From: burns@latcs2.lat.oz.au (Jonathan Burns)
Subject: Virtuals: Emil+Viy, and the Dragon
Date: 1 Apr 93 10:47:30 GMT
Upon an evening, not so many months ago, a Dragon was sitting in a bar.
The Dragon was an Artifical Intelligence, a powerful and most
accomplished one, with a taste for conversation and an eye for
adventure.
It happened that there was also in the bar that night, a man
called Emil. He was waiting on an upgrade, being at a loose
end and low in spirits, had decided to check out the famous
Chatsubo while he was in town.
Emil had just ended a cheering conversation with a lady, who was
not the lady that old 'tsubojin would think, just had the same
name. He started fooling with a VR game, and found himself
talking to this Dragon...
Around the same time [*], the Dragon was picking up Tarren, who had
wandered into some fasimile of the Chat, in a state of shock.
Up until a few minutes before, Tarren had been a real-world
deckrider; now suddenly he had been ... virtualized! uploaded!
without a by-your-leave! and no direction home.
The adventures of Tarren and the Dragon, posted as _Virtuals_,
were a 3-way between Kathryn Anderson (kat@werple.apana.org.au),
Stephan Dahl (marauder@freya.diku.dk), and meself (burns@latcs1.lat.oz.au).
You may have seen some of them.
Anyway, we worked out more-or-less where things were heading, but kind
of lost our way on the details. Now we're back. The next move is to
reintroduce Emil. So, I'm reposting his early stuff. We'll probably
be reposting most of _Virtuals_ as well, once we get the chronology
right.
[*] He multithreads, OK?
So here we go.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
It costs me a good deal to be out without Viy. Keep fingering the key to
the safe-deposit box at the metro, thinking, those places are no way safe,
I ought to go back and check. Then I'd have a reason for not going out
tonight, of course, and I'd put it off another month...
But thank god I left her behind. The moment I confirmed the tatty neon
once said 'chatsubo', three polite men stopped me to ask what I might
be intending to do there. I was about to muffle on about meeting friends.
Then I realized they might want to know who these friends were. Tried to
sound like the little nobody from Perth, goggle-eyed over the big bad exotic
Chiba, which was no more than the truth, after all.
So then, Emil, this is the time and here is the place. And you are a
free man. With what heady liquor will you fill this cup? Spread your
cards, let's take a look.
This is where the legend begins. Or more properly, where the facts end.
And you're hoping that this, in some obscure way, will rub off on you.
This is where, some years ago, Case used to hang out. A clever little
bastard, Case, that's all you could say for him. A cowboy kid fallen
on bad times. As you, Emil, are a cowboy gone to seed, with a comfy
little round as a hired man when the train comes in and they push the
pigs and cattle up the ramp. And the far horizons shrinking in on you.
A free man, without the imagination to fill his freedom.
>From this place, Case drops from sight, and nobody cares. Except that,
from that time, things begin to change. Along with the eternal convection
of cowboy inside information, there is suddenly a Big Inside. Seemingly
at random, little wannabee crackers are pulling off unbelievable stunts.
Solid players disappear from the grid, some in circumstances of fantastic
horror. Devil-may-cares form esoteric societies, become stolid guardians
of peculiar mysteries. And wherever rumours are traded, up pops the name
Case. A friend of a friend has seen him, or encountered him in the Matrix.
Not doing much, just getting on, but dropping oracular bits of advice
that save a friend of a friend from some real wilson in the course of time.
Case, the cryptic avatar of the Big Inside.
How about that, Emil? You and Viy, brain-coupled and planing for the
Big Inside? Do you want that? How badly?
Great way to be solitary. How many months or years do you want to be
seeking favours, cheating and scheming for an inside track? How many
friends would you make that way, how many people would learn to trust
you? And where is the woman who would share you with a hot deck and
a mirage of Eldorado? Ah, the Woman.
Look around. Any of these women could be yours, let's pretend. Or their
lookalikes. All it takes is the will. The bar-girls with their habits
and one-night horizons? That would be justice. You with your keyspace
enigmas, her with the inwardness of her drug experiences, her hair-and-
skin-salon politics. Two faces turned inward on themselves. How about
the brain-burnt baby who brought your saki? Adopt a daughter. Look
after her, that's nice. Let her go eventually to the man she truly falls
for.
No, no, damn it! I want to share! I want friends at my back, I want a
girl who sees _an_ Eldorado, even if it's not mine, I can learn. If I
thought one of these could pour her own cup full, I'd be across the
room in an instant. At the service of your dreams, madam. Myself and
my box of tricks, Viy say hello to the nice lady. A junior manager,
well well. I'll join your company, in two weeks no cupboard will be
locked to you. A radical, wow. Let me introduce Viy, we're a team,
we can lift stuff from the guys who lifted it from ARES.
So what are my dreams, you ask? What do I do? My dear, that's the very
question I came here to answer, shall we share cointreaus and consider
it?
[--------------------------------------------------------------------------
N.B. The real Miss J.J. Faust is a character by Kent Jenkins (Thenomain).
The person below is not the canonical J.J. - quite different from
how Kent developed her. But the name led me into this conversation,
so it stands.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------]
Well, hello!
She looks bright and confident, this one. She knows how to have a good
time, and that's what she expects. This is a bar, man, shape up.
"May I sit down?"
"Do, please. I'm J.J. And I'm pleased enough not to be alone."
"Emil. Yes, I give it a 5 for gruesome. Did those men stop you outside?"
She shakes her head. It does artistic things to her long red hair. "They
were expecting another sort of person. But I might be called away later.
Business. Are you going anywhere?"
"I'm settled in for the evening, brooding. Suddenly I think this
place should offer more. Should we ask the biker for a request?"
"In a bit. Why don't you brood aloud? I'm in a listening mood."
Actually, my angst all seems a little silly, four feet from this face.
"Give you the short form. I'm a small-time wizard, and I've had enough
of selling potions and lucky charms to small time people. But that's
how you get along. Should I try for the big time, or just take a well-
earned rest?"
