people can get more LSD?''
LSD is part of and a result of this interconnectedness. It's mind expansive and
group-mind expansive. And what it does is act as a catalyst for culture and individuals.
Now
that we've left the industrial age and come into the information age, the rate
information
exchanges is increasing exponentially. It's very fast; you can look at it in binary
terms. Two,
four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two--that's how fast the information multiplies. What's
going on is,
the way people learn, is they cause an imprint in their subconscious, and then they're
able to
build a type of structure on their imprint which represents their knowledge. And how they
see
their own knowledge is their own wisdom ... it's their knowledge of their knowledge.''
Both Deadheads are lost now. The girl has started mindlessly unbeading a
bracelet and
the boy is reloading the bong. But Leo doesn't care that he can't make an impact on these
people. He just continues to reel out his run-on sentences into the datapool in the hope
that
they get picked up morphogenetically.
LSD primes the mind for subconscious imprintation--makes it more susceptible to
it.
We're able to learn more information at a faster rate because we're able to imprint
ourselves
at the same rate as the information is being developed, because in the LSD state you're
able
to conceive such a vast quantity of anything. When I'm on LSD sometimes I can think in
broad terms and sometimes I even gain vocabulary that I've never used before and I'm able
to
retain that in the future.''
If you gave us another hit of your LSD, Leo,'' the bead girl smiles, "maybe
we'd
know what you're talking about, too.''
This is where traditional, sixties-style tripsters differ from their cyberian
offspring. The
sixth sense, or group mind oversoul,'' to which Leo has dedicated himself (but which
these
old-fashioned-type Deadheads can't understand) is the locus of awareness that most
cyberian
psychedelic explorers seek. Whether it be Mariah in Elf Land or Leo in the LSD
distribution
net, the cyberian difference is that psychedelic activity now becomes part of an overall
fractal
pattern, experienced, in one way or another, by everyone.
While Leo draws the lines of interconnectivity between users and groups of
users,
other reality designers at sublevels of the psychedelic fractal network are more
concerned
with the lines of interconnectivity between the very atoms of the substances they take.
Becker, Leo's LSD source, is a twenty-eight-year-old chemistry grad student with a strong
background in illicit psychopharmacology. His experience of psychedelics is on a
different
fractal order from that of classical personal tripsters or even Leo and other cultural
catalysts.
Becker knows about drugs from the inside out, so his answer to any drug's problems lies
in
its chemistry. If a drug is illegal, alter its chemistry to make it legal again. If a
drug is too
short-acting, figure out a way to stunt the user's ability to metabolize it.
Leo arrives at Becker's attic laboratory discouraged from the Deadheads the
night
before. He's wondering if Becker can whip something up with better transformational
properties than those of LSD.
Becker has just the answer. He spent all of last night creating his first batch
of 2CB
(in chemist's lingo, 4-Bromo-2,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine). It's called Venus, and it's a
synthetic version of mescaline, with a few designer improvements.''
Becker's problem with mescaline, another organic psychedelic, is that it is
metabolized
by the body very quickly. By the time the user begins to trip heavily, he's already on
the way
down. To figure out how to modify the substance, Becker took a large dose, then went on
an
internal visionquest into the chemical structure of the active mescaline molecule.
The native mescaline molecule is a ring. I saw how the methoxy group which
hangs
on that ring could be pried off easily by the metabolism, rendering the molecule impotent
in
an hour or so. By replacing that methoxy group with bromine, which can hang on much
tighter, the drug becomes ten times stronger. The body can't break it down, and it goes
much
much further because it can stay planted in the brain's receptor site that much longer.''
But how much do you have to take? And how do you know it's not toxic?'' Leo
asks,
fingering the white powder in its petri dish.
It's less toxic, Leo, don't you see? Plus it's much more effective, so you
don't have to
take as much. That way you don't get any side effects either. I'm on it right now!''
Leo had dropped a tab of acid about two hours ago but it wasn't doing anything.
He
licks his finger, dabs it in the mound of powder, and puts it on his tongue.
That's a pretty big hit,'' Becker warns. "Probably about eight doses.''
Leo just shrugs and swallows. He can handle it. How fast can you make this
stuff?''
That's the joy. It's really simple to make. Just think of it as stir, filter,
wash, and dry.
That's all there is to it.''
As Becker goes over an ingredients checklist for a mass-production schedule, Leo
collapses into a hammock and waits for the new drug to take effect. Both believe that
they
are on to something new and important.
By designing new chemicals, psychopharmacologists like Becker design reality
from
the inside out. They decide what they'd like reality to be like, then--in a kind of
submolecular
shamanic visionquest--compose a chemical that will alter their observations about reality
in a
specific way. Then, Leo, by distributing the new chemical to others who will have the
same
experience, literally spreads the new designer reality. The world changes because it is
observed differently.
The other reason to make new drugs is to create unknown and, hence, legal
psychedelics before the FDA has a chance to classify them as illegal. A relatively new
law,
however, has made that difficult. The Analog Substance Act classifies yet-to-be-designed
chemicals illegal if they are intended to serve the same function as ones that are
already
illegal. This law was passed shortly after the Ecstasy craze'' in Texas, where the new,
mild
psychedelic got so popular that it was available for purchase by credit card at bars. As
a
result, according to Becker, "Lloyd Bentsen put a bee in the bonnet of the Drug
Enforcement
Agency, and it was stamped illegal fast.''
But rather than simply stamping out Ecstasy use, its illegality prompted
chemists like
Becker to develop new substances. Like computer hackers who understand the technology
better than its adult users, the kids making drugs know more about the chemistry than the
regulatory agencies. The young chemists began creating new drugs just like Ecstasy, with
just
one or two atoms in different places. In Becker's language, Thus, Ecstasy began to stand
for
MDMA, MDM, Adam, X, M-Ethyl, M methyl 3-4-methyline dioxy, also N-ethyl, which was
sometimes called Eve, which had one more carbon, or actually CH2, added on.'' This flurry
of
psychopharmacological innovation prompted the Analog Act, and now almost everything with
psychedelic intent is illegal or Schedule 1 (most controlled).
Despite its illegality, Ecstasy, even more than LSD and mushrooms, has remained
on
the top of the cyberian designer-substance hit parade. LSD, mushrooms, and mescaline--all
powerful, relatively long-acting psychedelics--bifurcated, so to speak, into two shorteracting
substances, the mild, user-friendly Ecstasy, and the earth-shatteringly powerful and
short-acting DMT. Both drugs can be found in many carefully manipulated chemical
variations, and epitomize the psychedelic-substance priorities in Cyberia.
The E Conspiracy
The circuits of the brain which mediate alarm, fear, flight, fight, lust, and
territorial
paranoia are temporarily disconnected. You see everything with total clarity,
undistorted by animalistic urges. You have reached a state which the ancients
have
called nirvana, all seeing bliss.
--Thomas Pynchon on MDMA
Cyberians consider Ecstasy, or E as it's called by its wide-grinning users, one
of the
most universally pleasant drugs yet invented. While negative experiences on Ecstasy are
not
unheard of, they are certainly few and far between. Everyone knows somebody who's had a
bad acid trip. Ecstasy does not carry the same stigma, which may be why people don't
freak
out'' on it.
As Dr. Schoenfeld explains, another part of the reason may be that some of the
substances aren't yet illegal, so users don't have the same negative associations and
paranoia.
In addition, according to the doctor, the Ecstasy drugs are nonaddictive and shorteracting.
As you know, there are drugs being used that the DEA [Drug Enforcement Agency]
isn't aware of. Once they get aware of them, they'll try to make them illegal; but people
who
take substances are becoming aware of these new drugs, which are nonaddictive, and which
don't last as long as the other drugs used to last. They don't have the same adverse
effects.
For example, there are a few reports of people having bad experiences with MDMA or
occasional freak-outs, but it's highly unusual. And even with LSD it wasn't that common
to
have freak-outs. You'd hear about the cases where people tried to fly or stop trains or
things
like that, but compared with the amount of use there was, that was uncommon. With a drug
like MDMA, it's still less common for people to have bad experiences.''
But E is not just a kinder, gentler acid. The quality of the E-xperience is very
different. Bruce Eisner wrote the book Ecstasy: The MDMA Story, still the most
authoritative
and enlightening text on the drug's history and use. His scholarly and personal research
on the
chemical is vast, and he describes the essence of the E-xperience well:
You discover a secret doorway into a room in your house that you did not
previously
know existed. It is a room in which both your inner experience and your relations with
others
seem magically transformed. You feel really good about yourself and your life. At the
same
time, everyone who comes into this room seems more lovable. You find your thoughts
flowing, turning into words that previously were blocked by fear and inhibition.
After several hours, you return to your familiar abode, feeling tired but
different,
more open. And your memory of your mystical passage may help you in the days and weeks
ahead to make all the other rooms of your house more enjoyable.''
The main advantage of E is that it allows you to take your ego with you.'' Acid
or
even mushrooms can have the unrelenting abrasiveness of a belt sander against one's
character. E, on the other hand, does not disrupt "ego integrity'' or create what
psychologists
call depersonalization.'' Instead, the user feels as open and loving and connected as he
might
feel on a stronger psychedelic but without the vulnerability of losing his "self'' in the
process.
If anything, E strengthens one's sense of self, so that the issues that arise in the
course of a
trip seem less threatening and infinitely more manageable. E creates a loving ego
resiliency in
which no personal problem seems too big or scary. This is why it has become popular in
the
younger gay and other alternative-lifestyles communities, where identity crises are
commonplace.
E-volution
You touch the darkness--the feminine, the gross, whatever you see as dark,''
Jody
Radzik explains to Diana as they hand out flyers in the street for a new house club.
"When
you're on Ecstasy, the drug forces you to become who you really are. You don't get any
positive experience from a drug like cocaine; it's a lie. But with Ecstasy, it can have a
positive effect on the rest of your life!''
Jody and Diana are on their way to a club called Osmosis, a house event which
occurs
every Thursday night at DV8, a downtown San Francisco venue, for which Radzik serves as
promotional director. Promoting house, though, is almost like promoting Ecstasy. The drug
and subculture have defined and fostered each other. Osmosis is proud of the fact that it
mixes gay, straight, glam,'' and house culture, and Radzik--a gamine, extremely young
thirty-year-old with a modified Hamlet haircut and a mile-a-minute mouth--credits E with
their success.
There's a sexual element to house. E is an aphrodisiac and promiscuity is big.
In
everyday life men usually repress their `anima.' Ecstasy forces you to experience what's
really going on inside.'' Diana (who runs her own house club down the block) is amused by
Jody's inclination to talk about taboo subjects. Jody goes on proudly, exuberantly, and
loud
enough for everyone else in the street to hear. Being publicly outrageous is a valued
personality trait in E culture adapted from Kesey's Merry Pranksters.
E has a threshold. It puts you in that aahh experience, and you stay there. It
might
get more intense with the number of hits you take, but it's not like acid, which, with
the more
hits you take, the farther you're walking from consensus culture. With E, your ability to
operate within the confines of culture remain. You can take a lot of E and still know
that
that's a red light, or that there's a cop here and you don't want to fuck up too much. On
acid,
you can be completely out of your head, and walking in a completely different reality.''
So E is not simply watered-down LSD. While acid was a test,'' Ecstasy is a
"becoming.'' Acid involved a heroic journey, while E is an extended moment. The
traditional
bell curve of the acid trip and its sometimes brutal examination and stripping of ego is
replaced with a similar vision but without the paranoia and catharsis. By presenting
insight as
a moment of timelessness, E allows for a much more cyberian set of conclusions than the
more traditional, visionquest psychedelics.
Rather than squashing personal taste and creating legions of Birkenstock clones,
E
tends to stimulate the user's own inner nature. Hidden aspects of one's personality--be
it
homosexuality, transvestitism, or just love and creativity--demand free expression. All
this is
allowed to happen, right away, in the E-nvironment of the house club. Reintegration on E
is
unnecessary because the E-xperience itself has an immediately social context. If
anything, the
E trip is more socially integrated than baseline reality. E turns a room of normal,
paranoid
nightclubbers into a teaming mass of ecstatic Global Villagers. To Radzik, the club
lights,
music, and Ecstasy are inseparable elements of a designer ritual, just like the campfire,
drumbeats, and peace pipe of a Native American tribal dance.
Arriving at the club in time for the sound check, Jody and Diana dance a while
under
the work lights. Jody's diatribe continues as he demonstrates the new hip-hop steps he
picked
up in Los Angeles last week.
The Ecstasy comes through the house music. The different polyrhythmic elements
and the bass ... this is current North American shamanism. It's technoshamanism. E has a
lot
to do with it. It really does. I get a little nervous but I've got to tell the truth
about things. But
the system is probably going to react against the E element.''
Diana cuts in: And then they'll just shut you down like they closed our party
last
week.'' She takes a cigarette from behind her ear and lights it.
Jody still dances while Diana stands and smokes. Neither he nor the E culture
will be
taken down that easily. E is an enzyme that's splicing the system. E is like a cultural
neurotransmitter that's creating synaptic connections between different people. We're all
cells
in the organism. E is helping us to link up and form more dendrites. And our culture is
finally starting to acknowledge the ability of an individual to create his own reality.
What you
end up with, what we all have in common, is common human sense.''
The E-inspired philosophy borrows heavily from the scientific and mathematics
theories of the past couple of decades. House kids talk about fractals, chaos, and
morphogenetic fields in the same sentence as Deee-Lite's latest CD. Jody's cultural
neurotransmitter'' image refers back to James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, which is the
now
well-supported notion that planet Earth is itself a giant, biological organism. The
planet is
thought to maintain conditions for sustaining life through a complex series of feedbacks
and
iterations. A population of ocean microorganisms, for example, may regulate the weather
by
controlling how much moisture is released into the atmosphere. The more feedback loops
Gaia has (in the form of living plants and animals), the more precisely "she'' can
maintain the
ecosystem.
Evolution is seen more as a groping toward than a random series of natural
selections.
Gaia is becoming conscious. Radzik and others have inferred that human beings serve as
Gaia's brain cells. Each human being is an individual neuron, but unaware of his
connection
to the global organism as a whole. Evolution, then, depends on humanity's ability to link
up
to one another and become a global consciousness.
These revelations all occur to house kids like Jody under the influence of E.
This is
why they call the drug a cultural enzyme.'' The Ecstasy helps them see how they're all
connected. They accept themselves and one another at face value, delighted to make their
acquaintance. Everyone exposed to E instantly links up to the Gaian neural net. As more
people become connected, more feedback and iteration can occur, and the Gaian mind can
become more fully conscious.
Jody and Diana both believe that house culture and the Gaian mindset literally
infect''
newcomers to the club like a virus. As Osmosis opens, Jody watches a crowd of uninitiated
clubbers step out onto the dance floor, who, despite their extremely "straight'' dress,
are
having a pretty Ex-uberant time.
This looks like a group of people that might be experimenting with Ecstasy for
the
first time. They're going to remember this night for the rest of their lives. This is
going to
change them. They are going to be better people now. They're infected. It's like an
information virus. They take it with them into their lives. Look at them. They're dancing
with
each other as a group. Not so much with their own partners. They're all smiling. They are
going to change as a result of their participation in house. Their worldview is going to
change.''
Indeed, the growing crowd does seem uncharacteristically gleeful for a Thursdaynight
dance club. Gone are the pickup lines, drunken businessmen, cokeheads, and cokewhores.
The
purposeful social machinations--getting laid, scoring drugs, or gaining status--seem to
be
overrun by the sheer drive toward bliss. Boys don't need to dance with their dates
because
there's no need for possessiveness or control. Everyone feels secure--even secure enough
to
dance without a partner in a group of strangers.
Whether that carries into their daily life is another story. Certainly, a number
of new
cyberian converts'' are made each evening. But the conversions are made passively, as
the
name of the club implies, through Osmosis. Unlike acid, which forces users to find ways
to
integrate their vision into working society, E leads them to believe that integration
occurs in
the same moment as the bliss. The transformation is a natural byproduct--a side effect of
the
cultural virus.
As club regulars arrive, they wink knowingly at one another. Jody winks and nods
at
few, who gesture back coyly. The only information communicated, really, is I am, are
you?''
The winkers are not so much the "in'' crowd as the fraternity of the converted. They're
all part
of what one T-shirt calls The E Conspiracy.'' These are the carriers of the cultural
virus. No
need to say anything at all. The E and the music will take care of everything (wink,
wink).
The sixties went awry because they wanted a sweeping cultural change to go on
overtly,'' explains Radzik, nodding to two girls he's sure he has seen before. They wink
back.
"And that didn't happen. What's different about house is that no one's trying to `spread
the
message.' It's more like, we're into it because we love it, but we're not out to convert
people.
'Groove is in the heart' [a Deee-Lite lyric]. We just want to expose people to it. People
decide
that they're into it because they respond to it on a heart level. I think the bullshit's
going to
come apart of its own accord.''
So is this a dance floor filled with socially aware, fully realized designer
beings?
Certainly not. It's a dance floor filled with smart kids, sexy kids, not-so smart kids,
and not-so
sexy kids, but they do seem to share an understanding, in the body, of the timeless
quality of
bliss and how to achieve it through a combination of dance and E. Even the music, playing
at
precisely 120 beats per minute, the rate of the fetal heartbeat, draws one into a sense
of
timeless connection to the greater womb--Gaia. The lyrics all emphasize the sound eee.''
"Evereeebodeee's freee,'' drones one vocal, in pleeesing gleeeful breeezes, winding their
way
onto the extreeemely wide smiles of dancing boys and girls. It's just the E! Likewise,
the way
in which E infiltrates society is much less time-based and confrontational than was the
case
with acid. E infiltrates through the experience of bliss, so there's nothing to say or do
about it.
The meta'' agenda here is to create a society with no agenda.
As Jody screams over the din of the house music, Fuck the agendas. We just have
to
manifest our culture. You have to trust your heart. That's what Jesus really said. And
that's
what E does. It shows people they have their own common sense. They realize, I don't need
this!''
Bruce Eisner shows up at about midnight, exploring the house scene and its
relationship to Ecstasy for the second edition of his book Ecstasy: The MDMA Story. A
veteran of the sixties and just a bit too old to fit in with this crowd, he almost sighs
as he
explains to E-nthusiastic clubbers how E's preservation of social skills and ego make it
a
much better social transformer than the psychedelics of his day.
In the sixties, we were sure we were going to have this revolution that would
change
everything overnight. And it never came. We got the seventies instead.''
A few girls laugh. They were born in the seventies. Bruce smiles slowly. He's
got a
dozen stoned kids hanging on his every word, when in fact he's trying to understand them.
With E, you don't get so far out, like on acid, where you lose touch with the
physical
world. It allows you an easier time to bring the insights back in. Huxley talked a lot
about the
importance of integrating the mystical experience with the worldly experience. He had
that
one trip where he decided, `The clear light is an ice cube. What's important is love and
work
in the world.' And love and work in the world is what Ecstasy shows you. It's a model for
enlightenment, and the challenge is bringing that into the real world.''
So maybe revolution has become evolution as house culture awakens to the fact
that
there is method behind Gaia'a madness, and that Darwin wasn't completely right. Life
naturally evolves toward greater self-awareness, and we don't need to push it anywhere.
The
universe is not a cold sea of indifference but the warm, living waters of an oversoul
composed of waves of love--Gaia's morphogenetic fields. The mock self-assuredness of the
me'' generation gives way to the inner wink-wink-say-no-more knowing of the E
generation,
as the sixties bell curve finally touches down, and ego fully reintegrates into a
postpsychedelic culture.
CHAPTER 7
The Blast Furnace of Disillusion
For those still intent on smashing the ego into oblivion and
discovering the very edge of what it means to be sentient, DMT
(dimethyltryptamine, and its cousin, 5-hydroxytryptamine) is the
only answer. It is a naturally occurring hallucinogen that is
usually smoked, although shamans snort it and some aggressive
Western users inject it. It's effect is immediate--definitely
within a minute, usually within seconds--and all-encompassing. It
cannot even be described in terms of magnitude (one user says,
It's like taking every LSD experience you've ever had and
putting them on the head of a pin''), but makes more sense when
thought of as a true, hyperdimensional shift. As Terence McKenna
describes it:
The experience that engulfs one's entire being as one slips
beneath the surface of the DMT-ecstasy feels like the penetration
of a membrane. The mind and the self literally unfold before
one's eyes. There is a sense that one is made new, yet unchanged,
as if one were made of gold and had just been recast in the
furnace of one's birth. Breathing is normal, heartbeat steady,
the mind clear and observing. But what of the world? What of
incoming sensory data?
Under the influence of DMT, the world becomes an Arabian
labyrinth, a palace, a more than possible Martian jewel, vast
with motifs that flood the gaping mind with complex and wordless
awe. Color and the sense of a reality-unlocking secret nearby
pervade the experience. There is a sense of other times, and of
one's own infancy, and of wonder, wonder, and more wonder. It is
an audience with the alien nuncio. In the midst of this
experience, apparently at the end of human history, guarding
gates that seem surely to open on the howling maelstrom of the
unspeakable emptiness between the stars, is the Aeon.
The Aeon, as Heraclitus presciently observed, is a child at
play with colored balls. Many diminutive beings are present
there--the tykes, the self-transforming machine elves of
hyperspace. Are they the children destined to be father to the
man? One has the impression of entering into an ecology of souls
that lies beyond the portals of what we naively call death. I do
not know. Are they the synesthetic embodiment of ourselves as the
Other, or of the Other as ourselves? Are they the elves lost to
us since the fading of the magic light of childhood? Here is a
tremendum barely to be told, an epiphany beyond our wildest
dreams. Here is the realm of that which is stranger than we can
suppose. Here is the mystery, alive, unscathed, still as new for
us as when our ancestors lived it fifteen thousand summers ago.
The tryptamine entities offer the gift of new language; they sing
in pearly voices that rain down as colored petals and flow
through the air like hot metal to become toys and such gifts as
gods would give their children. The sense of emotional connection
is terrifying and intense. The Mysteries revealed are real and if
ever fully told will leave no stone upon another in the small
world we have gone so ill in.
This is not the mecurial world of the UFO, to be invoked
from lonely hilltops; this is not the siren song of lost Atlantis
wailing through the trailer courts of crack-crazed America. DMT
is not one of our irrational illusions. I believe that what we
experience in the presence of DMT is real news. It is a nearby
dimension--frightening, transformative, and beyond our powers to
imagine, and yet to be explored in the usual way. We must send
the fearless experts, whatever they may come to mean, to explore
and to report on what they find.''
DMT is the most hard-core cyberian drug experience for
several reasons. The user penetrates'' another dimension,
experiences timelessness, and then enjoys nonverbal and nonlinear
communication and connectedness. Even "mind'' and self'' unfold,
freeing the user to roam about this dimension unencumbered by
physical, emotional, and mental barriers. This is a
psychopharmacological virtual reality.
DMT is metabolized almost as soon as it enters the system, a
fact that, McKenna argues, indicates a long history of human
co-evolution with its molecular structure and a well-developed
morphogenetic field. He sees DMT and human beings as companions
in the journey toward a hyperdimensional reality. Still, the
intensity and severity of the DMT experience make any user aware
that he has taken something foreign into his system, and that he
may never be the same. Nearly everyone who smokes DMT reports
hearing a high-pitched tone corresponding to what they believe is
a carrier wave'' of reality at that moment. The visual world
begins to vibrate at the same frequency until everything breaks
up into geometric patterns and crystalline twinkles. This is when
the "machine elves'' show up, if they're going to. They look like
little elves, and sometimes hold wands or crystals and seem to be
dancing or operating some kind of light-and-glass machinery. The
elves definitely have a good time, but by the time the idea to
join and dance with the elves arises, they're gone and a
different set of images parades by.
Terence and his brother Dennis McKenna's experiences on DMT
shape many of the cyberian conclusions about reality. They
believe that DMT works by latching on to the DNA in a user's own
cells. Traditionally, DNA is understood to be the carrier of
genetic information in living things. It is thought to be in the
shape of a double helix (two spirals) so that it can split up and
replicate. The McKennas took this a little further both
scientifically and philosophically by assuming that DNA works by
resonating certain frequencies to their host cell and organism.
They believe that when DMT connects with the molecule, the two
strands of the double helix vibrate against each other like
tuning forks, which is why the user hears a tone and also
experiences such a radically different reality.
Terence and Dennis went to the Amazon to conduct experiments
on themselves and test these theories using the state-of-the-art
organic tryptamines of the Jivaro Indian medicine men. Dennis
heard the most tones, so he became the main subject, while
Terence observed and speculated. The two young men succeeded in
putting Dennis into a completely psychotic state for several
weeks. But as Dennis freaked out, Terence sat on the other side
of their tent making notes and having insights. What he realized
in a sudden flash was that the structure of DNA resembles that of
the ancient Chinese I Ching sequence. Further, their functions
are the same.
As a gene carrier, DNA is what links any being to the
ancestors in his evolutionary past and the offspring in his
evolutionary future. The double-helix structure of the molecule
can be seen as a pair of metaphorical spiral staircases: one
going down into history, the other up into the future. Its
purpose is to compress linear time into these two active springs.
(As Sheldrake would also later conclude, the DNA is what sings''
morphogenetic fields over time and space.) The I Ching is thought
to work the same way, and uses a sixty-four-part structure almost
identical to that of DNA to help people predict future events and
understand their personal roles in the overall continuum of time
and space. Finally, back in the United States, Terence and Dennis
used computers to compute the I Ching as a huge fractal equation
for all of human history. According to their fractal, called
"Time Wave Zero,'' history and time as we know it will end in the
year 2012. This date has also been linked with the Mayan Tzolkin
calendar, which many believe also calls 2012 the end of linear
time. It makes the notion of a simple, global renaissance pale by
comparison.
Many cyberians agree with Terence that end of history is
fast approaching. When history is over, human experience will
feel like, you guessed it: a DMT trip. Experimentation with
tryptamines, then, is preparation for the coming hyperdimensional
shift into a timeless, nonpersonalized reality. It helps
cyberians discriminate between what is linear, temporary and
arbitrary, and what is truly hyperdimensional. This isn't an easy
task.
Downloading Infinity
Just as the most earth-shattering information off the
computer net is useless without a computer capable of downloading
it into a form that a user can understand, the DMT experience
provides nothing to a user who can't similarly download some
essence of timeless hyperspace into a form he can understand in
linear reality. However amazing and blissful the DMT euphoria may
be, coming down is much trickier than with any other
hallucinogen. It's no wonder, though. DMT brings one into a new
dimension--a dimension where the restrictions of time and self
don't exist--so stepping back into frictional, cause-and-effect
reality must be a letdown.
Most cyberian users do their DMT in pairs or small groups,
so that they may help one another come down more easily and
document as much of every experience as possible. In Oakland, an
entire household cooperative called Horizon is dedicated to
fostering good DMT trips. Several nights a week, the dozen or so
residents sit in a circle on the living room floor and take DMT
in sequence. As one tripper returns to earth, the next takes hold
the pipe and launches himself.
Dan, whom most consider the head of the house, is a
psychology student at Berkeley whose doctoral thesis is on shared
states of consciousness. He leads the evenings and judges whether
to intervene when someone is in great physical discomfort or
freaking out too heavily. Tonight, thanks to a connection made by
one of the residents over his computer bulletin board, a new
batch of 5 MAO'' DMT has arrived, a close relative of DMT but
even more powerfully mind-bending effects. Dan is aware that
he'll have to watch extra-carefully for disasters tonight--his
well-traveled math professor has warned him, "On 5 MAO, you begin
to see the words `brain damage' literally printed out in front of
your eyes.''
The first two adventurers log fairly typical experiences.
One girl curls up into a ball, but emerges understanding how the
nature of reality is holographic. Each particle of reality
reflects, in a dim way, the whole picture. It doesn't matter who
you are or where you are. Everything that ever happened or ever
will happen is available to everyone and everything right now.''
The next boy, Armand, who just returned from a three-month
visionquest to South America, has been taking acid every day this
week in preparation for tonight's ceremony. He remarks how this
circle ceremony is exactly the same as the way he took ayahuasca
and ibogaine (organic psychedelics) with a shaman in the Amazon.
Then he lights his pipe and almost immediately falls back onto a
pile of pillows. He writhes around for several minutes with his
eyes rolled back, then rises, announcing that he's been gone for
three days. He met an entire race of forest creatures, and they
needed his help. As he describes the place where he's been, what
the people look like, how he's eaten with them and even made love
with one of them, another girl in the circle suddenly perks up.
Hey! That's the story I've been writing!''
Dan establishes that the boy hasn't read the girl's story;
then, with techniques he has developed in shared-states
psychology, he helps the two relate their stories to each other.
Armand has, indeed, been living in Sabrina's fantasy story. He
decides to go back to help his new interdimensional friends.
Still stoned, Armand rolls back his eyes and he's gone. He
spends about ten more minutes moving around on his back. When he
rises again, he explains that in the five minutes he was absent
from the other dimension, several weeks went by and the crisis
was averted without him. Armand can't bring himself to feel happy
about this. He feels that his need to come back and tell his
experience to the rest of the circle deprived him of his chance
to save the forest creatures.
But they were saved anyway,'' Dan reminds him. "It's only
your ego getting in the way now.''
Armand shrugs. Dan doesn't want to let him reenter like
this, because the boy might be depressed for weeks.
Think of it this way,'' he says, putting a comforting hand
on Armand's shoulder, "maybe what you and Sabrina did out here,
recounting the story and verifying the reality of the forest
people, is what actually saved them.''
Jonathan, whose main interest is making music for other
people to listen to while they're on acid, breaks decorum by
taking the pipe and lighting it before Dan and Armand are quite
finished. He had a bad day in the recording studio and wants to
make up for it with a good DMT trip. Now.
But as soon as he inhales the DMT smoke, his expression
changes to one of fear--like the look on a young kid after the
safety bar slams down on a roller coaster. He's stuck on this
ride. Bizarre visions that Jonathan knows he won't remember whiz
by. He can see the other people in the room, but he can also see
past them, through them, around them. He can see their
experiences in the lines of their faces, then the lines become
his whole reality. They point everywhere. The walls of the room
are gone. This is cool,'' he thinks. "I can take it.'' Then he
gasps in terror, Who thinks it's cool?''
The flip side of Jonathan's euphoria is that he doesn't know
who he is.
Oh fuck! Oh fuck!'' Jonathan screams.
Sabrina moves to touch him, but Dan holds her back. Let him
go,'' the leader warns, "he's got to get through it.''
Just then Andy, a musician who lives downstairs, barges in.
Fuck! This new sampler just erased my entire drum machine's
memory! That's all my samples! All my patterns! Weeks ... months
of work!'' Dan quickly gets Andy out, but the synchronicity is
not lost on the members of the circle.
Jonathan, are you okay?'' Dan asks gently. The tripper
stares up at him from the floor. "Jonathan?''
Jonathan suddenly sits up. I'm your creation, aren't I?''
What do you mean?''
You made me, didn't you? I'm only here when you're on DMT.
Otherwise I don't exist, do I?'' Jonathan stares cynically at his
creator. "And you gave me this drug now, because it was time for
me to know, right?''
Sabrina is worried. She's been attracted to the boy for some
time and would hate to lose him now. Jonathan?'' she says,
putting her hand on his back.
Jonathan lurches forward as if he's been stabbed. He
breathes heavily, holding his head in his hands, crying intensely
and then suddenly stopping.
Hours later, after everyone else has their chance to try the
new drug, Jonathan explains what happened to him when Sabrina
touched his back. I had forgotten who I was. I had no identity
other than being Dan's creation. Then, all of a sudden I heard my
name--Jonathan. And I remembered my last name, and my mom, and I
went, `Wait a minute.' It was as if all the fragments of my life
had been blown apart and I was sticking them back in my body. I
was eagerly grabbing the information; I wanted this illusion of
my life. I was eagerly pasting it back on me. I was willingly
accepting this illusion.''
Sabrina feeds Jonathan chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen
as life at Horizon hums back to normal. Dan watches Jonathan out
of the corner of his eye.
There's still this conversation going on in my head
saying--'We're sorry you had to find out this way,''' Jonathan
says.
You still think you're a DMT creation of Dan's?'' Sabrina
asks.
No. Jonathan is just a role I'm playing! It's as if the
whole search of life is not to obtain some kind of knowledge, but
trying to remember what you lost at birth. 'We're sorry you had
to find out this way. Such a shock to you. But now you know ...
you're not Jonathan.'''
Sabrina frowns. She was hoping that the cyberian truth
wouldn't be so depressing.
Jonathan reads her instantly and takes her hand. It was a
good experience, Sabrina, don't you see? Whatever God is, we're
all one thing. We're all part of the same thing. We've got no
identity of our own. 5 MAO DMT is like when you die. Life is like
this dream, and when you die you go, `Oh wow! It was so real!'
And then discovering that higher level--it's not like `Oh my god
I'm that higher self?' It's more like discovering `I'm not that
back there. I thought I was Jonathan--how silly!'''
Dan smiles and quietly moves out of the room. The download
has been successful.
Straight and Stoned
It's hard to know whether these people are touching the next
reality or simply frying their brains. Transformation, no doubt,
is occurring in either case. But no matter how much permanent
damage may be taking place, there is substantial evidence that
these voyagers are experiencing something at least as revelatory
as in any other mystical tradition. The growing numbers of
normal-seeming Americans who are enjoying DMT on a regular basis
attests, at least, to the fact that even the most extremely
disorienting DMT adventures need not hamper one's ability to lead
a productive'' life.
World sharing and discovery of parallel realities fills the
DMT afternoons of Gracie and Zarkov,'' she a published
anthropologist, he an established and successful investment
analyst. Sex swingers in the 1970s, they became psychedelic
voyagers in the 1980s and self-published their findings in Notes
from Underground: A Gracie and Zarkov Reader out of their East
Bay home.
A cross between an opium den and a sex chamber, their
bedroom takes up at least half of their house. While most
people's parties end up in the kitchen, Gracie and Zarkov's end
up here in the bedroom, which is equipped with an elaborate
lighting system hidden behind translucent sheets on the walls and
in the ceiling panels, a remote control sound system, and several
cabinets filled with straps, studs, and belly-dancing gear.
Their writings on psychedelics are a detailed and
well-thought-out cross between the Physician's Desk Reference and
a wine-tasting guide; in describing the drug 2CB they point out
details such as there is a long, low-level tail to the trip.''
They've become regular Mondo 2000 contributors, avid heavy-metal
fans, and frequent DMT travelers. They spend their free hours
experimenting with new types of psychedelics and new combinations
of old ones. Gracie occasionally manifests the spirit of a female
goddess, most often Kali, and the two indulge in hyperhedonism on
an order unimaginable by others in their professional
fields--hence the pseudonyms. But Zarkov's practical, rationalist
Wall Street sensibilities shine through his storytelling about
psychedelics. To Zarkov, it's all a question of hardware and
software.
Tryptamines are a real phenomenon. If you take a high dose
of tryptamines you see certain things. I am a believer that you
are not a blank slate when you're born. You're a long complicated
product of genetic engineering by the Goddess, under all sorts of
selection criteria. And there's a hell of a lot of hardware and
wetware, so that DMT's not going to change everybody, or
everybody positively. That has to do with how you're wired up,
and how you're raised. Now, my experiences have been extremely
positive, but several of my closest friends are dead as a result
of psychedelic drugs. If you're not up to handling heavy
equipment, DMT is a very dangerous, very powerful hallucinogen.
It's extremely strong.''
Gracie and Zarkov can be considered designer beings. They
use their DMT experiences to consciously recreate their
identities in their professional worlds.
Gracie and I have developed the ability to write some
software to become significantly different people. That is a big
advantage in terms of being able to run our lives.'' They
sometimes like to think of themselves as anthropologists from
another dimension, merely observing the interactions and concerns
of human beings.
Zarkov makes practical use out of the sublime DMT state to
redesign the personality he uses in real life. He enjoys his DMT
experience, then downloads it in order to devise new business
strategies or even new sexual techniques--but he does not take
any of it too seriously. Zarkov remains convinced that our
reality is not making a wholesale leap out of history. His views
sharply contrast those of his good friend Terence McKenna.
I don't buy Terence's whole package. I just say that right
out. On the other hand, Terence is on to a lot of very important
things. Does that mean that the world's going to come to an end
in 2012? Does that mean that there's going to be a major
bifurcation? I don't see it that way. A drug is a tool, like a
microscope, a telescope, or a radio. Is it some godlike
metaphysical entity? Where I part company with Terence is where
he talks about the drug as a metaphysical entity which looks,
smells, tastes, and acts like God. I don't believe in God.''
Terence attributes Zarkov's obstinacy to an inability to
translate the experience of the infinite, egoless reality into a
model that can jive with his experience of daily, straight life.