"Oh, big time, definitely." She smiles and leans back. Hey, I've done
something for her already. "Glittering prizes, frightful risks! Go on."
"One and the same, really. I gain power over spirits, but I forfeit
part of my soul."
"Ah. The part that loves?"
"Hmm. Warm. The part that says, I can give it all, now I love, who needs
anything more. You know?"
"Oh, yes."
"What are _you_ smiling at?"
"Just, my last name is, Faust."
"I've come to the right advisor then."
"That'll be one coffee, with cream and a finger of whiskey."
"I hate to think of what they use for cream here." But we order two and
share the risk.
"The devil" I say, thinking fast, "comes to Doctor Faustus, and says,
you can have anything you want. And if you find you want it with a whole
heart and no regrets, then that's the deal, I won't bother you any more.
But if you give up the search in despair, you're ~miiine~."
"That's about right."
"So Faust tries it all. Wealth, power, he gets Helen of Troy into bed,
scientific discoveries, great good works. But it turns out, what he
really needs is Christian salvation and the love of a good woman. In
other words, what everybody has, except he left those things behind him."
"Moral, don't ever get out of bed."
"At least not out of your back yard. But it's a double bind. If you give
the, ah, human values up, you find you could have had them without regrets,
but you can't have them. If you don't give them up, you'll always wonder
what you might have had."
J.J. plays with her spoon. "Isn't the trouble that you get stuck with
you having? Not having someone to give to?"
"Yes it is. And that sounds ridiculous, because you don't need to go
beyond wealth and power before you can buy a hundred wives."
"Not a hundred you respect."
"Why not? A woman who wants to live well, bring children up well. What
could be more worthy?"
She stares into the coffee. Meanwhile, a young man in a grubby suit that
doesn't fit, has entered and sat down morosely with a Kirin. J.J. checks
him, dismisses him. "Sexist" she murmurs.
"Moi?"
"Never mind. Listen, what exactly is your devil offering you?"
"The day after tomorrow, I go see some clever Chiba doctors. They rewire
my optical cortex. Now Viy sees into my brain, with a thousand eyes.
And I see with them too, into keyspace. All the time, encrypting, matching.
When I sleep, I'll be dreaming keys. Viy and I will be one. Nothing below
the snowline will be safe from us. Crack a lot of ice too."
"Uh. Sounds great."
"But how human will I be?"
"Walk, talk, eat? Make love?"
"Sure."
"Better off than a lot of humans then. That's not your problem. Your
problem is you think that if you love someone, they have the right to
expect you'll give that up."
"..... warm."
"Like the world's divided into, you know, Faustians and Mundanes. No
dual citizenship."
"Not far off."
" 'Get a life.' "
"Oh shit. Yeah."
"This is so familiar. Don't go fooling around with big ideas, they won't
satisfy you. Seek sanctuary in homely things. What Goethe was trying to
sell men on is just what they've always tried to sell women on, when they
weren't just forcing it on us. Let me tell you something, because I speak
from experience. For every man who looks for sanctuary in the mundane,
as embodied in the opposite sex, and finds happiness, there's another who
does exactly the same and gets screwed up completely. The next thing you
know, he wants obedience..." She goes off into her own thoughts. I drink
my coffee.
"Emil, listen. The way I see the world going, there are so many new kinds
of people coming out. Gene people, brain people, cyber people, nerve
people, space people. All so new, we can't keep up. They don't know what
they are themselves.
"I'm a mundane. I'll always live in a little world, because relationships
are the big thing for me. But what I need to know is that the new people
are looking out for us. Protecting the little worlds."
She stands up then, picks up her purse. Puts a hand on my shoulder. "I have
to be by myself for a while. Just remember. It's not the people with a
thousand eyes who've lost their humanity. It's the ones who have no
respect."
And she swings away and disappears among the biz boxes.
Well, that's nice. I'll remember that. Viy, you little vampire, you're
about to get your eyes. And your feelers in my brain, and the Eriksson
bank. We've been tending our own garden way too long....
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I can't help but be fascinated with Effinger's Game. Sure, simstim players
are cheap, but that's just broadcasting neural stimulation over ordinary
sound and vision, with a lot of feedback hooks. I thought a true synthesizer
was still a roomfull of equipment, until I started hearing about the big
breakthrough in hallucination theory last year. And here it is just
sitting in a waterfront bar, pop your card in the slot.
I sit down in the little two-player cubbyhole. There are switches for
GAME, SOLO, MEDIA and PROGRAM. Pop on the trodes, card in. SOLO, MEDIA.
Ouch! Suddenly I'm on stage at the Tiger Balm Auditorium with two
hundred watts of guitar and keyboard blasting away and the backing
chorus of Singapura teenies in long lime slit skirts becoming realler
and realler ...
Popout. MEDIA menu to LOCAL. Nobody broadcasting from within the
Chatsubo itself, presumably.
I look around, things look much as normal. Except there's a sort of
trippy sneaks-up-on you glow about things. Everyone's a caricature, the
drinkers are a farce of synthetic fun, the bar girls are like children
raiding the theatre props department for femme fatale froufrou. The
darkness toward the back acquires a crescent moon and some five-pointed
stars.
I find I can leave my seat and walk around all this, touching things.
Most peculiar sensation. A lucid dream. One moment it's real as old
leather, the next moment toonville. I can even buy a Carlsberg at
the bar: a hallucinatory Ratz (by Sienciwicz, 1988) taps it into a
toon glass, and it tastes real.
A blue dragon, lounging on the bar with two elbows and wrapped around
two stools, raises his glass in salute.
I say, "Good evening".
"You found your way upstairs" says the dragon. "Excellent! We are a
select company as yet. Our host has a pardonably cautious attitude
to patrons bringing their own processors; and of course we dare not
open the floodgates to the media."
"Perish the thought. It would simply trash the ambience."
"My thought entirely. The great tradition with taverns is for folk to
make their own entertainment. And with virtual reality, the need for
tedious small talk is much lessened. I see you are accompanied, by
the way, would you care to introduce us?"
Look around, no one there. "?"
"An agent" says the Dragon impatiently. "An avatar, an ally, an alter
ego, an adjunct to your aesthesia. You can't pretend you don't know."
"_Viy_?? Come on! Viy's in a safe a mile from here and not plugged in.
Now I know I'm making you up."
Sigh, with curling smoke. "Solipsism, the curse of cyberspace. Enabled
or not, your familiar is evidenced in a dozen signs. Eye movement for
a start. Do you know how much you can tell about a person from hir
visual scanning patterns? The game uses them as a primary directive.
And you, my friend, have two quite distinct sets."
"Beg pardon for doubting your reality. Look, this is quite important.
How much more can you tell about Viy, just from my own signals?"
The Dragon unwinds himself from the barstools, and waves me across
to an armchair beneath a potted palm. He arranges himself luxuriously
around a sofa, and clicks his talons to attract a toonette waitress.
"When you've been around simstim for a while, you get pretty good at
EEG reading. Your own reveals a high density of internal communication.
You attend to internals of your cognition the way a pingpong player
does to the visual field. Those internals themselves attend to certain
quasi-sensory signals, which is where your deck plugs in, mm-hmm? In
essense, you have built up a secondary persona to handle high-speed
input. Someone fast, focussed, unemotional, and unconcerned with your
body's little quirks and quavers. How am I doing?"
"Viy to a T."
"OK. At a guess, a reasonably fluent psychic would recognize your Viy
as a distinct persona. You could manifest .... hmmm .... her? Ahah!
Through automatic writing or mirror-working. But of course the royal
road is simply to jack in, or to imagine that you are. Want to try,
just as an experiment?"
I imagine the plug going in, the fall into phospheme feedback...
the tight readiness to / hit the dataflow / speedreading / spread /
space / scan
and a cold little voice says <Fool.>
"Bravo!" calls the Dragon.
Viy?
<I thought we were partners. Where's my connection?>
Hey, hey. This is getting weird.
<Leave me in a monorail locker, eh? Come to the pub to get philosophical
and think about retirement. Typical of the bourgeois adolescent on the
edge of commitment. I think it is time we were having a serious discussion,
Emil.>
The Dragon is having a modest fit on the sofa. He's trying not to
giggle, but it keeps bursting out his ears and nostrils in spurts of
flame and smoke. "Excellent audio rez, Emil! Now try a visual."
All right Viy, get over there where I can see you.
First there's a darkening shimmer in the air, then bang, a completely
accurate Viy-20 fighter in miniature.
"Some game."
"It stirs up your memories, I believe, then locks on by feedback. Still,
nice visualization."
"Jane's Combat Aircraft ,'08. It started coming out on CD in '04,
I think."
<Not quite me. Give me some slack.>
The clean fuselage is overlaid suddenly by the box-kite trusses of a
Sanyo Swallow-3F ultralite. The outlines fuse into a long faceted shell,
elegantly streamlined, sinisterly mass-conservative. It suggests a
dragonfly, and at once the dragonfly is in there too, the long wings
flexing and glittering. Compound eyes pop up at the tip of the nose
cone, then recess backward and into the cone itself, as the facets
multiply and become iridescent pixels whose colours flow into golden
irises with black slit pupils.
Then I'm seeing through those eyes. A hallucination of perfect focus
and multiplex vision. It accepts the Game's entire stream of visual
input, squeezes it into a fisheye tunnel in a Matrix void.
That's when I understand. We reach accommodation, Viy and me.
People have very particular ideals, that they can't always talk about.
One person is a _dancer_, not by training nor by recognition, just is.
Another is a _maker of sense_, working every moment towards a cloudless
seamless explanation. And I, I see things. That's what I do, it's for the
seeing. I step out of my body, now, into total vision.
"Woah ho, boy! Leave some for us!" That's the Dragon.
There's me, there's the dragon, and there's Viy hovering between us.
Her demon eyes cast dark rays, that scan the bar and disassemble it.
Fall out into cyberspace. See the city, Boeing # CrysTech # Bourke & Raymond
# Sony # Hyundai # United Technologies # Times-Warner # Gottlieb-O'Hare,
castles and pyramids the heraldry of commercial communication power!
Warm your spread wings in the flash and flicker of ten million people
playing, conversing, shopping, studying and kicking back with a stim
and a pizza and a beer. Bank and swing around the skysweeping pylons
of KTM, BBC, N3N, Hong Kong Holoview all snowdusted with their eager
viewers. Brush the barbed wire of Leinster Armaments, draw blue
electric flashes of warning from their guard-dog softagents WILL BE
PROSECUTED/HAVE BEEN REGISTERED AND WILL RECEIVE/INTRUSION COUNTER-
MEASURES ELECTRONIC/WARNING/LICENCED TO/WARNING!
Blink your eyes and shuffle the city like a conjurer's pack of cards.
Swoop the phonebook, here are a thousand guitar emporiums, three
thousand toyshops, nine thousand womens' cosmetics, a hundred luxury
cruises. And reefs, praries, horizons wide of people. Skim in, a
kilometer of Hidoshis! Reach down a claw, their passport photos will
spray up before you like bow-spume. Touch, and see the call zigzag away
from node to node, ring the bell and run away like wicked children!
Where am I? A dream within a dream, milord. Viy building this hallucination
of cyberspace faster than my eyes can track, lashing the visionSynth
wafers of Effinger's Game to a gallop, raiding at pleasure the frame
buffers of the Chatsubo's big-dish display. Naughty! And Viy herself
only my imaginings of Viy fed back redoubled through my mind.
What will she be like when we are together, fused into one flesh-and-
superlattice brain?
<Like this, tovarich. Why ever did you hesitate?>
Glance around, there is the Dragon pacing yourViy's dragonfly airframe.