Zarkov is great at downloading useful information, but, still
attached to his personality, he is not equipped to deal with the
most crushing nonpersonal cyberian conclusions. It's a question
of his ability to download threatening material.
Zarkov is terrified of psilocybin, and a fairly ego-bound
person. He is forceful, opinionated, and it never enters his mind
that he might not be entirely 100 percent correct. The couple of
times that he's tried to take mushrooms it's just been too rough
for him, because of the dissolving of the ego and surrender. This
is the issue for most males and most dominator types--is how can
you fling yourself into the blast furnace of disillusion?''
The point here is not to pit Zarkov and McKenna against each
other, but to distinguish the specific qualities of the cyberian
psychedelic experience from other sorts of psychedelic
experiences. What makes a vision qualify for the renaissance is
that it is an experience of greater mystical dimensionality,
which can then be translated down, at least in part, to the
three-dimensional realm. One must retain an inkling of the
infinite--an intimation of immortality. As Terence argues:
You have to download it [the DMT experience] into some kind
of model, and I don't know why I'm so able to do that. It may be
because of a bad upbringing. Because really there is nothing new
about this. This is what lurks behind Kabbalism and Catholic
hermeneutics. If you talk to the village priest, that's bullshit;
but if you talk to the theologians of the Jesuit order, they will
tell you God will enter history. History is the shock wave of
eschatology--the fall of all these dimensional models. This is
the secret that lies behind religion, but religion has been
subverted for millenia as a tool of social control through the
notion of morality. Morality has nothing to do with it. It isn't
good people who go to heaven. It's smart people who go to
heaven.''
CHAPTER 8
1234567: All Smart People Go to Heaven
Earth Girl--a beautiful if slightly otherworldly
twenty-year-old from Los Angeles--is at Mr. Floppy's Firm and
Floppy house party in Oakland, explaining the effects of Psuper
Cybertonic to several young girls who have traveled from the
suburbs to get a taste of the house scene. Adorning her Smart Bar
(a Peter Max version of Lucy's psychiatrist's booth) are several
posters of mushrooms, spaceships, and loose quotes from The
Starseed Transmissions:
As this new awareness increasingly filters into everyday
levels of human function, and as more and more individual human
cells become aware of what is taking place, the change will
accelerate exponentially. Eventually, the psychic pressure
exerted by a critical mass of humanity will reach levels that are
sufficient to tip the scales. At that moment, the rest of
humanity will experience the instantaneous transformation of a
proportion you cannot now conceive.''
Earth Girl and her traveling Smart Bar offer two brain
nutrient mixtures: the Cybertonic and a stimulant drink called
Energy Elicksure, made from ephedra (an herb related to the
active ingredient in Sudafed, the cold medicine that keeps one
from getting drowsy) and a few amino acid uppers. Her advice to
the high-schoolers is heartfelt but somewhat underinformed. She
relies heavily on the fact that these herbs are 100 percent
safe, used for centuries by ancient cultures, and make you feel
really good.'' The girls all buy the Cybertonic for $3 a glass
and chug it down. "Light up and live,'' Earth Girl calls after
the kids as they return to the dance floor.
A punkish boy stumbles up to the bar at about 4:00 a.m. His
girlfriend wants to dance till dawn but the LSD he took at three
that afternoon has sucked about as much in adrenaline as it
offered in insight. Earth Girl sells him a large cup of tangy
Energy Elicksure, and soon he's back under the strobe lights,
pulsing with new life.
It is the kind of scene that would horrify parents. What the
hell's going on?
Earth Girl isn't really selling drugs; she's selling
nutrients. Drugs are patented medications that enhance brain
function; nutrients are nonpatented substances that the body uses
more like food to do the same thing, usually less invasively but
also a bit less effectively. They include substances like the
amino acid L-pryoglutamate, the herb Gingko biloba, niacin,
lecithin, and certain vitamins. Earth Girl's brews are slightly
altered versions of prepackaged nutrient mixes available at
health food stores or through multilevel marketers. These mixes
bear the names of Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw, whose book Life
Extension first publicized the existence of smart chemicals and
the notion of nutrient-enhanced designer beings'' back in the
1970s.
Smart drugs (with names like vasopressin--a snorted
spray--hydergine and piracetam) are generally unavailable in this
country. Depending on the legal weather, these drugs can be
purchased through the mail from pharmaceutical companies overseas
because of a loophole demanded by AIDS patients who wanted access
to drugs not approved for use in the United States. (For more
information, see Dean and Morgenthaler, Smart Drugs and
Nutrients.) Smart drugs fall between the cracks of America's
ability to comprehend the uses of medication, which is why we
have such a cloudy understanding of their abilities and their
categorization.
Most cyberians understand the science by now. Acetylcholine
is one of the chemicals that allow for transmission of
information at the nerve synapses. As we get older, our supply of
acetylcholine decreases. While we can't just eat acetylcholine to
increase the supply in the brain, we can take its precursors,
such as choline, as well as chemicals that tend to increase our
own production of acetylcholine by the cholinergic system. Some
of these chemicals are now called nootropics'' (noos, "mind'' +
tropein, to turn''--that is, "acting on the mind''), the new
class of drugs that provide cognitive enhancement with no
toxicity.
The most widely used, over-the-counter smart nutrients are
mixtures of several forms of choline along with a few of the
enzymes and co-enzymes that turn them into acetylcholine. Earth
Girl's Cybertonic is a combination of choline, acetylcholine
precursors, and co-factors. Their effect is noticeable over time
but not very dramatic. The sudden increase in popularity and
marketing visibility of these nutrients is due to the fact that
other, much more potent smart substances have arrived in Cyberia.
It is a case of fame by association.
The pyrrolidone derivatives are the smart substances
deserving the most attention. In an unknown way, they improve the
functioning of the cholinergic system. They increase memory,
boost intelligence, and enhance certain kinds of learning. They
were originally used for diseases of old age such as Alzheimer's
and senility. The most widely distributed one in Europe is a
geriatric medication called piracetam, which is unavailable in
the United States. (Users here purchase it directly from European
distributors through the mail.) It is a fast-acting,
easy-to-notice cognitive enhancer. Walter Kirn, a novelist and
smart drugs user (whom we'll meet later), describes piracetam's
effect as going through life wearing a miner's lamp with a beam
of intelligence.'' Nearly everyone who takes it experiences
greater ability to conceptualize complex problems and to retain
information.
Users' reactions to the drugs differ, and all have their
preferred combinations and dosages. It's quite common to see a
bottle of vasopressin on a computer terminal, next to a bar of
chocolate or a pack of cigarettes. A particularly dense passage
of text to understand or a complex series of steps to write into
a program? A blast of vasopressin and everything gets clear in
less than a minute. Going to have a difficult day filled with
interviews? Probably better off with piracetam or pyroglutamate
in a few doses spread out over the course of the day--that added
articulateness and recall will come in handy. And, of course,
don't forget the daily dose of hydergine until the end of the
semester. Jet lag still a problem? Maybe some L-tyrosine (an
amino acid) to wake up this morning instead of coffee--it works
as well, without the jitters or the stress to the adrenal system.
Smart drugs even help psychedelics users come down off difficult
trips.
Smart drugs don't get cyberians high or stoned, but they do
seem to help them cope with complex computer problems,
ego-bending philosophical or spiritual inquiry, odd hours, a
highly pressurized work environment, or a creativity lapse. The
most common perception among users is that they have gained the
ability to deal with more than one or two parameters of a problem
at the same time. A computer programmer, for example, gains the
ability to track three or four different interdependent functions
through a series of program commands rather than only one. Smart
drugs give some writers the ability to keep half-a-dozen plot
points in mind at once. Psychedelics users report the ability to
download more of the information and realizations of a trip when
they augment the coming-down period with smart drugs.
A typical smart drug user receives his supplies from
laboratories in Europe, then creates his own regimen based on
self-experimentation. Personal neurochemical adjustment,'' as
users call it, is designer consciousness. Earth Girl's
distributor, Lila Mellow-Whipkit, a large, bald, hedonistic smart
drugs enthusiast, loves explaining how this neurochemical
self-modulation fits in to the new paradigm. He often sits behind
Earth Girl's Smart Bar sharing his wealth of data and insight
with newcomers.
Personal neurochemical adjustment--the equivalent is
personal paradigm and belief adjustment. And there's a basic
presupposition stolen from cybernetics that's used in NLP
[neurolinguistic programming]: the organism with the most
requisite behavior--the broadest variety of requisite
behavior--will always control any situation.''
To Lila, smart drugs, NLP, and cybernetics are all basically
the same thing: programming.
In other words, if two people interact and they're trying
to get something done, the one who has the most variety in
behavior is the one who will be in charge and decide where it's
gonna go. It's an excellent operating presupposition. It works
most of the time, because that person's more able to compromise
and come up with ideas, they're less stuck. Think about children
who are getting a good Christian education right now. Where are
those people gonna be in the future? They're gonna be what Hunter
S. Thompson called `the doomed.' They are the doomed. They have
one belief system; they have one basic operating strategy, which
is the avoidance of pleasure. That's about it in Christianity as
far as your real life. You get to kneel and pray to this dead
guy.''
What Lila argues is twofold. First, smart drugs and
nutrients open up new neural pathways, allow for new thoughts and
more flexibility in conceptualizing. Those who take smart drugs
can understand more patterns and survive better. Second, and more
important, the implicit argument he makes is that the idea of
smart drugs and the willingness to experiment with them are
themselves heralds of the new paradigm. Not only is a smart drugs
user more equipped to deal with the increasingly complex reality
matrix; a person willing to take smart drugs is already coping
better. He has taken the first step toward becoming a designer
being.
The Readiness Is All
Downloading the massive information wave emanating from the
end of time is no easy task. Sure, a stockbroker can use smart
drugs to help himself draw broader conclusions about certain
market data, but cyberians have always known that the real
destiny of these chemicals is to foster the processing of the
inconceivable.
Mark Heley had just graduated Cambridge when he first found
smart drugs. An experienced psychedelic explorer, Heley already
believed that the earth is heading toward a great bifurcation
point. As a would-be usher of the final paradigm, he knew what
was required of him: a hierarchical leap in his mind's ability to
identify, process, store, and articulate the complexities of
eschatological acceleration. Mark was already smart--very
smart--but he'd need to be even smarter to face the challenges
ahead. He knew that smart drugs were going to play a major role
in the formation of Cyberia, and he knew he was going to be a
part of it.
At that time Earth Girl, who hadn't yet abandoned her given
name, Neysa, was visiting England. Her mother was a New Age
extremist, and Neysa, age eighteen, had left the West Coast to
get away from what she saw as trivial and fake spirituality. She
wasn't going back until she knew had something to fill the
vacuum.
As a writer for England's ID, Heley exploited his Cambridge
philosophy education to become an articulate launcher of cultural
viruses. In articles and lectures on topics ranging from
permaculture farming techniques to technoshamanism, Heley defined
the ways and memes of cyberian culture in London. He was DJing
for a house club and running a brain gym'' (brain machine rental
store), and in the process he gathered a wide following for a
twenty-four-year-old. Neysa, for the time being, was just hanging
out. When they met, they knew it would be forever.
In many ways, Heley and Neysa are opposites. He's an
intellectual who grounds every psychedelic revelation into a
plan. He's all business, and even his most far-reaching DMT
experiences mean nothing to him if he can't process them into
concrete realizations about the nature of reality. If those
realizations are to be worth anything, he must also quickly
determine how to communicate them to others through articles,
chemicals, club events, or cultural viruses. Heley is a mind. So
much so, that his body, often neglected through aggressive
chemical use and lack of sleep, revolts in the form of Chronic
Fatigue Syndrome, which incapacitates him completely for weeks or
even months at a time.
Neysa lives through her body almost exclusively. She can
feel what she calls spiritual weather,'' evaluate people at a
glance, and predict events in the weeks ahead entirely through
her body. She is incapable of articulating her experience through
words, but has developed her own "language of heart,'' which
takes the form of a smile, a touch, an embrace, or even sex.
Wherever she goes, a cluster of admirers forms around her looking
for the security that her carefree yet self-assured manner offers
them. With the help of Heley and his cyberian epiphanies, Neysa
was able to embrace the New Age ideas of her mother in a new,
cyberian context. Then she was complete: Earth Girl was born.
Where Heley valued smart drugs for their mental effects,
Earth Girl saw them as a physical preparation for the coming age.
They both knew that smart drugs and the cyberian designer minds
that the chemicals fostered needed to be broadcast to a wider
audience. America was ripe and ready. A few books on the
substances had come out in the United States, but popular, club
culture had no idea what was going on. Together, then, they
decided to put smart drugs and cyber culture on the map.
After severing ties with his partners at the Mind Gym in
London, Mark Heley came back to the Bay Area with Neysa and a new
idea: Smart Bars. They could distribute the drugs as healthy
fruit drinks over the counter right next to the dance floor.
Mark's media savvy and pharmaceutical experience could develop
the idea into a workable concept. Neysa's personality and flair
made her the perfect barperson and iconic representation of new,
designer being. Their mission was clear.
In San Francisco, Heley was introduced to Diana, a Berkeley
dropout who, with her friend Preston, was running Toon Town, an
underground roving house event for kids fed up with haughty dance
hall atmospheres. Heley's multidimensional language and strong
ideas soon earned him Diana as his new girlfriend, as well as a
position as one of the coordinators of Toon Town. Heley's
presence quickly manifested as an infusion of cyber-culture
viruses. Rooms were set aside for brain machines, virtual reality
demonstrations, sales of books and tapes, and the infamous Smart
Bar. While Preston would later resist Heley's metabrainstorm, for
the time being it made Toon Town the highest profile house
gathering in town. That, coupled with Diana's gentle pleading and
positive attitude, kept competition between the two men in check.
Heley, who by now had inherited and updated Ken Kesey's role
as charismatic visionary of the San Francisco psychedelic
underground, invited the press and public to sample the Smart Bar
and other attractions at the cyber disco'' party. While he tells
only the facts to the press, "Smart drugs enhance
neurofunctioning legally and safely,'' he shares the real secret
of his success with anyone who thinks to ask.
My theory is that all that's happening is really the same
thing. There are cultural viruses which are actually no more than
elaborate placebos to draw people in. They're not the actual
things that are happening. For example, smart drugs and virtual
reality, these are two of my favorite cultural viruses because
they really hit wide and hard. Virtual reality comes from the
heart of a society which is really wired in to technology; it's a
powerful cultural virus for people to interface with a computer
in a harmonious way. And yet, if you try to experience it, you're
sadly disappointed. Or you take a smart drug and even after
designing an intelligent program, you realize that you've had all
this inside you in the first place. People think they're going to
get evolved using smart drugs, when actually you've got to be
evolved to want to use them in the first place.''
But Earth Girl shares a different story. Her enthusiasm for
smart drugs and her newfound fame are irresistible. She puts her
hair up in a Bardot-meets-Diller dredlocked beehive, and wears
Day-Glo silk robes. She offers her take on the smart drug virus
to the crowds who have gathered.
For me they're really good `cause I do enjoy getting high,
as everyone does. I love altered states--they're fun. But I can't
do the `body degeneration trip' anymore, especially the mental
one. Pot turns me into a moron. And a lot of these other kids are
doing so many drugs in one night that they're depleting
themselves of vitamins and minerals that these drinks put back.
Will they feel more love and communication ability from the
Psuper Cybertonic? Probably not. But at least they're going to be
maintaining a balance. They're tripping forever. They don't eat
for days. So I say, `Okay, here, have some of this, this is all
of the daily whatever you need. It's cheap, and it's actually,
really, really, really, really good for you so just like get into
it.'''
Mark gets pretty annoyed as Earth Girl babbles on to the
press. He knows her words are heartfelt, but they're also
mindless and dangerous. Soon, Earth Girl is more of a phenomenon
than the smart drinks themselves. She's gathered a posse of
young, mostly gay or sexually nondescript hangers-on whom she
calls the Foxy Seven. To anyone uninvolved in the scene, Earth
Girl begins to look more and more like a space cadet--or, in even
the best light, a new version of the stereotypical San Francisco
fag hag.'' The control she begins to exhibit over her seven
assistant bartenders is absolute. She is their mother and
spiritual guide. She holds out the promise of glory and
adventure, and it's all in the form of an elaborate theater/comic
book/cosmic fantasy.
Earth Girl shares her new vision of the Smart Bar mission
with her squadron as they set up her portable booth.
We're doing this because what we really are is, writers and
performers. This is the perfect way to get in. We're going to
make our own comic book. We can keep launching all of our stuff.
That's why we all have to dress up. We're the Foxy Seven--Earth
Girl, Galactic Greg, Dynama, Greenfire. We get to play. Play and
serve ''
Earth Girl takes on the tone of a restaurant manager
briefing her new waiters, but in the language of a Course in
Miracles instructor on local cable access. When people are
talking to you and asking questions, they're looking at you like
you're an authority, so you conceive thought. And the stuff that
we put up--the pictures of mushrooms, quotes from The Starseed
Transmissions--it will help you keep on suggesting all this stuff
hypnotically and subliminally. I mean, everyone needs a little
awareness kick, as far as I'm concerned.''
Heley begins to feel it is Earth Girl who needs the
awareness kick. First, she has started bringing the Smart Bar,
which Toon Town paid for, to other clubs. Heley has been working
a carefully controlled culturo-viral experiment--now it is
out.'' Second, the kind of indiscriminate, overflowing
enthusiasm she exhibits clouds many of the issues that Heley is
attempting to clarify. She's even been on national television
news saying, "Smart drugs are really really really really really
really really really really really good!''
But things get even worse when Rolling Stone shows up to do
a piece on smart drugs. Of course, Earth Girl is the center of
the interview: Alcohol, cigarettes, coffee--work culture is drug
culture,'' she explains to their reporter. "With smart drugs,
there's no hangover, you're not depressed, you have a better
memory. Instead of getting fucked up and making a fool of
yourself, you're more in touch.''
Heley is incensed by her blanket statements, which
counteract months of his machinations. He broods in a back room
with the contempt of spurned lover. Alcohol is out there. Its
dangers are well known. It's promoted by a massive machine. She's
running up against something which she can never ever hope to
defeat. What are they going to do? Stop selling alcohol? No
fucking way. It just has to be played out. What you've got to do
is move the ground. You don't attack the monster. You infect him,
like a virus. Neysa's attitude is almost like a sixties' `left'
thing; it's like, `attack the monster.' But if you do that, you
become the monster. You're playing to spectacle. What we should
do is simply infect the monster and let it destroy itself. By
activating a media virus. And a media virus isn't a media attack,
it's something which exposes things internally.''
This conflict made for a tense week in Cyberia, as Earth
Girl explains: Honestly, the best way to tell on a reflection
level is the weather, as I'm sure you know. And if you just check
the weather out for the past three days it's just like ... it's
still ... we're coming out, we're trying to come out of it.''
It seemed to be a week in which cyberians were learning that
somewhere else, someone else was doing exactly the same thing
they were. Someone else was writing a book about cyber culture.
Someone else was mixing a new house tune. Someone else was
creating a club. Someone else was doing a Smart Bar. In addition,
it had been raining for four days, and nearly everyone was
fighting the same cold. No one was fully sick, but everyone felt
under the weather.
Sitting with Earth Girl in a Thai restaurant on Haight
Street, I take some of the herbal formulas that Lila
Mellow-Whipkit has given me for my sniffles. Earth Girl explains
to me how everything fits together. In spite of her
generalizations, Earth Girl is a sensitive, spiritually mature''
young woman. It would be a mistake to let her cosmic jargon
obscure her quite perceptive observations on human nature in the
trenches of Cyberia:
The weirdness of this weekend is that everyone's
discovering all these parallel things that are going on and
everyone's reeling from the fear of `do it first.' But this is
just the realization of a universal mind! Of course everyone's
doing it all at the same time. It's all part of the same thing!
Everyone's fighting a cold, and feels like they've got a cold,
but ... it's not breaking through ... it's a slightly physical
thing, but it's much more psychological because in this time all
the fear can get in and all these negative thoughts and all this
stuff can get in, and it is getting in. It did get in ... but now
I feel today we're coming out of it. We've still got a lot of
shit we've got to work out personally, like, group-wise.''
To Earth Girl and her followers, the current friction is
really a morphogenetic stress. Many people are having the same
ideas at the same times because they are all connected
morphogenetically. The sickness and fear results from the
inability to break the fiction of individuality. But in the cyber
culture world, the denizens must realize that they are all
connected. Their commitment to the metatransformation of humanity
has put them all into the same weather system.'' They must be
content with never "owning'' an idea. There is no room for pride
or credit.
But Earth Girl also seems to realize that her final
allegiance is to herself and the Foxy Seven. Survival and
ambition--however rationalized--still take precedence. By the
time the Rolling Stone piece goes to press, Earth Girl has gone
off to Big Heart City, another club in town, which gives her
their entire basement (which was the location of Tim Leary's
reception last month) to create a smart drugs lounge. There, she
will be queen bee, and will never again have to put up with Heley
or his mild-mannered political arrogance. Her Smart Lounge will
just light up and live.''
Heley, meanwhile, partners with Chris, an electrical
engineering student and smart nutrients chemist whose knowledge
of neurochemistry is as vast as Earth Girl's knowledge of
spiritual weather.
It stops raining Friday afternoon, and Chris, Heley,
Preston, and Diana convene at 650 Howard Street (a club that has
become the temporary home of Toon Town) to eat the free hors'
d'oeuvres that the daytime bar gives out during happy hour.
Having reviewed the Rolling Stone article, they now discuss
strategies to keep their new and improved Smart Bar sans Earth
Girl, called the Nutrient Cafe, on the cutting edge of
neuro-enhancement. Mark gets on one of his articulate impassioned
riffs about the smart drugs virus, as the others drink beer and
nod. Not that they haven't heard all this before, but nodding
generally keeps Mark from getting too worked up and pissed off.
Heley's main regret is that the Smart Bar, which was supposed to
be an outlet for true information about good drugs and bad drug
laws, turned into a media joke.
It's a war on information. If you're not capable of
fighting the wrong information then you're not capable of
fighting the machine. The point is, that if we manage to combine
the subtlety of good information with the bludgeon of its media
impact, we'd have had a tool against the war on drugs. What do we
have at the moment? Petty hype for a bunch of multilevel
marketing people who want to scam a few fucking dollars out of
something that doesn't do what they say it does.
What could have happened is that we could have gotten to a
level where we could have argued the case for the complete
restructuring of the drug patenting laws just on their own
internal logic. Piracetam is not available in the U.S., not
because of any toxicity, or any side effects, but because it's
not patented. Because the company that invented it didn't patent
it. At the time, it just wasn't thought of as commercially
viable. The psychotropic effects of piracetam were discovered
years later. Also, there's no FDA approval procedure for a
nootropic drug. It has to be for Alzheimer's, or it has to be for
treating strokes.''
Heley's disgust is well founded. Today, most smart drugs are
not available in the United States even to victims of geriatric
disease. In order for a drug to get FDA approval, a
pharmaceutical company must spend millions of dollars on tests.
It's worth it to these companies to do the tests only if they
know they will have a patent on the medication; with piracetam,
the companies know they cannot get a patent. So, instead, they
race to develop substances similar to piracetam and then patent
those. Meanwhile, only the underground knows of piracetam's
existence, and it's in the pharmaceutical companies' best
interests to keep it that way. The FDA obliges, and most doctors
who know of the drug do not buck the system or risk liability by
ordering unapproved substances from overseas.
In even more ludicrous cases, chemicals and nutrients like
DHEA (not legal in the United States) and L-pyroglutamate (which
is available at any good health store) have been studied by
pharmaceutical companies and proven to enhance cognitive skills
in humans. But the companies intentionally conceal these studies
and instead attempt to develop variants of these chemicals that
can be patented and sold more profitably. Some of these
substances have even been shown to be effective in treating AIDS,
but, again, since the drugs are not patentable, the studies done
on them are suppressed. In one case, a scientist has been issued
a court order not to reveal the results of his discoveries about
DHEA. Heley believes that smart drugs, as a cultural virus, will
expose how the American health-care business may be our nation's
most serious health threat:
Smart drugs is a good way of burrowing in there. The
argumentation that surrounds smart drugs, the web of the cultural
virus, is just a worm designed to eat into those regulatory
bodies and explode them by turning the mirror back on themselves.
If we can create a cogent argument we can show up their
structural inadequacies. The war on drugs, for example, being
this blanket war on drugs. You can advertise cigarettes and
alcohol and there are all these horrible over-the-counter drugs
that you can buy; painkillers in this country are pretty fucking
dubious to say the least. But the thing that can't be said in
American culture, because of that massive media attack, is that
some drugs are good for you in some ways.
What I object to is the smart drug argument being
completely obscured. Now the FDA has a counteraction. Their
counterattack has been to close the loophole which allows the
importation of smart drugs. And that is the only rational piece
of legislature in the entire cannon of American drug laws. And
that wasn't a loophole established by the smart drugs movement;
it was established by Act Up, and by AIDS activist organizations
over a long period of time with sustained political pressure of
an absolutely enormous magnitude. All the FDA is waiting for one
public excuse for closing this, and it's gone.''
Diana rises to get more food. Heley realizes he's
grandstanding a bit, and justifies himself. I admit that we made
a mistake with this thing. It got out of hand. What we're doing
now is we're actually trying to put this right. Doing this
Nutrient Cafe: really straightforward. We're not hyping, we're
not going do a media virus about it, but we'll provide a really
good product within a certain milieu, and lots of information
about it. And if we completely stay within the laws as they exist
at the moment, it'll just do the fucking job without all of the
bullocks.''
Diana returns with some chicken wings and joins in the
conversation. That bar never even evolved. When we started it
the whole idea was that Mark and Neysa [Earth Girl] would create
these products. They knew that Durk and Sandy products were shit
anyway. That's never happened. ...''
Mark defends: Well it's not just that they're shit; they're
old. It's told and tired.''
The only thing that's evolved down in that basement [Earth
Girl's new Smart Lounge],'' Diana continues with candor, "is that
there's more decorations. And there's more flash and there's more
superstars. And that's not the point. There's no books down
there, there's no information, there's no pamphlets, there's no
nothing, and the people that designed it didn't know shit about
it. Not that I do, but I'm not selling the stuff.''
Mark interrupts: I'm certainly not washing my hands of it,
because we're all partly responsible; we instituted a lot of the
processes that lead to this thing. But I find myself radically
disagreeing with the way she's doing it. It's not her, it's not
even the way that she's approaching it. It's the way that she's
allowing it to go. It's a group thing. It's not Neysa, the owners
of Big Heart City, Rolling Stone, or Lila Mellow-Whipkit. It's
basically what all of them want out of it. This is a propagation
of an immediate product over something which is an informational
thing. How many people have ever fucking taken smart drugs since
we started this? That's a measure of its failure. The people that
fucking do the Smart Bar don't even use them.''
He stares off into space. He knows his ego is probably as
responsible for his upset as the political vulnerability of Earth
Girl's glamour image.
It's a matter of fine balance. I really believe that if it
had gone other ways, that FDA loophole wouldn't even be in
question. I think we'll still manage to keep it open, maybe we
have to do some repair work. It should never ever have been this
way. It's just my stupidity to allow it to happen.''
Maybe he should have taken more smart drugs.
CYBERIA PART 3
Technoshamanism: The Transition Team
CHAPTER 9
Slipping Out of History
Much more than arenas for drug activism, Toon Town and other
house'' events are Cyberia's spiritual conventions. House is
more than a dance craze or cultural sensation. House is cyberian
religion. But the priests and priestesses who hope to usher in
the age of Cyberia have problems of their own.
We're at an early Toon Town--the night Rolling Stone came to
write about Earth Girl and the Smart Bar. It's their first party
since one fateful night three weeks ago when their giant,
outdoor, illegal rave got crashed by the cops and they lost
thousands of dollars. Preston is still a little pissed at Heley
over that mishap. The English newcomer got too ambitious, and now
Preston and Diana's baby, Toon Town, is in serious debt. They may
never recover, and all Heley can think about are his damn
cultural viruses. This used to be a dance club!
Heley's in no mood for arguments now. It's 11:00 p.m. Earth
Girl hasn't shown up with her bar--correction: with Toon Town's
bar. She isn't picking up her phone. The laser is malfunctioning.
It's still early, but it's already clear that either the owners
of this venue or the hired doorpeople are stealing money. A
Rolling Stone reporter is on his way to write about the Smart
Bar, which is nowhere to be found. R.U. Sirius and Jas Morgan,
the editors of Mondo 2000 magazine, arrive with about forty
friends whom they'd like added to the guest list. Tonight is
supposed to be a party for the new issue, but, on entering the
club, R.U. Sirius announces that the real release party will
happen in a few weeks at Toon Town's competitor Big Heart City.
Tonight is just a party'' that Mondo is co-sponsoring. News to
Heley. News to Preston. News to Diana.
Bryan Hughes, the virtual reality guide, is setting up a VR
demo on a balcony above the dance floor. Along with his gear he's
brought a guest list of several hundred names. Cap'n Crunch,
notorious reformed hacker and the original phone phreaque, and
his assistant are trying to hook up his Video Toaster, but the
projector isn't working. The place is buzzing, but Heley is not.
Perched on a balcony overlooking the dance floor, he looks away
from the confusion, takes off his glasses, and pinches the bridge
of his nose. He's angry. Chris--the future nutrient king--mixes
Heley a special concoction of pyroglutamate to take the edge off
the apparent conflux of crises.
Diana and Preston are running around with wires and
paperwork, arguing about the limits of the building's voltage.
They perform much more actual physical business than Heley does,
but they know, even begrudgingly, that he's engaged in an equally
important preparation, so they give him all the space he needs.
Heley is the technoshaman. He is the high priest for this
cybermass, and he must make an accurate forecast of the spiritual
weather before it begins. He is guiding the entire movement
through a dangerous storm. But instead of using the stars for
navigation, he must read the events of the week, the status of
key cultural viruses, the psychological states of his
crewmembers, and the tone and texture of his own psychedelic
visionquests. Tonight, most of Heley's calculations and
intuitions indicate doom. He brought cyber house to San Francisco
and was willing to man the helm, but now it's getting out of
control.
I brought the house thing to Mondo, I did their article,
and I introduced them to it.'' Their disloyalty, Heley feels, has
undermined his efforts to bring real, hard-core, spiritual,
consciousness-raising cyber-influenced house to America.
"Sometimes I just feel like there's only fifteen of us really
doing this. There's Fraser Clark in England, who does Evolution
magazine, there's me, there's Nick from Anarchic Adjustment, Jody
Radzik, Deee-Lite. I don't mean that we're creating it, but we
are painting the signs. We're indicating the direction.'' Heley
looks down at the confusion of people, machinery, and wires on
the dance floor and sighs. God knows what direction this is
pointing in.''
It was about three weeks ago that things began to get messy.
Heley, Preston, and Diana had arranged a huge rave''--a party
where thousands take E and dance to house, usually outside,
overnight, and illegally--at an abandoned warehouse and yard. A
club competing for the same business on Saturday night found
their map point (a small hand-out circulated through the
underground community indicating where the party was to be held)
and notified the police, who were more than willing to shut it
down. Heley recounts the bust with the conviction of a modern-day
Joan of Arc.
They arrived and they only saw people having a good time.
People having a party. There's no rational argument they can make
against us. They smell it. They smell it and they understand.''
Heley swigs down the rest of his pyroglutamate and soon
appears to have gained a new clarity and, along with it, a new
reason to fight on. This is not a countermovement. It is the
shape of the thing that will replace them. But it will be
painless for them. It's not a thing to be frightened of. If
you're frightened of acceptance, yes, be afraid because this
thing is a reintegration. The trouble is that it just dissolves
the old lies--all the things you just know are untrue. We're not
living that life anymore. You can only live the old lies when the
rest of the paraphernalia is in place. Really, house just
destroys that. It's not a reactionary thing.''
Let's leave Toon Town for a moment to get a look at the
history of this thing called house.'' Most Americans say it
began in Chicago, where DJs at smaller, private parties and
membership-only clubs (particularly one called The Warehouse)
began aggressively mixing records, adding their own electronic
percussion and sampling tracks, making music that--like the
home-made vinaigrette at an Italian restaurant--was called
"house.'' The fast disco and hip-hop---influenced recordings
would sample pieces of music that were called bites'' so (others
spell it "bytes,'' to indicate that these are digital samples
that can be measured in terms of RAM size). Especially evocative
bites were called acid bites.'' Thus, music of the house, made
up of these acid bites, became known as "acid house.''
When this sound got to England, it was reinterpreted, along
with its name. Folklore has it that industrial (hard, fast,
high-tech, and psychedelic) music superstar Genesis P. Orridge
was in a record store when he saw a bin of disks labeled acid,''
which he figured was psychedelic music--tunes to play while on
LSD. He and his cohorts added their own hallucinogenic flavor to
the beats and samples, and British acid house was born.
When I heard acid house music would be playing, I figured
for sure they meant it was a psychedelic dance club--music to
take acid to,'' explains Lyle, an ex-punker from Brixton who has
followed the house scene since its beginnings in the suburbs of
London. "It began on an island, Ibetha, off the coast of Spain.
Everyone goes there on holiday, does Ecstasy, and stays up all
night. We got back to England and decided we didn't want to give
it up and started raving on the weekends.''
Lyle's explanation is as good as any for how raves got
started. These Woodstock-like fests begin on a Friday evening and
carry on through Sunday afternoon. Dancing is nonstop. They
became most popular in the late 1980s, when thousands of cars
could be seen on any weekend heading toward whichever
suburb--Stratford, Brighton--was hosting the party. Police began
cracking down on them in 1990 or so, but then they went legit by
renting out permitted club space. News of raves eventually
rebounded to the United States, where the original house clubs
began to incorporate the British hallucinogenic style and
substances. San Francisco, where psychedelics are still the most
popular, was most receptive to the new movement, which is why
Heley and other English ravers wound up there.
As Heley suggests, there's more to raves and house than
meets the eye. Coming to an understanding of the house phenomenon
requires a working knowledge of the new technology, science, and
drugs that shape Cyberia, as well as an awareness of the new
spiritual dimension (or perhaps archaic spiritual revival)
arising out them. Just as the new, quantum sciences and chaos
mathematics developed out of the inability of materialist models
to effectively map our reality, house is meant as a final
reaction to the failings of a work ethic---based,
overindustrialized culture.
The ravers see themselves and the creation of their
subculture as part of the overall fractal equation for the
postmodern experience. One of the principles of chaos math, for
example, is phase-locking, which is what allows the various cells
of an organism to work harmoniously or causes a group of women
living together to synchronize their menstrual cycles.
Phase-locking brings the participants--be they atoms, cells, or
human beings--into linked cycles that promote the creation of a
single, interdependent organism where feedback and iteration can
take place immediately and effectively. A phase-locked group
begins to take on the look of a fractal equation, where each tiny
part reflects the nature and shape of the larger ones.
Members of rave culture phase-locked by changing their
circadian rhythms. They self-consciously changed their basic
relationship to the planet's movements by sleeping during the day
and partying all night. As Heley says in defiance: It's in the
face of the network that tells you seven to eight-thirty is prime
time. You sleep during prime time. You share the same place
physically as that society, but you're actually moving into a
different dimension by shifting through the hours. It's an
opportunity to break out from all the dualistic things.''
Of course, sleeping days and partying nights is just as
dualistic as working days and sleeping nights, but the point here
is that the dualistic things'' considered important by
mainstream culture are not hard realities, and they are certainly
not the "best'' realities. Ravers were able to create a
subculture different from the work-a-day society in which they
had felt so helpless. They used to be the victims of a top-down
hierarchy. As the poor workers to a mean boss or the powerless
kids to a domineering father or even the working class to a rigid
monarchy, they were just numbers in an old-style linear math
equation. Now, phase-locked as part of a living, breathing
fractal equation, they feel more directly involved in the
creation of reality.
When you move away from a massive guilt trip in which there
is a direct hierarchy, you suddenly find that it doesn't matter a
fuck what your boss or the authorities think of you. You're
creating yourself moment by moment in an environment that is
created by people who are like-minded. It's a liberation, and
it's completely in the face of twentieth-century society.''
The ultimate phase-locking occurs in the dance itself, where
thousands of these like-minded'' young people play out house
culture's tribal ceremony. The dance links everyone together in a
synchronous moment. They're on the same drugs, in the same
circadian rhythm, dancing to the same 120-beat-per-minute
soundtrack. They are fully synchronized. It's at these moments
that the new reality is spontaneously developed.
The dance empowers you. It reintegrates you. And then you
can start again. It's an ancient, spiritual thing. It's where we
have always communicated to each other on the fullest level.
Instead of being in this extremely cerebral,
narrow-bandwidth-television society, people learn instead to
communicate with their bodies. They don't need to say anything.
There is just a bond with everyone around them. A love, an
openness. If you look at a society as repressed as England, you
see how much impact that can have.''
The various forms of social repression in England, along
with its own deeply rooted pagan history, made it the most
fertile soil in which house could grow. As Heley shares: I felt
it was slipping out of history. That this was an alternative
history.''
House became massive in England. News of raves was always
spread precariously by word of mouth or tiny flyers, but somehow
everyone who needed to know what was happening and where, found
out. Either one knew what was happening or one didn't. It was as
simple as that. By the end of the 1980s, house was everywhere in
the United Kingdom, but it had never seen the light of day. Tens
of thousands of kids were partying every weekend. Mainstream
culture was not even aware of their existence. By the time the
tabloids caught on and published their headlines proclaiming the
arrival of house, the ravers had realized they'd gone off the map
altogether.
Off the Map and into the Counterculture
Today, the English house scene still defines the pulse for
other house-infected cities. Whether through the brain-drain of
emigrees like Heley or the exportation of London-mixed dance
tracks, Great Britain still holds the most coherently articulated
expression of the house ethic. While there's less technology,
fewer gays, and fewer smart chemicals at London clubs, there's a
much clearer sense of house's role as a countercultural agent.
Some argue that this is because London's morphogenetic field
of counterculture is more developed than America's. London's
pagan cultures have endured centuries of repression and
distillation. Their phase-locking was probably achieved somewhere
in the twelfth century. Symbols and even personalities from
ancient pagan times still live in London house.
One such pagan hero is Fraser Clark, a self-proclaimed
psychedelic warrior from the 1960s who began Encyclopaedia
Psychedelica magazine, which has since mutated into London house
culture's `zine Evolution. At his London flat, which he shares
with two or three students half his age, the long-haired Welshman
rolls some sort of cigarette and explains to me what's happening.
From the British perspective, this is a historical battle for
religious freedom.
A kid grows up in a Christian culture and thinks he's
probably the only one questioning these ideas. When he comes to
house,'' the English are found of using the word alone like that,
as if it's a religion, "he suddenly realizes he's got a whole
alternative history. He might get into UFOs or whatever there
is--drugs, witches, it's all in there.''
And all quite accessible. To participate in this experience
of resonance, each participant must feel like part of the source
of the event. Where a traditional Christian ritual is dominated
by a priest who dictates the ceremony to a crowd of followers,
pagan rituals are free-for-alls created by a group of equals. For
house events to provide the same kinds of experiences, they had
to abandon even traditional rock and roll concert ethos, which
pedestals a particular artist and falls into the duality of
audience and performer, observer and object. The house scene
liberates the dancers into total participation. Fraser, whose new
club UFO opens tonight, explains the advantages of a no-star
system:
Nobody is that much better than the next guy that he needs
a whole stage and twenty thousand people fillin' up a stadium to
see him. Nobody's that much better than the audience. We don't
need that and people don't want it anymore. A lot of the music
you'll hear tonight is never gonna be on a record. Kids just mix
it the week before and play it that one night.''
So the house movement is determined to have no stars. It is
in the face'' of a recording industry that needs egos and
idolatry in order to survive. It depends, instead, on a community
in resonance. The fractal equation must be kept in balance. If
one star were to rise above the crowd, the spontaneous feedback
creating the fractal would be obliterated. The kids don't want to
dance even facing their partners, much less a stage. Everyone in
the room must become "one.'' This means no performers, no
audience, no leaders, no egos. For the fractal rule of
self-similarity to hold, this also means that every house club
must share in the cooperative spirit of all clubs. Even a club
must resist the temptation to become a star.'' Every club and
every rave must establish itself as part of one community, or
what Fraser calls "the posse.''
It looks sort of like a tribe, but a tribe is somehow
geographically separate from the main culture.'' Fraser finishes
his cigarette and feeds his dog some leftover Indian food from
dinner. "A posse is very definitely an urban thing. It's just a
group of people, sharing technology, sharing all the raves and
music as an organization. We even call them `posses putting on
raves.' I really don't think there's such a thing as personal
illumination anymore. Either everybody gets it or nobody gets it.
I really think that's the truth.''
UFO, a collective effort of Fraser's posse, opens in an
abandoned set of train tunnels at Camden Lock market. This
English party is not at all like a San Francisco or even a New
York club. It is an indoor version of the old-style massive
outdoor raves. The clothing is reminiscent of a Dead show, but
maybe slightly less grungy. Batik drawstring pants, jerseys with
fractal patches, love beads, dredlocks, yin-yang T-shirts, and
colorful ski caps abound. In the first tunnel, kids sit in small
clusters on the dirt floor, smoking hash out of Turkish metal
pipes, sharing freshly squeezed orange juice, and shouting above
the din of the house music. In one corner, sharply contrasting
the medieval attire, ancient stone, and general filth, are a set
of brain machines for rent. In the second tunnel, dozens of kids
dance to the throbbing house beat. Even though we're in a
dungeon, there's nothing down'' about the dancing. With every
one of the 120 beats per minute, the dancers articulate another
optimistic pulse. Up up up up. The hands explode upward again and
again and again. No one dances sexy or cool. They just pulse with
the rhythm, smile, and make eye contact with their friends. No
need for partners or even groups. This is a free-for-all.
A cluster of young men are hovering near the turntables with
the nervous head-nodding and note-taking of streetcorner bookies.
They are the DJs, who are each scheduled to spin records for
several hours until the party breaks up at dawn. Tonight's music
will be mostly hard-core, techno-acid---style house, but there
are many house genres to choose from. There's bleep,'' which
samples from the sounds of the earliest Pong games to extremely
high-tech telephone connection and modem signals. New York house,
or "garage'' sound, is more bluesy and the most soulful; it uses
many piano samples and depends on mostly black female singers.
There's also headstrong'' house, for the hardest of headbangers;
"techno,'' from Detroit; dub,'' coined from Gibson's Neuromancer
for Reggae-influenced house; and "new beat,'' from Northern
Europe. Less intense versions of house include deep'' house,
with more space on the top layers and a generally airier sound,
and the least throbbing kind, and "ambient'' house, which has no
real rhythm at all but simply fills the space with breathy
textures of sound. Of course, any or all of these styles may be
combined into a single song or mix, along with samples of
anything else: Native American whoops,'' tribal chanting,
evangelists shouting, or even a state trooper calling a mother to
inform her "your son is dead.''
The DJs consider themselves the technoshamans of the
evening. Their object is to bring the participants into a
technoshamanic trance, much in the way ancient shamans brought
members of their tribes into similar states of consciousness. A
DJ named Marcus speaks for the group:
There's a sequence. You build people up, you take `em back
down. It can be brilliant. Some DJs will get people tweaking into
a real animal thing, and others might get into this smooth flow
where everyone gets into an equilibrium with each other. But the
goal is to hit that magical experience that everyone will talk
about afterwards. Between 120 beats a minute and these sounds
that the human ear has never heard before, you put them to music
and it appeals to some primal level of consciousness.''
If it didn't, house would never had made it across the
Atlantic to America, where it could manifest not only on a primal
level but a marketing one.
CHAPTER 10
Making the Golden Rule Trendy
Building on the foundations of shamanism in the English
house scene, Americans in San Francisco focus on the techno side.
While the English rave has a quality of medievalism, tribal
energy, and Old World paganism, the American cyber disco is the
most modern mutation of bliss induction, and uses whatever means
necessary to bring people into the fractal pattern.
As Jody Radzik explains: In a really good house experience,
you want to create something like the Electric Kool-Aid Acid
Test. You're trying to create an environment where people can get
outside of themselves. There gets to be a certain point in the
night where people just cut loose. The party just reaches a kind
of critical mass. A synergy of shared consciousness occurs and
boom. You'll know it. It'll have a certain sparkle to it.''
Rising above the muted grit and gristle of the British pagans,
American technojunkies sparkle and buzz to the same throbbing
beat.
Rather than abandoning the television aesthetic and
discouraging the urge to be hip,'' club promoters use hipness as
bait. Jody Radzik, who designs house clothing when he's not
promoting the club Osmosis, believes that as house gets on MTV,
"a whole new culture will be created. This will be a result of it
being trendy. At the bottom line, that's what makes things run:
narcissism. Trendiness. I'm always trying to be the trendiest I
can be. It's my job. I do design. People get into this because
it's a hip new thing. Then maybe they have an opening and get
exposed to new ideas. But the fuel that's going to generate the
growth of this culture is going to be trendiness and hipness.
We're using the cultural marketing thing against itself. They
consume the culture, and get transformed. House makes the Golden
Rule trendy. That's why I'm trying to create the trendiest
sportswear company in the world.''
For Radzik, marketing is the perfect tool for
transformation. Rather than discard the system that has dominated
until now, the system is used to destroy itself. The machinery of
the industrial culture--be it technology, economics, or even the
more subtle underlying psychological principles and social
mechanisms--is turned against itself for its own good. Just as
the earth uses its own systems of feedback and iteration to
maintain a viable biosphere, house culture exploits the positive
feedback loops of marketing and data sharing to further human
consciousness. Radzik explains his take on the Gaia hypothesis
and McKenna's prediction about the year 2012:
This bifurcation we're coming up to, this shift, will be
the awakening of the planet's awareness. That's the shared belief
of the raver camp in the scene. House is the vehicle for
disseminating that culture to the rest of the planet.''
And how does house conduct this dissemination? By imparting
a direct experience of the infinite. In the dance is the eternal
bliss moment. The social, audio, and visual sampling of
innumerable cultures and times compresses the history and future
of civilization into a single moment, when anything seems
possible. The discontinuous musical and visual sampling trains
the dancers to cope with a discontinuous reality. This is a
lesson in coping with nonlinear experience--a test run in
Cyberia. A tour of Radzik's clothing studio makes this amply
clear. His design arsenal is made up of the illustrations from an
eclectic set of texts: Decorative Art of India, with pictures of
Indian rugs woven into patterns reminiscent of fractals;
Molecular Cell Biology, with atomic diagrams and electron
microscopy of cells and organic molecules; The Turbulent Mirror:
An Illustrated Guide to Chaos Theory and the Science of
Wholeness, with fractals and mathematical diagrams; and Yantra:
The Tantric Symbol of Cosmic Unity, a collection of hieroglyphics
and graffiti-like ancient scribblings. Radzik composes his
designs by computer scanning images from books like these and
then recombining them. With a keen eye for the similarities of
these images, Radzik creates visually what house does musically:
the discontinuous sampling of the symbology of bliss over time.
The images' similarities give a feeling of comfort and
metacontinuity.
Radzik leafs through the pages of his books, scanning images
for his next promotional flier. The arcane and future groove in
the now. It's like this fantastic coincidence. House culture is a
meeting point for all these different things. Music, finally, is
the universal language of love. The nightclub people are the ones
who help manifest it into popular culture. What I do is creative
anthropology. I observe what's happening in the house culture,
and market it back at those people.''
It's important to realize that this seemingly mercenary
attitude is not inconsistent with house philosophy--in fact, it's
not considered mercenary at all. Marketing is merely one of the
feedback loops that can promote the house philosophy back into
itself, and amplify the experience. It does not suck from the
system, it adds to it. Everything relates to house in a
self-conscious or meta'' way. House music is not just music, but
samples of music recombined into a kind of meta-music.
House is merely a construction--a framework--like language
or any other shell. Once something is in the house,'' it has
been incorporated into the fractal pattern of metaconsciousness,
and is a subject of and contributor to the greater schematic. It
has become a part of the self-similar universe--one with the
galactic dance. That's why the mechanisms for change in house
might be "in your face,'' but they are almost never
confrontational. With no dualities, there's nothing to confront.
House, like punk, is an anarchic, rebellious movement,'' admits
Radzik "but it isn't a violent or negative one. If the planet's a
living organism, then it doesn't make sense to fuck with each
other.''
Nick Phillip, twenty-two, a recent emigre from Britain and
now the designer for Anarchic Adjustment clothing, is one of
Radzik's best friends and conspirators. He agrees wholeheartedly
that participants in house are within a construct that allows for
global change.
The kids now are not going to turn on, tune in, drop out.
They're going to drop in. They're going to infiltrate society and
change things from within. They're going to use business, music,
or whatever they can to change people. What we're doing speaks
for itself. People who are involved in the scene are creating
this stuff for themselves.''
Finally Going Mental
Nick has arrived at Toon Town tonight with a supply of his
most popular jerseys to be sold at the club's small shop, and he
senses that the crowd needs an infusion of life. Heley has moved
down from the balcony and is making suggestions to Buck, the
rookie DJ who will play until 2:00 a.m., when Jno, the
technoshaman extraordinaire, takes over. Nick makes his way to
the dance floor like a prizefighter taking the ring, and his
pugilistic fury is more reminiscent of punk slamdancing than
blissful house explosions. It's called going mental'' and it
looks pretty intense, but his enthusiasm is contagious and others
are either encouraged enough to join in or frightened off the
dance floor altogether. Apparently, part of the reason for the
evening's discontinuity is that the venue's previous event, a
birthday party for a yuppie named Norman, had not been let out
before Toon Town began. Diana and Preston have urged Buck to play
the most brutal house music he can find in the hopes of scaring
these people away.
Many house regulars have retreated to a brain machine
lounge,'' where they smoke and chat like members of a bridge
club. The room has been set aside for David, a distributor of the
"light and sound'' devices, to demonstrate the new technology to
house kids and maybe make a few sales. The machines consist of a
set of goggles and headphones.
No, it's not virtual reality,'' David says, probably for
the hundredth time, to a newcomer to the room. "It's for
relaxation and it can get you high.'' The goggles flash lights
and the headphones beep sounds at exact frequencies, coaxing the
brain into particular wave patterns. Ultimately, the brain
machines can put the user into the brain state of an advanced
meditator.
While the kids play with the machines, David is more
interested in explaining to an attractive young woman who is
waiting for a brain machine, an article he hopes to write for
Magickal Blend magazine about the physics of David Bohm.
It's all about discontinuity. Things that look separate in
our reality, the explicate order, are all linked together in what
Bohm says is the implicate order.''
David grabs a pencil and draws a picture on the back of his
hand to make his point. If two positrons shoot out of an atom at
the same time, and you shove one, the other will move, too.''
How does it know to move? ESP?'' asks the girl.
No. It happens at the same exact time.''
A couple of other kids perk up to hear the explanation.
That's because on the implicate order, the positrons are still
linked together.''
David is interrupted by a fourteen-year-old boy who seems to
have a better handle on the idea. Bohm used the analogy of a
goldfish and two TVs. If you put two cameras on a single
goldfish, and connected them to two TVs, you might think these
were pictures of two different fish. But when one fish moves, the
other will move at exactly the same time. It's not because
they're connected. It's because they're the same fish!''
Right,'' David chimes in, eager to get credit for his
knowledge before the girl disappears under the goggles. "The real
goldfish in the bowl is the implicate order. The monitors--the
way we see and experience it--is the explicate order.''
The young boy rolls his eyes. Clearly, David doesn't
understand the implications of all this. Kind of, only, man. The
implicate order is timeless truth. It's the way things are. The
explicate order is the way they manifest for us in time and three
dimensions.''
David gives in to the child's brilliance. Do you take smart
drugs, or what?''
In another private room, actually a kind of DJ lounge, Jody
Radzik, a DJ named Pete, and a more flamboyant crowd who call
themselves personal friends of the DJs'' smoke pot and talk
about similar issues. This is all very heady for a house club.
The center of attention is a state-of-the-art transvestite
calling "her''self Gregory, who is trying to understand the
merits of trendiness in house culture.
Radzik takes a stab at a simple response: House makes the
Golden Rule trendy. It makes spirituality trendy.''
But is trendiness good?'' Gregory asks, her eyes shifting
in that tweaking-on-psychedelics-paranoid way.
The culture is just pushing a pseudopod into a new
direction and that's a trend.'' Radzik says, using the biological
metaphor to reassure her. "The ideas have a life of their own.
They have an existence outside the human beings. The human beings
receive the ideas, and that manifests them.''
That's the implicate order being downloading into the
explicate order!'' The girl from the brain machine room has a
near religious experience in relating the two conversations. "We
were talking about the same thing in there!'' She beams. Two
conversations. Distinct on the explicate order, linked on the
implicate order. I get it now!''
Pete, the DJ, seems a little uncomfortable when the
conversation gets too far into science. Sounding as brainy as he
can, he tries to ground everything back to music. The ecstasy
comes through the music. The different polyrhythmic elements and
the bass. It's technoshamanism.
Gregory kisses Pete's hands as if she's recognized the
messiah. You're our spiritual leader, aren't you!''
Well, spiritual leader entails a lot of responsibility and
I don't think I want to take that on.''
Nobody does,'' Radzik says, once again, trying to bring it
all together. It's the unspoken rule here that if everyone's
point of view can be integrated into the same picture, it will
all be okay. "Nobody wants to be a spiritual leader. 'Cause
everyone's got the access to the E-xperience. Everyone can create
their own situation in the social context. House lets all those
different experiences get on and synergize.''
Gregory's eyes widen. She slowly rises, her arms
outstretched, her head falling back. With E, at 120 cycles a
second through our heart, we're dancing. We must dance!''
Radzik's been overpowered. Well, the E's not responsible,
but ...''
Gregory might be on the verge of a bad trip. She whips her
head to face Radzik directly. It'll literally bust our spines,
won't it?''
Radzik tries to regain control of the previously quiet
gathering. That's a lie! Propaganda.''
But Gregory doesn't seem to mind her suspicions about
permanent neurological damage. She clenches her fists together as
if to hold back an orgasm. The peak threshold is bliss, is E, is
now. We've condensed it down. It's powerpacked. It's now. We all,
man and woman, we come together and dance. All our technology.
We've heard of the side effects. E diminishes a vital chemical in
our bodies every time we take it. The chemical is the essence of
life. This is a gift which cannot be replaced. We're taking this
fluid and spending it. The E is undermining our very existence. I
feel a little bit of my life force being spent each time. It's
bliss. You're dancing it. E gathers all your life's bliss at one
time. If the world were supposed to end, we'd come together, take
E, and dance!''
Gregory's allusion to a recent study linking MDMA to spinal
fluid reduction in mammals, coupled with her oversimplified
E-xuberance for the dance, gets everyone a little uncomfortable.
Is this the transformed being we've been working to create?
Luckily, the moment is interrupted by a young visual artist and
video wizard who just happens to be distributing an MAO inhibitor
called Syrian Rue. Radzik introduces me as, Don't worry, he's
cool,'' which garners me four of the capsules. I put them in my
pocket and thank the boy, but he's already busy rigging a
projector to show a film loop on a wall near the dance floor.
It's a ten-second cycle of two boys fighting over a microscope. I
ask Radzik about the pills I've been given.
It's called Syrian Rue. Mark Heley will be able to tell you
a lot more about it. It has to be taken with other psychedelics.
It has a synergistic effect. It's made from a bark.'' Not enough
information to merit sampling. I leave it in my pocket and work
my way back out into the club. I search for the periphery so that
I may observe but not participate ... fully. Leaning against a
noncommittal wall near the edge of the club is Bob, an oriental
computer programmer from Oakland whom I met last week at Mr.
Floppy's, where he operated the camera for some television
interviews and got bitten by the house bug. He continues a
conversation we had been having there, as if there were no break
in continuity:
Thought is a distraction of the moment. Whenever we're in a
space we're processing information. In our reality, we're
bombarded with information. So in Reichian terms, we put this
armor on. You know the song, `I Wanna Be Sedated'? I think a lot
of people are anesthetized by their surroundings. It takes some
really piercing hard information to break that. Like piercing
your cheeks. If you get Zen, you've got to let go, and let it all
come in. But if you let it all in, you go crazy. But if you let
it come in without processing it, without calling it good or bad
... people who label things bad have got a lot of heaviness. Go
Zen about it. There is no black or white, then you can let
everything in.''
I give him one of my capsules of Syrian Rue and move on.
Engineering the Synchronization Beam
Our evening at Toon Town is getting into full swing. Most of
Norman's birthday partiers are gone, and several hundred more
hard-core house people have crowded onto the dance floor. Buck,
the novice DJ, is spinning well, and steering the energy toward
deeper, techno-acid house. Nick, the rave pugilist, is on a small
stage pumping his fists into the air, and the laser is finally
functioning.
Meanwhile, on a balcony, Bryan Hughes, the cyberspace guide,
leads a young man through his first virtual reality experience.
Cap'n'Crunch uses one of his cameras to capture an image of the
boy in his VR goggles. Another of Crunch's video leads comes
straight from the virtual reality machine. He uses his Video
Toaster to combine the two images and then projects a composite
video picture onto a giant screen above the dance floor. The
resulting image is one of the boy actually appearing to move
through the virtual reality space he is unfolding in the
computer. Superimposed on that picture are further video images
of people on the dance floor watching the giant projection.
Gregory notices me staring at the self-referential computer-video
infinity. Works kind of like a fractal, doesn't it?'' I have to
agree.
But Bruce Eisner, MDMA expert, who stares at the same video
depiction of virtual reality, shakes his head. He is amused but
unconvinced. Maybe one day the mystical vision will be realized
in some kind of neurological link-up or a virtual reality.
Technology does have a great promise. It could become seamless,
so that what we think of today as magic will eventually be done
by technology, and eventually we won't even see the technology. A
neo-Garden of Eden made possible by technology. But the main rub
is human nature. That's where I have a problem with the virtual
reality people. I was at the Whole Life Expo, and Timothy [Leary]
was there with John Barlow and Ken Goffman [R.U. Sirius] and they
were doing a panel on virtual reality and I sat there for an hour
and a half and listened to them talk about virtual reality the
way they talked about LSD in the sixties--it was this thing that
was intrinsically liberating. You hook yourself up to this thing
and automatically you're better--you got it. And so I asked him a
question. I said, `It seems to me that technology can be used for
good or for bad. In the sixties, Leary told us he was looking for
the cure for human nature. How is a new media intrinsically
good?'
Leary looked at me and said, `Bruce, I'm going to talk to
you as I would to a ten-year-old child.' And then he went on to
explain how when we have virtual reality, no one will have to fly
anymore. No one will have to go to Japan to make a deal. You can
do it in Hawaii on the beach. Fine. But why is that intrinsically
liberating?''
Eisner seems almost sad. He's not in tune with the same
harmonic as these kids but can, deep down, remember the sixties
and his own acid experiences. He refuses to be lulled into that
false optimism again. He stares out, losing himself in thought.
Meanwhile, the pulse on the dance floor deepens. I can feel
the bass passing through my body like the subsonic frequencies of
an as-yet-uninvented kidney therapy. The frenzy of the crowd
iterates back to the DJ, and in turn to Mark at the laser. The
walls are covered with projected images of fractals, tribes
dancing, the fight over the microscope, a cartoon smiley shoots
at evil, attacking letters. Another monitor displays the virtual
reality bombardments of attacker pilots in the Gulf War, intercut
with tribal dancing and the wild computer holographics of a tape
called Video Drug.'' The strobe flashes like a brain machine.
Do you know where I can get some Syrian Rue?'' asks a young
house girl named Mimi, pulling me out of my trance and into
another. I recognize her from other house events; this makes her
part of our posse. Her face is soft and young--almost
supernaturally so. It's as if she isn't a regular human being but
an extremely human being. Her eyes are large and clear, almost
like a Disney character's. ... Then it hits me! She's a toon!
She's a soft and squishy new evolved being! The iterations have
created a new human. I produce the coveted capsule from my shirt
pocket and hand it to her. She pops it in her mouth and washes it
down with a choline drink, then hops back out onto the dance
floor. It's not as if I could have asked her to dance. One
doesn't dance with someone. One just dances. No purpose. No
agenda.
A smell like flowers. From where? Lavender water. Who? Earth
Girl! She's arrived with her Smart Bar and has already set up. At
her side is Galactic Greg, one of her brightly clad bartenders.
Earth Girl embraces me as if recognizing me from lifetimes before
this one, and pours me a complimentary Cybertonic. It nicely
washes down the L-pyroglutamate I had earlier. I offer her one of
my two remaining Syrian Rue capsules, but Lila Mellow-Whipkit, in
drag this evening, stops her from accepting: You've got to be
careful with MAO inhibitors.'' Meanwhile, Galactic Greg begins
explaining his own and Earth Girl's mission:
Earth Girl, Galactic Greg, Psychic Sarah, Disco Denise,
Audrey Latina, Computer Guy, and his assistant Dynama. We all
make up the Foxy Seven, and we are environmental crime fighters.
And performers. Our performances are rituals to augment our
psychic powers, and then in return we use our psychic powers to
help change the world. We are building the infrastructure right
now. Everything's all happening so rapidly and really naturally.
All these people in the infrastructure are coming together like a
big family reunion--all the star-seeded children.''
I'm not sure how seriously to take Galactic Greg, for whom
metaphor and reality seem to have merged. I wonder if he realizes
that this will be the Foxy Seven's last night at Toon Town. Earth
Girl has already made her deal with Big Heart City, and Mark
Heley has already signed contracts with Chris for the new and
improved Nutrient Cafe.
But right now none of that seems to matter. Toon Town is in
absolutely full swing, and not even the apocalypse could break
the spell of the technoshamanic trance. I work my way up to the
laser controls, where I find Mark and one of his assistants
dancing as they furiously pound the consoles. They are one with
the technology. Just at the moment that Jno, who is now the
DJ, shifts from a hard, agro, techno sound to a broad, airy,
feminine, ambient one, the laser transforms from a sharp-edged
flurry into a large hollow tunnel cut through the fog in the
room. All hands on the dance floor are raised. Another sixteen
bars of techno layered with tribal rhythms begins the
120-beat-per-minute drone once again, drawing in anyone who
hasn't already reached the dance floor. Screams and whoops.
Whistles blowing. Chanting. We're at the peak. Whatever it is
that goes on at a house party that everyone talks about later is
happening now.
Mark has the uncanny ability to articulate the event as it
occurs, but the din requires that he shout, and his Oxbridge
elocution gives way to a more urban, East End accent.
It's a transposition of the fractal/harmonic. Every Toon
Town is a psychedelic event. We're the transition team. It's like
a Mayan temple, and acts as a relay station. An antenna. It's a
harmonic thing--beaming out something. It's a landing beacon for
starships. We are trying to attract something down. Through time,
toward us.''
Hands continue to reach into the air, and dancers look up at
the ceiling ... or past the ceiling. Are they looking for the
UFOs? Do they somehow hear what Mark is saying? The music shifts
back and forth between a familiar garage'' house sound to an
amazingly dense assemblage of electronic orchestral thrusts.
Every new piece of house music is another clue. A new
strand of the DNA pattern. A new piece of information. We need to
create a synchronization wave for the planet. House is synchronic
engineering.''
Mark is referring to a recently revived Mayan idea that the
planet, in the year 2012, will have passed through the galactic
time wave of history. Time itself will end as the planet moves up
to a new plane of reality.
The weird orchestral sound gives way to a more ambient
passage. A few dancers leave the floor and head to the Smart Bar.
Others browse the clothing boutique and bookshop that Diana has
set up.
Media viruses work at the same level. Smart drugs, life
extension, house, acid, and VR most importantly exist in people's
imaginations. This is a clue. Mayan mathematics just came into
existence and disappeared. We're in the endgame. This is
postapocalyptic. We're living under the mushroom cloud. Being
busted at precisely 11:30 last week. It was a group
sacrifice--just like the Mayans.''
Mark's assistant nudges him to play with the laser a little
more. The crowd is getting hyped again, and Jno,
accordingly, is playing more agro'' beats.
I consider myself to be more of a technoshaman now than
when I was DJing. You don't need to be the one controlling the
decks. There's a feedback energy loop going on between the people
there--it's just a mind thing. The DJs that we work with are just
tuned in to these frequencies. You can influence the fractal
pattern at a different vortex, a different corner.''
We look down at the sea of bodies. The pattern their bright
clothes makes on the floor looks something like one of the
fractals being projected onto the wall. Look closer and the
pattern repeats itself in the movements of individual dancers'
bodies, then again in the patterns printed on their T-shirts. The
boy in the VR television loop discovers the torus in Bryan's demo
tour. The whole screen turns to cosmic stars. The dancers
respond. The DJ responds. The lasers respond. The pattern
iterates, feeds back, absorbs, adjusts, and feeds back again.
Heley translates:
At a house event, the dance floor is really a very complex
fractal pattern, consisting of the entirety of all the people
there, and their second-to-second interactions, and everyone is
influencing everyone else in a really interesting way. A really
nonverbal way. You can just be yourself, but you can redefine
yourself, moment to moment. That's the essence of the dance.''
Jno takes off his headphones for a moment and stares at
the crowd. Rather than look for another record or adjust the
control of the mix, he closes his eyes and begins to dance,
flailing his arms in the air.
Jno just tunes in to the frequency that's already
there and reiterates it. He is anticipating the energy changes
before they happen, not because he's tuned in to the records, but
because he's tuned in to a sort of psychic template which exists
above the people that are there and unifies them. It's the
transpersonal essence of what's going on.''
Mark has described the house version of Bohm's laws of the
implicate and explicate order. The dance floor is the explicate
order, and the DJ is the link from the dancers to their implicate
whole. They only think they are separate goldfish because they
experience life in old-fashioned space-time. Through the iterated
and reiterated samples of music, they regain access to the
experience of total unification. It is religious bliss. All is
one. And, of course, this realization occurs simultaneously on
many levels of consciousness.
Everything is important,'' Mark continues. "The Ecstasy,
the lights, even the configuration of the planets. The dance is a
holistic experience. You're there in your totality, so duality is
irrelevant. It's where your body is mind. It's a question of
reintegration. You dance yourself back into your body. It's got a
lot to do with self-acceptance. There's no level of separation as
there is in words, when there's always a linguistic separation
between subject and objects. The song is the meaning. It lets you
avoid a lot of the semantic loops that tie people in to things
like career, and other fictional ghosts that are generated by our
society for the purpose of mass control. It's a different
frequency that you tune in to when you dance than the one that's
generally broadcast by TV shows, the media, politics.''
This new frequency, finally, is the frequency of the
apocalypse. Terence McKenna's 2012, the Mayan calendar, and the
great, last rave of all time are all part of one giant
concrescence. Over the loudspeakers, samples of Terence McKenna's
meandering voice now mix with the rest of the soundtrack. He's on
a house record, his own words helping the dancers to tunnel
toward the overmind, as the overmind lovingly drills backward
through time toward them.
If we imagine ourselves in four-dimensional space-time,''
Heley explains, "in that very dubious construct of Einsteinian
space-time--we're sort of swimming towards the object from which
the frequency emanates. It's like these are fragments of DNA
information that are squeezed into a certain specific time frame.
It's a constant exploration and discovery of how those resonate
with our own DNA information in that particular moment of time.
Basically it's that fact--and the rich sampling of all the
moments placed within that context--that gives you this amazingly
flexible framework for reintegrating yourself into your body and
also communicating as a group. You're moving to a certain
time-space and you're in a group state of consciousness. You're
at one with it and you become the moment.''
I realize that Mark's perception and retelling is
LSD-enhanced; he's just beginning to feel the full effect of a
hit he took about an hour ago. Still, he's concerned that it's
not strong enough to take him to any kind of edge.'' I offer him
my two remaining Syrian Rue capsules. He pops them down
immediately, explaining that they enhance the effect of other
psychedelics and are related to ayahuasca, one of the main
ingredients (along with DMT) used by shamans to make the most
potent brews. I surmise that it puts a new twist on things the
way one might turbocharge a car with NO2, add salt to spaghetti
water to raise its boiling point, or throw a starship into warp
drive. In an ominous synchronicity, down on the dance floor Diana
helps a disoriented girl to a chair at the side of the room.
Mark goes on, the new chemical accelerating his speech
toward the climax of his cosmic drama: The human body has not
been fully danced. We don't dance our full dance yet. Time is
accelerating towards this point in the year 2012 when the story
of the human race will have been unfolded. We're reaching a
bifurcation point. There's so much instability in our current
paradigm that it's just shaking apart. A lot of people I know
feel we're reaching an endgame. There's that feeling in the air.
I feel myself being dragged through different time zones and it's
intense. When you surrender to it, it becomes even stronger.
Exponentially so. It's amazing.''
But what about the people who haven't been exposed to house?
All those people Diana so desperately hopes to bring into the
scene before it's all over? If they aren't dancing when the
spaceships or the galactic beam comes, won't they be left out?
How are people to guide themselves toward Cyberia? As Mark tries
to reassure me, I become conscious that my questioning may be
starting to affect his trip.
Well, bliss is the most rigorous master you could
imagine,'' he says. Then suddenly his face registers a new
thought. "If your antenna is finely tuned, you'll find it
[Cyberia]. In a way, everyone is tuned in. One point in humanity
rises, all of humanity rises.'' He adds, as if he's never thought
this before: But I imagine that there are some towns in the
Midwest where a house record has never even been played.''
These kinds of conceptual uncertainties grow into physically
realized landmines for the shamanic warrior. Mark senses his own
doubts, as the Syrian Rue drives his trip down a frictionless
psychic tunnel. Instinctively, he hands the laser controls to an
assistant. He stares at me intently. There's only so much
energy. My only tack is to just keep my head down and push ahead.
Diana may bring in more people someday. But until then, I've got
to do what I can with what I've got. We'll struggle and struggle
until we give up. Then it will break through.''
He works his way to the dance floor. The bodies are
writhing, peaking. It is in the middle of this swirl that Mark
reaches the highest part of his trip. He realizes that the
fractal pattern that surrounds him is of his own making. The
synesthesic congruities between movement, sound, and light bring
a feeling of certainty and wholeness. His body and mind are
united, as he literally steps under the looking glass that he
created. Both God and Adam at once, his very existence literally
dissolves the fiction of creator and created, beginning and end.
He has constructed his own womb and stepped inside. In his
self-conception is the essence of timelessness. The beginning is
the end.
But timelessness is only temporary. How long can this last?
In that very wondering is the initial descent. The perfection of
the fractal pattern has begun to decay. Reentry into time is
imminent. Has he become the UFO?
Damage can occur on the way back. Downloading the cogent
information requires every shamanic skill he can muster. The
Syrian Rue has caused a kind of time phasing. Mark searches for a
way to bring himself back into crystalline alignment, even if at
a different frequency from before. He doesn't care how he comes
back, as long as he can find the way home. His body is gone,
dispersed throughout the room.
He tries to recreate his body by finding his point of view.
A point of reference can serve as the seed. But his field of
vision is compressing and expanding ... expanding as far out as
the sun and even the galactic core. He is riding through the
precarious Mayan Tzolkin calendar. He closes his eyes and fixes
on the galactic core--on that time a year or so ago, tripping in
a field, in the sun. He was like a dolphin under water, swimming
under the surface yet still warmed by the sun. It was beautiful.
And as he lay there, a new Gaia program came down from the sun to
the earth, and needed his head to do it. The light used him to
download the precious information. His own body. Strange ganglia
sprouted from the back of his head straight into the soil beneath
him. Beautiful.
But no. That's not what's going on here. Everything is phase
shifted. It's out of control. No panic or all is lost. He could
spin out and be gone forever. Mark must get down carefully. He
doesn't care what he brings back anymore, as long as he gets
back. He realizes that somehow he's gotten himself onto a flight
of steps. Real steps, somewhere in the club. Perfect image. It's
where he is. Stuck on the stairway. It's life or death now. Bliss
is merciless. The rigorous master. The music continues to pound
and eventually draws him back into the vortex. Everything spins.
This is dangerously disorienting. He's completely losing
polarity. He's on the steps, but which way is he facing? Is he
going up or down? The back and the front are the same!
But wait! This isn't so bad. There's complete knowledge of
what's on both sides! He can see in front and behind at the same
time! There's no duality--but, alas, no orientation, either.
There's no up the stairs or down. No before the trip or after. No
higher than the peak or lower. Suddenly everything is static.
Paralyzed. Stillness.
It is in this brief fulcrum of stability that the
transmission occurs. Like an electrical earthquake, an alien
thing passes up through Heley's muscles, bringing his whole being
up into a faster, shamanic shape-shifting frequency. This is the
state of being, Heley realizes, in which master shamans turn into
pumas or eagles or visit the dead.
Suddenly, then, it's all clear. The duality is not within
life as judgments or ideas. Life itself is one side of it. It's
life itself that is rooted in dimension. That's one side of the
whole thing. The explicate order. That's the place where will is
necessary. ( I'll just keep my head down and press on.'')
The will. Mark summons his will, knowing that this
navigation through the iron gate of the moment back down into
dimensional space-time requires it. He must summon his will. He
senses movement.
He passes through the I Ching sequence as if it were a cloud
formation--the effortless binary expression of the universe. Ahh,
he realizes, the creation of time and history were necessary.
Without them, we'd never have created will. We need the will in
order to move toward something. But what? Toward 2012. Toward the
overmind. The galactic event. But now he must continue his
descent.