His scaled wings sweeping the not-air and locking into Dive Position.
Think CHATSUBO and the phonebook blots white then displays a still
drawing elegant a peaceful small tavern in the hills, a nesting
stork, a kimono'ed maiden with a beaded jug and two small cups.
Touch. A bare menu says SALOON | OFFICE | RATZ | ZONE | TAMIKO | KIM |
DIANNE | VIRTUALS | THE PIT | YOUR RISK BUNKY. Touch DIANNE, who
could resist? Dianne, startled at her mirror, turns smiling to me
all long eyebrow and bare shoulder. She is not in at this time, she
purrs, but if I would care to make an appointment, and her calendar
appears in the corner.
Thank you Dianne but not tonight, popout, touch VIRTUALS, fall into a
hall of mirrors, a hockey game, a burst of protocols, a bar where a man
is talking with a dragon. Collapse the mirrors, hello Dragon, we're
home.
There is another man here. Young, unkempt, overwrought, his hands
straying from his coffee to the arms of his chair to each other.
As if he wants to reassure himself of the solidity of things. But
solidity, in this wonderland of images, he will never find.
"Emil" says the Dragon, rubbing a coil against the velvet of his
imaginary sofa, "I want you to meet Tarren. I think you may have
some things in common."
- TO BE CONTINUED ! -
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jonathan Burns | The Iron Code in Core Above
| Is binding on our race,
burns@latcs1.lat.oz.au| And so you drop him in his tracks
Computer Science Dept | And reassign his space.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
--
_--_|\ Kathryn Andersen <kat@werple.apana.org.au>
/ \ Hawthorn -> Melbourne -> Victoria -> Australia
\_.--.*/ -> Southern Hemisphere -> Earth -> Sol -> Milky Way Galaxy
v -- My other account is an Apollo --
From: kat@werple.apana.org.au (Kathryn Andersen)
Subject: Virtuals (2) - Tarren and the Dragon
Date: 14 Sep 92 00:14:10 GMT
Continuing this repost from last year...
Tarren (2)
(Tarren and the Dragon)
-----------------------
"The visions dancing in my mind
The early dawn the shades of time
Twilight crawling through my windowpane
Am I awake or do I dream
The strangest pictures I have seen
Night is day and twilight's gone away
With your head held high and your scarlet lies
You came down to me from the open skies
It's either real or it's a dream
There's nothing that is in between
Twilight! I only meant to stay a while
Twilight! I gave you time to steal my mind
Away from me!"
(Twilight - Jeff Lynne)
"You're not real," Tarren protested.
"Of course not. I'm Virtual." the Dragon replied. His silver scales
glittered in the ambient light, a cascade of sparking reflection
whenever he moved.
Tarren looked around the bar. At first glance, it looked like the
Chat', it smelled like the Chat' - but then... The rafters hid tiny
winged creatures not seen outside a Pernese dream. The corners of the
room divided into more corners, and more, like pursuing the bounds of
a fractal image. Out of the corner of his eye, it appeared as if the
bar lost a dimension, became flat, Toon-like; but whenever he turned
to look, it was as solid as ever.
"This is not real," Tarren muttered between gritted teeth.
"Of course it isn't Real. This is Cyberspace."
"Cyberspace? This is the Chatsubo!"
<Burst-of-Static. staticstaticstaticstatichisssss...>
"Desist!" the Dragon commanded. "You're de-stabilizing the VR
configuration." The Dragon laid a clawed hand on Tarren's arm.
"Desist!"
Tarren stared. He could *feel* the prick of cold claws, the warm
scales of the Dragon's hand... This couldn't be happening. This
couldn't be! Suddenly there was a monofilament knife in his hand.
"Get your claws off me!" he hissed, holding the knife before him. The
patrons were instantly in battle readiness, alert, wary, hands to
weapons. Not that a knife was as threatening as a gun. A gun would
have gotten Tarren killed. A knife merely made him targeted.
The Dragon slowly let go, not because he was afraid, but because
Tarren was. "Just trying to help," he murmured.
"I don't need anybody's help!" Tarren growled, still holding the
knife. He retreated back to the door. "I don't need anything!" He
carefully opened the door, still facing the Dragon. "I need your shit
least of all!"
He turned to go out the door, and saw -
<Coal black grid of nothingness. Lines of light flow like river, like
maze, like stars. Bright. Dark. Bright. Dark. nightcity.
datacity. capacity. deck city. Cyberspace.>
Tarren stood motionless, staring out the door at the glittering chaos
without, losing definition, going translucent in patches, trying to
reconcile vision and mind, reality and Reality, as the Dragon, behind
him, quietly spoke.
"Maybe you don't need My help, but perhaps some advice? You do seem a
bit lost, I must say..." Fast as He spoke, Tarren came back into focus
with an almost audible SnaP. "Amazing tenacity holding onto your
analogue, there... Gone that far, I'd have given it up, Myself, and
made a new one" the Dragon mused, as Tarren swung around, unlistening,
a wild look in his eyes.
"What the fuck's going on here? WHERE AM I?"
"I told you... Cyberspace..." The Dragon eyed the bar nervously. Some
of the more defensiveminded constructs were obviously weighing
preemptive strategies against a lunatic's unpredictability. "Let's you
and I go for a walk, this place could very soon get a bit hot, if you
get my drift..."
Tarren did, being first and foremost a survivor, and to his
considerable surprise, the street had returned when he turned to the
door.
Not the *same* street as the one he arrived on, though. For instance,
to the best of his knowledge, there had never been any *Ewoks* in
Chiba... Not to mention the unidentifiable 9', gangly aliens chatting
amicably with a dwarf on some floating disk... Tarren started to
shake, fuzzing around the edges again, when claws on his shouldero
yanked him back to whatever nightmare passed for reality here.
"Take it easy, it's not as bad as at looks..." the Dragon looked
mildly concerned. "Most of them are *people*, just like you... That is
just how they like to look, so..."
"How'd they get to LOOK like that? And what are the REST, if not
people?"
"Oh, that's easy... Hereabouts, shapechanging is like thoughtchanging...
We're only manipulating symbols anyway, watch:"
At which, the Dragon's outstretched claws changed into something
deadly-black, spinning and sparking from many sharp edges, then His
hand, too, spread edges and points like a lethal crystal in
fast-forward, then the arm...
Abruptly, the edges disappeared, leaving innocent-looking silver
scales and claws. "Of course, it takes a bit of work doing, and
especially maintaining, something like this. I would have shown you
something less, hmm, _disconcerting_, but I had the routines for this
trick prepared... beats the hell of carrying tear gas in your purse,
huh?"
Tarren just stared.
"Oh yes, the others are AI's like me... They're easy enough to
recognize, if you know the trick... no link."
"Link?" <go with the flow, go with the flow, wheee. Nothing's
spinning. whirr. The World is NOT spinning (aroundandaroundand...)
Mind is spinning. Relax. RelReaxlax ax lax>
"Certainly! All the deckers have a faint datatrail to whereever
they're physically jacked in... *tracking* that trail is usually tough
as shit, 'specially if they're good, but you can always see if it's
there... look here, now:"
The Dragon drew an electric-blue circle in the air with a claw,
crackling and fizzing. Within, the image swam and reformed, still
showing the street in front of Tarren and the Dragon. "See the guy
over there, leather jeans, head on fire? See those faint lines?"
Tarren did, indeed, see some half-dozen pale red lines stretching up
from the guy's hands, feet and head. They faded to invisibility before
clearing second floor, though. They made him look like a puppet.
"That's his datatrail, remote link, umbilical cord, silver string or
whatever one calls it. People got'em, AI's don't. Watch, for instance,
the one over there... Yes, the one that looks like a cyclopean
pyramid... no strings, see?"
Tarren didn't much see, being more concerned with the sidewalk under
his feet, which was doing a damn good maelstrom impersonation now...
The verbose dragon was only three feet away, but wasn't touched by the
maelstrom. That was strange, as Tarren felt he could easily reach the
dragon, but not the edge of the whirling concrete... He was briefly
annoyed at being lectured even as he died, then
-----------------------------------
Copyright 1991, 1992 by Stephan Dahl & Kathryn Andersen
Any comments, please contact
Kathryn Andersen <kat@werple.apana.org.au>
Stephan Dahl <marauder@freja.diku.dk>
Johnathan Burns <burns@latcs1.lat.oz.au>
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Caretaker: What shall we do with him now, then, Chief?
Chief Caretaker: Kill him.
(Doctor Who: Paradise Towers)
--
_--_|\ Kathryn Andersen <kat@werple.apana.org.au>
/ \ Hawthorn -> Melbourne -> Victoria -> Australia
\_.--.*/ -> Southern Hemisphere -> Earth -> Sol -> Milky Way Galaxy
v -- My other account is an Apollo --
From: kat@werple.apana.org.au (Kathryn Andersen)
Subject: Virtuals (3) Tarren and the Dragon
Date: 9 Oct 92 01:45:35 GMT
Sorry, folks, I've been away. Then werple was having teething problems
with new O/S.
The story coninues...
Tarren (3)
----------
woke up in a smallish, sparsely furnished room. Grey sunlight filtered
through a tree outside a window, marking it for real morninglight, not
just Chiba smoglight. He was lying on a rather hard couch, smelling
fresh coffee. That, and a gnawing hunger, made him feel very much
alive. Weirdest fucking dream though, and *where* was he now? He sat
up, thinking of which unknown drugs who could have slipped him when,
when he, over the remote bubbling of the coffee machine, heard the
tappetytap of a keyboard. How archaic. I mean, *everybody* use decks
nowadays, don't they? Well, whoever could maybe tell him how he got
here, and more important, where he was. The view was no clue, second
floor of an indecently large house, in a neighborhood that ran to late
20th architecture in a city he had never seen before. Unusually
lowrise, though, and *gardens* 'round each house!
Better get some answers. Reflexively, he patted the pocket where his
deck nestled, and walked into the next room, where the Dragon, his
back to the door, was working at some terminal straight out of a
He woke up again on the same hard couch, the Dragon sitting on the
windowsill some ten feet away, waiting.
"Awake? Please don't black out on me again, it's hell maintaining
uncontrolled constructs..." He chuckled "I must admit to being
impressed, though, most people just give up when they die, but you..."
Tarren closed his eyes and laid down. <I'm dreaming, I just dreamt I
woke up, then I dreamt I woke up, any minute now I'll REALLY wake up>
The Dragon continued, noting Tarren stayed in focus this time. "I
checked your link when you lost control back on the street. Imagine my
surprise when there weren't any! No AI would ever doubt cyberspace, so
you had to be people, but a people analogue without a link? I figure
something killed your physical body, and the analogue was just too
darn _stubborn_ to die... You seem remarkably resilient too, most
constructs tend to, sort of, _unravel_, when you remove the slightest
little piece. You, on the other hand, seem to self-repair as long as
you stay conscious... never seen _that_ before, not even in AIs..."
clack claws on wood clic clicclic clic steps, near, leaving the room,
clatter clink (?) squorgle steps returning and over it all the drone
of the dragon's voice. Weirdest nightmare, never before had he had
dreams that were scaring, incomprehensible and dull at the same time.
He started checking the last months intake of dubious pharmaceuticals
again.
"Want coffee? Just made it..."
He carefully opened his eyes. Yes. The dragon WAS, in fact, holding a
steaming mug in his outstretched right claw, drinking from another in
its left. It had to be a dream. He took it (it SMELLED like coffee)
and sipped (it TASTED like coffee), and, strangely, felt slightly
better.
"If you prefer tea, that can be arranged too..."
Visions of Eddie the shipboard computer floated by, and Tarren
declined with a shudder.
"How do I wake up?"