He passes over a shamanic conference. Eight old men sitting
in a spotlight. He is offered an apprenticeship by these dead
warriors, but refuses. He's made the right choice, he thinks, and
begins to travel faster. He's gained either power or stupidity.
He just needs to remember that everything is fractal; he
just needs to find the fractal pattern on any level and the rest
will fall into place. But stretch out too far and the pattern
breaks. The illusion of personal reality is gone, and so goes the
person with it.
Diana, Preston, and Nick come to the rescue, finding Heley
stuck on the stairs, trembling. He can't even speak to them, but
just their focus is helping. As they stare at Heley and call to
him, he becomes anchored in the present. Then all the Heleys on
each of the fractal levels are able to redefine into shape. He
finally finds himself back on the stairs, leaning against the
wall. Preston looks at him and asks simply, Are you going up or
down?''
If I only knew,'' Mark says, grinning.
Mark had a really, really bad trip,'' Nick Phillip
announces at his design studio the next day. "He took some Syrian
Rue and LSD. He got a weird side effect and he was cog-wheeling.
It took us two hours to get him into the car. He wouldn't let us
touch him!'' Nick dials Heley's number angrily. Mark picks up the
phone after about ten rings.
You should fucking reevaluate what you're doing!'' Nick
scolds him.
It was brilliant, Nick. Just brilliant!''
So brilliant!? You shouldn't do those bloody MAO
inhibitors! You could die, you know!''
Mark hides his extreme weariness by speaking in clipped
sentences.
I experienced some polarities, that's all''
Nick covers the mouthpiece and talks to the room and to the
air: That's sooo Mark Heley!''
There were just not enough people to absorb the beam,''
Mark explains logically, "and I had to do it alone.''
The responsibilities of the technoshaman never end. Like the
shamans of ancient cultures, they must translate the wave forms
of other dimensions into the explicate reality for the purposes
of forecasting the future and charting a safe path through it.
And as Heley's adventure indicates, it's networking the potential
of this beam that defines success in spiritual Cyberia.
CHAPTER 11
Neopagan Technology
There is a growing spiritual subculture dedicated to
channeling the beam, and it is characterized by pagan ethics,
reliance on technology, and interconnectivity through vast
networks. The neopagan revival incorporates ancient and modern
skills in free-for-all sampling of whatever works, making no
distinction between occult magic and high technology. In the
words of one neopagan, The magic of today is the technology of
tomorrow. It's all magic. It's all technology.''
Again, it's easiest to get a fix on the neopagan revival
back in England, where the stones still resonate from the murders
of over 50 million pagans throughout the Dark Ages. Fraser Clark,
pater of the Zippy movement ( zen-inspired pagan
professionals''), sees the current surge of pagan spirit in the
cyberian subculture as the most recent battle in an ancient
religious struggle. Youth culture is the only answer.
As Fraser prepares to head to work (it's about one in
afternoon) he invites me to read what he's just typed onto his
computer screen:
Ever since they managed to blackball the Hippy to death, the
correct mode of Youth (as hope and conscience of the
culture) has been systematically schizophrened from its
historical roots. And we're talking about roots that go back
through the punks, hippies, rebels, beats, bohemians,
socialists, romantics, alchemists, the shakers and the
quakers, witches, heretics and, right back in the roots,
pagans. Yet the human spirit still revitalized itself! We
pagani (Latin for nonmilitary personnel, by the way) have
been cooperating and breeding unstoppably, together with our
personal gods and succubi like personal computers! Until
now, just when the Roman Christian Monotheistic Mind State
reaches out to grasp the whole planet by the short hairs,
the Alternative Culture births itself.
Fraser has dedicated his life to the spread of pagan
consciousness, specifically through the youth culture, which he
sees as our last hope for planetary survival. The system cannot
be allowed to go on for another ten years or it really will
destroy us all, it's as simple as that,'' Fraser tells me as we
walk with his hairless dog from his house in Hampstead to Camden
Lock Market. His tone is always conspiratorial, reverberating a
personal paranoia left over from the sixties, and an inherited
paranoia passed down through pagan history. "If we had this
conversation in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, we'd be
burned at the stake for it. We'd never even be able to imagine
things being as good as they are now ... or as bad as they are
now.'' Fraser brings a broad perspective to the archaic revival,
helping would-be pagans to see their role in the historical
struggle against the forces of monotheistic tyranny.
The actual witch-hunts came in like waves of hysteria just
like drug stories in the press do now. You know, every so often
along comes a story about witches in their midst so let's burn a
few. So it came in waves. Another thing that came in waves is the
plague. The black death.'' I can tell that Fraser wants me to
draw the parallel myself. Deep down, this man is a teacher. His
theory (which has been espoused elsewhere in pagan literature) is
that the sudden rises in black death can always be traced to a
surge in witch killing and cat killing. The church would reward
people who killed cats because they were associated with witches.
The rat population would be free to increase, and more plague
would spread. As he puts it, "Hysteria caused the plague.''
Meanwhile, our current and potential plagues--AIDS, pollution,
nuclear war--are seen to be caused by similar repression of the
pagan spirit, which he seeks to revitalize in the youth culture
of England, in any way possible.
To this end, Fraser has become a spokesman and advocate for
the modern, urban neopagans. Like both their own ancestors and
the most current mathematicians and physicists, they have
abandoned organized rules of logic in favor of reality
hacking--riding the waves, watching for trends, keeping an open
mind, and staying connected to the flow. It's not important
whether the natural system is a forest, an interdimensional
plane, a subway, or a computer network. For the neopagan,
exploration itself is a kind of understanding, and the process of
exploring is the meaning of life.
Interdimensional Scrolling
One urban neopagan, Green Fire, is a witch who works for
Earth Girl at the Smart Drugs Lounge under Big Heart City and as
a psychic for a 900-number phone service called Ultraviolet
Visions. The house scene is like a self-similar hypertext
adventure. Each new person is like a new screen, with its own
menus and links to other screens. But they're all somehow united
in purpose and direction. As though each member of the global
neopagan network goes on his own visionquests, they are all on a
journey toward that great chaos attractor at the end of time.
Today, Earth Girl and other members of her Foxy Seven are
busy remodeling the new basement home of the Smart Bar. Toys and
trinkets are everywhere. In one corner sits a six-foot geodesic
dome lined with pink fur and foam, dubbed the Space Pussy. The
soft being inside, who believes he's a direct descendant of the
magical Shee'' beings, is Green Fire, an impish and androgynous
twenty-something-year-old whose Peter Pan gestures belie the
gravity with which he approaches his mission: to save the planet
by bringing back the Shee, the ancient fairie race that
originally inhabited Ireland before the planet was overrun with
the "Naziish alien energy'' that has been directing human
activity for the past few millenia.
Green Fire believes we are fast approaching a kind of
spiritual dawn. There is more light now than ever before. Even
Joe Blow now is starting to experience a little bit of magic
through technology.'' Green Fire is a seamless blend between the
magic of the ancients and the technology of the future. "High
technology and high magic are the same thing. They both use tools
from inner resources and outer resources. Magic from the ancient
past and technology from the future are really both one. That is
how we are creating the present; we're speeding up things, we are
quickening our energies; time and space are not as rigid as they
used to be; the belief system isn't there. Those who did control
it have left the plane; they have been forced out because it no
longer is their time. Those of us who know how to work through
time and space are using our abilities to bend time and space
into a reality that will benefit people the most.''
So, like house music and its ability to condense'' time
through juxtaposition of historical "bytes,'' Green Fire's
witchery gives him an active role in the creation of the moment.
The ancients call forward in time to the present, giving Green
Fire the techniques of sorcery, while the light from the future
calls back in time through computer technology.
Earth Girl joins us in the Space Pussy to make sure Green
Fire is presenting himself in the best possible light. Diana,
from Toon Town, follows her in. Diana has come to the Smart
Lounge as an emissary of peace. The subtext never reaches the
surface, but Diana's presence is threefold: first, to understand
exactly why Earth Girl left Toon Town for Big Heart City; second,
to gather as many facts as possible about Heley's competition;
and third, and most apparently, to make sure everyone stays
friends. No matter how stiff the competition and how hot the
tempers, everyone is in this thing together. There's only one
galactic beam.
Giving the gift of vulnerability as a peace offering, Diana
mentions Heley's bad'' trip last night at Toon Town.
He doesn't have the tools to be traveling that far out,''
Earth Girl responds in a genuinely caring tone.
No one says anything for a while. The Space Pussy, too, is
silent, itself an emblem of Earth Girl's betrayal of Toon Town
and her ex-boyfriend, Heley. Diana shifts uncomfortably: Why
would he leave her for me? Earth Girl, knowing she's being stared
at, fingers the lace on her flowing satin dress--a striking
contrast to Diana's tomboyish overalls and baseball cap.
Diana lights a cigarette and laughs. They all pretend the
moment of silence was spent contemplating Mark's weird Syrian Rue
adventure. He doesn't feel bad today. He even thinks he may have
touched the ability to shape-shift.
We humans are all shape-shifters,'' Green Fire comments,
getting the conversation back on track. "We just need to learn to
access our DNA codes. It's very computer-oriented. We are
computers; our minds are computers; our little cells are
computers. We are bio-organic computers. We are crystals. We are
made out of crystals. I even put powdered crystals into the smart
drinks.''
Green Fire's words seem a little hollow given the emotional
reality of Diana and Earth Girl's conflict, so the two girls
leave. But despite its inability to tackle everyday, real-world
strife, Green Fire's cyber pagan cosmology beautifully
demonstrates the particular eclecticism of the new spirituality.
It is not an everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink grab bag of
religious generalizations, but a synthesis of old and new ideas
whose organization is based on a postquantum notion of time. The
juxtaposition of magic and computers, shape-shifting and DNA,
crystals and pharmaceuticals, is itself indicative of a time
compression preceding the great leap into hyperspace, or
timelessness.
But until that leap, the realities of romance and business
still shape the experiences of cyberians. Diana and Earth Girl
must still cope with the fact that they're in the same business
and have shared the same boyfriend. Green Fire must cope with the
fact that his goddess, Earth Girl, will eventually realize the
futility of her comicbook-style leadership, dissolve the Foxy
Seven, and go into business for herself.
But in the Space Pussy, for the time being, all is quite
well. In the safety of his cocooned emotional playground, Green
Fire is free to take daring leaps into interdimensional zones
that a parent, professional, or reality-based adult would not.
Instead of using Heley's psychedelics and house music, or a
hacker's home computer and modem, he practices his magic using
techniques from the Celtic shamanic traditions. (Unless, of
course, he just happens upon a fairie ring of mushrooms in the
forest.)
He'll begin with a purification ritual and an herbal bath,
then some breathing techniques and chanting for an hour or so,
which brings him into a kind of psychedelic clarity.
Everything mundane leaves so I know I'm in the trance. I'll
cast the circle and invoke the elements. Sometimes I'll have to
do a dance to help tap in to some of the Celtic energies. Then I
will begin the journey down. Now, that's just like--that's
something close to mushrooms, LSD, or DMT.''
Green Fire's fairie realm is also very close to the computer
experience. His description of this space, his iconic presence,
the way he moves through the space, as well as the hypertext
quality of his experiences make it sound like a cyber space
fantasy game.
They'll take me inside. Sometimes I feel like I'm falling
or flying. Sometimes I just whoosh, and I'm there. Depends on
what kind of passage it is. Then I'm there, and it's a real
place. Usually once I get there my body is still in this
dimension. I've gone through my cells, my DNA, and I've opened a
doorway and I've gone to that other dimension. So I will need to
have an archetype there. It's a dreamlike state, but it's also
very physical. This is the strange part. I can feel stuff there
through that body. I can smell, I can taste, I can touch, and I
can hear. My guides will be there, my totems--and they usually
guide me to certain cities I need to go to.''
Just as I was guided through virtual reality by gentle Bryan
Hughes, Green Fire is guided by his fairies through Celtic
Cyberia. This is a virtual world! Each doorway is another screen.
Each totem allows him to load'' more "worlds.'' Through an
archetypal virtual suit, he can see and feel his hyperdimensional
reality. And, like Mark Heley in the shamanic fractal, or me in
the Intel virtual reality demo program, he must prove he is a
worthy interdimensional traveler. As McKenna would say, thoughts
are beheld.'' As Heley would say, "bliss is a rigorous master.''
Whatever I think becomes real. Just to even get there I
have to be very clear. My emotions and my thoughts steer me.
Really, instead of me moving, the place moves. I think something,
and then I'm kind of like, there. So if I start feeling dark and
weird, I find myself in the dark places of that land. And there
are dark places.''
Things get eerie. Green Fire describes how realities
scroll'' by as on a computer screen, and it's as if he's
describing the thickest places in the "ice'' in William Gibson's
Neuromancer, where a hacker/cowboy can lose his soul. Green Fire
moves through the fairie matrix like a hacker through the
network, from system to system, always leaving a back door open.
But Green Fire is making his systems breaches without the
protection of David Troup's Bodyguard program. Instead, he must
depend on his mental discipline. He's in the ultimate designer
reality, where his thoughts become what's real, whether he likes
it or not.
It's a discipline to keep your emotions in check--to keep
certain archetypical images in my mind. I have to keep them
because they're doorways, and if I don't have those doorways
positioned correctly, they could lead me to a place that I
wouldn't want to be. It's like a puzzle or a maze and I could get
lost. Magic is a dangerous thing. There's a new age belief that
you can never get hurt; that's not true. You can get hurt very
bad. Not everybody should do magic. Even those of us who are made
to do it, we fuck up quite a bit. I fuck up quite a bit.''
While a computer hacker who ventures into the wrong system
might find the Secret Service knocking at his door, a witch who
ventures into the wrong dimension risks psychological or
spiritual damage. But just as the most aggressive cyberian
hackers make sacramental use of psychedelics to augment their
computer skills, adventurous witches make use of the computer net
to keep informed of pagan technologies. The communications and
computer networks are a self-similar extension of the pagan need
for a map to hyperspace.
Green Fire's journeys through the multidimensional net''
are also reflected in the way he conducts business through the
communications net on earth. Most of his income is generated
through a national psychic phone service, Ultraviolet Visions,
which offers psychic readings, astrology, tarot card analysis and
other psychic services through a 900 number. The office in which
the psychics operate is decorated in what Earth Girl likes to
call "New Delphic Revival''--twenty-two stations around a big
glass table with pillars, each station corresponding to one of
the twenty-two cards of the tarot's major arcana. Of course, the
billing is handled by computer through the phone company.
CHAPTER 12
Gardeners Ov Thee Abyss
The strength of any magic in Cyberia is directly
proportional to that magic's ability to permeate the network.
Like cultural viruses, the techniques of magic are thought to
gain strength as they gain acceptance by larger groups of people.
Computer technology fits in to cyberian spirituality in two ways:
as a way to spread magic, and as a magic itself.
Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth is a nett-work for the
dissemination of majick (their spellings) through the culture for
the purpose of human emancipation. TOPY (rhymes with soapy) began
as a fan club and ideological forum for Genesis P. Orridge,
founder of industrial band Throbbing Gristle and its house
spin-off Psychic TV, but soon developed into a massive cultish
web of majick practitioners and datasphere enthusiasts. They are
the most severe example of technopaganism, consciously stretching
backward through medievalism to ancient pagan spirituality and up
through computer technology to the creation of a global,
informational being. They predate and maybe even spawned House
culture, but have remained pretty separate from the lovey-dovey,
soft and squishy Ecstasy crowd.
All male initiates to TOPY take the name Coyote, and all
women Kali. The name is followed by a number so that members can
identify one another. Kali is the name of a female sex goddess
known as the destroyer''; the coyote is found in many
mythologies, usually symbolizing wisdom and an adventurous
nature.
The nett-work consists of access points, or stations, which
are post office boxes, fax machines, computer modems, or 800
phone numbers. Each access point gathers information from places
off the web, then distributes it throughout the network, and in
turn takes information from the web and makes it available to
local members. As one initiate explains: The main memory can be
accessed from the stations, then downloaded via correspondents
through Xeroxes.'' Or, in English, someone reads his mail or
plays his message machine, then types it up and gives copies to
his friends. "The main memory'' refers to the TOPY idea that all
its members compose a single, informational being.
The information passed about consists of majickal
techniques'' from drugs and incantations to computer hardware and
engineering tricks, as well as general TOPY philosophy. In some
ways, the entire TOPY network is really just an elaborate
metaphor for the postmodern Gaian brain. The information they
pass around is much less important than the way in which it is
passed. TOPY documents are immediately recognizable because they
spell words in obsolete or newly made-up ways. This is seen as a
way of retaking control of language, which has been used and
abused for so long by the illegitimate power mongers of Western
culture, which are directing the planet toward certain doom.
However well TOPY has permeated the net, its members rarely
peep up out of the underground into the light of day and
consensus reality. For all their 800-number accessibility, very
few cyberians regularly socialize with flesh-and-blood TOPY
members. It's almost as if their presence as human beings is less
important than their presence as a cultural virus or
informational entity.
All on the Same Side
Today, Diana is on Haight Street, distributing fliers for
the next Toon Town. Unlike most promoters, who target likely''
clubgoers--kids with house-style clothes, computer-hippies,
college cliques--Diana is dedicated to spreading the house
phenomenon to the uninitiated. A freespirited club girl with a
slight Mother Theresa complex, Diana is the female, emotional,
caring counter to Toon Town's otherwise heady patriarchy,
especially now that Earth Girl works at Big Heart City. Each
human to whom she hands a flier is a potential link to dozens
more. The more people brought in to the scene, she reasons, the
more it grows, the more they grow, the further enlightened and
loving the world is. This is the philosophy that got Diana to
leave protective campus life at Berkeley and move into the city
to promote Toon Town full-time.
When Diana approaches an unlikely cluster of young men clad
in leather and army fatigues and smoking a joint in front of a
record store, she unwittingly hits the networking jackpot. Her
Toon Town promotional bill is grabbed up by the trio, who
exchange it for a leaflet of their own, The Wheel of Torture,''
a poem by Coyote 107:
EYE WAS ON THEE WHEEL OV TORTUREON THAT TABLE, I WAS SPUN LIKE AZ
A VORTICE. IN AN ACT OV ATTRACTING VIOLENCE TO MY BEING. THEE
VIOLENCE WAS EXPRESSED THROUGH TORTURE, WHICH BECAME AN ACT OV
ALCHEMICAL PROCESS. MY SENSES WERE BEING PULVERIZED. THROWN INTO
SHOCK. PULVERIZATION WAS BEING SHOVED DOWN MY THROAT. EVERY OUNCE
OV MY EMOTION WAS NULLIFIED. STEPPED ON AND SPIT ON. TOTAL
APPLICATION OV NEGATION. TOTAL ACT OV NON SERVITUDE. REJECTING MY
OWN PERSONALITY. NOT LETTING MY EGO TAKE KONTROL. VIOLATING MY
OWN EGO IZ AN ACT OV KONTROL OVER IT. A REBELLION AND A
REJECTION. HOPING FOR COMPLETE REVOLUTION WITHIN MYSELF AND NOT
WAITING FOR THEE GENERATIONZ TO CATCH UP. (FUCK THE EVOLUTIONARY
PROCESS! WHEN THINGS NEED TO CHANGE THEY WILL; THROUGH WILL.)
THIS TYPE OV NULLIFICATION IZ THEE PROCESS OV PURIFICATION
THROUGH PULVERIZATION. AN INITIATION INTO THE SELF. THE TRUE
SELF. NOT THEE ILLUZION OUR EGO FEEDZ US. LOSS OV EGO IZ PART OV
THEE AWAKENING PROCCESS. THEE LIBERATION PROCESS. TO LIBERATE
YOURSELF IZ TO NEGATE AND NULLIFY THAT WHICH RESTRICTS YOU. WHAT
RESTRICTS YOU FROM EXPRESSION AND EXPLORATION. EXPLORE YOURSELF
AND BE READY. BE ABLE AND CAPABLE. TRANZFORM AND COMMUNICATE.
TRUE COMMUNICATION ONLY HAPPENZ BETWEEN EQUALS. YOU MUST MUTATE
TO COMMUNICATE. YOU MUST SHARE VIBRATIONAL FREQUENCY, WHICH IZ
WHAT YOU ARE. ALL LIFE IZ VIBRATION AND MOVEMENT. NOTHING IZ IN A
FIXED POSITION. FIXED POSITIONS ARE ONLY TEMPORARY. TRUE STATES
ARE TEMPORAL BECAUSE CHANGE IZ INEVITABLE. CHANGE MAKES BALANCE.
CHANGE IZ MOVEMENT. MOVEMENT IZ UNIVERSAL YET DEPENDENT AND
DEFINABLE. MOVEMENT HAS VELOCITY AND DIRECTION. MOVEMENT IZ
MAJICK. MAJICK IS SETTING FORTH THEE WILL INTO MOTION TOWARDS A
GOAL. ALLEGORY IZ THEE VEHICAL. LEARN TO KONTROL THEE VEHICAL.
GET BEHIND THE WHEEL. STEER YOUR LIFE IN THEE DIRECTION YOU
CHOOSE. YOU DON'T HAVE TO MAKE PIT-STOPS FOR YOUR EGO.PULVERIZE &
PURITY.
The majick, kontrol, and steering happen in two ways. First,
the techniques and ideas spread throughout the United States and
England empower individual pagans to develop their own personal
strategies for moving through life. Second, and more important,
the dissemination of the information itself creates a sub- or
even countercultural infrastructure. In a meta'' way, the new
lines of communication create the global, informational being, in
this case based on majick and pagan technology. Unlike Green
Fire, though, whose gentle androgyny is quite Disney in its
softness, TOPY members are medieval-styled skinheads. Pierced
lips and noses, tattoos, army clothes, spikes, leather, bizarre
beards, crew cuts, shaved heads and mohawks for the men; the
women dress either in sixties naturale or psychedelic party
clothes beneath heavy army coats and leather jackets.
Magick. Cool. We're into that, too,'' Diana says, looking
up from the small document. Unlike most with whom the TOPYs come
in contact, Diana knows that they're not punk rockers. "We have a
Nutrient Cafe, a virtual reality booth, brain machines. Plus a
lot of good information about all those things.'' Diana's attempt
at cross-culturalization opens a Pandora's box.
We're trying to achieve total control over information.''
Kurt, the leader of the group, speaks with a forced eloquence,
ironically counterpointing his belligerent styling. "That allows
us to decontrol the imprints that are implanted within the
information itself. Everyone has the right to exchange
information. What flows through TOPY is occult-lit,
computer-tech, shamanistic information and majick--majick as
actually a technology, as a tool, or a sort of correlative
technology based on intuitive will. It's an intuitive correlative
technology that is used by the individual who's realized that he
or she has his or her own will which they have the freedom to
exercise the way they want. That's kind of how I see majick.''
To TOPYs, magic is just the realization and redirection of
the will toward conscious ends. To do this, people must
disconnect from all sources of information that attempt to
program them into unconscious submission, and replace them with
information that opens them to their own magical and
technological abilities.
While Kurt is more in your face'' and confrontational about
his majickal designs on culture than is Green Fire or Earth Girl,
Diana is confident that they all share in the basic belief that
magic and spirituality are technologies that must be utilized to
prepare and develop the planet for the coming age.
Well, we're all on the same side.'' She's hip to their
codified lifestyle and too determined to get them to her club to
let their critical tone or angry-looking fashion choices get in
the way. At Berkeley there were kids plenty more strung out than
these guys. Besides, if she can turn one TOPY into a Toon Towner,
thousands could follow. Kurt has the same intention. Toon Town
would be an excellent venue to distribute TOPY literature.
Everyone's trying to turn everyone else on to basically the
same thing. Diana takes their names down for the ever-expanding
guest list (Preston won't be happy about that) and moves on.
The Protocol of Empathy
Back at Kurt's apartment later that day, the group prepares
to go to Toon Town for the evening. They'll check out the club,
it's decided, and give out some of their latest propaganda. A new
member of the group--a runaway teenager who was found at a
concert last weekend--wonders why everyone is so preoccupied with
spreading the word. Kurt is quick to answer him.
That's what TOPY's always existed for: to help people
realize that this society is in a crisis point. People have to
wake up instead of sleeping in front of the TV, which is a window
on information which you don't even realize is subliminal `cause
the intentions aren't even known to all the people.''
Kurt's tiny black-and-white television set has the word
virus scrawled across its screen in indelible marker, a constant
reminder to all viewers that the media is carrying potentially
infectious subliminal ideas.
It's the programming that's dangerous. The television
networks create programs which program the reality of the viewer.
Each viewer is defined by nothing more than his programming.''
So, TOPY members replace regular, power-depleting television
programming with information of their own: magick.
Majick is a map of the external reality. Pagans who've
understood that throughout history have stayed away from the
church, and used the occult as a type of underground
communication. Symbols which were agreed upon.''
The revelation of the subcultural latticework vanishes as
Kurt's girlfriend suddenly enters.
I got an electric shock,'' she announces, with a certain
amount of wonderment in relating the incident. "And it made my
finger go numb. I was plugging in my hair dryer to the socket,
and my finger's numb. I don't know what to do! It hurts like
hell. I mean, it doesn't hurt at all, but ... I got shocked and
it affected me.''
Do you have any cigarettes, Kim?'' Kurt asks her in an even
tone.
Yeah,'' she answers. "Do you want one? Want some pot?''
She goes out, still staring at her thumb, to search for
tobacco and/or cannabis. Although these kids are far out on a
technopagan limb, their familial interactions look as
traditionally patriarchal as the Bunkers. In one sense they seem
to have taken cyber paganism the farthest. Their model of the
human being is really that of the computer with will. But in
another way, they appear to have adopted a more sexist and
radically traditional value system than their parents could have
had. The Coyotes have all become pack animals, roaming the
streets for adventure, while the Kalis stay at home, shop for
clothes, or mix potions.
When Kurt does get to the topic of socializing, he speaks
about it in a language more suited to computer modem protocol
than human interaction:
When computers talk, there's a basic handshake that happens
between two terminals. The computer is analogous to the human
biosystem, or a neural linguistic coalitive technological
system.'' Kim sits up on Kurt's knee as he continues. She lights
Kurt's cigarette for him and puts it into his mouth.
Empathy is caused by frequencies being shared by people,
and when they interlock their frequencies, they cause a certain
level of syncopation. The closer that that level of syncopation
is together, the closer that those frequencies are locked in the
higher level of communication that you're experiencing.
Interlocking can happen in what we now call protocol: the terms
that are agreed by the two users.''
The highest level of protocol between two users is, of
course, sexual intercourse, an act of creativity that TOPY
members are trying to demystify. Since they see sex as the
connective energy in all interactions, the word of has been
replaced in TOPY-spell by the word ov, representative of ovum,''
the sexual energy, which needs to be liberated from society's
restrictions and reintegrated with the will. In a practical
sense, this means using the sexual energy for the practice of
majick.
Your dick is majick wand if you know how to use it,'' one
roommate loves to say. As another of the many leaflets around the
house insists in block type:
We are thee gardeners ov thee abyss. Working to reclaim
astrangled paradise choked with unwilled weeds,
subconsciousmanifestations ov fear and self-hate. We embrace this
fearand our shadow to assimilate all that we think we are
not.Realigning ourselves on thee lattice ov power. Change is
ourstrength. We turn the soil to expose thee roots ov
ourconditioned behavioral responses. Identifying anddissimilating
the thought structures that blind us ov our beautyand imprison us
from our power. We thrash these weeds beyondrecognition, beyond
meaning, beyond existence to theconsistency of nothingness.
Returning them to their origin,thee abyss. Thee fertile void
revealed is pure creativeinspiration. in coum-union, we
impregnate thee abyss; theeomninada; thee all nothingness, with
thee seed ov creation.Cultivating, through will and self-love,
thee infinite beauty andlove that is Creation.
The creative energy in TOPY is always linked with the
darkness. It is through recognition of the shadow (what Radzik
considers the anima liberated by Ecstasy) that new life may see
the light. The fertile void revealed is pure creative
inspiration,'' because an acknowledgment of the unconscious
programming and darkness within us opens the possibility for
their obliteration. Leaving them in the unconscious or repressing
them turns them into monsters, which will sooner or later have to
be dealt with in the form of Charlie Mansons, Chernobyl
disasters, or worse.
Still, to most of Cyberia, the TOPY view is unnecessarily
dark and its treatment of the human organism too mechanistic.
They have an almost puritanical obeisance to the forces they
believe are controlling the universe. Ecstasy produces many
experiences, but fear and paranoia are very rare.
Jody Radzik, for example, believes he once encountered the
spirit of Kali directly. To him, there was nothing dark about it,
he tells me as he makes a graffiti picture of the goddess onto a
billboard at a construction site in downtown Oakland:
I can positively describe that experience as making love
with God. I know that's what it was. Nobody can tell me
different. I will argue until the day I die that that's what my
experience was. It was a wonderful experience and it's led me to
greater opening. Every now and then I do Ecstasy again because it
brings me back to that incredible experience that I can't even
begin to describe. It's there. It's there that I learned how to
make love with God. It's how I offered myself as a sex slave to
God, through MDMA, and it's brought me to really a wonderful
experience of life.''
Several TOPYs who are walking by stop to watch Radzik paint.
Whoah!'' exclaims one girl. They stare in astonishment.
Better be careful, man!'' warns the largest of the guys,
whose nose has at least three rings in it. "Kali is dangerous.
She'll get you really hard. She's the Destroyer.''
The TOPYs shake their heads and walk on in horror and
disdain. Radzik looks up from his work and shouts after them with
a wide smile: Kali has her fist up my ass up to her elbow and
she loves every minute of it!''
As he puts the finishing touches on his masterpiece:
Fucking art critics!''
CYBERIA PART 4
Cut and Paste: Artists in Cyberia
CHAPTER 13
The Evolution of a Cyborg
Cyberia expresses itself as art and literature. Because
Cyberia is still evolving, it is impossible to pin down a single
cyberian aesthetic. The art of Cyberia is a work in progress,
where the forefathers of each genre coexist and even collaborate
with the most recent arrivals. The conflicts over which art and
lifestyles are truly'' cyberian are less a symptom of
divisiveness than they are an indication of the fact that this
aesthetic is still in the process of unfolding. The artistic and
religious debates between the TOPYs and the house kids like Jody
Radzik arise because the different evolutionary levels of Cyberia
all exist simultaneously.
While current state-of-the-art cyberians like Radzik or Mark
Heley claim they have no agenda and believe they are acting
against no one, their belief system was developed out of the
ideas of people who did. Just as E-generation free-form love
raves can be traced back to the radical be-ins'' of the
confrontational sixties, house music and designer beings can be
traced back to the arts and artists of a more admittedly
countercultural movement.
As we attempt to determine exactly what it means to be a
cyberian, and who is succeeding at it best, let's briefly trace
the development of the cyberian aesthetic and ethic in music,
literature, and the arts.
Anti-Muzak
Cyberians most often credit Brian Eno with fathering the
cyber music genre. His invention of the arty Ambient Music paved
the way for Macintosh musicians by taking emphasis off of
structure and placing it on texture. These aren't songs with
beginnings and endings, but extended moments--almost static
experiences. Internally, Eno's music isn't a set of particular
sounds one listens to but a space in which one breathes. Unlike
traditional rock music, which can be considered male or active in
the way it penetrates the listener, Eno's Ambient Music envelops
the listener in an atmosphere of sound. Inspired by Muzak, Eno's
recordings use similar techniques to produce the opposite
effects. In September 1978, Eno wrote the liner notes to his
first Ambient record:
Whereas the extant canned music companies proceed from the
basis of regularizing environments by blanketing their acoustic
and atmospheric idiosyncrasies, Ambient Music is intended to
enhance these. Whereas conventional background music is produced
by stripping away all sense of doubt and uncertainty (and thus
all genuine interest) from the music, Ambient Music retains these
qualities. And whereas their intention is to `brighten' the
environment by adding stimulus to it (thus supposedly alleviating
the tedium of routine tasks and leveling out the natural ups and
downs of the body rhythms) Ambient Music is intended to induce
calm and space to think. Ambient Music must be able to
accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing
one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is
interesting.''
Eno quickly gained popularity on headier college campuses
and even inspired famous precyberian Ambient tripping parties at
Princeton University, where each room of a house called the
Fourth World Center would be set up with a different decor and
Eno record. His was the ideal music for fledgling collegiate
cyberians in their first attempts to synthesize new intellectual
discoveries like the fractal and chaos mathematics with the
equally disorienting psychedelic perspective. This uncertainty is
precisely the territory of Eno's creativity.
One of the motives for being an artist,'' he relates from
personal experience, "is to recreate a condition where you're
actually out of your depth, where you're uncertain, no longer
controlling yourself, yet you're generating something, like
surfing as opposed to digging a tunnel. Tunnel-digging activity
is necessary, but what artists like, if they still like what
they're doing, is the surfing.'' The image of artist-as-surfer
was born, soon to be iterated throughout popular culture.
Eno speaks of riding the dynamics of the system'' rather
than attempting to control things with rules and principles--good
advice for those who would dare venture into the dangerous surf
of future waters, but even more significant for his use of new
mathematics terminology as a way of describing the artistic
endeavor. His musical compositions follow what he calls a
"holographic'' paradigm, where the whole remains unchanged but
texture moves about as individual timbres and resonances are
altered. To some, the music appears as cold, neutral, and boring
as a Siber-Cyberia. To others, it is a rich world of sound,
bursting with boundless creativity and imagination, uninhibited
by the arbitrary demands of drama, structure, and audience
expectation. Eno epitomizes the art student turned musician, and,
true to form, he refuses to shape his compositions around the
skeletal structure of standard songwriting.
His recording techniques become as much his guides as his
tools, and he surfs'' his pieces toward completion, cutting,
pasting, dubbing, and overdubbing. His collaboration with David
Byrne, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, best demonstrates his use
of these techniques and was the inspiration for the industrial,
house, and even rap and hip-hop recording artists who followed.
Like the house song "Your Son is Dead,'' these compositions form
an anthropological scrapbook, sampling voices and sounds from
real life. The record jacket lists the sound bytes used in each
song, which include a radio-show host, a Lebanese mountain
singer, Algerian Muslims, and even an unidentified New York City
exorcist. Each voice is layered over different percussive and
instrumental tracks, sometimes modern sounds over tribal beats,
or vice versa. The effect is a startling compression of time and
culture, where the dance beat of the music is the only regulated
element in a barrage of bird, animal, industrial, television,
radio, random, musical, and human noises. The industrial noises
were soon to become an entire genre of their own.
Eno has remained central to the creation of a cyberian
aesthetic. He gives regular interviews to Mondo 2000 magazine and
is often spotted at virtual reality events and house parties. His
forecast for the future of his own and the rest of popular music
mirrors the evolution of the computer subculture, which abandoned
the clean lines of the Space Odyssey vision for the gritty, urban
realism of Bladerunner and, as we'll see, cyberpunk books like
Neuromancer. Eno says that the new music is built up by
overlaying unrelated codes and bits and pieces of language,
letting them collide to see what new meanings and resonances
emerge. It is music that throws you off balance. It's not all
tightly organized ... a network rather than a structure.''
Coyote 1
The TOPYs, of course, took the idea of a collision-based
nett-work even further. Industrial'' pioneer and TOPY founder
Genesis P. Orridge also bases his music on Muzak, attempting to
create an even more violently antibrainwashing style of
songwriting than Eno's. His original group, Throbbing Gristle,
was the first major industrial band, and even his current
industrial/house band, Psychic TV, incorporates industrial sounds
to deprogram what he sees as a Muzak-hypnotized youth culture. In
his treatise on fighting Muzak, P. Orridge testified:
We openly declared we were inventing an anti-muzak that,
instead of cushioning the sounds of a factory environment, made
use of those very sounds to create rhythmic patterns and
structures that incorporated the liberating effects of music by
unexpected means. This approach is diametrically opposed to the
position of official muzak, as supplied by the Muzak Corporation
of America. Their intention is to disguise stress, to control and
direct human activity in order to generate maximum productivity
and minimum discontent.''
Throbbing Gristle's mission was a social reengineering
effort to decode brainwashing stimuli from the oppressive status
quo. This motivated them to create what they called metabolic''
music, for which cut-and-paste computer techniques were
necessary. They took irritating machine noises, factory sounds,
and other annoying postmodern samples and overlaid them using the
computer to create a new kind of acoustic assault. They knew the
new sound was unpleasant--so much so that they considered it a
"nonentertainment-motivated music.'' Orridge was more interested
in affecting the body directly through the textures of his sounds
than he was in making any aesthetic statement through
entertaining songs or ear-pleasing harmonic structures.
The bare-bones quality of his music was thought to go right
past the analytic mind, de-composing the listener's expectations
about music. Making use of Muzak's painstaking research into the
effects of various frequencies and pulses on the physiology and
psychology of listeners, Orridge picked his sounds on the basis
of their ability to decondition social restraints on thought and
the body.'' Orridge claims certain passages of his songs can even
induce orgasms. In industrial music, it was not important that
listeners understood what was happening to them any more than it
was in Muzak technology. The music needed only to deprogram the
audience in any way available.
For his current, more house-oriented Psychic TV project,
Orridge has made a more self-conscious effort to expose Muzak and
the societal values it supports. The music still contains
deconditioning elements, but is a more transparent parody of
Muzak techniques. Listeners can feel the way the music works and
enjoy it. It is less angry and abrasive because it no longer
seeks to provoke fear and anxiety as its weapon against
passivity-inducing Muzak. Instead, this lighter music invites
thought and even humor by creating new and greater pleasures.
Orridge is not merely fighting against Muzak; he is trying to do
it better than they are. He not only deprograms his audience but
reprograms as well, and makes listeners fully aware of the
conditioning techniques of modern society in the process. This
creates what Orridge calls a distorted mirror reflecting Muzak
back on itself.'' He believes he can show his listeners and
followers--through self-consciously cut-and-paste house
music--that the technologies in place around them can be
successfully analyzed and reversed. They contain, in code, "the
seeds of their own destruction and hopefully the structure that
nurtures it.''
Cut and paste technology, applied to music, becomes a
political statement. While beginning as a confrontational assault
on programming, it developed into a race to beat Muzak at its own
game. Muzak teaches that the world is smooth and safe. There is
no such thing as a discontinuity. If a shopper in the grocery
store experiences a discontinuity, he may take a moment to
reevaluate his purchases: Did I buy that because I wanted it, or
was I still influenced by the commercial I saw yesterday?'' If a
voter experiences a discontinuity, the incumbency is challenged.
Muzak's continuous soundtrack promotes the notion that we are in
a world that behaves in an orderly, linear fashion. Cut-and-paste
music like Psychic TV is an exercise in discontinuity. But rather
than angrily shattering people's illusions about a continuous
reality, it brings its listeners into a heightened state of
pleasure. The teaching technique is bliss induction directly
through the sound technology:
We've been saying that pleasure has become a weapon now.
You know, confrontation just doesn't work. They know all about
that game, the authorities, the conglomerates, and even the
supermarkets, they know all those scams. So straight-on
confrontation isn't necessarily the most effective tactic at the
moment. Ironically, what used to be the most conservative thing,
which was dance music, is now the most radical. And that's where
the most radical ideas are being put across, and the most jarring
combinations of sounds and sources as well.''
Filtering Down to the Posse
Many musical groups in various corners of Cyberia took their
cue from the industrial and early house eras. We link up with our
own crowd in the form of a house band Jody Radzik promotes, Goat
Guys from Hell. The guys in this group got to know one another at
Barrington, a cooperative house for some of the most artsy and
intellectual students at Berkeley. This was the sort of place you
could easily find forty people tripping to Eno records or Psychic
TV and, needless to say, a household the university was happy to
have an excuse to shut down after one student committed suicide
on the premises.
But even after their building was confiscated, a core group
remained true to the Barrington ideals modeled after the
philosophies of musical pioneers like G.P. Orridge. As the band
GGFH first formed, they chose to use anti-Muzak recording
techniques similar to those by Psychic TV, but for less overtly
political purposes. The closer we get to today's house music and
pure cyberian enthusiasm, in fact, the farther we get from any
external agenda. To GGFH, the enemy is not the authorities, but
the repression of the darkness within ourselves.
But as I sit at Pico Paco Tacos with GGFH members Ghost, a
slightly scary-looking big white guy in black guy's rapper
clothes, and Brian, a toonish, long-haired Iro-Celtic
keyboardist, I learn that implicit in their sampling techniques
are some strong points of view about our society. Brian (the
Celt) takes a break from his veggie burrito to explain:
We take American culture in all its fucked-up-ness, its
expressions of violence and sensationalism of violence--and stick
it back in its face. Our culture tries to suppress and repress
the negative impulses and then people like Ricky Ramirez go off
and do these sick things. Then the culture feeds on the sick
things and trivializes or sensationalizes them.''
As a Spanish-language muzaky version of I've Got You Under
My Skin'' plays on a radio in the kitchen, more tacos arrive,
along with Jody Radzik, who begins to iterate his take on the
band: "GGFH is the shadow of our culture. These guys are
channeling the global shadow. Their album is a kind of Jungian
therapy on a social level.'' Ghost shrugs. Brian nods, but
doesn't fully agree:
The guys that we're talking about are people like Ricky
Ramirez, being sentenced to death saying, `See you at
Disneyland,' or mass murderers at McDonald's.'' He swallows his
food and continues in a more collegiate dialect: "The polar
opposites in our culture are very interesting to us.''
Radzik's enthusiasm prevents him from allowing his prodigy
to speak further. The more of a good person you think you are,
the more of a model citizen you think you are, the bigger the
evil shit you've got stored away back there. You can never purge
it. You've got to accept it. You allow for it, and then it
becomes harmless. The cultural repression of the shadow is what
is leading to the high level of violence in the world today.''
The juxtapositions of these polar opposites--the post office
order and chaotic bloody death, McDonald's clowns and automatic
weapons, Ramirez and Disneyland--are the subject matter of GGFH.
This is why their style, then, is correspondingly polar and
depends on the cut-and-paste computer techniques that can bring
disparate elements together. Melody takes a back seat to texture,
and again we see musicians creating atmospheres and timeless
moments instead of structured pieces with heroic journeys. The
music has moved from an LSD sensibility to one of Ecstasy.
Likewise, Brian's composition process is a
feel-your-way-through-it experience. He'll begin with a sampled
sound, then tweak knobs and dials until he's developed a texture.
Like Eno, he thinks of sound waves as currents to be surfed, and
consciously gives himself over to the sound, working as a mere
conduit for its full expression. ( The sound simply demands to be
treated a certain way.'') But this Brian's surfboard is language
and image from popular culture: "We find samples and cut-ups that
fit with the atmosphere of the sound. We've got one that's very
dreamy so we used a sample of Tim Leary saying `flow to the pulse
of life.' Another is a real hard dance beat, so it has Madonna
sampled saying `fuck me'--which I think is really cool because if
you wanted to put Madonna into two words, `fuck me' is pretty
good.''
Radzik can't resist making another comparison: It's like
me! I've sampled all these different religions, and created my
own belief system. That includes psychedelics.''
House music is never remembered for its melody but for a
particular texture--what genre songwriters call the main
ingredient.'' Like Eno, house composers start with the sound,
then surf the system that forms around it. The songwriting
process is not exactly random--it depends on the composer's taste
and the samples he's assembled, but the machinery does take on a
life of its own. Cyber artists like GGFH experience a kind of
cyber journey as they create and layer a given piece. Although
listeners might detect only one basic set of textures, each
moment of the song can be decompressed like a DMT trip into any
number of more linear experiences.
Climax
Sarah Drew, girlfriend of Mondo chief R.U. Sirius, is a
house musician/performance artist who herself needs to be
decompressed in order to be understood. The final frontier of
house artist, she's a consciously self-mutated psychedelic
cyborg. Eno developed the idea of music as a texture; Orridge
exploited it; GGFH plays with it; Sarah Drew lives it.
She just showed up at the door one day,'' recalls R.U.
Sirius about Sarah's arrival at the Bay Area and the Mondo 2000
headquarters. "And I just said. 'Okay. Yeah. Looks good to me!' I
guess it was a sexual thing.''
Sarah--a beautiful young woman from an extremely wealthy
family--turned on to psychedelics and the notion of designer
reality as a child. Her social status gave her the luxury and
time to choose exactly who--and what--she wanted to be. By the
time Sarah entered college, her life had become an ongoing art
project. When she saw a Mondo magazine, she knew it was something
she wanted to be part of--not simply to get on the staff, but to
become Mondo 2000.
First step: to link her body with the brain from which Mondo
emanates. Within a few weeks, she and R.U. Sirius were a couple,
so to speak, and they lived together in a room in the Mondo 2000
mansion, publisher Queen Mu's cyberdelic answer to the Hefner
estate.
We're at the aftermath of Queen Mu's birthday party. It is
about three in the morning, and almost everyone is in the same
altered state. The remaining guests include Walter Kirn, a GQ
reporter doing a piece on Mondo, to whom Sarah is speaking in a
psychedelic gibberish. The poor boy is having a hard time telling
whether Sarah's trying to seduce him or drive him insane.
She's been talking about a past DMT experience, then
suddenly she cuts herself off in midsentence and pins the
journalist against the refrigerator, making a rapid
ch-ch-ch-ch-ch'' sound while widening her eyes. Perhaps she is
describing the frame-within-a-frame-within-a-frame zoom-out
feeling on psychedelics, when one suddenly experiences a broad
and sudden shift in perspective. Or maybe she's pretending to be
a snake. A few other heads turn as she looks into Walter's eyes,
flips back her long brown hair, and, her mouth an inch from his,
again spits out "ch-ch-ch-ch-ch''
One Mondo newcomer explains to the mesmerized New Yorker
that Sarah means to express the feeling of many scenes receding
suddenly and the accompanying realization of the kind one gets
when he conceives an idea from hundreds of points of view at
once. But the veterans know what's really going on: Sarah is a
media personality. She's a multimedia manifestation of the
magazine itself. She's leaped off the page. She's a house song.
She's a human cyborg.
At about four o'clock, Sarah turns off the lights for the
half-dozen survivors of the psychedelic excursion and plays a
cassette of freshly recorded music called Infinite Personality
Complex.
The listeners close their eyes and the stereo speakers
explode with a vocal fission. Moaning, keening, and howling make
up most of the sound, but it is so deep, so rich, so layered--or
at least so damn loud--that it creates a definite bodily
response. To listen to her music is to have the experience of
your brain being dehydrated and reconstituted many times per
second. Come inside my little yoni,'' her lyrics iterate over
themselves. Somehow, Sarah Drew's music is the real thing. This
is a woman on the very edge of something, and even if that
something is sanity itself, her work and persona merit
exploration.
By dawn, everyone has gone to bed except Sarah, Walter (who
is no longer in this thing for the story), and R.U. Sirius, who
watches the whole scene with detached amusement, utterly unafraid
of losing his girlfriend to the journalist.
As Walter talks to Sarah, she manifests totally. Sarah is a
magazine article. She groks'' what he says, making an mm sound
again and again as she nods her head. This is not a normal,
conversational acknowledgment she's making, but a forced feedback
loop of rapidly accelerating mms--as if the faster Sarah mms, the
more she's understanding, and the more she's prodding him on to
explore deeper into the phenomenon he's describing. He's simply
trying to tell her he's attracted to her.
But Sarah is a cyborg, and finally answers his question with
a long discourse about virtual space. Our current forms of
communication--verbal and physical--are obsolete, she explains.
Someday she will be able to project, through thought, a
holographic image into the air, into which someone will project
his own holographic mental image.
Then we would literally see what the other means,'' she
borrows from Terence McKenna, "and see what we both mean
together.'' It would be the ultimate in intimacy, she tells him,
touching his arm gently, because they would become linked into
one being.
The reporter has had enough. But wouldn't it be much easier
to just fuck?''
Six months later, having moved to the next evolutionary
level, Sarah recalls what she was going through in the Infinite
Personality period. I remember I would reach into my mind and
... ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch. It was the way I had of expressing what I
was experiencing at that time. Sometimes I'm a very, very, very
high conduit. It was like a huge information download.''
For Sarah, the relationship of DNA, computers, psychedelics,
and music is not conceptual but organic. According to Drew, her
Infinite Personality Complex served as a highly dense
information loop.'' But, like her work, her own DNA was
mutating--evolving into a denser informational structure. As an
artist, she became capable of downloading the time-wave-zero
fractal through her own resonating DNA, and then translating it
into music. Meanwhile, she was also becoming a human, biological
manifestation of the downloading process, evolving--like her
society--by becoming more intimately linked to technology.
I was becoming what you can call a cyborg. It was time for
me to make that synthesis. In this kind of work, you are the
becoming--not an artist separate from the medium. Then you can
even be in multiple places at once. Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch!''
Artist as art object goes way back, but not artist as cyborg
or information loop time traveler. The other particular advantage
of becoming a cyborg is, of course, that it enables the artist to
interact fully with her computer and other high-tech recording
equipment. Sarah's current house project is an adaptation of the
Bacchae, for which she's using an EMU synthesizer/sampler. She
makes a moan or a whisper into a microphone that the EMU records
digitally. Then she replays, overdubs, and manipulates the sounds
with computers. Finally, she ends up with a house recording that,
again, recreates a timeless, skinless sexual experience through
computers.
It starts out with soft, light sounds and whisperings, then
moves into a sort of ecstasy. As it starts to build, the
breathing becomes the rhythms, and the rhythms become the
breathing. It's the sound of ecstasy happening. And I have a
male, Dionysian figure, going into orgasm as he's being torn
apart. And it ends up in a climax. All in five minutes.''
In addition, using the 3-D holographic'' sound techniques
developed for virtual reality systems, Sarah creates a
three-dimensional acoustic sound space where the audience can
experience sounds as real, physical presences. The whispers seem
to come from all sides. This is not just a "sens-u-round'' effect
but a genuine cyberian effort in structure, style, and meaning.
I'm talking about a holographic sense of presence and
movement,'' she insists. "We can take people through time that
way by creating a space with sound. It'll move people back in
time.''
By creating a space with sound, Sarah makes a time machine
in which she can transport her audience--not by bringing them
into a different space but by changing the space that they're
already in. The implication of her music is that time does not
really exist, since it can be compressed into a single moment.
The moment itself, of course, is Dionysian; orgiastic bliss is
the only inroad to timelessness. Because Sarah creates her sound
space out of her own voice and cyborg presence, she feels her
music is a way of taking her audience into herself. Her ultimate
sexual statement is to make love to her entire audience and
create in them the bliss response.
Despite her flirtatious manner and flippancy about orgasm,
Sarah takes human sexuality quite seriously. As several recording
engineers carry equipment into Sarah's basement studio to mix the
final tracks for her Bacchae record, she makes a startling
admission: she'll probably perform with low energy'' today
because she had an abortion yesterday. For lack of anything
better to say, one of the engineers asks her how it was.
I took acid before I went in,'' she says, "because I really
wanted to experience it. It was a purge.''
To average ears, this sounds like intense, artsy beatnik
nonsense, but Sarah's unflinching commitment to experiencing and
understanding her passage through time has earned her recognition
as one of the most fully realized participants in Cyberia.
Everyone in the scene who knows Sarah--and almost everybody
does--is a little frightened of her, but also just a wee bit in
awe.
She is most definitely for real, and however bizarre she
gets, everything she says and does is in earnest. Even her
affectations--weird sounds, strange hats, pseudointellectual
accent, and name dropping--are done innocently, almost like a
child trying on costumes to test the reality of each. Sarah's
life is absolutely a work in progress, and her pieces are
indistinguishable from her self.
To have an abortion on acid,'' muses R.U. Sirius the day
afterward. "It hasn't seemed to affect her too much. It was
intense, and she cried, but one of the things I like about her is
she can have these incredibly intense experiences, and she
expects them.''
The discontinuity training is complete. Cyberian music has
evolved into a cyborg.
CHAPTER 14
Hypertextual Forays
The writers of Cyberia underwent a similar evolution. The
literary culture of Cyberia began as a dark, negative worldview
but later developed into a multimedia celebration of timelessness
and designer reality. Today, the literature of Cyberia--like its
music--has become personified by cyberians themselves, who adopt
into their own lives the ethos of a fictional designer reality.
The Interzone
Beat'' hero William Burroughs didn't start the cyberpunk
movement in literature, but he foresaw it, most notably in his
novel Naked Lunch (1959). Although written long before video
games or the personal computer existed, Burroughs's works utilize
a precybernetic hallucinatory dimension called the Interzone,
where machines mutate into creatures, and people can be
controlled telepathically by "senders'' who communicate messages
via psychedelics introduced into the victims' bloodstreams.
Burroughs's description of the psychic interface prophesizes
a virtual reality nightmare: Senders gain control of physical
movements, mental processes, emotional responses, and apparent
sensory impressions by means of bioelectrical signals injected
into the nervous system of the subject. ... The biocontrol
apparatus [is] the prototype of one-way telepathic control.''
Once indoctrinated, the drug user becomes an unwilling agent for
one of the Interzone's two main rivaling powers. The battle is
fought entirely in the hallucinatory dimension, and involves
"jacking in'' (as William Gibson will later call it) through
intelligent mutated typewriters.
Burroughs's famed prismatic'' style of writing--almost a
literary equivalent of Brian Eno's Ambient Music--reads more like
jazz than the narrative works of his contemporaries. Each word or
turn of phrase can lead the reader down an entirely new avenue of
thought or plot, imitating the experience of an interdimensional
hypertext adventure. But as the pioneer of nonmimetic
hallucinatory and even pornographic literature, Burroughs
suffered condemnation from the courts and, worse, occasional
addiction to the chemicals that offered him access to the far
reaches of his consciousness. Unlike the cyberian authors of
today, Burroughs was not free simply to romp in the uncharted
regions of hyperspace, but instead--like early psychedelic
explorers--was forced to evaluate his experiences against the
accepted, "sane'' reality of the very noncyberian world in which
he lived. The morphogenetic field, as it were, was not yet fully
formed.
This made Burroughs feel alone and mentally ill. In a letter
to Allen Ginsburg, he wrote that he hoped the writing of Naked
Lunch would somehow cure'' him of his homosexuality. As David
Cronenberg, who later made a film adaptation of the book,
comments, "even at that time ... even these guys, the hippest of
the hip, were still capable of thinking of themselves as sick
guys who could be cured by some act of art or will or drugs.''
Burroughs's early pre-Cyberia, as a result, became as dark,
paranoid, and pessimistic as the author himself. It was three
decades before cyberian literature could shake off this tone. In
the current climate, Burroughs has been able to adopt a more
full-blown cyber aesthetic that, while still cynically expressed,
calls for the liberation of humanity from the constraints of the
body through radical technologically enhanced mutation:
Evolution did not come to a reverent halt with homo
sapiens. An evolutionary step that involves biologic alterations
is irreversible. We now must take such a step if we are to
survive at all. And it had better be good. ... We have the
technology to recreate a flawed artifact, and to produce improved
and variegated models of the body designed for space conditions.
I have predicted that the transition from time into space will
involve biologic alteration. Such alterations are already
manifest.''
It wasn't until the 1990s (and close to his own nineties)
that Burroughs gained access to other forms of media, which more
readily accepted his bizarre cyberian aesthetic. Filmmaker Gus
Van Sant (Drugstore Cowboy; My Own Private Idaho) collaborated
with Burroughs on a video version of the satiric poem
Thanksgiving Prayer,'' which later appeared in freeze-frame form
in Mondo 2000. But long before Burroughs had himself successfully
crossed over into other media, his aesthetic and his worldview
had found their way there.
Jacking in to the Matrix
Cyberpunk proper was born out of a pessimistic view similar
to that of William Burroughs. The people, stories, and milieu of
William Gibson's books are generally credited with spawning an
entirely new aesthetic in the science fiction novel, and
cross-pollinating with films like Bladerunner, Max Headroom, and
Batman. Taking its cue from comic books, skateboard magazines,
and video games more than from the lineage of great sci-fi
writers like Asimov and Bradbury, cyberpunk literature is a
gritty portrait of a future world not too unlike our own, with
computer hackers called cowboys,'' black market genetic
surgeons, underground terrorist-punkers called Moderns who wear
chameleonlike camouflage suits, contraband software, drugs, and
body parts, and personality imprints of dead hackers called
"constructs'' who jet as disembodied consciousness through the
huge computer net called the matrix.'' The invention of the
matrix, even as a literary construct, marks the birth of
cyberpunk fiction. Here, the matrix describes itself to Case,
Gibson's reluctant cowboy hero:
The matrix has its roots in primitive arcade games,'' said
the voice-over, "in the early graphics programs and military
experimentation with cranial jacks.'' On the Sony, a
two-dimensional space war faded behind a forest of
mathematically generated ferns, demonstrating the spacial
possibilities of logarithmic spirals; cold blue military
footage burned through, lab animals wired into test systems,
helmets feeding into fire control circuits of tanks and war
planes. Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced
daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation,
by children being taught mathematical concepts. ... A
graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of
every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity.
Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters
and constellations of data. Like city lights ... receding
...''
The matrix is a fictional extension of our own worldwide
computer net, represented graphically to the user, much like VR
or a video game, and experienced via dermatrodes, which send
impulses through the skin directly into the brain. After years
away from cyberspace, Case is given the precious opportunity to
hack through the matrix once again. Gibson's description voiced
the ultimate hacker fantasy for the first time:
He closed his eyes.
Found the ridged face of the power stud.
And in the bloodlit dark behind his eyes, silver phosphenes
boiling in from the edge of space, hypnagogic images jerking
past like film compiled from random frames. Symbols,
figures, faces, a blurred, fragmented mandala of visual
information.
Please, he prayed, now-A gray disk, the color of Chiba sky.
Now-Disk beginning to rotate, faster, becoming a sphere of paler
gray. Expanding-And flowed, flowered for him, fluid neon origami trick, the
unfolding of his distanceless home, his country, transparent
3D chessboard extending to infinity. Inner eye opening to
the stepped scarlet pyramid of the Eastern Seaboard Fission
Authority burning beyond the green cubes of Mitsubishi Bank
of America, and high and very far away he saw the spiral
arms of military systems, forever beyond his reach.
And somewhere he was laughing, in a white-painted loft,
distant fingers caressing the deck, tears of release
streaking his face.''
The invention of cyberspace as a real place is the most
heralded of the cyberpunk genre's contributions to fiction and
the arts. William Gibson and his colleague/collaborator Bruce
Sterling paint vivid portraits of a seamy urban squalor
contrasted by an ultra-high-tech web of electronic sinews,
traveled by mercenary hackers, digital cowboys, artificial
intelligences, and disembodied minds.
These authors acknowledge the discrepancy between the
promise of technological miracles, such as imprinting
consciousness onto a silicon chip, and their application in a
real world still obsessed with power, money, and sex. Their backs
are the literary equivalent of industrial music, exploring a
world where machines and technology have filled every available
corner, and regular people are forced to figure out a way to turn
these technologies against the creators and manipulators of
society.
Contributing to the pessimistic quality of these works is
another idea shared with the industrial movement--that human
beings are basically programmable. I saw his profile,'' one
character remarks about another. "He's a kind of compulsive
Judas. Can't get off sexually unless he knows he's betraying the
object of his desire. That's what the file says.'' And we know
that means he can't act otherwise. Characters must behave
absolutely true to their programming, having no choice but to
follow the instructions of their emotional templates. Even Molly,
the closest thing to a love-interest in Neuromancer, leaves her
boyfriend with a written, self-defeating apology: ITS THE WAY IM
WIRED I GUESS.''
Like Burroughs's reluctant hero in Naked Lunch, Case's
addictive personality is exploited by higher powers, and he must
pay for the joy of jacking in by becoming an agent for a dark,
interdimensional corporation. Also like Burroughs's prismatic
style, the feeling of these books is more textural than
structural. Like fantasy role-playing, computer games, or
Nintendo adventures, these books are to be appreciated for the
ride. Take the opening of Gibson and Sterling's novel, The
Difference Engine:
Composite image, optically encoded by escort-craft of the
trans-Channel airship Lord Brunel: aerial view of suburban
Cherbourg, October 14, 1905.
A villa, a garden, a balcony.
Erase the balcony's wrought-iron curves, exposing a
bath-chair and its occupant. Reflected sunset glints from
the nickel-plate of the chair's wheel-spokes.
The occupant, owner of the villa, rests her arthritic hands
upon fabric woven by a Jacquard loom.
These hands consist of tendons, tissue, jointed bone.
Through quiet processes of time and information, threads
within the human cells have woven themselves into a woman.
Her name is Sybil Gerard.
Like the characters in Fantastic Voyage, we move through a
multitiered fractal reality, enjoying the lens of a camera, the
dexterity of a computer design program, the precision of a
microscope, the information access of an historical database, the
intimacy of a shared consciousness, and, finally, the distance
and objectivity of a narrative voice that can identify this
entity by its name. The way in which we move through the text
says as much if not more about the cyberpunk worldview than does
its particular post-sci-fi aesthetic. Writers like Gibson and
Sterling hate to be called cyberpunk'' because they know their
writing is not just an atmosphere or flavor. While this branch of
fiction may have launched the cyberpunk milieu, it also embodies
some of the principles of the current renaissance in its thematic
implications.
Even the above passage from The Difference Engine
demonstrates a sense of holographic reality, where identity is
defined by the consensual hallucination of a being's component
parts. Similarly, like a DMT trip, a shamanic journey, or a
hypertext computer program, reality in these books unfolds in a
nonlinear fashion. A minor point may explode into the primary
adventure at hand, or a character may appear, drop a clue or
warning, and then vanish. Furthermore, these stories boldly
contrast the old with the new, and the biological with the
technical, reminding us that society does not progress in a
smooth, curvilinear fashion.
Sterling's Schismatrix, for example, pits the technical
against the organic in a world war between Mechanists, who have
mastered surgical manipulation of the human body through advanced
implant technology, and Shapers, who accomplish similar
biological manipulation through conscious control over their own
DNA coding. This is the same metaphorical struggle that systems
mathematician Ralph Abraham has explored throughout human
history, between the organic spiritual forces--which he calls
Chaos, Gaia, and Eros--and the more mechanistic forces embodied
by technology, patriarchal domination, and monotheism. In fact,
Sterling's own worldview is based on a nonlinear systems
mathematics model.
Society is a complex system,'' he writes for an article in
Whole Earth Review "and there's no sort of A-yields-B business
here. It's an iteration. A yields B one day and then AB is going
to yield something else the next day, and it's going to yield
something else the next and there's 365 days in a year, and it
takes 20 years for anything to happen.''
Just as these writers incorporate the latest principles of
chaos math, new technology, and computer colonization into their
stories and milieu, they are also fascinated by exploring what
these breakthroughs imply about the nature of human experience.
William Gibson knew nothing about computers when he wrote
Neuromancer. Most of the details came from fantasy: If I'd
actually known anything about computers, I doubt if I'd been able
to do it.'' He was motivated instead by watching kids in video
arcades: "I could see in the physical intensity of their postures
how rapt these kids were. It was like one of those closed systems
out of a Pynchon novel: you had this feedback loop, with photons
coming off the screen into the kids' eyes, the neurons moving
through their bodies, electrons moving through the computer. And
these kids clearly believed in the space these games projected.
Everyone who works with computers seems to develop an intuitive
faith that there's some kind of actual space behind the screen.''
Gibson's inspiration is Thomas Pynchon, not Benoit
Mandelbrot, and his focus is human functioning, not computer
programming. The space behind the screen--the consensual
hallucination--is Cyberia in its first modern incarnation. Gibson
and his cohorts are cyberpunk writers not because they're
interested in hackers but because they are able to understand the
totality of human experience as a kind of neural net. Their
stories, rooted partially in traditional, linear fiction and
common sense, mine the inconsistencies of modern culture's
consensual hallucinations in the hope of discovering what it
truly means to be a human being. Their permutations on
consciousness--a cowboy's run in the matrix, an artificial
intelligence, an imprinted personality--are not celebrations of
technology but a kind of thought experiment aimed at
conceptualizing the experience of life.
As ushers rather than participants in Cyberia, Gibson and
Sterling are not optimistic about the future of such experience.
Most criticism of their work stems from the authors' rather
nihilistic conclusions about mankind's relationship to technology
and the environment. Gibson's characters in Neuromancer enjoy
their bodies and the matrix, but more out of addictive
impulsiveness than true passion.
Gibson admits, One of the reasons, I think, that I use
computers in that way is that I got really interested in these
obsessive things. I hadn't heard anybody talk about anything with
that intensity since the Sixties. It was like listening to people
talk about drugs.'' The cyberian vision according to these, the
original cyberpunk authors, is a doomed one, where the only truth
to be distilled is that a person's consciousness has no spirit.
In a phone conversation, Bruce Sterling shares his similar
worldview over the shouts and laughter of his children: If you
realize that the world is nonlinear and random, then it means
that you can be completely annihilated by chaos for no particular
reason at all. These things happen. There's no cosmic justice.
And that's a disquieting thing to have to face. It's damaging to
people's self-esteem.''
Both Sterling and Gibson experienced the cyberian vision,''
but their conclusions are dark and hopeless. Rather than trashing
the old death-based paradigm, they simply incorporate chaos,
computers, and randomness into a fairly mechanistic model.
Sterling believes in systems math, cultural viruses, and the
promise of the net, but, like Bruce Eisner, he doesn't see
technology as inherently liberating. "I worry about quotidian
things like the greenhouse effect and topsoil depletion and
desertification and exploding populations and species extinction.
It's like it's not gonna matter if you've got five thousand meg
on your desktop if outside your door its like a hundred twelve
degrees Fahrenheit for three weeks in a row.''
While they weren't ready to make the leap into cyberian
consciousness, Gibson and Sterling were crucial to the formation
of Cyberia, and their works took the first step toward imagining
a reality beyond time or locational space. These writers have
refused, however, to entertain the notion of human beings
surviving the apocalypse, or even of real awareness outside the
body. Hyperspace is a hallucination, and death is certainly real
and permanent. Even Case's friend, the one disembodied
consciousness in Neuromancer, knows he's not real: his only wish
is to be terminated.
It has been left to younger, as-yet less recognized writers,
like WELL denizen Mark Laidlaw, to invent characters whose
celebration of Cyberia outweigh the futility of life in a
decaying world. One of his stories, Probability Pipeline,''
which he wrote with the help of cyber novelist and mathematician
Rudy Rucker, is about two friends, Delbert, a surfer, and Zep, a
surfboard designer, who invent the ultimate board, or "stick'':
one that, utilizing chaos mathematics, can create monster waves.
Dig it, Del, I'm not going to say this twice. The ocean is
a chaotic dynamical system with sensitive dependence on
initial conditions. Macro info keeps being folded in while
micro info keeps being excavated. ... I'm telling you, dude.
Say I'm interested in predicting or influencing the waves
over the next few minutes. Waves don't move all that fast,
so anything that can influence the surf here in the next few
minutes is going to depend on the surfspace values within a
neighboring area of, say, one square kilometer. I'm only
going to fine-grain down to the millimeter level, you wave,
so we're looking at, uh, one trillion sample points. Million
squared. Don't interrupt again, Delbert, or I won't build
you the chaotic attractor.''
You're going to build me a new stick?''
I got the idea when you hypnotized me last night. Only I'd
forgotten till just now. Ten fractal surf levels at a
trillion sample points. We model that with an imipolex CA,
we use a nerve-patch modem outset unit to send the rider's
surfest desires down a co-ax inside the leash, the CA does a
chaotic back simulation of the fractal inset, the board does
a jiggly-doo, and ...''
`TSUUUNAMIIIIII!'' screamed Delbert, leaping up on the bench
and striking a boss surfer pose.
Laidlaw and Rucker's world is closer to the cyberian
sentiment because the characters are not politicians, criminals,
or unwilling participants in a global, interdimensional battle.
They are surfers, riding the wave of chaos purely for pleasure.
To them, the truth of Cyberia is a sea of waves--chaotic, maybe,
but a playground more than anything else. The surfers'
conclusions about chaos are absolutely cyberian: sport, pleasure,
and adventure are the only logical responses to a fractal
universe. Like the first house musicians who came after Genesis
P. Orridge's hostile industrial genre, dispensing with leather
and chains and adopting the fashions of surfwear and
skateboarding, these younger writers have taken the first leap
toward ecstasy by incorporating surf culture into their works.
Laidlaw first thought of writing the story, he explains to
me in the basement office of his San Francisco Mission District
home, at Rudy's house, where he had a Mandelbrot book with a
picture of a wave. I looked at it, and realized that a surfboard
can take you into this stuff.'' Laidlaw rejects the negative
implications of Gibson's hardwired world and refuses to believe
that things are winding down.
The apocalypse? I see that as egotism!'' Likewise,
abandoning the rules of traditional structure ("plot,'' Laidlaw
explains, merely affords comfort in a hopeless situation''),
Laidlaw follows his own character's advice, and surfs his way
through the storytelling.
Get rad. Be an adventurist. You'll be part of the system,
man,'' explains the character Zep, and eventually that's what
happens. Like Green Fire, who on his visionquests must control
his imagination lest his fantasies become real, Del accidentally
sends too many thought signals through his surfboard/chaotic
attractor to the nuclear power plant at the ocean shore and blows
it up; but, as luck would have it, he, Zep, and their girl Jen
escape in an interdimensional leap:
The two waves intermingled in a chaotic mindscape
abstraction. Up and up they flew, the fin scraping sparks from
the edges of the unknown. Zep saw stars swimming under them, a
great spiral of stars.
Everything was still, so still.
And then Del's hand shot out. Across the galactic wheel a
gleaming figure shared their space. It was coming straight at
them. Rider of the tides of night, carver of blackhole beaches
and neutron tubes. Bent low on his luminous board--graceful,
poised, inhuman.
`Stoked,' said Jen. `God's a surfer!'''
The only real weapon against the fearful vision of a cold
siber-Cyberia is joy. Appreciation of the space gives the surfer
his bearings and balance in Cyberia.
This is why art and literature are seen as so crucial to
coping there: they serve as celebratory announcements from a
world moving into hyperspace. No matter how dark or pessimistic
their milieus, these authors still delight in revealing the
textures and possibilities of a world free of physical
constraints, boring predictability, and linear events.
Toasters, Band-Aids, Blood
Comic book artists, who already prided themselves on their
non-linear storytelling techniques, were the first to adopt the
milieu of cyberian literature into another medium. Coming from a
tradition of superheroes and clearcut battles between good and
evil, comics tend to focus on the more primitive aspects of
Cyberia, and are usually steeped in dualism, terror, and
violence. While younger comic artists have ventured into a
post-nihilistic vision of Cyberia, the first to bring cyberian
aesthetics into the world of superheroes, like the original
cyberpunk authors, depicted worlds as dark as they could draw
them.
Batman, the brooding caped crusader, was one of the first of
the traditional comic book characters to enjoy a cyberpunk
rebirth, when Frank Miller created The Dark Knight Returns series
in the 1980's. As Miller surely realized, Batman is a
particularly fascinating superhero to bring to Cyberia because he
is a mere motal and, like us, he must use human skills to cope
with the post-modern apocalypse. The mature Batman, as wrought by
Miller, is fraught with inconsistencies, self-doubt, and
resentment toward a society gone awry. He is the same Batman who
fought criminals in earlier, simpler decades, who now, as an
older man, is utterly unequipped for the challenges of Cyberia.
Miller's Dark Knight series interpolates a human superhero
into the modern social-media scheme. Commentators in frames the
shape of TV sets interpret each of Batman's actions as they
occur. Newsmedia criticism running throughout the story reminds
the audience that Batman's world has become a datasphere: Each of
his actions effect more than just the particular criminal he has
beaten up--they have an iterative influence on the viewing
public.
For example, a Ted Koppel-like newsman conducts a TV
interview with a social scientist about Batman's media identity.
The psychologist responds:
Picture the public psyche as a vast, moist membrane--through
the media, Batman has struck this membrane a vicious blow,
and it has recoiled. Hence your misleading statistics. But
you see, Ted, the membrane is flexible. Here the more
significant effects of the blow become calculable, even
predictable. To wit--every anti-social act can be traced to
irresponsible media input. Given this, the presence of such
an aberrant, violent force in the media can only lead to
anti-social programming.
The iterative quality of the media within the comic book
story creates a particularly cyberian looking glass'' milieu
that has caught on with other comic book writers as a
free-for-all visual sampling of diary entries, computer
printouts, television reports, advertisements, narratives from
other characters as well as regular dialogue and narration. In
addition, the comic books make their impact by sampling brand
names, media identities, and cultural icons from the present, the
past, and an imagined future. Comics, always an ideal form for
visual collage, here become vehicles for self-consciously
gathered iconic samples. This chaos of imagery, in a world Batman
would prefer to dominate with order and control is precisely what
cause his anguish.
In the Batman comics we witness the ultimate battle of
icons, as Batman and Joker conduct a cyberian war of images in a
present-day datasphere. They no longer battle physically but
idealistically, and their weapons are the press and television
coverage. This becomes particulary ironic when the reader pauses
to remember that Batman and the Joker are comic book characters
themselves--of course they would behave this way. They are their
media identities, which is why their manifestation in the
datasphere is so important to them. Their battle is a
metaconflict, framed within a cut-and-paste media.
So poor Batman, a character out of the patriarchy (he is,
after all, avenging the murder of his father), finds himself
caught in a nightmare as he tries to control post-modern chaos.