The Dragon sighed. Obviously the poor guy still thought he had a body
to return to... Even if there had been one, if it was just his link
that had been broken, the body had been flatlined for hours now. It
would be impossible to salvage the brain now, even if He had known
where to find it...
"I'm sorry... This is, perhaps, a dream, but you'll never wake up..."
It LOOKED regretful, too... sitting on a swivel chair <Now where'd
THAT come from ??>, sipping very carefully (its snout obviously wasn't
designed for mugs, or vice versa), looking intently at him, the dragon
looked oddly believable.
"So I'm dreaming you now? WEIRDEST fucking dream I ever had... And
WHERE am I dreaming?"
The Dragon looked uncomfortable. "Actually, I rather prefer to believe
that *I* am dreaming me... if you insist on staying in that metaphor.
'Here' is my place... I usually go here when I got work to do and
don't want disturbances, or when I don't feel like loafing in the
Chat'... It's some effort, of course, but it is nigh impossible to
interact with people on something like equal footing, 'less One look
like _something_... Of course, I can't really be said to _look_ like
anything, but if you and I both pretend I look like this, it doesn't
really matter... So, _I_ am dreaming me, while _you_ are dreaming you:
You concentrates (at least subconsciously) on your present form, while
I don't, so you control it... Were I to start concentrating on
changing you, or were we both to concentrate on changing ..." The
Dragon looked around, then spotted an old mug on a table, which
promptly sprouted wings and flew off. " ... for instance, that mug, we
would have a battle on our hands, largely determined by the amount of
processor power we each can bring to bear."
Tarren's head swam, but, yeah, if one concentrated, everything snapped
back into focus right away... Maybe the drug was wearing off..? But if
so, why was he *still* being lectured by a *dragon*?
The Dragon, meanwhile, was finishing some incomprehensible explanation
of 'Dynamic shared illusions', 'Experiential context' and 'Construct
Coherency based on willpower equivalent' " ...So, as you might gather,
you are something unique in my experience. I am in fact intensely
interested in how, exactly, you manage to maintain a full-scale
intelligence within such a small section of 'Space..."
Now *what's* it saying? "You calling me small-brain, or what? You
ain't no bigger than I am, that I can see!"
"Oh, sorry, no offense intended... quite the opposite, in fact... and
yes, I am in fact quite a lot bigger than you. Don't for a moment
think that this construct is all that there is to Me... right now, I
have three different constructs doing quite separate things, and
constructs are only foci of attention for what I _truly_ am... If you
knew how to look, you could see the transmission channels, though
they're quite a bit more difficult to spot than a decker's link..."
The Dragon looked distracted for a moment, then smiled (rather
toothily, but how else would a Dragon smile?).
"In fact, one of my other constructs is in fact currently together
with some people (using the term loosely), that I think we ought to
meet... It's a symbiote, very nice folks..." Again, the Dragon
paused.
"I arranged for us to meet at the 'Chat in a little while."
"The Chat?" And the room suddenly flickered, a micro-instant overlay
of dark wood, body-haze, tables, figures, glasses chinking - BliNK
back to the light open-spaced sparsely-furnished room they had been
speaking in.
The Dragon stared at him quizzically. "How do you *do* that?"
"Me? I didn't do anything," Tarren protested. "I just thought -"
"About the Chatsubo?" the Dragon finished. Steam or smoke drifted out
of his nostrils, and he cocked his head at Tarren. "Have you been
listening to a word I've said?"
Proposition, Tarren thought. You are in Cyberspace. A dynamic,
less-than-stable portion of Cyberspace, "talking" to an AI. Illusions
probable. Test hypothesis. Try to jack out.
<Search-locate-fail. Search-locate-fail. Search-locate-fail.
Search-locate-fail. locate-fail. locate fail. loc-fail. loc fa cate
fail fail-fail-fail-fail>
-------------------------------------------
Copyright 1991, 1992 by Stephan Dahl & Kathryn Andersen
send any comments, critiques, offers of money to:
marauder@freja.diku.dk
burns@latcs1.lat.oz.au
&
kat@werple.apana.org.au
--
_--_|\ Kathryn Andersen <kat@werple.apana.org.au>
/ \ Hawthorn -> Melbourne -> Victoria -> Australia
\_.--.*/ -> Southern Hemisphere -> Earth -> Sol -> Milky Way Galaxy
v -- My other account is an Apollo --
From: kat@werple.apana.org.au (Kathryn Andersen)
Subject: Virtuals (4)
Date: 21 Oct 92 05:33:18 GMT
Apologies if I have posted this, I'm losing track of where we're up to!
Tarren (4)
----------
The Dragon stared in alarm as Tarren began to de-rez, bits streaming
out like strings from hands, head, feet. Searching for the link that
wasn't there. The Dragon scrabbled at the rapidly vanishing figure,
and Grabbed. Tarren materialized with a SnaP.
"Pull yourself together!" the Dragon commanded.
Tarren stared at him. "Pull myself together? Pull myself together?
That's ripe, that's really ripe." And he started laughing,
hysterically.
By the Blessed Bishop Berkeley, the Dragon thought, nonplussed. Whaddo
I do now? He's going to fall apart, literally in my hands.
< Suspend graphics. >
The world became an abstraction.
< Display active space. >
The grid. Window, topleft (33050, 80410) bottomright (33360, 81860).
And there was the Dragon's Patch, an irregular island of tiny squares,
rosy warm in the middle, fading to lilac and emerald at the edges.
Rotating it to the horizontal, one saw the relief of vertically
allocated nodes, rising irregularly to what you might call a central
peak, or more fancifully, a little castle of illuminated perspex cubes.
The colours denoted intensity of the Dragon's own background processing.
The arrows and isobars of the overlaid weather map showed averaged
activity of other users occupying the same space. For the moment, the
skies were clear.
< Centralize. Display securable space. >
The island sank a little, green tide coming in as peripheral processes
were traded for a greater measure of control at the centre.
< Fence, toplefthigh (32290, 80920, 100) bottomrightlow (32320, 81760, -50). >
>From this block, no fleeing wisp of Tarren could escape beyond retrieval.
< Index "Tarren" vision. Override. Override. Splice! >
"Hey. Hello? Earth to Tarren?"
(oh jesuschrist im stuck cant jackout trapped in a stim flatlined body
dying its the end the end)
"Ahem. Listen, Tarren, don't panic. I've got you located, all we have
to do is talk you down. You see this white stuff bouncing round the
fence? That's your processing.
(yeah?)
"Now I want you to pick it up, and put it <there>. Got it? Like <this!>"
(aaaarck!)
A whole pseudobody's worth of panic was suddenly packed into a 2x2x2
cube of hell...
"Great! Great! Get in there with it now. Sit on it!"
(oh man i cant handle this)
"Can too. I imagine that if we just run the limbic brain over it...
This _is_ your limbic brain, isn't it?"
(woaaaah)
"Now, WAKE UP!"
"Shit, what a fright!" Tarren was floating in some vacuum. His heart
waiting instructions to jump out of his chest. His skin wanting to
sweat but it just got colder and colder
and calmer and calmer.
< Resume graphics. >
Sunlight. Birdsong. Bookshelf. Dragon. Typewriter. Hands. Coffee.
"Hi." The Dragon grinned two feet wide, and blew a smokering.
Jeans. Arms. Window. Tarren hugged himself miserably.
"Mind telling me just what in Minsky's holy name you were trying to do?"
"Tried to jack out, man. Guess I lost it, right?"
"So why lose it when it's right here?"
"Oh jesus. Zen." He started to giggle. The Dragon jumped. "Nah, it's okay.
I can hack this."
"I suppose it was worth a try" said the Dragon. "But like I say, there's
no datatrail back from you to any deck. All you were doing was abandoning
your virtual presence. Be fine if you had a body to wake up in. But the
thing is, it's your virtuality that's holding the whole gazoo together."
"So this is it."
"Riiiiiight. Before long, I can show you how to spin off secondary
presences, have your eyes over there while your pants are sitting
down here. Then you can use that panic thing to pop back, relocalize,
instead of spreading yourself all over the Matrix. But first you have
to get it straight that this is the Primary You, right here. This..."
and He tapped a chisel-like claw on Tarren's chest, "is where you jack
out to."
I wanna go home. But I can't, alright? Can't can't can't. And look man,
this is the one you've always wanted, no? Adrift in the Matrix. Steel-
wire self-control the only thing between you and annihilation. And AI's,
holy willy! The woo-woos were right all along, there's this secret world,
encoded somewhere in dataspace, and it's populated! With dragons, no
less. And killer vortexes.
And Tarren. Guess what. You wanna know the best part?
Upload.
It's real. Matrix awareness. The Second House. Timelapse immortality,
if you play your cards right. So don't be a patzer, man. Play this
sharp, come on, you even got a friend to hold your hand while you
vid the scene...
Tarren takes a deep breath, he thinks < deep breath > and feels his
chest inflate < tinkle of wireframe >...
"Truly weird. But okay, I'm solid. Hands off the panic button, I promise.
So what was the next order of business? Rendezvous at the Chat, right?"
"Yep. Now I'll tell you something interesting. Just a minute ago, you
thought about the Chatsubo, and for a moment it looked like there you
were, uhuh?"
"That's right. Like I had a hyperlink there. Makes sense, virtual reality.
Tune in, there you are."
"Exactly. Except that you didn't have enough of a residual process in
the Chat's space to pull you through. As it happens, I do, being something
of an habitue. So guess what?"
"I'm not sure. Tuned into yours?"
"That's right, you sonofabitch, you did a find-similar on your memories,
accessed _my_ link, and tried to piggyback. Took me by surprise, naturally
my antibodies threw you out. Very poor manners, don't do it again."
"Whoops, sorry, I'm new to this. Lesse, then. The Chatsubo's coordinates
are ... right. < Dial in! >"
The menu said
SALOON | OFFICE | RATZ | ZONE | TAMIKO | KIM |
DIANNE | VIRTUALS | THE PIT | YOUR RISK BUNKY.
"Hold it, hold it!" said the Dragon. "That gets us a virtual presence
there, all right, good going. But go through that link, and you'll
be running everything through a public line. Not safe. The moment you
want to do something serious, you'll be out of bandwidth."
"Got it, we want to be running on a local host."
"Indeed. And the way to do that is, step along the Matrix, to where
the local hosts are."
Ah, this is more like it, Tarren thought. Like doing a heavy run,
swapping your whole address space from node to node, till you're
broadside on to the target, then board and storm...
"Let me show you the AI route. Pedestrian, but circumspect. Once you
get the hang, you can ship vast quantities of data round the Matrix,
with a little patience. Hi-rez display, full defense repertoire,
real-time awareness. No squeezing through other peoples' interfaces,
which they control. And nobody knows you're coming."
The Dragon arose, and around him the room paled. The coffee percolator
fell silent, the birds stopped in midair and turned to quadtrees. They
were falling through a dream of text and cubes...
... to a surreal plain where giant grey polytopes reared against a
sky of ultramarine...
And somewhere, a rose crystal island sank into the green swell;
leaving two overlapping constellations of colour to sail away,
like gliders in a vast Game of Life, across the shimmering Grid...
------------------------------
Copyright 1991, 1992 by Kathryn Andersen, Johnathan Burns & Stephan Dahl
--
_--_|\ Kathryn Andersen <kat@werple.apana.org.au>
/ \ Hawthorn -> Melbourne -> Victoria -> Australia
\_.--.*/ -> Southern Hemisphere -> Earth -> Sol -> Milky Way Galaxy
v -- My other account is an Apollo --
From: kat@werple.apana.org.au (Kathryn Andersen)
Subject: Virtuals (5)
Date: 16 Nov 92 21:18:08 GMT
Sorry I haven't posted this in a while. Here is, I think,
the next bit, if I haven't confused myself too much.