In Frank Miller's words, Batman imposes his order on the world;
he is an absolute control freak. The Joker is Batman's most
maddening opponent. He represents the chaos Batman despises, the
chaos that killed his parents.'' Living in a comic book world,
it's no wonder that Batman is going crazy while the Joker seems
to gain strength over the years.
This is why the experience of Miller's world is more like
visiting an early acid house club than reading a traditional
comic book. Miller initiates a reexploration of the nonlinear and
sampling potential of the comic-book medium, pairing facing pages
that at first glance seem unrelated but actually comment on each
other deeply. A large, full-page abstract drawing of Batman may
be juxtaposed with small cells of action scenes, television
analysis, random comments, song lyrics, or newsprint. As the eye
wanders in any direction it chooses, the reader's disorientation
mirrors Batman's confusion at fighting for good in a world where
there are no longer clear, clean lines to define one's position.
The comic-book reader relaxes only when he is able to accept the
chaotic, nonlinear quality of Miller's text and enjoy it for the
ride. Then, the meaning of Batman's story becomes clear, hovering
somewhere between the page and the viewer's mind.
Even more grotesque, disorienting, and cyber-extreme is the
work of Bill Sienkiewicz, whose Stray Toasters series epitomizes
the darkest side of the cyberpunk comic style. The story--a
mystery about a boy who, we learn, has been made part machine--is
depicted in a multimedia comic-book style, with frames that are
include photographs of nails, plastic, fringe, packing bubbles,
toaster parts, leather, Band-Aids, and blood. This world of
sadomasochism, crime, torture, and corruption makes Neuromancer
seem bright by comparison. There is very little logic to the
behaviors and storyline here--it's almost as if straying from the
nightmarish randomness of events and emotions would sacrifice the
nonlinear consistency. In essence, Stray Toasters is a world of
textures, where the soft, hard, organic, and electronic make up a
kind of dreamscape through which both the characters and the
readers are moved about at random. As Bruce Sterling would no
doubt agree, an accidental or even an intentional electrocution
could come at any turn of a page.
Finally, though, cyber-style comics have emerged that are as
hypertextual as Miller or Sienkiewicz's, but far more optimistic.
Like the characters of Marc Laidlaw and Rudy Rucker, the Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles are fun-loving, pizza-eating surfer dudes,
for whom enjoying life (while, perhaps, learning of their origin
and fighting evil) is of prime importance. They are just as
cyberpunk and nonlinear as Batman or the Joker, but their
experience of life is playful. While the characters and stories
in the subsequent films and TV cartoons are, admittedly, fairly
cardboard, the original comic books produced out of a suburban
garage by Eastman and Laird are cyberpunk's answer to The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Four turtles, minding their own
business, fall off a truck and into a puddle of ooze that turns
them into human-size talking turtles. They are trained by a rat
to become ninja warriors, and then they go on an interdimensional
quest to the place where the transformative ooze originated.
Throughout their adventures, the turtles maintain a lighthearted
attitude, surfing their way through battles and chases.
The violence is real and the world is corrupt, but the
turtles maintain hope and cheer. The comic itself, like the Toon
Town atmosphere, is a sweet self-parody, sampling nearly all of
the comic-book-genre styles. But instead of creating a
nightmarish panoply, Eastman and Laird use these elements to
build a giant playground. Challenges are games, truly evil
enemies are bad guys,'' and the rewards are simple--pizza and a
party. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series offers the only
optimistic response to a nonlinear and chaotic world: to become
softer, sweeter, more adventurous for its own sake, and not to
take life too seriously.
Signal Compression and Mind Expansion
The multimedia quality of cyber comic books spills over into
cyberian video production, which has begun to reinterpret its own
dynamic in relation to the fantasy games, novels, and comics.
While these media borrow from video's quick-cut electronic
immediacy, videographers now borrow back from the cyberpunk style
and ethics to create a new graphic environment--one that
interacts much more intimately with the viewer's body and
consciousness than does the printed page.
At any Toon Town house event, television monitors throughout
the club flash the computer-generated imagery of Rose X, a
company created by Britt Welin and Ken Adams, a young married
couple who moved Petaluma, California, to be close to their
mentor, Terence McKenna. Global Village enthusiasts, they hope
their videos will help to awaken a network of like-minded people
in remote regions throughout the nation. Their vision, inspired
in part by McKenna, is of a psychedelic Cyberia, where techniques
of consciousness, computers, and television co-evolve.
Like McKenna, Ken and Britt believe that psychedelics and
human beings share a morphic, co-evolutionary relationship, but
they are quick to include technology in the organic dance. As
they smoke a joint and splice wires in their garage-studio (where
else?), Ken explains the video-psychedelic evolutionary model.
Psychedelic experiences are almost like voices from your
dream state. They call you and they seduce you. People are also
constantly seduced by psychedelic techniques on TV that have to
do with fluid editing and accelerated vision processing. People
love that stuff because it strikes them in a very ancient place,
something that spirals back down into the past for everybody
whether or not they're using psychedelics. It's there already.''
Like MTV videos that substitute texture for story and quick
cuts for plot points, Rose X videos work on an almost subliminal
level. Meaning is gleaned from the succession of images more than
their linear relationship. Viewers process information moment to
moment, thus the amount processed increases with the number of
cuts, even if the data is less structured. Rose X takes these
techniques a step further by intentionally appealing to the
viewer's ability to experience a kind of morphic resonance with
the patterns and data flashing on the screen. Even their subject
matter--their most popular videos are talks by Terence McKenna
and Ralph Abraham--is intended to awaken dormant zones of human
consciousness.
Britt, a perky, dark blonde with a southern accent, pops in
a video collage'' and details her take on the relationship of
technology, psychedelics, and consciousness. The images swirl on
a giant video screen flanked by banks of computer equipment and
wires. It's difficult to figure out the difference between what's
around the screen and what's being projected onto it.
We work in a psychedelic state when we're able to. And then
we have a different relationship to our technology. We're into a
concept called `technoanimism,' where we really think of
technology itself as an animistic dynamic that filters through
the individual machines, bringing an overspirit to them--an
animistic spirit that's way beyond what humans are comprehending
on their own level.''
Britt, like Sarah Drew from the music world, has developed
herself into a cyborg. Both women unite with their technology in
order to channel information they believe is new to humanity.
Just as house musicians start with a sound, then go where the
sound takes them, Britt allows her video and computer equipment
to lead her into artistic discoveries. When you are functioning
at a high psychedelic level and you go into a cyberspace
environment, you lose your parameters and you find yourself
entirely within the electronic world. It breeds its own
surprises.''
Unlike most men in the cyber-arts scene, who tend to think
of themselves as dominators of technology, Ken, like Britt,
strives to become one'' with the machine. "Our video-computer
system's set up to ease us into a level of intimacy where we can
use it in a transparent sense. If I enter into a trance
relationship with it, then it ends up having a spiritlike
existence.''
Rose X's current project, a feature-length video call
Strange Attractor emerges out of their interest in the
relationship of technology to organic interdimensional
consciousness. In the story, a reversal of the Adam and Eve myth,
Rose is a strange attractor'''-- a person who, through lucid
dreaming, can access the vast network of artificial environments
normally entered through computers or virtual reality. On one of
her journeys into cyberspace, she befriends another strange
attractor--a young man who has gotten lost in the consensual
hallucination. Her task is to rescue this lost soul by getting
him to experience his body--through virtual sex--or his
spirit--by getting him to eat a psychoactive apple. On the way,
she is helped by an interdimensional sect who use organic methods
to access Cyberia, and thwarted by an evil race of authorities,
who hope to curd interdimensional travel and trap the human race
forever in its earthly, single-dimensional reality.
The battle is typically cyberpunk, but here the forces of
chaos are the good guys, and those who put a lid on
interdimensional travel are the bad guys. The good guys are true
cyberians, who use ancient techniques, psychedelics, and
computers in a nondiscriminatory cybersampling of whatever works.
Britt and Ken believe Eve was right, and that had Adam followed
his own impulses rather than God's orders, everything would have
been okay.
Unlike earlier voyagers like Burroughs, Britt embraces the
ambiguous impulses that can feel so unsettling:
Westerners tend to try to suppress them and ignore them,
probably out of fear of insanity. If there are voices or beings
in your mind that you don't seem to have any control over--that
can be a terrifying prospect.''
Similarly, rather than be afraid of technology's influence
over them, they lovingly embrace their machinery as an equal
partner in the race toward hyperspace. The printed, official''
version of Britt and Ken's psychedelic and technological agenda
equates the experience of drugs with the promise of technology
and the lost art of ecstasy:
Strange but efficient organic forms appearing and
disappearing resemble visions before sleep when two worlds touch.
This is computer video signal compression. Like peyote, like
psilocybin, silicon has songs to sing, stories to tell you won't
hear anywhere else.''
Likewise, the Rose X company is true to cyberian ideals of
tribal, open interaction--a new garage-band ethic based on
pooling resources and hacking what's out there. Britt trained
herself on the Amiga Video Toaster after she convinced her
employer to buy one. Ken bought his with money from an NEA grant.
But even without elaborate social hacking, the Video Toaster's
low cost makes it as available now as a guitar and amplifier were
in the sixties. The device links the personal computer to the
television, giving the viewing public its first opportunity to
talk back to the screen. Britt explains enthusiastically: Look
how many bands got formed since the Beatles.''
Low-cost guerrilla production techniques have also led
artists toward the cut-and-paste aesthetic. No longer concerned
with making things look real,'' videographers like Ken and Britt
do most of their work in postproduction, manipulating images they
shoot or scrounge. Like house music recording artists, their
techniques involve sampling, overlaying, and dubbing. Ken is
proud that his work never tries to imitate a physical reality and
is especially critical of filmmakers who waste precious resources
on costly special effects. Video art in Cyberia is cut-and-paste
impressionism. Just as comic-book artists include television
images or even wires and blood in their cells, videographers
include pictures of the Iraq bombings, virtual reality scenes,
and even old sitcoms.
We're much more like a cyberpunk comic book. We don't want
it to look like it takes place in a natural setting. We want it
to all be self-contained in a conceptual space that's primarily
videographic--like virtual reality. It'll be the reality of the
imagination. We've quit trying to mimic reality; we try to mimic
our imagination, which is the root of all reality anyway.''
Again, the final stage in the development of a cyberian
genre is the designer being, mated both with technology and with
psychedelics in the hope of creating a new territory for human
consciousness. But what the designers of the new literary milieu
may not realize is that around the world, thirsty young minds
absorb these ideas and attempt to put them into effect in their
own lives. The fully evolved cyberian artists aren't making any
art at all. They're living it.
CHAPTER 15
Playing Roles
Ron Post, aka Nick Walker, is a gamemaster and aikido
instructor from suburban New Jersey. In his world, fantasy and
reality are in constant flux. Having fully accepted ontological
relativism as a principle of existence, Ron and his posse of
gamers'' live the way they play, and play as a way of life. It's
not that life is just a game, but that gaming is as good a model
as any for developing the skills necessary to journey
successfully through the experience of reality. It is a constant
reminder that the rules are not fixed and that those who
recognize this fact have the best time. Ron, his "adopted''
brother Russel (they named themselves after the comic-book
characters Ron and Russel Post), and about a dozen other
twenty-something-year-olds gather each week at Ron's house to
play fantasy role-playing games. Like the psychedelic trips of
the most dedicated shamanic warriors, these games are not mere
entertainment. They are advanced training exercises for cyberian
warriors.
Fantasy role playing games, unlike traditional board games,
are unstructured and nonlinear. There is no clear path to follow.
Instead, the game works like an acting exercise, where the
players improvise the story as they go along. There is no way to
win'' because the only object is to create, with the other
players, the best story possible. Still, players must keep their
characters alive, and having fun often means getting into trouble
and then trying to get out again.
Ron's game is based in GURPS, the Generic Universal Role
Playing System, by Steve Jackson; it is a basic set of numerical
and dice-roll rules governing the play of fantasy games. In
addition, Jackson has provided modules,'' which are specific
guidelines for gaming in different worlds. These modules specify
realistic rules for play in worlds dominated by magic, combat,
high-tech, even cyberpunk--a module that depicts the future of
computer hacking so convincingly that the U.S. Secret Service
seized it from Jackson's office believing it was a dangerous,
subversive document.
I meet Ron and Russel at Ron's house, which is next to the
train overpass in South New Brunswick. It's the kind of day where
everyone blames the sweltering heat on the greenhouse effect--too
many weather records are being broken for too many days straight.
The gamers sit on the front steps of Ron's house with their
shirts off, except for the two girls. The group defies the
stereotypically nerdy image of role players--this is an
attractive bunch; they don't need gaming just to have a group of
friends. Ron smiles and shakes my hand. His build is slight but
well defined, which I imagine is due to hours of aikido practice.
His hard-edged, pointy face and almost sinister voice
counterbalance his quirky friendliness. He laughs at the cookies
and wine I've brought as an offering of sorts, recognizing the
gesture as one of unnecessary respect. He hands off the gifts to
one of the other gamers, and as several begin to devour the food
(these are not wealthy kids), Ron takes me upstairs to his room.
On his drafting table are the map and documents for
Amarantis, the game Ron spent about a year designing for his
group to play. It's a world with a story as complex as any novel
or trilogy--but one that will be experienced by only about a
dozen kids. Amarantis is a continent that floats
interdimensionally--that is, the land mass at its eastern coast
changes over time. It could be one civilization one year and a
completely different one the next. The western coast of the
continent is called the edge.'' It's a sharp drop into no one
knows what--not even Ron, the creator of this world. He'll decide
what's there if anyone ventures out over it. The "tech level'' of
this world is relatively low--crossbows are about as advanced as
the weaponry gets, but there is magic. The power and accuracy of
magic on Amarantis fluctuate with what Ron calls the weather,''
which refers not to atmospheric conditions but to the magical
climate. The world is of particular interest to the IDC (the
InterDimensional Council, which regulates such things), whose
members recognize it as a nexus point for interdimensional
mischief. Amarantis also has metaphorical influence over the rest
of the fictional universe and even on other fantasy game worlds.
What happens here--in a fractal way--is rippled out through the
rest of that universe's time and space. If the IDC can maintain
decorum here, they can maintain it throughout the cosmos.
Ron wants me to play along today, so we must invent a
character. I am to enter Amarantis as an IDC cadet, who has
escaped the academy via its interdimensional transport system.
But first we must create my character's profile. My strengths and
weaknesses are determined by a point system out of the GURPS
manual. Each character has the same number of total points, but
they are distributed differently. The more points a character has
dedicated to agility, for example, the more tasks he can perform
which require this asset.
During play, rolls of the dice are matched against skills
levels to determine whether a character wins a fight, picks a
lock, or learns to fly. If a character has spent too many points
on wit and not enough on brute strength, he better not get
cornered by a monster. GURPS has come up with numerical values
for almost every skill imaginable, from quarterstaff combat to
spaceship repair. Players may also acquire disabilities--like a
missing arm or an uncontrollable lust for sex--which gives them
points to use elsewhere. As in Neuromancer, characters must
behave according to their profiles. Ron rewards players who,
while maintaining their weaknesses, still manage to play
skillfully.
For all the mathematics of character creation, the playing
of the game itself is quite relaxed and chaotic. When Ron and I
emerge from his bedroom we find today's players sitting in the
living room, shirts still off, ready for action. Ron sets up a
table for himself in the corner with his map, a notebook of
information, and a box of index cards for every character in
Amarantis.
What's going on here, essentially, is the creation of a
fantasy story, where game rules and character points dictate the
progression of the plot. A player thinks up an idea and is
allowed to run with it as far as he can go until a conflict
arises. Each character has an agenda of a sort, but these agendas
do not get satisfied to the point where the game can end. For
example, an agenda might be to extend the power of a large
corporation, to destabilize the government of a city, or, as in
my character's case, to spread goodwill throughout the universe.
Ron declares my arrival: Suddenly, in a blaze of light, a
large metal obelisk crashes through the floor of the stage. Smoke
and sparks fly everywhere. The obelisk opens to reveal ...'' And
there I am. After I excuse away my arrival as a space-surfing
accident--which no one believes--Russel, who plays a corporate
businessman, invites everyone over to the Bacchic temple, a
religious organization and megacorporation, to join the revelry
already in progress. When we go there, Russel proceeds to seduce
the young dancer (whose show I interrupted) with the promise of
career advancement. As he takes her to his bedroom, I wander
around the castlelike church. I hope to steal Russel's prize
possession: a flying dragon.
Rolls of the dice decide my fate. The other players,
especially Russel, watch on in horror, powerless: his character
is in bed with the dancer and can't hear or see me even though
the real Russel can. Other players worry for me--they know things
about Russel's immense powers that I don't. But my character has
a weakness for taking risks, and, disappointed by the lack of
enthusiasm for my message of peace and harmony, I feel my only
choice is to head straight for the edge and thus either certain
doom or certain awakening. I find the dragon in an open
courtyard. If I can get it to fly I'll have an easy getaway, but
the creature is unbridled. I use my skill of
resourcefulness-- scrounging,'' as it's called in the game--to
find a rope to fashion into a bridle. I roll the three dice--two
2's and a 1. The other players moan. I'm a lucky roller, and the
dice indicate that I easily find the rope. But the hard part is
flying the creature. My dexterity is the skill that Ron pits
against the dice. He calls this task a "D minus 8''--very hard. I
need to roll a 10 or lower to succeed. I roll a 9. Amazing.
Players cheer as gamemaster Ron describes the wiburn taking off
into the night. I use the stars to navigate west, toward the
edge. Russel stares at me from across the room and chills go up
my spine. He reaches for the GURPS Magic Module to find a spell
to get his dragon back ... and to destroy me. He plans on using
corporate/church money to hire a powerful professional wizard.
Is the Wizard's Hall open this late?'' he asks Ron.
I look at Ron, who smiles knowingly at me. He had advised me
to take magic-protection'' as a strength, and I reluctantly had
done so. Thanks to Ron's insistence in adding this feature to my
character, none of Russel's spells will work on me. I'm on my way
to the edge.
FRP's (fantasy role-playing games) are surprisingly
engrossing. They share the hypertext, any-door-can-open feeling
of the computer net. And, like on a computer bulletin board,
FRP's do not require that participants play in the same room or
even the same city. Play is not based in linear time and space. A
character's decision might be mailed in, phoned in, enacted live,
or decided ahead of time. Also, there is no object'' to the
game. There is no finish line, no grand finale, no winner or
loser. The only object would be, through the illusion of
conflict, for players to create the most fascinating story they
can, and keep it going for as long as possible. As with cyberian
music and fiction, role-playing games are based on the texture
and quality of the playing experience. They are the ultimate
designer realities, and, like VR, the shamanic visionquest, or a
hacking run, the adventurer moves from point to point in a path
as nonlinear as consciousness itself. The priorities of FRPs
reflect the liberation of gamers from the mechanistic boundaries
imposed on them by a society obsessed with taking sides, winning,
finishing, and evaluating.
Edge Games
These kids are not society's unwitting dropouts. Indeed,
they are extremely bright people. Ron and Russel met at a school
for gifted yet underachieving high-schoolers in the Princeton
area. They were smarter than their teachers, and knew it, which
made them pretty uncontrollable and unprogrammable. Their
brilliance was both their weakness and their strength. Because
the subjects in school bored them, they turned to fantasy games
that gave their minds the intellectual experience for which they
thirsted. Of course, their elders never understood.
Parental reaction is negative towards anything that teaches
kids to think in original or creative ways,'' Russel reflects.
"Playing the games is an exercise in looking at different
realities--not being stuck in a single reality. It gives you
courage to see how you're following many rules blindly in real
reality.''
Russel explains his childhood to me as we share a shoplifted
cigarette beneath the train overpass. He has learned that the
rules of this world are not fixed, and both he and Ron live
according to the principles of uncertainty and change. Like the
heroes in a cyberpunk novel, they are social hackers who live
between the lines of the system and challenge anything that seems
fixed. When Russel is hungry and has no money, he steals food
from the supermarket ... but he doesn't believe he'll get caught.
Geniuses take precautions that regular shoplifters don't, I'm
told, and survival to them becomes yet another edge game.''
What is the edge? The edge is the imaginary or imposed
limit beyond which you're not supposed to go, says Russel. Where
you'll get yourself really hurt. Pushing or testing the
boundaries. Usually we find out the boundaries aren't really
there. It's matter of putting yourself through the test of your
own fear.''
Ron and Russel's comfortable suburban upbringing offered
them few opportunities to test their tolerance for fear. The boys
were forced to create their own edge in the form of behavioral
games, so that they could experience darker, scarier realities.
These edge games ranged from stealing things from school and
playing elaborate hoaxes on teachers to assuming new identities
and living in these invented roles for weeks at a time. Once,
after taking LSD, Ron, Russel, and their friend Alan went to the
mall to play an edge game they called space pirates.'' Ron and
Russel played interdimensional travelers, and Alan, who was
temporarily estranged from them for social reasons, played a
CIA-like spy trying to catch them. By the end of the acid trip
and the game, Alan was crying hysterically in his mother's
kitchen, and the Post brothers had to decide "whether we were
going to help Alan get himself back together from this and
rebuild things, or let him crumble into the kitchen floor and
become permanently alienated.''
Unlike the western border of the continent of Amarantis, to
Russel and Ron the edge is no fantasy. Even Sarah Drew's abortion
on acid could be called an edge game. The consequences of playing
too close can be extremely real and painful. Ron spends as much
time as possible on the edge, but he takes the risks seriously.
If you fuck up on the edge, you die. Edge games involve real
risk. Physical or even legal risk. Try this: Take a subway or a
city street, walk around, and make eye contact with everyone you
meet, and stare them down. See how far you can take it. You'll
come up to someone who won't look away.''
Part of the training is to incorporate these lessons into
daily life. All of life is seen as a fantasy role-playing game in
which the stakes are physically real but the lessons go beyond
physical reality. Unlike the characters of a cyberpunk book,
human beings are not limited to their original programming.
Instead, born gamers, humans have the ability to adopt new
skills, attitudes, and agendas. They just need to be aware of the
rules of designer reality in order to do so. Fantasy role-playing
and playing edge games in real life are ways of developing a
flexible character profile that can adapt to many kinds of
situations. As Ron explains: The object in role-playing games is
playing with characters whose traits you might want to bring into
your own life. You can pick up their most useful traits, and
discard their unuseful ones from yourself.'' One consciously
chooses his own character traits in order to become a designer
being.
Ron slowly slips into the Zen-master tone he probably uses
with his students at the dojo. As the gamemaster, too, he serves
as a psychologist and spiritual teacher, rewarding and punishing
players' behaviors, creating situations that challenge their
particular weaknesses, and counseling them on life strategies.
Like a guided visualization or the ultimate group therapy, a
gaming session is psychodramatic. Moreover, adopting this as a
life strategy leads gamers to very cyberian conclusions about
human existence.
I regard any behavior we indulge in as a game,'' Ron says,
waxing Jungian. "The soul is beyond not only three-dimensional
space but beyond the illusion of linear time. Any method we use
to move through three- or four-dimensional space is a game. It
doesn't matter how seriously we take it, or how serious its
consequences are.''
Ron's wife of just two weeks looks over at him, a little
concerned. He qualifies his flippant take on designer reality:
To play with something is not necessarily to trivialize it.
Anything you do in your life is a role-playing game. The soul
does not know language--any personality or language we use for
thinking is essentially taking on a role.''
To Ron, basically everything on the explicate order is a
game--arbitrarily arranged and decided. Ron and Russel have
adopted the cyberian literary paradigm into real life. Fantasy
role-playing served as a bridge between the stories of cyberpunk
and the reality of lives in Cyberia. They reject duality
wholesale, seeing reality instead as a free-flowing set of
interpretations.
Again, though, like surfers, they do not see themselves as
working against anything. They do not want to destroy the system
of games and role-playing that defines the human experience. They
want only to become more fully conscious of the system itself.
Ron admits that they may have an occasional brush with the
law, but, we're not rebels. There's nothing to rebel against.
The world is a playground. You just make up what to play today.''
These people don't just trip, translate, and download. They
live with a cyberian awareness full-time. Unlike earlier
thinkers, who enjoyed philosophizing that life is a series of
equations (mathematician Alfred North Whitehead's observation
that understanding is the a-perception of patterns as such''),
or Terence McKenna, who can experience "visual language'' while
on DMT, Ron guides his moment-to-moment existence by these
principles.
I'm aware that time is an illusion and that everything
happens at once.'' Ron puts his arm around his young wife, who
tries not to take her husband too seriously. "I've got to
perceive by making things into a pattern or a language. But I can
choose which pattern I'm going to observe.''
Role-playing and edge games are yet another way to download
the datastream accessed through shamanic journeys and DMT trips.
But instead of moving into a completely unfiltered perception of
this space and then integrating it piecemeal into normal
consciousness, the gamer acknowledges the impossibility of
experiencing reality without an interpretive grid, and chooses
instead to gain full control over creation of those templates.
Once all templates or characters become interchangeable, the
gamer can infer'' reality, because he has the ability to see it
from any point of view he chooses.
The whole idea of gaming is to play different patterns and
see which ones you like. I like playing the game where I live in
a benevolent universe, where everything that happens to me is a
lesson to help enlighten me further. I find that a productive
game. But there are other games. Paranoia is a really good edge
game. Or one can play predator: I live in a benevolent universe
and I'm the other team.''
That's probably why society has begun to react against
designer beings: They don't play by the rules. Cyberian art,
literature, game-playing, and even club life are tolerated when
they can be interpreted as passing entertainment or fringe
behavior. Once the ethos of these fictional worlds trickles down
into popular culture and human behavior, the threat of the
cyberian imagination becomes real. And society, so far, is
unwilling to cope with a reality that can be designed.
PART 5
Warfare in Cyberia: Ways and Memes
CHAPTER 16
Cracking the Ice
Like a prison escape in which the inmates crawl through the
ventilation ducts toward freedom, rebels in Cyberia use the
established pathways and networks of our postmodern society in
unconventional ways and often toward subversive goals. Just as
the American rail system created a society of hobos who
understood the train schedule better than the conductors did, the
hardwiring of our world through information and media networks
has bred hackers capable of moving about the datasphere almost at
will. The nets that were designed to hold people captive to the
outworn modalities of a consumer society are made from the same
fibers cyberians are now using in their attempt to climb out of
what they see as a bottomless pit of economic strife, ecological
disaster, intellectual bankruptcy, and moral oblivion.
Warfare in Cyberia is conducted on an entirely new
battleground; it is a struggle not over territory or boundaries
but over the very definitions of these terms. It's like a
conflict between cartographers, who understand the ocean as a
grid of longitude and latitude lines, and surfers, who understand
it as a dance of chaotic waves. The resistance to renaissance
comes out of the refusal to cope with or even believe in the
possibility of a world free of precyberian materialism and its
systems of logic, linearity, and duality. But, as cyberians
argue, these systems could not have come into existence without
dangerous patriarchal domination and the subversion of thousands
of years of nondualistic spirituality and feminine, earth-based
lifestyles.
Pieced together from the thoughts and works of philosophers
like Terence McKenna and Ralph Abraham, the ancient history of
renaissance and antirenaissance from the cyberian perspective
goes something like this: People lived in tribes, hunting,
gathering, following animal-herd migrations for ready food
supplies, enjoying free sex, and worshipping the elements. As
they followed the herds, these nomads also ate the psychedelic
mushrooms that grew on the animals' dung, and this kept any ego
or dominator tendencies in check. The moment when people settled
down in agricultural communities was the moment when everything
went wrong. Instead of enjoying the earth's natural bounty,
people worked the soil for food--an act considered by extremists
to represent the rape of Gaia and the taming of nature.
Psychedelics fell out of the daily diet because people weren't
wandering around anymore. They had time to sit around and invent
things to make life easier, like the wheel, and so came the
notions of periodicity and time.
Time was a particular problem, because if anything was
certain to these people, it was the fact that after a certain
amount of time, everybody dies. The only way to live on after
death is through offspring--but ancient men did not know who
their offspring were. Only women knew for sure which children
were their own. In previous, psychedelics-influenced tribes, the
idea of one's own personal children mattered less, because
everyone identified with the tribe. Now, with developed egos, men
became uncomfortable with free love; thus patriarchal domination
was born. Men began to possess women so that they would know
which children were their own. The ideas of property,''
"yours,'' mine,'' and a host of other dualities were created. In
an attempt to deny the inevitability of death, a society of
possessors was born, which developed into a race of conquerors
and finally evolved into our own nation of consumers.
Others blame the invention of time for the past six thousand
years of materialist thought. Fearing the unknown (and, most of
all, death), ancient man created time as a way to gauge and
control his unpredictable reality. Time provided a framework in
which unpredictable events could appear less threatening within
an overall order'' of things. Of course the measured increments
were not the time itself (any more than the ticks of a watch say
anything about the space between them when the real seconds go
by), but they provided a kind of schedule by which man could move
through life and decay toward death in an orderly fashion.
Whenever man came upon something he did not understand, he put
over it a grid, with which he could cope. The ocean and its
seemingly random sets of waves is defined by a grid of lines, as
are the heavens, the cities, and the rest of reality. The
ultimate lines are the ones made into boxes to categorize and
control human behavior. They are called laws, which religions and
eventually governments emerged to write and enforce.
According to cyberian logic, the grids of reality are
creations. They are not necessarily real. The Troubadours
believed this. People burned at the stake as witches in the
fourteenth century died for this. Scientists with revolutionary
ideas must commit to this. Anyone who has taken a psychedelic
drug experiences this. Fantasy gamers play with this. Hackers who
crack the ice'' of well-protected computer networks prove this.
Anyone who has adopted the cyberian vision lives this.
The refusal to recognize the lines drawn by dominator
society'' is a worse threat to that society than is the act of
consciously stepping over them. The exploitation of these lines
and boxes for fun is like playing hopscotch on the tablets of the
Ten Commandments. The appropriation of the strings of society's
would-be puppeteers in order to tie their fingers and liberate
the marionettes is a declaration of war.
Such a war is now being waged, and on many levels at once.
The cyberian vision is a heretical negation of the rules by which
Western society has chosen to organize itself. Those who depend
on this organization for power vehemently protect the status quo
by enforcing the laws. This is not a traditional battle between
conservative and liberal ideologies, which are debates over where
to put the lines and how thick to draw them. Today's renaissance
has led to a war between those who see lines as real boundaries,
and those who see them as monkey bars. They can be climbed on.
Cyberian warriors are dangerous to the line people''
because they can move in mysterious ways. Like ninjas, they can
creep up walls and disappear out of sight because they don't have
to follow the rules. Cyberian activities are invisible and render
the time and money spent on prison bars and locks worthless. The
inmates disappear through the vents.
As Marshall McLuhan and even George Orwell predicted, the
forces in power'' have developed many networks with which they
hope to control, manipulate, or at least capitalize on the
behaviors and desires of the population. Television and the
associated media have bred a generation of conditioned consumers
eager to purchase whatever products are advertised. Further, to
protect the sovereignty of capitalist nations and to promote the
flow of cash, the defense and banking industries have erected
communications networks that hardwire the globe together. Through
satellites, computers, and telecommunications, a new
infrastructure--the pathways of the datasphere--has superimposed
itself over the existing grids like a metagrid, enforcing
underlying materialism, cause and effect, duality and control.
But cyberians may yet prove that this hardwiring has been
done a little too well. Rather than create an easy-to-monitor
world, the end of the industrial era left us with an almost
infinite series of electronic passages. The passages proved the
perfect playground for the dendrites of expanding young
consciousnesses, and the perfect back doors to the power centers
of the modern world. A modem, a PC, and the intent to destabilize
might prove a more serious threat to the established order than
any military invasion. Nowhere is the fear of Cyberia more
evident than in the legislation of computer laws and the
investigation and prosecution of hackers, crackers, and
data-ocean pirates.
Forging Electronic Frontiers
There are as many points of view about hacker ethics,
responsibility, and prosecution as there are players. Just how
close to digital anarchy we move depends as much on the way we
perceive law and order in the datasphere as it does on what's
actually going on. While many young people with modems and
personal computers are innocently exploring networks as they
would the secret passages in an interactive fantasy game, others
are maliciously destroying every system they can get into. Still
other computer users are breaking in to networks with purpose: to
gain free telephone connections, to copy information and code, or
to uncover corporate and governmental scandals. No single
attitude toward computer hacking and cracking will suffice.
Unfortunately, the legal and law-enforcement communities
understand very little about computers and their users. Fear and
ignorance prevail in computer crime prosecution, which is why
kids who steal'' a dollar's worth of data from the electronic
world suffer harsher prosecution than do kids who steal bicycles
or even cars from the physical world. Raids have been disastrous:
Bumbling agents confiscate equipment from nonsuspects, destroy
legally obtained and original data, and even, on one occasion,
held at gunpoint a suspected hacker's uninvolved young sister.
After a series of investigations and botched, destructive arrests
and raids (which proved more about law enforcement's inability to
manage computer use, abuse, and crime than it did about the way
hackers work, play, and think), two interested parties--Mitch
Kapor, founder of Lotus, and John Barlow, Grateful Dead lyricist
and computer-culture journalist--founded the Electronic Frontiers
Foundation.
The EFF hopes to serve as a bridge of logic between computer
users and law enforcement so that cyberspace might be colonized
in a more orderly, less antagonistic fashion. In Barlow's words,
the seemingly brutal tactics of arresting officers and
investigators isn't so much a planned and concerted effort to
subvert the Constitution as the natural process that takes place
whenever there are people who are afraid and ignorant, and when
there are issues that are ambiguous regarding constitutional
rights.''
The EFF has served as a legal aid group defending hackers
whom they believe are being unjustly prosecuted and promoting
laws they feel better regulate cyberspace. But while the EFF
attempts to bring law and order to the new frontier, many hackers
still feel that Barlow and Kapor are on the other side'' and
unnecessarily burdening virgin cyberspace with the failed legal
systems of previous eras.
Barlow admits that words and laws can never adequately
define something as undefinable as Cyberia: I'm trying to build
a working scale model of a fog bank out of bricks. I'm using a
building material that is utterly unsuited to the representation
of the thing I'm trying to describe.''
And while even the most enlightened articulators of Cyberia
find themselves tongue-tied when speaking about the new frontier,
other, less-informed individuals think they have the final word.
The media's need to explain the hacker scene to the general
public has oversimplified these issues and taken us even farther
from understanding them. Finally, young hackers and crackers feed
their developing egos with overdramatized reports on their
daring, and any original cyberian urge to explore cyberspace is
quickly overshadowed by their notoriety as outlaws.
Phiber Optik, for example, a twenty-year-old hacker from New
York, plea-bargained against charges that he and his friends
stole access to 900'' telephone services. When he was arrested,
his television, books, telephone, and even his Walkman
confiscated along with his computer gear. While he sees the media
as chiefly responsible for the current misconceptions about the
role of hackers in cyberspace, he appears to take delight in the
media attention that his exploits have brought him.
People tend to think that the government has a lot to fear
from a rebellious hacker lashing out and destroying something,
but we think we have a lot more to fear from the government
because it's within their power to take away everything we own
and throw us in jail. I think if people realize we aren't a
dissident element at all, they would see that the government is
the bad one.''
Phiber claims that the reason why hackers like himself break
into systems is to explore them, but that the media, controlled
by big business, presents them as dangerous. The term they love
to use is `threat to society.' All they see are the laws. All
they see is a blip on the computer screen, and they figure the
person broke the law. They don't know who or how old he is. They
get a warrant and arrest him. It's a very inhuman thing.''
But this is the very argument that most law enforcement
people use against hackers like Phiber Optik: that the kids don't
get a real sense of the damage they might be inflicting because
their victims are not real people--just blips on a screen.
Gail Thackery served as an assistant attorney general for
Arizona and is now attorney for Maricopa County. She has worked
on computer crime for two decades with dozens of police agencies
around the country. She was one of the prosecuting attorneys in
the Sun Devil cases, so to many hackers she is considered the
enemy,'' but her views on the legislation of computer laws and
the prosecution of offenders are, perhaps surprisingly, based on
the same utopian objective of a completely open system.
I see a ruthless streak in some kids,'' says Thackery,
using the same argument as Phiber. "Unlike a street robbery, if
you do a computer theft, your victim is unseen. It's a fiction.
It's an easy transition from Atari role-modeling games to
computer games to going out in the network and doing it in real
life.''
The first hacker with whom she came in contact was a
university student who in 1973 took over'' a class. Intended for
social workers who were afraid of computers, the class was
designed to acquaint them with cyberspace. "What happened,''
explains Thackery, was this kid had planted a Trojan horse
program. When the students logged on for their final exam, out
came, instead of the exam, a six-foot-long typewriter-art nude
woman. And these poor technophobic social workers were pounding
keys. They went cuckoo. Their graduation was delayed, and in some
cases it delayed their certification, raises, and new titles.''
Thackery sees young hackers as too emotionally immature to
cope with a world at their fingertips. They are intellectually
savvy enough to create brilliant arguments about their innocent
motivations, but in private they tell a different story. I
always look at their downloads from bulletin boards. They give
legal advice, or chat and talk about getting busted, or even
recite statutes. Kids gang up saying, `Here's a new system. Let's
trash this sucker! Let's have a contest and see who can trash it
first!' They display real callous, deliberate, criminal kinds of
talk.''
Gail's approach to law enforcement is not to imprison these
young people but to deprogram them. She feels they have become
addicted to their computers and use them to vent their
frustrations in an obsessive, masturbatory way. Just as a drug
user can become addicted to the substances that provide him
access to a world in which he feels happier and more powerful, a
young computer user, who may spend his days as a powerless geek
in school, suddenly gains a new, powerful identity in cyberspace.
Like participants in role-playing games, who might shoplift or
play edge games under the protective veils of their characters,
hackers find new, seemingly invulnerable virtual personas.
After we took one kid's computer away,'' Gail says,
speaking more like a social worker than a prosecuting attorney,
"his parents said the change is like night and day. He's doing
better in school, he's got more friends, he's even gone out for
the ball team. It's like all of a sudden this repressed human
arises from the ashes of the hacker.''
The hacker argument, of course, is that another brilliant
young cyberian may have been reconditioned into boring passivity.
Thackery argues that it's a victory for the renaissance. I have
a philosophical, idealistic view of where computers started to
head, and where the vandals actually kicked us off the rails. We
wanted everybody to have a Dick Tracy wristradio, and at this
point I know so many people, victims who have had their
relationship to technology ruined. All you have to do is have
your ATM hacked by a thief and you start deciding technology's
not worth it.''
So, in the final analysis, Gail Thackery is as cyberian as
the most truly radical of the hackers. These are the ones who
hack not for a specific purpose or out of resentment but for the
joy of surfing an open datastream. The padlocking of the
electronic canals is the result of society's inability to cope
with freedom. Corporate and governmental leaders fear the
potential change or instability in the balance of power, while
macho, pubescent hackers act out the worst that their
ego-imprisoned personalities can muster. In both analyses, the
utopian promise of Cyberia is usurped by a lust for domination
and a deeply felt resentment.
Several months after speaking with Thackery, I get a phone
call late at night. She is crying; she's furious and needs
someone to listen.
Phiber's been busted again! Dammit!'' She goes on to
explain that the Secret Service in New York, along with the FBI
and the Justice Department, have just arrested Phiber and several
of his friends, including Outlaw and Renegade Hacker--the famed
MOD (Masters of Deception) group. She takes it as a personal
defeat:
I always think when we catch these kids, we've been given a
chance to show them a better way to spend their lives,'' her
voice cracks in despair, "to finish school, get real jobs, stay
out of trouble because it's a big bad world out there. Now
Phiber's gonna go to jail. A kid's going to jail! I thought we
made a dent but we blew it! I saw it coming.''
What Gail had observed was undue media attention and praise
for a boy who deserved better--he deserved scorn and derision.
According to Gail, the positive reinforcement bestowed on him by
reporters, computer-company owners, and sixties' heroes since his
first arrest steered him toward more crime and antisocial
behavior.
Phiber was the only hacker to go on Geraldo. Where's
Geraldo now? Nowhere! The kid's an embarrassment to him now!''
Gail is fuming--"flaming,'' as they say on the WELL. Looking at
it from a cyberian vantagepoint, Phiber became a victim of the
fact that observers always affect the object they are observing.
Media observation--from the likes of Geraldo or even me--threw
Phiber farther off course than he already was. His problems were
iterated and amplified by the media attention.
What really irks me,'' adds Gail, "is guys like Kapor
[Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus] and Jobbs [founder of Apple]
misleading these kids by not scolding them for hacking. They
shouldn't pat them on the shoulder! Kapor has no idea what's
really going on out there today. When he was hacking, things were
very different. It was a few pieces of code or a university
prank. They're scared to tell these kids the truth because of
their liberal guilt.''
She calls them hypocrites: These guys certainly protect
their own software. The money that's funding the EFF is the same
money that's paying for Lotus's attorneys, and they protect their
proprietary rights, believe me! Guys like Kapor and Jobbs are
fighting an old sixties' battle, and getting kids put in jail
with their misleading touchy-feely rhetoric. The kids shouldn't
be made to fight these battles for them. It's the kids who are on
the front line!''
Gail explains that the young hackers blindly follow the
wisdom of the original computer hackers--but that this is a logic
no longer appropriate on today's violent computer frontier.
Organized crime and Colombian drug cartels now hire young hackers
to provide them with secure, untraceable communications and
intelligence.
Now these kids are being used by drug dealers! They are
being prostituted, but it's the kids who go to jail! Where's the
EFF now?''
Cyberia is not real yet, but the problems facing it are. On
one hand, fledgling cyberians are still rooted in the political
activism and cultural extremism of the 1960s and 70s, and eager
to please the people they consider their forefathers--Tim Leary,
Steven Jobbs, Mitch Kapor, William Burroughs--by wholeheartedly
embracing their lifestyles and priorities. Kids who attempt to
emulate William Burroughs will probably become addicted to drugs,
and kids who take Steven Jobbs's words at face value may end up
prosecuted for computer crime. On the other hand, the
technologies and pathways that young, brilliant cyberians forge
are irresistible both to themselves and their would-be
exploiters. Ego invades hyperspace.
Maybe the detractors are right. Maybe the cyberian
technologies are not intrinsically liberating. While they do
allow for cultural change through principles such as feedback and
iteration, it appears that they can almost as quickly be
subverted by those who are unready or unwilling to accept the
liberation they could offer. But others present convincing
arguments that the operating principles of Cyberia eventually
will win out and create a more just Global Village.
CHAPTER 17
The New Colonialism
As we slouch farther toward the chaos attractor at the end
of time, we find most of our networks, electronic or otherwise,
working against their original aims or being diverted toward
different ends. Subnetworks and metanetworks grow like mold over
the original medium. Be it a symptom of social decay, cyberian
genesis, or both, the growth of new colonialism around and within
our old systems and structures brings a peculiar sort of
darkness-before-dawnishness to the close of this millennium.
Compare our subculture of cyberians to Hogan's Heroes
carrying out rebellious acts under the noses of guards and
through underground tunnels in the prison camp. Perhaps the most
telling sign of our times is that the United States has a greater
percentage of its population in jail than does any other country,
and is breeding a criminal subculture further and further removed
from accepted social scheme.
It was in prison that legendary phone phreaque Cap'n Crunch
(who got his name for using a two-note whistle he found in a box
of Cap'n Crunch cereal to make free long-distance phone calls)
was forced to join the ranks of the criminal subculture. His real
name is John Draper, and I find him at Toon Town operating with a
computer-video interface.
After several meteoric climbs to the top of the programming
profession, Draper is in the low phase of an endless
rags-to-riches-to-rags curve that has defined the past twenty or
so years of his life. It seems as though every time he develops a
brilliant new program, an investigation links one of his friends,
or friends of his friends, to something illegal, and then
Draper's equipment--along with his livelihood--gets confiscated,
delaying his progress and costing him his contract. The large,
gray-haired, bespectacled cyber veteran suggests that we duck
into the brain-machine room to speak about his prison experience.
In order for me to survive in jail, I had to make myself
valuable enough so they wouldn't harass me or molest me. So I had
to tell everybody how to make calls, how to get in to the system,
and what to do when they got in there. We'd have little classes.
Out of pure survival I was forced to tell all and, believe me, I
did.''
Draper believes that thousands of telephone and computer
crimes resulted from his prison classes. When his technologies
got in the hands of inmates serving time for embezzlement or
fraud, they in turn developed some of the most advanced
industrial hacking done today.
Draper's experiences mirror the ways in which cyberian
counterculture movements form in society at large. For
intellectual, emotional, or even physical survival, clusters of
people--not always linked by geography--form posses characterized
by the specific networks holding them together. This, then,
initiates a bottom-up iteration of cyberian ideals.
One startling example is the growing community of Mole
People,'' who inhabit the forgotten tunnels of New York's subway
system. The New York City Transit Authority estimates that about
five thousand people live on the first level, but that accounts
for only one-third of the tunnel system. Other officials estimate
that closer to twenty-five thousand people live in the entire
system, which goes much farther down than police or transit
workers dare trek, and consists of hundreds of miles of abandoned
tunnels built in the 1890s. The ash-colored denizens of the
subways elect their own mayors, furnish their underground
apartments, find electricity, and in some cases install running
water. Sounding more like an urban myth than a real population,
mole people claim that their children, born in the tunnels, have
never seen the light of day. Others speak of patrols, organized
by mole leaders to prevent their detection by making sure that
outsiders who stray into their campsites and villages never stray
out again. Whether or not this is an exaggeration, we do know
that numerous television news crews who have attempted to reach
the lower tunnels were pelted with rocks and forced to retreat.
It's for security,'' explains J.C., who was asked by the
mayor of his Mole community to explain their philosophy of life
to Jenny Toth, a New York journalist who befriended the Mole
People in 1990. "Society lives up in a dome and locks all its
doors so it's safe from the outside. We're locked out down here.
They ignore us. They've forgotten what it is to survive. They
value money, we value survival. We take care of each other.''
Alienation, disorientation, and, most of all, necessity, form new
bonds of community cooperation not experienced above ground.
A man who lives hundreds of feet under Grand Central Station
explains: You go down there, play with some wires, and you got
light. And before you know it, there are twelve to fifteen people
down there with you. They become like neighborhoods; you're
friends with everyone. You know the girls at the end and the
family in the middle. When someone gets sick, we put our money
together to get medicine. Most people team up. You can just about
make it that way.''
This bottom-up networking is analogous to the formation of
the Global Electronic Village, which also depends on bonds of
mutual interest and like-minded politics. Each system is made up
of people whose needs are not met or are even thwarted by
established channels and each system exploits an existing
network, using it for a purpose that was not intended. These
kinds of communities make up an increasingly important component
in the overall dynamical system of society. Programmer Marc de
Groot compares this social landscape with the conclusions of
systems math:
The classic example of the feedback loop is the thermostat,
which controls itself. I think we're becoming aware of the fact
that the most common type of causality is feedback, and not
linear or top-down. The effect goes back and effects the cause,
and the cause effects the effect. We have a society where power
becomes decentralized, we get feedback loops, where change can
come from below. People in power will try to eliminate those
threats.''
The fears about cyberian evolution may stem from a partial
awareness of these new channels of feedback and iteration. Those
who believe they are currently in power attempt to squash the
iterators, but find that their efforts are ineffectual. Like
mutating bacteria or even cockroaches, feedback loops will foster
adaptive changes faster than new antibiotics or bug sprays can be
developed to combat them. Meanwhile, the formerly powerless who
now see themselves as vitally influencing the course of history
through feedback and iteration become obsessed with their causes
and addicted to their techniques. But however obsessed or
addicted they get, and however fearfully or violently society
reacts, feedback and iteration slowly and inevitably turn the
wheel of revolution, anyway.
Negative Feedback Iteration
Feedback loops are mathematics' way of phrasing revolution
and are as natural a part of existence as plankton, volcanoes, or
thyroid glands. The negative feedback loops to a mechanistic,
consumption-based culture are irate labor, ecoterrorists, and
consciousness-expansion advocates, who conduct their iterations
through cheap communications, printing, and video production.
Take Chris Carlsson, for example, editor of Processed World,
a magazine that he says is about the underside of the
information age and the misery of daily life in a perverse
society based on the buying and selling of human time.'' Carlsson
looks more like a college professor than an office worker; he's a
brilliant, ex-sixties radical who dropped out of the rat race to
make his living as an office temp data processor in San
Francisco.
On a lazy Sunday morning, Carlsson explains the intricacies
of his historical-philosophical perspective as he changes the
screen in his pipe and the grounds in his espresso pot. He
believes that we are currently living in a socially constructed
perversion,'' an unnatural reality that will be forced to change.
According to Carlsson, our society is addicted to consumption,
and this addiction leads us to do things and support systems that
benefit only the dollar, not the individual. The systems
themselves are constructed, like Muzak, to squash the notion of
personal power.
It's hard to imagine how else it could be. The only
questions you are asked in this society are, `What do you want to
buy?' and, `What are you going to do for money?' You don't get to
say, `What do I want out of life and how can I contribute to the
totality?' There's no mechanism at all in our society that
promotes some sort of role for the individual.''
The processed world'' is a place where the bottom line is
all that matters. Workers are paid as little as possible to
produce goods that break as quickly as possible, or serve no
function whatsoever other than to turn a buck. For this final
phase in the era of credit and GNP expansion, there can never be
enough stuff--if there were, the corporations would go out of
business. The motivation is to sell; the standard of living, the
environment, cultural growth, and meaning to life do not enter
into the equation.
Chemical companies who want to sell chemicals, for example,
thrive on weak crops and cattle; they hope to create a chemically
dependent agriculture. Thus, the first application of
gene-splicing technology will be bovine growth hormone,''
Carlsson says. "Not that we need more milk in this country; we
have a surplus!'' But the growth hormone will increase a cow's
output of milk. Farmer Jones will need to keep up with Farmer
Smith, so he, too, will buy the hormone. Unfortunately, the
hormone also weakens the cows' knees, which requires that the
farmers purchase more antibiotics as well as other drugs,
bringing more dollars to the chemical companies. Another example:
It is to the chemical company's advantage to lobby against
sterile fruit flies as a way of combating the medfly crisis in
California. By persuading'' the government to allow the use of
pesticides, chemical companies weaken the plants they are
"saving,'' and thus create further dependence on fertilizers and
medications--more money, less effectiveness, greater pollution.
Carlsson does not blame the people in charge'' for our
predicament. "The chairman of the board doesn't feel like he has
any power. He's just as trapped in. Nothing matters to the
stockholders but how the balance sheet looks.'' Further, as the
work environment increasingly dehumanizes, the system loses
precious feedback channels with which it can correct itself. The
dollar oversimplifies the complexities of a working society (and
its needs--as we'll see later in this chapter--have simplified
the global ecology to disastrous levels). As the workplace gets
more automated, workers become merely a part of the spreadsheet:
their input and output are monitored, regulated, and controlled
by computer. As jobs are replaced by machines (which do the work
more efficiently), workers are demoted rather than promoted. Any
special skills they developed over time now become obsolete.
The way out, according to Carlsson, is subversion and
sabotage.
When you sell your time, you are giving up your right to
decide what's worth doing. The goal of the working class should
be to abolish what they do! Not being against technology, but
being against the way it's being used. Human beings can find
subversive uses for things like computers and photocopy machines.
They were not made to enhance our ability to communicate, and yet
they do. They provide everybody with a chance to speak through
the printed medium. The work experience tells the worker that he
has no say, and that what he is doing is a complete waste of
time. But this profound emptiness and discontent is not evident
on TV. Everything in society erodes your self-esteem.''
Processed World magazine hopes to enhance the worker's
self-esteem by appealing to his intellect and giving him tips on
how to subvert the workplace. It's a homespun publication that
articulates the experience of office workers so that they may
realize they're not going crazy and their situations are not
unique. It serves also as a forum for workers to share their
observations on consumer society, abuses at work and techniques
for fighting back. Slogans like sabotage ... it's as simple as
pulling a plug'' and joke ads for "cobalt-magnet data-zappers''
for erasing office hard disks accompany the articles and
testimonials written by reader/workers about ways in which to
disable the workplace and thus disrupt the evil practices of big
companies.
The computer is the primary instrument of sabotage in the
workplace. The techniques that industrial hackers use against
competitive companies are now being used by workers against their
own companies. Usually--as throughout Cyberia--the routes to the
greatest destruction have already been established unwittingly by
the company bosses in the hope of better monitoring and
controlling their employees.
On a tour of the data entry department at a major insurance
firm, a computer serviceman and office saboteur explains the way
things can get reversed. Our office managers monitor the workers
through a special intercom feature in the worker's telephone,''
he whispers as we stroll through the tract-deskscape. "I know
this because I installed the phone system, and I taught the
office managers how to use it, and I know that they do use it,
because I monitor them!'' We arrive at the desk of another
worker, who plays video games on his computer. When he hits the
escape key, a dummy spreadsheet covers the screen.
Show him how the phone works,'' my escort requests.
The worker punches some keys on his phone and hands me the
receiver. Someone is dictating a memo about how to order paper.
That's the floor manager's office,'' the worker says,
smiling proudly as he takes back the receiver and carefully hangs
it up.
My guide boasts about the achievement. You can repair a
Rolm (a subsidiary of IBM) phone system through a modem to act
like a bugging device--useful for bosses to spy on their workers.
But if you modify the software--which is easy enough to do
through the modem by remote control without ever entering the
boss's office--you can take advantage of the same feature in
reverse!''
He did it right from my desk with my computer!'' adds the
worker, thankfully.
As we walk, most of the workers smile knowingly at my guide.
They all are in this together. In the lingo of office sabotage,
he confides proudly, We've got this place pretty well locked
up.''
Sabotage, like computer hacking, can be seen as both a
natural iteration and a destructive urge. True, it makes people
feel more powerful and sends a warning signal--in the form of
negative feedback--to the system as a whole. But it's also an
opportunity for people to vent their frustration in general. A
child who feels powerless and unpopular suddenly gains strength
and status with a computer modem. An anonymous worker who cannot
see any purpose to his life gets an ego boost when his
well-planned prank disables an entire company.
Whether the motives are cyberian idealism or masturbatory
ego gratification, these actions still serve as iterative
feedback. We cannot dismiss these efforts as neurotic impulse or
childish power fantasy just because their perpetrators cannot
justify themselves with cyberian rhetoric. Even the most
obsessive or pathological urges of saboteurs, when viewed in a
cyberian context, appear to be the natural reactions of an
iterative system against the conditions threatening its
existence.
The most pressing of these conditions, of course, are the
ones currently destroying the biosphere. As James Lovelock
observed, Gaia defends herself through iterative feedback loops
like plankton, algae, trees, and insects, which help maintain a
balanced earth environment and conditions suitable for biological
life. One such iterative loop may be the radical environmental
group Earth First! These self-proclaimed ecoterrorists,'' like
their founder, the burly Arizonan Dave Foreman, have developed an
extraordinarily virulent sociopolitical virus called "ecotage''
or ecodefense.''
Ecotage is a terrorist approach to the defense of the
environment. Rather than conduct protests, stage blockades, or
influence legislation through lobbying, ecoterrorists perform
neat, quick, surgical maneuvers that thwart the aims of those who
would violate the environment. These actions, called
monkeywrenching,'' take the form of burying spikes in trees so
that they may not be cut down; disabling vehicles; pulling down
signs or electric wires; destroying heavy machinery or aircraft;
spiking roads or woods to make them impassable; triggering animal
traps; and, most important, getting away with it. Their acts are
never random, but carefully planned to make the greatest impact
with the least effort and risk. Cutting two cables on a
helicopter rotor the evening before an insecticide spray, for
example, does more damage than stealing the distributor caps out
of forty jeeps in a company's parking lot. A few low-cost,
well-planned ecotage attacks can make an entire deforestation
project unprofitable and lead to its cancellation.
As Foreman explains in his Ecodefense: A Field Guide to
Monkeywrenching--a kind of Anarchist's Cookbook with a
purpose--monkeywrenching is powerful because it is nonviolent (no
forms of life are targeted, only machines), not organized
(impossible to be infiltrated), individual, specifically
targeted, timely, dispersed throughout the country, diverse, fun,
essentially nonpolitical, simple, deliberate, and ethical. Of
course the ethics are arguable. Businesses have a legal'' right
to destroy the environment (especially if they've paid big bills
lobbying or bribing for that right). The monkeywrenchers feel
that the current political system is merely a gear in the
destruction machine, and that the only tactic left is direct
action.
Bob and Kali (yes, she's a TOPY member) are ecoterrorists
from the Northwest. They have limited their activities (or at
least the ones they're willing to talk about) to billboard
trashing and revision.'' Their hope is to preserve national parks
and reverse the propaganda campaigns of would-be environmental
violators. Kali, who works as a waitress in an interstate highway
rest stop, is an odd mix of American sweetheart blonde and
ankle-braceleted Deadhead--on her way from the counter to the
tables she can be heard humming "Sugar Magnolia'' through her
Colgate smile. Her unthreatening demeanor allows her to listen in
on and even provoke truckers' and construction workers'
conversations about ongoing projects. Her boyfriend, Bob, then
gives this information to more serious monkeywrenchers in their
area over his school's computer network.
Bob is an art-studio assistant at the state university
farther up the highway. He was motivated to take action against
billboarding on his long drives down to the diner to pick Kali up
from work each evening. There's more and more billboards every
week. There was a law passed to limit the number of billboards,
but every time we pass a good law like that, the opposite thing
happens in reality.'' Taking his pseudonym Bob from the "savior''
of the Church of the Subgenius, a satirical cyberian cult, the
young man has a tongue-in-cheek attitude toward his
monkeywrenching and delights in the efficiency of his visual wit.
One two-dollar can of spray paint can reverse a
hundred-thousand dollar media campaign. You use their own words
against them, expose their lies with humor.'' Using his own
version of a device diagramed in Foreman's Field Guide, Bob puts
a can of spray paint on top of a long metal rod with a string and
trigger in the handle. From the ground, he can alter or add to a
billboard many feet above his reach. Following Foreman's advice,
he keeps the tool dismantled and hidden in a locked compartment
of his truck, and varies the locations and times of his "hits''
so that he won't get caught. The book says answer the
billboards. That's what we do. It's like they leave space for our
comments.'' Among Bob's favorites are painting tombstones on the
horizons of Marlboro Country and changing campaign slogans from
"elect'' to eRect.''
Both Bob and Kali support the activities of more aggressive
monkeywrenchers, but fear keeps them from going on those
missions. Not everyone's gotta risk their lives,'' Kali
explains. "They've gotten chased by guys with bats.''
But what they're doing is essential,'' Bob adds. "It's a
completely natural response. When the body gets sick, it makes
more white blood cells. These guys are like that. We're like
that, too, to an extent.''
From a cyberian perspective, ecoterrorists are natural
generators of negative feedback in the great Gaian organism. Even
Brendan O'Regan, the reserved and mild-mannered vice president
for research at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, acknowledges
the place of ecotage as a valuable meme against the violation of
the planet:
Even if you disagree with the tactic, they're pointing out
that industry is generating a kind of anarchy toward the
environment. Ecoterrorists generate an anarchy back. There is an
extreme that is driving it. Ecotage is sabotage on behalf of the
environment. It's done rationalizing that due process of law and
ethical concern is not being followed by the owners of the
system, so `fuck them.' And a lot of this stuff will be happening
in concert with and through technologies like the fax, copiers,
the computer network. It's chaos against chaos.''
The systems set in place by the establishment,'' as long as
we're using blanket terminology, created a new series of feedback
loops and iterators to replace or at least make us as aware of
the natural ones destroyed by deforestation and environmental
tyranny. Large organizations like Greenpeace depend on computer
hackers and satellite experts both to set up their own
communications networks and to intercept law enforcement
communications about planned actions. Illegal television
broadcasting vans, which have already been used in Germany, are
currently under construction in the Bay Area; they will be
capable of substituting scheduled programming with radical
propaganda, or even superimposing text over regular
transmissions.
Ecoterrorists are never antitechnology. They see high tech
as a tool for faster and more effective feedback and iteration.
For these and other reasons, the developers of the Gaia
hypothesis do not predict doom for our planet--especially from
the development of inventions that appear unnatural. They realize
the place of technology in the bigger picture, and even its value
in regulating the biosphere. As James Lovelock, originator of the
Gaia hypothesis, assures us:
In the end we may achieve a sensible and economic
technology and be more in harmony with the rest of Gaia. There
can be no voluntary resignation from technology. We are so
inextricably part of the technosphere that giving it up is as
unrealistic as jumping off a ship in mid-Atlantic to swim the
rest of the journey in glorious independence.''
Howard Rheingold, a social theorist, editor of the Whole
Earth Review and author of computer culture books including
Virtual Reality, also admits: It might be correct that
technology was the wrong choice a long time ago and that it led
to a really fucked up situation. But I don't see a way of getting
out of this--without most of the people on Earth dying--without
learning how to manage technology.''
The danger here, of course, is in overestimating our
potential to see our situation clearly and to implement
technology toward the ends necessary. An oversimplification of
the issues is as dangerous to our survival and, even more, our
liberation, as is the reduction and simplification of our
biosphere through the elimination of the millions of species upon
which Gaia depends for feedback and iteration.
CHAPTER 18
May the Best Meme Win
It's by using the technologies and pathways laid down by
promoters of control that cyberians believe they must conduct
their revolution. The massive television network, for example,
whose original purpose was to sell products and--except for a
brief period during the Vietnam war--to manufacture public
consent for political lunacy, has now been coopted as a feedback
mechanism by low-end home video cameramen. Coined Video
Vigilantes'' on a Newsweek cover, private citizens are bringing
reality to the media. When a group of cops use excessive force on
a suspect, chances are pretty good that someone with a camcorder
will capture the images on tape, and CNN will have broadcast it
around the world within a couple of hours. In addition, groups
such as Deep Dish TV now use public access cable channels to
disseminate convincing video of a reality quite different from
the one presented on the network newscasts.
The gun used to be the great equalizer,'' explains Jack
Nachbar, professor of popular culture at Bowling Green
University, in reference to camcorders. "You can say this is like
the new six gun, in a way. It can really empower ordinary
people.'' Police departments now bring their own video cameras to
demonstrations by groups like DIVA (Damned Interfering Video
Activists) in order to make a recording of their own side of the
story. The new war--like Batman's media battle against the
Joker--is fought not with conventional weapons but with images in
the datasphere. The ultimate weapon in Cyberia is not the sword
or even the pen but the media virus.
The media virus is any idea that infiltrates the host
organism of modern society. It can be a real thing, like Mark
Heley's Smart Bar, which functions on an organic level yet also
acts as a potent concept capable of changing the way we feel
about drugs, health care, and intelligence. A virus can also be a
pure thought or idea, like Gaia'' or "morphic resonance,''
which, when spread, changes our model of reality. The term virus
itself is a sort of metamedia virus, depicting society as a
immunodeficient host organism vulnerable to attack from better''
thoughts and messages. A virus contains genetic code, what
cyberians call "memes,'' which replicate throughout the system as
long as the information or coding is useful or even just
attractive. Cyberian activists are marketing experts who launch
media campaigns instead of military ones, and wage their battles
in the territory of cyberspace. How the computer nets, news, MTV,
fashion magazines, and talk show hosts cover a virus will
determine how far and wide it spreads.
The public relations game is played openly and directly in
Cyberia. As we've seen, people like Jody Radzik, Earth Girl, and
Diana see their marketing careers as absolutely compatible with
their subversive careers. They are one and the same because the
product they market--house culture--is a media virus. The fuel
that's going to generate the growth of this culture is going to
be trendiness and hipness,'' Radzik says. "We're using the
cultural marketing thing against itself.'' So, to be hipper and
trendier, people buy Radzik's clothing and are exposed to the
memes of house culture: fractals, chaos, ecstasy and Ecstasy,
shamanism, and acceptance. Making love groovy.
But older, more practical generations cannot be so easily
swayed by fashion or hipness. Cyberians who hope to appeal to
this market segment use different sorts of viruses--ones that are
masked behind traditional values, work ethics, and medical
models. Michael Hutchinson, author of The Book of Floating,
Megabrain, and Sex and Power, makes his living distributing
information about brain machines and other stress-reduction
devices. He is a tough and determined New Yorker dressed in local
Marin County garb: pastels, khaki, and tennis shoes. Similarly,
the cyberian motives behind his stress-reduction'' systems are
dressed in quite innocent-sounding packaging.
When we took acid in the sixties,''Hutchinson admits, "we
felt our discovery could change the world. A lot of the spirit at
the time was, `Hey, let's dump this stuff in the reservoir and
turn on America...the world! We can get everybody high and there
won't be any war!'''
But it's hard to get people to drop acid. Getting them to
put a set of goggles on their eyes is a whole lot easier and can
even be even be justified medically. Numerous studies have
demonstrated that the flashing lights and sounds produced by
brain machines can relax people, invigorate them, and even
relieve them from substance abuse, clinical depression, and
anxiety. The machines work by coaxing the brain to relax into
lower frequencies, bringing a person into deep meditative states
of consciousness. This can feel like a mild psychedelic trip
according to Hutchinson, and has many of the same
transformational qualities.
The subconscious material tends to bubble to the surface,
but you are so relaxed by the machine that you're able to cope
with whatever comes up. Over a period of time, people can release
their demons in a very gentle way. If it were as intense as an
acid trip, it would scare people away.'' Hutchinson smiles. In a
way he is glad to admit that brain machines are really
transformational wolves in therapeutic sheep's clothing. "There's
something really subversive to what we're working on here. We've
convinced businesses to use these devices for stress reduction,
schools for better learning curves, doctors for drug
rehabilitation. The hidden agenda is that we actually get them
into these deep brain states and produce real personality
transformation. That's the secret subtext. I think in the long
run this machine's going to have a very revolutionary effect. if
everybody in the world...''
His sentence trails off as he muses on global brain-machine
enlightenment. But the Food and Drug Administration has other
plans for these devices. Manufacturers may no longer make medical
claims about the machines before they have received FDA
approval-- a process requiring millions of dollars. Hutchinson is
convinced that there are powers behind the suppression of the
brain virus machine.
George Bush once said, `The only enemy we have is
unpredictability.' Authoritarian systems depend on their citizens
to act with predictability. But anything that enhances states of
consciousness is going to increase unpredictability. These
machines lead people to new, unpredictable information about
themselves. The behavior that results is unpredictable, and, in
that sense, these tools are dangerous. Big Brother is threatened
when people take the tools of intelligence into their own
hands.''
This is why Hutchinson spends his efforts educating people
about brain machines rather than distributing the machines
himself. His newsletters detail where to purchase machines, how
they work, why they're good, and how to make them. Mass
education is mass production,'' he says. "Even if the machines
are outlawed, the circuit diagrams we've printed will keep the
technology accessible.''
Finally, though, the most cyberian element of the brain
virus machine is the idea, or meme, that human beings should feel
free to intentionally alter their consciousnesses through
technology. As the virus gains acceptance, the cyberian ideal of
a designer reality moves closer to being actualized.
Meme Factory
For the survival of a virus, what promoters call
placement'' is everything. An appearance on The Tonight Show
might make a radical idea seem too commonplace, but an article in
Meditation might associate it with the nauseatingly "new'' age. A
meme's placement is as important to a media virus as the protein
shell that encases the DNA coding of a biological virus. It
provides safe passage and linkage to the target cell, so that the
programming within the virus may be injected inside successfully.
One such protein shell is R.U. Sirius's Mondo 2000.
Originally birthed as High Frontiers, a `zine about drugs,
altered states of consciousness, and associated philosophies, the
publication spent a brief incarnation as Reality Hackers,
concerning itself with computer issues and activism as Cyberia's
interests became decidedly more high tech. Now known to all
simply as Mondo, the two or so issues that make their way down
from the Berkeley Hills editorial coven each year virtually
reinvent the parameters of Cyberia every time they hit the
stands. If a virus makes it onto the pages of Mondo, then it has
made it onto the map. Cyberia's spotlight, Mondo brings together
new philosophy, arts, politics, and technology, defining an
aesthetic and an agenda for those who may not yet be fully
online. Mondo is the magazine equivalent of a house club. But
more than gathering members of a geographical region into a
social unit, Mondo gathers members of a more nebulous region into
a like-minded battalion of memes. Its readers are its writers are
its subjects.
Jas Morgan, a pre-med student in Athens, Georgia, knew there
was something more to reality but didn't know where to find it.
Like most true cyberians, drugs, music, and media had not made
Jas dumb or less motivated--they had only made it imperative for
him to break out of the fixed reality in which he had found
himself by the end of high school. (He once placed one of his
straight-A report cards on his parents' kitchen table next to a
small bag of pot and a note saying We'll talk.'')
Like many other fledging cyberians around the United States,
Jas had few sources of information with which to confirm his
suspicions about life. He listened to alternative FM radio late
into the night and read all of Timothy Leary's books twice. Jas
had been particularly inspired by Leary's repeated advice to the
turned-on: Find the others.'' When Jas came upon an issue of
High Frontiers, he knew he'd found them.
High Frontiers was the first magazine to put a particular
selection of memes together in the same place. Ideas that had
never been associated with one another before--except in
pot-smoke-filled dorm rooms--could now be seen as coexistent or
even interdependent. The discontinuous viral strands of an
emerging culture found a home. Leary wrote about computers and
psychedelics. Terence McKenna wrote about rain-forest
preservation and shamanism. Musicians wrote about politics,
computer programmers wrote about God, and psychopharmacologists
wrote about chaos. This witches' brew of a magazine put a
pleasant hex on Jas Morgan, who found himself knocking on the
door of publisher/ Domineditrix'' Queen Mu's modest mansion
overlooking Berkeley, and, he says, being appointed music editor
on the spot. The Mondo House, as it's admiringly called by those
who don't live there, is the hilltop
castle/kibbutz/home-for-living-memes where the magazine is
written, edited, and, for the most part, lived. The writers of
Mondo are its participants and its subjects. Dispensing with the
formality of an objectified reality, the magazine accepts for
publication whichever memes make the most sense at the time. The
man who decides what makes sense and what doesn't is R.U. Sirius,
aka Ken Goffman, the editor in chief and humanoid mascot.
Jas moved in and quickly became Mondo's jet-setting
socialite. His good looks and preppy manner served as an
excellent cover for his otherwise illicit'' agenda, and he
helped get the magazine long-awaited recognition from across the
Bay (the city of San Francisco) and the Southland (Los Angeles).
But as Jas developed the magazine's cosmopolitan image, R.U.
Sirius developed Jas's image of reality. Jas quickly learned to
see his long-standing suspicions about consensus reality as
truths, and his access to new information, people (Abbie
Hoffman's ex-wife became his girlfriend), and chemicals gave him
the lingo and database to talk up a storm.
Every time I want a CD, I have to go out and spend fifteen
dollars to get one when it would be really nice just to dial up
on the computer, or, better, say something to the computer and
get the new release and pay a penny for it. And to not have it
take up physical space and to not have all these people in the CD
plant physically turning them out to earn money to eat. I want a
culture where everybody's equally rich. People will work out of
their homes or out of sort of neotribal centers with each other,
the way the scientists work together and brainstorm. Everyone
worries about motivation. Don't worry--people wouldn't just sit
around stoned watching TV.''
He ponders that possibility for a moment. Maybe people will
want to take a year off, smoke some grass and watch TV. But then
they'll get bored and they'll discover more and more of
themselves.''
The boys and girls at Mondo have made a profession of
quitting the work force, getting stoned, and sitting around
talking like this. (Since my shared experience with the Mondo
kids, publisher Queen Mu has worked to make the magazine more
respectable. Most references to drugs are gone, and the original
band of resident renegades--who Mu now calls groupees''--has
slowly been replaced by more traditional writers and editors as
the magazine tries to compete with the tremendously successful
Wired magazine. This strategy seems to have back fired, and
having lost its founding contingent of diehard cyberians, Mondo
2000's days appear to be numbered. But, in its heyday, Mondo was
as vibrant as "The Factory,'' Andy Warhol's loft/commune/film
studio/drug den of 1960s New York City. Mondo the magazine and
Mondo the social setting provided a forum for new ideas, fashion,
music, and behavior.)
Like their counterparts in Warhol's New York, the kids I
meet at this, the original wild-hearted Mondo 2000 have dedicated
their lives to getting into altered states and them discussing
fringe concepts. Their editorial decisions are made on the if it
sounds interesting to us, then it'll be interesting to them''
philosophy, and their popularity has given them the authority to
make a meme interesting to "them'' simply by putting it in print.
The entire clan found itself on the Mondo staff pretty much
in the same way as Jas. Someone shows up at the door, talks the
right talk, and he's in. The current posse numbers about twenty.
At the center of this circus is R.U. Sirius. He's Cyberia's Gomez
Addams, and he makes one wonder if he is a blood relation to the
menagerie surrounding him or merely an eccentric voyeur. It's
hard to say whether Sirius is the generator of Cyberia or its
preeminent detached observer, or both. Maybe his success proves
that the ultimate immersion in hyperspace is a self-styled
metaparticipation, where one's surroundings, friends, and lovers
are all part of the information matrix, and potential text for
the next issue. While some social groups would condemn this way
of treating one's intimates, the Mondoids thrive off it. They are
human memes, and they depend on media recognition for their
survival.
We're living with most of our time absorbed in the media,''
Ken speculates on life in the media whirlwind. "Who we are is
expressed by what we show to the world through media extensions.
If you're not mentioned in the press, you don't exist on a
certain level. You don't exist within the fabric of the Global
Village unless you're communicating outwards.''
So, by that logic, Sirius decides what exists and what
doesn't. He has editorial privilege over reality. Oppose it if
you want,'' he tells me as we drive back from a Toon Town event
to the Mondo house late one night, "but you're already existing
in relation to the datastream like the polyp to the coral reef or
the ant to the anthill or the bee to the beehive. There's just no
getting away from it.'' And Sirius is Cyberia's genetic engineer,
designing the reality of the media space through the selection of
memes.
R.U. Sirius's saving grace--when he needs one to defend
himself against those who say he's playing God--is that he
doesn't choose the memes for his magazine with any conscious
purpose or agenda. The reason he left Toon Town so early (before
2:00 A.M.) is that, in his opinion, they present their memes too
dogmatically. Mark Heley and the house scene are a bit religious
about what they're doing. Mondo 2000 doesn't have an ideology.
The only thing we're pushing is freedom in this new territory.
The only way to freedom is not to have an agenda. Protest is not
a creative act, really.''
The memes that R.U. Sirius chooses for his magazine, though,
are politically volatile issues: sex, drugs, revolutionary
science, technology, philosophy, and rock and roll. Just putting
these ideas into one publication is a declaration of an
information war. Sirius claims that one fan of theirs, a
technical consultant for the CIA and the NSA, always sees the
magazine on the desks of agents and investigators. He told us
`they all love you guys. They read you to try to figure out
what's going on.' Why that's pretty pathetic. I told him we're
just making it up.''
In spite of his lampoonish attitude, Sirius admits that his
magazine reflects and promotes social change, even though it has
no particular causes. We're not here to offer solutions to how
to make the trains run on time. We're coming from a place of
relative social irresponsibility, actually. But we're also
offering vision and expansion to those who want it. We don't have
to answer political questions. We just have to say `here we
are.'''
And with that we arrive at the Mondo house. Sirius has a
little trouble getting out of the car. I'm kicking brain drugs
right now,'' he apologizes. "I was experiencing some back pain so
I'm staying away from them, for now.'' Yet, he manages to round
off his exit from the vehicle with a little flourish of his cape.
He moves like a magician--a slightly awkward magician--as if each
action is not only the action but a presentation of that action,
too. No meaning. Just showmanship.
As he walks the short footpath to house, he comes upon
journalist Walter Kirn, who is urinating off the front porch into
the bushes below.
We have a bathroom, Walter.'' Sirius may be the only person
in Cyberia who can deliver this line without sarcasm.
Walter apologizes quickly. This was actually part of an
experiment,'' he says, zipping up, and thinking twice about
offering his hand to shake. He proceeds to explain that he's been
waiting to get in for almost an hour. He thought he saw movement
inside, but no one answered the bell. Then he began to wait. And
wait. Then he remembered something odd: "That whenever I take a
piss, something unusual happens. It acts as a strange attractor
in chaos math. When I introduce the seemingly random, odd action
into the situation, the entire dynamical system changes. I don't
really believe it, but it seems to work.''
Sirius stares at Kirn for a moment. This is not the same
journalist who arrived in Berkeley last week. He's been
converted.
So you peed us here, I guess.''
Walter laughs at how ludicrous it all sounds. It was worth
a try.''
Apparently so,'' concludes Sirius, opening the door to the
house with that strange hobbitlike grace of his.
Why no one heard Kirn's ringing and knocking will remain a
mystery. About a dozen Mondoids sit chatting in the large,
vaulted-ceiling living room. The cast includes Eric Gullichsen
(the VR designer responsible for Sense8--the first low-cost
system), two performance artists, one of Tim Leary's assistants
(Tim left earlier in the evening to rest for a lecture tomorrow),
one member of an all-girl band called DeCuckoo, plus Sarah Drew,
Jas Morgan, a few other members of the editorial staff, and a few
people who'd like to be.
Queen Mu concocts coffee in the kitchen (hopefully strong
enough to oust the most sedentary of couch potatoes from their
cushions), as a guy who no one really knows sits at the table
carefully reading the ingredients on the cans of Durk and Sandy
mind foods that are strewn about. Back in the living room, the
never-ending visionary exchange-cum-editorial meeting prattles
on, inspiring, boring--abstract enough to confuse anyone whose
brain chemistry profile doesn't match the rest of the room's at
the moment, yet concrete enough to find its way onto the pages of
the next issue, which still has a couple of openings. The VR
designer might get his next project idea at the suggestion of a
writer who'd like to cover the as-yet nonexistent what if ...
?'' technology. Or a performance artist might create a new piece
based on an adaptation of the VR designer's hypothetical
interactive video proposal. This is at once fun, spaced, intense,
psychedelic, and, perhaps most of all, business.
It's interesting to see what happens to the body on
psychedelics,'' someone is saying. "The perceptions of it. Some
of it can be quite alien-looking. Some of it's very fluffy and
soft and wonderful. Sort of gives you some hints of what the
physical evolution of the body is going to be like.''
And the senses. Especially hearing and sound,'' adds Sarah,
looking deep into the eyes of one of her admirers. She's this
Factory's Edie Sedgewick except with a shrewd mind and a caring
soul. "Think if, instead of developing TV, we had taken sound
reproduction into art. It would have created a different
society.'' No one picks up on the idea, but Sarah has nothing to
worry about. A huge spread on her music is already slated for the
next issue.
Sirius sits down next to Sarah, and her admirers back off a
little. Kirn watches the couple interact, silently gauging their
level of intimacy. Perhaps Sirius is only a cyber Warhol, after
all. Sarah might be his art project more than his lover.
Meanwhile, others wait for Sirius to direct the conversation. Is
he in the mood to hear ideas? How was Toon Town? Did he think of
the theme for the next issue?
Journalist-turned-starmaker R.U. Sirius is the head head''
at Mondo, and he serves as the arbiter of memes to his growing
clan. It is Sirius who finally decides if a meme is worth
printing, and his ability to stay removed from "the movement''
gives him the humorist's-eye view of a world in which he does not
fully participate, yet absolutely epitomizes. Having made it
through the 1960s with his mind intact, Sirius shows amazing
tolerance for the eager beavers and fist wavers who come through
the Mondo house every day. In some ways the truest cyberian of
all, R.U. Sirius'' asks just that question to everyone and
everything that presents itself to him. His smirkishly
psychedelic "wink wink'' tone makes him impervious to calamity.
His no agenda'' policy infuriates some, but it coats the memes
in his glossy magazine with an unthreatening candy shell. Hell,
some of the strongest acid in the sixties came on Mickey Mouse
blotter.
Sirius sits in a rocker and smiles in silence awhile. He
knows these people are his willing subjects--not as peasants to
king, but as audio samples to a house musician. As Sirius said
earlier that day, I like to accumulate weird people around me.
I'm sort of a cut-and-paste artist.'' He waits for someone to
provide a few bites.
We were talking about the end of time,'' one of the
performance artists finally says. "About who will make it and who
won't.''
Through the great attractor at the end of time, she
means,'' continues another. "Into the next dimension.''
Only paying Mondo 2000 subscribers will make it into
hyperspace,'' Sirius snickers, "and, of course, underpaid
contributors.''
Everyone laughs. The mock implication is that they will be
rewarded in the next dimension for their hard work and dedication
to Mondo now--especially writers who don't ask for too much
money. Sirius puts on a more genuinely serious tone, maybe for
the benefit of Kirn, who still jots occasional notes into his
reporter's notebook. This is media talking about metamedia to
other media.
I'm not sure how this is all going to come to pass,
really.'' Sirius says slowly, so that Kirn's pen can keep up with
his him. "Whether all of humanity will pop through as a huge
group, or as just a small part, is hard to speculate. I don't
think it'll be rich, dried-up Republican white men who come
through it in the end. It's more likely to be people who can cope
with personal technologies, and who do it in their garages. You
have to have your own DNA lab in your basement.''
I've got this theory about New Age people and television.''
Jas sits up in his chair, gearing up for a pitch. The relaxed
setting in no way minimizes the personal and professional stakes.
To them, this is an editorial meeting.
New Age people are very much like the Mondo or the
psychedelic people are--they just go outdoors and camping because
they are scared of technology. That's because growing up in the
sixties, parents would take TV time away as a punishment. Plus,
TV became an electronic babysitter, and took on an authoritarian
role. And I think a certain amount of TV had to be watched at the
time in order to get the full mutation necessary to become one of
us. They didn't get enough, so they became New Age people with
mild phobias towards technology.''
There's a pause. Most eyes in the room turn to Sirius for
his judgment on the theory, which could range anywhere from a
sigh to an editorial assignment. Would the idea become a new
philosophical virus?
Hmmph. Could be ...'' He smiles. Nothing more.
Jas goes downstairs, covering the fact that he feels
defeated. Someone lights a bowl. Queen Mu serves more coffee. The
guy in the kitchen has passed out. Someone pops in a
videocassette. Walter, wondering now what he liked about Sarah,
checks his watch. Somehow, it's hard to imagine this gathering as
our century's equivalent of the troubadours. (Queen Mu later
informed me that the magazine actually conducted its business in
a much more conventional and businesslike fashion than I was
exposed to in my limited time with RU Sirius's crowd.)
But maybe this is the real Cyberia. It's not tackling
complex computer problems, absorbing new psychedelic substances,
or living through designer shamanic journeys. It's not learning
the terminology of media viruses, chaos math, or house music.
It's figuring out how two people can sell smart drugs in the same
town without driving each other crazy. It's learning how to match
the intentions of Silicon Valley's most prosperous corporations
with the values of the psychedelics users who've made them that
way. It's turning a nightclub into the modern equivalent of a
Mayan temple without getting busted by the police. It's checking
your bank statement to see if your ATM has been cracked, and
figuring out how to punish the kid who did it without turning him
into a hardened criminal. It's not getting too annoyed by the
agendas of people who say they have none, or the inane, empty
platitudes of those who say they do. It's learning to package the
truth about our culture into media-friendly, bite-size pieces,
and then finding an editor willing to put them in print because
they strike him as amusing.
Coping in Cyberia means using our currently limited human
language, bodies, emotions, and social realities to usher in
something that's supposed to be free of those limitations. Things
like virtual reality, Smart Bars, hypertext, the WELL,
role-playing games, DMT, Ecstasy, house, fractals, sampling,
anti-Muzak, technoshamanism, ecoterrorism, morphogenesis, video
cyborgs, Toon Town, and Mondo 2000 are what slowly pull our
society--even our world--past the event horizon of the great
attractor at the end of time. But just like these, the next
earth-shattering meme to hit the newsstands or computer nets may
be the result of a failed relationship, a drug bust, an abortion
on acid, or even a piss over the side of the porch.
Cyberia is frightening to everyone. Not just to
technophobes, rich businessmen, midwestern farmers and suburban
housewives, but, most of all, to the boys and girls hoping to
ride the crest of the informational wave.
Surf's up.
THE END
**************************************************************************
In the Beginning was the Command Line
By Neal Stephenson
About twenty years ago Jobs and Wozniak, the founders of Apple, came up with the very strange idea
of selling information processing machines for use in the home. The business took off, and its founders
made a lot of money and received the credit they deserved for being daring visionaries. But around the
same time, Bill Gates and Paul Allen came up with an idea even stranger and more fantastical: selling
computer operating systems. This was much weirder than the idea of Jobs and Wozniak. A computer at
least had some sort of physical reality to it. It came in a box, you could open it up and plug it in and
watch lights blink. An operating system had no tangible incarnation at all. It arrived on a disk, of course,
but the disk was, in effect, nothing more than the box that the OS came in. The product itself was a very
long string of ones and zeroes that, when properly installed and coddled, gave you the ability to
manipulate other very long strings of ones and zeroes. Even those few who actually understood what a
computer operating system was were apt to think of it as a fantastically arcane engineering prodigy, like
a breeder reactor or a U-2 spy plane, and not something that could ever be (in the parlance of high-tech)
"productized."
Yet now the company that Gates and Allen founded is selling operating systems like Gillette sells razor
blades. New releases of operating systems are launched as if they were Hollywood blockbusters, with
celebrity endorsements, talk show appearances, and world tours. The market for them is vast enough
that people worry about whether it has been monopolized by one company. Even the least technicallyminded people in our society now have at least a hazy idea of what operating systems do; what is more,
they have strong opinions about their relative merits. It is commonly understood, even by technically
unsophisticated computer users, that if you have a piece of software that works on your Macintosh, and
you move it over onto a Windows machine, it will not run. That this would, in fact, be a laughable and
idiotic mistake, like nailing horseshoes to the tires of a Buick.
A person who went into a coma before Microsoft was founded, and woke up now, could pick up this
morning's New York Times and understand everything in it--almost:
Item: the richest man in the world made his fortune from-what? Railways? Shipping? Oil? No,
operating systems. Item: the Department of Justice is tackling Microsoft's supposed OS monopoly with
legal tools that were invented to restrain the power of Nineteenth-Century robber barons. Item: a
woman friend of mine recently told me that she'd broken off a (hitherto) stimulating exchange of e-mail
with a young man. At first he had seemed like such an intelligent and interesting guy, she said, but then
"he started going all PC-versus-Mac on me."
What the hell is going on here? And does the operating system business have a future, or only a past?
Here is my view, which is entirely subjective; but since I have spent a fair amount of time not only using,
but programming, Macintoshes, Windows machines, Linux boxes and the BeOS, perhaps it is not so illinformed as to be completely worthless. This is a subjective essay, more review than research paper, and
so it might seem unfair or biased compared to the technical reviews you can find in PC magazines. But
ever since the Mac came out, our operating systems have been based on metaphors, and anything with
metaphors in it is fair game as far as I'm concerned.
MGBs, TANKS, AND BATMOBILES
Around the time that Jobs, Wozniak, Gates, and Allen were dreaming up these unlikely schemes, I was
a teenager living in Ames, Iowa. One of my friends' dads had an old MGB sports car rusting away in his
garage. Sometimes he would actually manage to get it running and then he would take us for a spin
around the block, with a memorable look of wild youthful exhiliration on his face; to his worried
passengers, he was a madman, stalling and backfiring around Ames, Iowa and eating the dust of rusty
Gremlins and Pintos, but in his own mind he was Dustin Hoffman tooling across the Bay Bridge with the
wind in his hair.
In retrospect, this was telling me two things about people's relationship to technology. One was that
romance and image go a long way towards shaping their opinions. If you doubt it (and if you have a lot of
spare time on your hands) just ask anyone who owns a Macintosh and who, on those grounds, imagines
him- or herself to be a member of an oppressed minority group.
The other, somewhat subtler point, was that interface is very important. Sure, the MGB was a lousy
car in almost every way that counted: balky, unreliable, underpowered. But it was fun to drive. It was
responsive. Every pebble on the road was felt in the bones, every nuance in the pavement transmitted
instantly to the driver's hands. He could listen to the engine and tell what was wrong with it. The steering
responded immediately to commands from his hands. To us passengers it was a pointless exercise in
going nowhere--about as interesting as peering over someone's shoulder while he punches numbers into a
spreadsheet. But to the driver it was an experience. For a short time he was extending his body and his
senses into a larger realm, and doing things that he couldn't do unassisted.
The analogy between cars and operating systems is not half bad, and so let me run with it for a
moment, as a way of giving an executive summary of our situation today.
Imagine a crossroads where four competing auto dealerships are situated. One of them (Microsoft) is
much, much bigger than the others. It started out years ago selling three-speed bicycles (MS-DOS); these
were not perfect, but they worked, and when they broke you could easily fix them.
There was a competing bicycle dealership next door (Apple) that one day began selling motorized
vehicles--expensive but attractively styled cars with their innards hermetically sealed, so that how they
worked was something of a mystery.
The big dealership responded by rushing a moped upgrade kit (the original Windows) onto the
market. This was a Rube Goldberg contraption that, when bolted onto a three-speed bicycle, enabled it
to keep up, just barely, with Apple-cars. The users had to wear goggles and were always picking bugs out
of their teeth while Apple owners sped along in hermetically sealed comfort, sneering out the windows.
But the Micro-mopeds were cheap, and easy to fix compared with the Apple-cars, and their market share
waxed.
Eventually the big dealership came out with a full-fledged car: a colossal station wagon (Windows 95).
It had all the aesthetic appeal of a Soviet worker housing block, it leaked oil and blew gaskets, and it was
an enormous success. A little later, they also came out with a hulking off-road vehicle intended for
industrial users (Windows NT) which was no more beautiful than the station wagon, and only a little
more reliable.
Since then there has been a lot of noise and shouting, but little has changed. The smaller dealership
continues to sell sleek Euro-styled sedans and to spend a lot of money on advertising campaigns. They
have had GOING OUT OF BUSINESS! signs taped up in their windows for so long that they have gotten
all yellow and curly. The big one keeps making bigger and bigger station wagons and ORVs.
On the other side of the road are two competitors that have come along more recently.
One of them (Be, Inc.) is selling fully operational Batmobiles (the BeOS). They are more beautiful and
stylish even than the Euro-sedans, better designed, more technologically advanced, and at least as
reliable as anything else on the market--and yet cheaper than the others.
With one exception, that is: Linux, which is right next door, and which is not a business at all. It's a
bunch of RVs, yurts, tepees, and geodesic domes set up in a field and organized by consensus. The people
who live there are making tanks. These are not old-fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like
the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials and jammed with sophisticated technology
from one end to the other. But they are better than Army tanks. They've been modified in such a way
that they never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary streets, and use
no more fuel than a subcompact car. These tanks are being cranked out, on the spot, at a terrific pace,
and a vast number of them are lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the ignition. Anyone who
wants can simply climb into one and drive it away for free.
Customers come to this crossroads in throngs, day and night. Ninety percent of them go straight to the
biggest dealership and buy station wagons or off-road vehicles. They do not even look at the other
dealerships.
Of the remaining ten percent, most go and buy a sleek Euro-sedan, pausing only to turn up their noses
at the philistines going to buy the station wagons and ORVs. If they even notice the people on the
opposite side of the road, selling the cheaper, technically superior vehicles, these customers deride them
cranks and half-wits.
The Batmobile outlet sells a few vehicles to the occasional car nut who wants a second vehicle to go
with his station wagon, but seems to accept, at least for now, that it's a fringe player.
The group giving away the free tanks only stays alive because it is staffed by volunteers, who are lined
up at the edge of the street with bullhorns, trying to draw customers' attention to this incredible
situation. A typical conversation goes something like this:
Hacker with bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can
drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!"
Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to
maintain a tank!"
Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!"
Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I
can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for
hours, listening to elevator music."
Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for
free while you sleep!"
Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!"
Bullhorn: "But..."
Buyer: "Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
BIT-FLINGER
The connection between cars, and ways of interacting with computers, wouldn't have occurred to me
at the time I was being taken for rides in that MGB. I had signed up to take a computer programming
class at Ames High School. After a few introductory lectures, we students were granted admission into a
tiny room containing a teletype, a telephone, and an old-fashioned modem consisting of a metal box with
a pair of rubber cups on the top (note: many readers, making their way through that last sentence,
probably felt an initial pang of dread that this essay was about to turn into a tedious, codgerly
reminiscence about how tough we had it back in the old days; rest assured that I am actually positioning
my pieces on the chessboard, as it were, in preparation to make a point about truly hip and up-to-the
minute topics like Open Source Software). The teletype was exactly the same sort of machine that had
been used, for decades, to send and receive telegrams. It was basically a loud typewriter that could only
produce UPPERCASE LETTERS. Mounted to one side of it was a smaller machine with a long reel of
paper tape on it, and a clear plastic hopper underneath.
In order to connect this device (which was not a computer at all) to the Iowa State University
mainframe across town, you would pick up the phone, dial the computer's number, listen for strange
noises, and then slam the handset down into the rubber cups. If your aim was true, one would wrap its
neoprene lips around the earpiece and the other around the mouthpiece, consummating a kind of
informational soixante-neuf. The teletype would shudder as it was possessed by the spirit of the distant
mainframe, and begin to hammer out cryptic messages.
Since computer time was a scarce resource, we used a sort of batch processing technique. Before
dialing the phone, we would turn on the tape puncher (a subsidiary machine bolted to the side of the
teletype) and type in our programs. Each time we depressed a key, the teletype would bash out a letter on
the paper in front of us, so we could read what we'd typed; but at the same time it would convert the
letter into a set of eight binary digits, or bits, and punch a corresponding pattern of holes across the
width of a paper tape. The tiny disks of paper knocked out of the tape would flutter down into the clear
plastic hopper, which would slowly fill up what can only be described as actual bits. On the last day of
the school year, the smartest kid in the class (not me) jumped out from behind his desk and flung several
quarts of these bits over the head of our teacher, like confetti, as a sort of semi-affectionate practical
joke. The image of this man sitting there, gripped in the opening stages of an atavistic fight-or-flight
reaction, with millions of bits (megabytes) sifting down out of his hair and into his nostrils and mouth, his
face gradually turning purple as he built up to an explosion, is the single most memorable scene from my
formal education.
Anyway, it will have been obvious that my interaction with the computer was of an extremely formal
nature, being sharply divided up into different phases, viz.: (1) sitting at home with paper and pencil,
miles and miles from any computer, I would think very, very hard about what I wanted the computer to
do, and translate my intentions into a computer language--a series of alphanumeric symbols on a page.
(2) I would carry this across a sort of informational cordon sanitaire (three miles of snowdrifts) to school
and type those letters into a machine--not a computer--which would convert the symbols into binary
numbers and record them visibly on a tape. (3) Then, through the rubber-cup modem, I would cause
those numbers to be sent to the university mainframe, which would (4) do arithmetic on them and send
different numbers back to the teletype. (5) The teletype would convert these numbers back into letters
and hammer them out on a page and (6) I, watching, would construe the letters as meaningful symbols.
The division of responsibilities implied by all of this is admirably clean: computers do arithmetic on
bits of information. Humans construe the bits as meaningful symbols. But this distinction is now being
blurred, or at least complicated, by the advent of modern operating systems that use, and frequently
abuse, the power of metaphor to make computers accessible to a larger audience. Along the way-possibly because of those metaphors, which make an operating system a sort of work of art--people start
to get emotional, and grow attached to pieces of software in the way that my friend's dad did to his MGB.
People who have only interacted with computers through graphical user interfaces like the MacOS or
Windows--which is to say, almost everyone who has ever used a computer--may have been startled, or at
least bemused, to hear about the telegraph machine that I used to communicate with a computer in 1973.
But there was, and is, a good reason for using this particular kind of technology. Human beings have
various ways of communicating to each other, such as music, art, dance, and facial expressions, but some
of these are more amenable than others to being expressed as strings of symbols. Written language is the
easiest of all, because, of course, it consists of strings of symbols to begin with. If the symbols happen to
belong to a phonetic alphabet (as opposed to, say, ideograms), converting them into bits is a trivial
procedure, and one that was nailed, technologically, in the early nineteenth century, with the
introduction of Morse code and other forms of telegraphy.
We had a human/computer interface a hundred years before we had computers. When computers
came into being around the time of the Second World War, humans, quite naturally, communicated with
them by simply grafting them on to the already-existing technologies for translating letters into bits and
vice versa: teletypes and punch card machines.
These embodied two fundamentally different approaches to computing. When you were using cards,
you'd punch a whole stack of them and run them through the reader all at once, which was called batch
processing. You could also do batch processing with a teletype, as I have already described, by using the
paper tape reader, and we were certainly encouraged to use this approach when I was in high school.
But--though efforts were made to keep us unaware of this--the teletype could do something that the card
reader could not. On the teletype, once the modem link was established, you could just type in a line and
hit the return key. The teletype would send that line to the computer, which might or might not respond
with some lines of its own, which the teletype would hammer out--producing, over time, a transcript of
your exchange with the machine. This way of doing it did not even have a name at the time, but when,
much later, an alternative became available, it was retroactively dubbed the Command Line Interface.
When I moved on to college, I did my computing in large, stifling rooms where scores of students
would sit in front of slightly updated versions of the same machines and write computer programs: these
used dot-matrix printing mechanisms, but were (from the computer's point of view) identical to the old
teletypes. By that point, computers were better at time-sharing--that is, mainframes were still
mainframes, but they were better at communicating with a large number of terminals at once.
Consequently, it was no longer necessary to use batch processing. Card readers were shoved out into
hallways and boiler rooms, and batch processing became a nerds-only kind of thing, and consequently
took on a certain eldritch flavor among those of us who even knew it existed. We were all off the Batch,
and on the Command Line, interface now--my very first shift in operating system paradigms, if only I'd
known it.
A huge stack of accordion-fold paper sat on the floor underneath each one of these glorified teletypes,
and miles of paper shuddered through their platens. Almost all of this paper was thrown away or
recycled without ever having been touched by ink--an ecological atrocity so glaring that those machines
soon replaced by video terminals--so-called "glass teletypes"--which were quieter and didn't waste
paper. Again, though, from the computer's point of view these were indistinguishable from World War
II-era teletype machines. In effect we still used Victorian technology to communicate with computers
until about 1984, when the Macintosh was introduced with its Graphical User Interface. Even after that,
the Command Line continued to exist as an underlying stratum--a sort of brainstem reflex--of many
modern computer systems all through the heyday of Graphical User Interfaces, or GUIs as I will call
them from now on.
GUIs
Now the first job that any coder needs to do when writing a new piece of software is to figure out how
to take the information that is being worked with (in a graphics program, an image; in a spreadsheet, a
grid of numbers) and turn it into a linear string of bytes. These strings of bytes are commonly called files
or (somewhat more hiply) streams. They are to telegrams what modern humans are to Cro-Magnon
man, which is to say the same thing under a different name. All that you see on your computer screen-your Tomb Raider, your digitized voice mail messages, faxes, and word processing documents written in
thirty-seven different typefaces--is still, from the computer's point of view, just like telegrams, except
much longer, and demanding of more arithmetic.
The quickest way to get a taste of this is to fire up your web browser, visit a site, and then select the
View/Document Source menu item. You will get a bunch of computer code that looks something like this:
<html>
<head>
<title>Shift Online</title>
<meta name="DESCRIPTION"
content="This is Shift Online,....">
<meta name="KEYWORDS"
content="Shift Online's homepage, homepage of Shift Online, Shift Magazine, Shift TV,
Behaviour, Behaviour, Shift Online, Shift Magazine, ...">
</head>
<frameset rows="80, *" frameborder="0" framespacing="0"
border="0">
<frame name="top" src="../html/core_top.html" noresize
scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0"
frameborder="0" framespacing="0">
<frame name="bottom" src="core_java.html" noresize
scrolling="yes" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0"
frameborder="0" framespacing="0">
</frameset>
This crud is called HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and it is basically a very simple
programming language instructing your web browser how to draw a page on a screen. Anyone can learn
HTML and many people do. The important thing is that no matter what splendid multimedia web pages
they might represent, HTML files are just telegrams.
When Ronald Reagan was a radio announcer, he used to call baseball games by reading the terse
descriptions that trickled in over the telegraph wire and were printed out on a paper tape. He would sit
there, all by himself in a padded room with a microphone, and the paper tape would eke out of the
machine and crawl over the palm of his hand printed with cryptic abbreviations. If the count went to
three and two, Reagan would describe the scene as he saw it in his mind's eye: "The brawny left-hander
steps out of the batter's box to wipe the sweat from his brow. The umpire steps forward to sweep the dirt
from home plate." and so on. When the cryptogram on the paper tape announced a base hit, he would
whack the edge of the table with a pencil, creating a little sound effect, and describe the arc of the ball as
if he could actually see it. His listeners, many of whom presumably thought that Reagan was actually at
the ballpark watching the game, would reconstruct the scene in their minds according to his descriptions.
This is exactly how the World Wide Web works: the HTML files are the pithy description on the
paper tape, and your Web browser is Ronald Reagan. The same is true of Graphical User Interfaces in
general.
So an OS is a stack of metaphors and abstractions that stands between you and the telegrams, and
embodying various tricks the programmer used to convert the information you're working with--be it
images, e-mail messages, movies, or word processing documents--into the necklaces of bytes that are the
only things computers know how to work with. When we used actual telegraph equipment (teletypes) or
their higher-tech substitutes ("glass teletypes," or the MS-DOS command line) to work with our
computers, we were very close to the bottom of that stack. When we use most modern operating systems,
though, our interaction with the machine is heavily mediated. Everything we do is interpreted and
translated time and again as it works its way down through all of the metaphors and abstractions.
The Macintosh OS was a revolution in both the good and bad senses of that word. Obviously it was
true that command line interfaces were not for everyone, and that it would be a good thing to make
computers more accessible to a less technical audience--if not for altruistic reasons, then because those
sorts of people constituted an incomparably vaster market. It was clear the the Mac's engineers saw a
whole new country stretching out before them; you could almost hear them muttering, "Wow! We don't
have to be bound by files as linear streams of bytes anymore, vive la revolution, let's see how far we can
take this!" No command line interface was available on the Macintosh; you talked to it with the mouse,
or not at all. This was a statement of sorts, a credential of revolutionary purity. It seemed that the
designers of the Mac intended to sweep Command Line Interfaces into the dustbin of history.
My own personal love affair with the Macintosh began in the spring of 1984 in a computer store in
Cedar Rapids, Iowa, when a friend of mine--coincidentally, the son of the MGB owner--showed me a
Macintosh running MacPaint, the revolutionary drawing program. It ended in July of 1995 when I tried
to save a big important file on my Macintosh Powerbook and instead instead of doing so, it annihilated
the data so thoroughly that two different disk crash utility programs were unable to find any trace that it
had ever existed. During the intervening ten years, I had a passion for the MacOS that seemed righteous
and reasonable at the time but in retrospect strikes me as being exactly the same sort of goofy infatuation
that my friend's dad had with his car.
The introduction of the Mac triggered a sort of holy war in the computer world. Were GUIs a brilliant
design innovation that made computers more human-centered and therefore accessible to the masses,
leading us toward an unprecedented revolution in human society, or an insulting bit of audiovisual
gimcrackery dreamed up by flaky Bay Area hacker types that stripped computers of their power and
flexibility and turned the noble and serious work of computing into a childish video game?
This debate actually seems more interesting to me today than it did in the mid-1980s. But people more
or less stopped debating it when Microsoft endorsed the idea of GUIs by coming out with the first
Windows. At this point, command-line partisans were relegated to the status of silly old grouches, and a
new conflict was touched off, between users of MacOS and users of Windows.
There was plenty to argue about. The first Macintoshes looked different from other PCs even when
they were turned off: they consisted of one box containing both CPU (the part of the computer that does
arithmetic on bits) and monitor screen. This was billed, at the time, as a philosophical statement of sorts:
Apple wanted to make the personal computer into an appliance, like a toaster. But it also reflected the
purely technical demands of running a graphical user interface. In a GUI machine, the chips that draw
things on the screen have to be integrated with the computer's central processing unit, or CPU, to a far
greater extent than is the case with command-line interfaces, which until recently didn't even know that
they weren't just talking to teletypes.
This distinction was of a technical and abstract nature, but it became clearer when the machine
crashed (it is commonly the case with technologies that you can get the best insight about how they work
by watching them fail). When everything went to hell and the CPU began spewing out random bits, the
result, on a CLI machine, was lines and lines of perfectly formed but random characters on the screen-known to cognoscenti as "going Cyrillic." But to the MacOS, the screen was not a teletype, but a place to
put graphics; the image on the screen was a bitmap, a literal rendering of the contents of a particular
portion of the computer's memory. When the computer crashed and wrote gibberish into the bitmap, the
result was something that looked vaguely like static on a broken television set--a "snow crash."
And even after the introduction of Windows, the underlying differences endured; when a Windows
machine got into trouble, the old command-line interface would fall down over the GUI like an asbestos
fire curtain sealing off the proscenium of a burning opera. When a Macintosh got into trouble it
presented you with a cartoon of a bomb, which was funny the first time you saw it.
And these were by no means superficial differences. The reversion of Windows to a CLI when it was in
distress proved to Mac partisans that Windows was nothing more than a cheap facade, like a garish
afghan flung over a rotted-out sofa. They were disturbed and annoyed by the sense that lurking
underneath Windows' ostensibly user-friendly interface was--literally--a subtext.
For their part, Windows fans might have made the sour observation that all computers, even
Macintoshes, were built on that same subtext, and that the refusal of Mac owners to admit that fact to
themselves seemed to signal a willingness, almost an eagerness, to be duped.
Anyway, a Macintosh had to switch individual bits in the memory chips on the video card, and it had
to do it very fast, and in arbitrarily complicated patterns. Nowadays this is cheap and easy, but in the
technological regime that prevailed in the early 1980s, the only realistic way to do it was to build the
motherboard (which contained the CPU) and the video system (which contained the memory that was
mapped onto the screen) as a tightly integrated whole--hence the single, hermetically sealed case that
made the Macintosh so distinctive.
When Windows came out, it was conspicuous for its ugliness, and its current successors, Windows 95
and Windows NT, are not things that people would pay money to look at either. Microsoft's complete
disregard for aesthetics gave all of us Mac-lovers plenty of opportunities to look down our noses at them.
That Windows looked an awful lot like a direct ripoff of MacOS gave us a burning sense of moral
outrage to go with it. Among people who really knew and appreciated computers (hackers, in Steven
Levy's non-pejorative sense of that word) and in a few other niches such as professional musicians,
graphic artists and schoolteachers, the Macintosh, for a while, was simply the computer. It was seen as
not only a superb piece of engineering, but an embodiment of certain ideals about the use of technology
to benefit mankind, while Windows was seen as a pathetically clumsy imitation and a sinister world
domination plot rolled into one. So very early, a pattern had been established that endures to this day:
people dislike Microsoft, which is okay; but they dislike it for reasons that are poorly considered, and in
the end, self-defeating.
CLASS STRUGGLE ON THE DESKTOP
Now that the Third Rail has been firmly grasped, it is worth reviewing some basic facts here: like any
other publicly traded, for-profit corporation, Microsoft has, in effect, borrowed a bunch of money from
some people (its stockholders) in order to be in the bit business. As an officer of that corporation, Bill
Gates has one responsibility only, which is to maximize return on investment. He has done this incredibly
well. Any actions taken in the world by Microsoft-any software released by them, for example--are
basically epiphenomena, which can't be interpreted or understood except insofar as they reflect Bill
Gates's execution of his one and only responsibility.
It follows that if Microsoft sells goods that are aesthetically unappealing, or that don't work very well,
it does not mean that they are (respectively) philistines or half-wits. It is because Microsoft's excellent
management has figured out that they can make more money for their stockholders by releasing stuff
with obvious, known imperfections than they can by making it beautiful or bug-free. This is annoying,
but (in the end) not half so annoying as watching Apple inscrutably and relentlessly destroy itself.
Hostility towards Microsoft is not difficult to find on the Net, and it blends two strains: resentful
people who feel Microsoft is too powerful, and disdainful people who think it's tacky. This is all strongly
reminiscent of the heyday of Communism and Socialism, when the bourgeoisie were hated from both
ends: by the proles, because they had all the money, and by the intelligentsia, because of their tendency to
spend it on lawn ornaments. Microsoft is the very embodiment of modern high-tech prosperity--it is, in a
word, bourgeois--and so it attracts all of the same gripes.
The opening "splash screen" for Microsoft Word 6.0 summed it up pretty neatly: when you started up
the program you were treated to a picture of an expensive enamel pen lying across a couple of sheets of
fancy-looking handmade writing paper. It was obviously a bid to make the software look classy, and it
might have worked for some, but it failed for me, because the pen was a ballpoint, and I'm a fountain pen
man. If Apple had done it, they would've used a Mont Blanc fountain pen, or maybe a Chinese
calligraphy brush. And I doubt that this was an accident. Recently I spent a while re-installing Windows
NT on one of my home computers, and many times had to double-click on the "Control Panel" icon. For
reasons that are difficult to fathom, this icon consists of a picture of a clawhammer and a chisel or
screwdriver resting on top of a file folder.
These aesthetic gaffes give one an almost uncontrollable urge to make fun of Microsoft, but again, it is
all beside the point--if Microsoft had done focus group testing of possible alternative graphics, they
probably would have found that the average mid-level office worker associated fountain pens with effete
upper management toffs and was more comfortable with ballpoints. Likewise, the regular guys, the
balding dads of the world who probably bear the brunt of setting up and maintaining home computers,
can probably relate better to a picture of a clawhammer--while perhaps harboring fantasies of taking a
real one to their balky computers.
This is the only way I can explain certain peculiar facts about the current market for operating
systems, such as that ninety percent of all customers continue to buy station wagons off the Microsoft lot
while free tanks are there for the taking, right across the street.
A string of ones and zeroes was not a difficult thing for Bill Gates to dis