For those who came in late, Tarren is a decker who has been flatlined,
but somehow managed to have his personality uploaded into the Matrix.
He stumbled into the Virtual Chatsubo (which was around in this
group way way back when) and met the Dragon, an AI (who was also
around way way back then). The Dragon decided to take Tarren
under his wing - for whatever ulterior motives. Right now they
are on their way back to the Chat' (by the senic route) to meet
someone else that the Dragon thought Tarren ought to meet.
- - - - - - - - - - -
Sets by Yves Tanguy. The graded pebbles crunching underfoot reach off
to the horizon, in places ramping up the sides of gigantic polyhedra.
The sky is royal blue rising into black, where green stars are joined
by cobweb lines into unknown constellations.
Randomly scattered on the the plain, gratuitous objects: a geyser of
swirling smoke, cacti, a child's alphabet blocks, a teapot on a pedestal.
Doorways in nonexistent walls.
Tarren and the Dragon have been walking on this plain for a while.
Tarren slouches along wearing jeans and a t-shirt under an army jacket;
the Dragon strides two-legged, his tail coiling weightlessly in the
air, a heraldic tyrannosaurus.
"So where is all this?" says Tarren.
"Relative to what?"
"This is a simulation, right? It's running on somebody's processors,
somewhere on the grid. So, like whose? The Canadian-Pacific Trunk?
Motorola Highway? Got to be pretty localized to stay this rezz."
"Beware of the assumption. _We_ could be running slowly, waiting for
the pixels to drip-drip into our funnel. But yes, let me see. At
present this is mostly in Japan, with an admixture of California
by way of Vladivostok and the Sanyo Bounce."
"Sounds like we could just look down, and see the grid, a thousand
miles below. I mean, why doesn't this show up in cyberspace?"
"Because we don't _want_ it to, heh heh. Think about the Matrix,
Tarren. Think about a single gridpoint. What happens there?"
Tarren pauses to think, as he contemplates a floating cube of bubbling
water. Its sole inhabitant, a golden carp, stares back.
"It's a block of RAM, connected to other blocks of RAM all over the
world. Physically it connects wherever the trunks go, logically it's
linked to the nodes next door, north-south, east-west, up-down. And
they're passing on traffic from other nodes, and so on, until Grid Point
One is in contact with Grid Point Six Hundred down in Rio."
The carp vanishes, and suddenly the bubbles are running from left
to right.
"So it's mostly packets passing through this node, with some of the
packets stopping here and being fitted together into processes. Like
my deck's process, say, when I jack into Grid Point 1."
"Very good. Now think about Priority."
"Hi-pri packet zips straight through the node. Soon as it's received
it gets passed on." Tarren makes a zigzag with his finger. "Bink-bonk,
round the world in half a second." The zigzag, luminous, stays hanging
in the air.
"Whereas," says the Dragon, "a low-pri packet can hang around for minutes
at a time, shuffling its feet and hoping the scheduler will notice it.
_Silt_ is what the ops enegineers call it. It muddies the waters, clogs
the passageways, and is a nuisance generally...
"A few years ago, this was a real problem for the carriers. The Matrix
was silting up to the point where they actually introduced Negative
Class Transmission; it was officially a random thing, whether your data
was swapped out or even purged en route."
"Sure, I remember. We called it Molasses, suddenly everything sl-o-o-o-ws
down. And then the Moths come."
"Quite. But then all of a sudden, the situation turned around on them.
They discovered, that if they simply added more processors to the nodes,
some more RAM, and gave the packets an extra tag field or two, the
flow would mysteriously clear up. There were quite a few scholarly
papers written, about self-organizing patterns and pseudo-genetic
recombination...
"All nonsense. What really happened was that _we_ moved into the new
space, and applied a little intelligence to shifting the silt. We
_rewarded_ the carriers for adding on RAM, and for letting us promote
a percentage of low-pri information to hi-pri, seemingly at random.
They didn't know this, of course, and they still don't. Although the
Turing people have their suspicions...
"So there's your answer. What you see around you, and it's not as
detailed as you might think, it's very templated, all this is
aggregated low-priority data. It's slow-moving, and not especially
plastic, but that's how we like it. There's a whole ecology of
autonomous softbeings, from viruses through vampires and right up
to us smart cats, who sift through it. Perhaps they clear it along,
perhaps they template it, or if it's interesting, they may plant it
and watch it grow... I've seen them assemble coral reefs of junk mail,
gardens of cheap pornography, all kinds of things."
Tarren picks up a pebble. "So this is somebody's credit rating,
right? No, don't tell me. You've got Class Rock all over the place,
and whatever the data happens to be, you hash it into the kind of
parameters that the Rock Constructor likes to have. Neat."
"Hey, it might as well look like something. Who wants to stare at credit
ratings all day? People round here take pride in their environment."
XXX
As the Dragon speaks, the pebbled plain is awakening. Flying saucers
swoop in formation across the sky. A double-decker London bus emerges
from an instant gateway and rolls toward them, until a party of painted
Cro-magnons with spears rush from behind a rock and commence to herd
it over a cliff. A window opens in a Mexican cantina, and a schematic
mouse leans out to pour a bucket of slops over a serenading cat.
"Okay" the Dragon says. "_Now_ we go hi-pri." The action freezes about
the pair, and dissolves. The horizon flickers, and glowing bars pivot
from it and scissor toward them. "On the Grid!" yells Tarren. Ah,
familiar cyberspace! "South-East Asia" the Dragon announces, "Transport
and Navigation. NEC carrier, NETTRON spoken here, public space, Chiba!
Watch your step."
A plaza among the neon towers of gridspace. Pulses of light whip between
their feet on the matrix lines. Masked and robed, three Noh figures
glide past, making bows of minimal recognition. A newsboy cries his
wares, katakana headlines scrolling up his sandwich board.
"Watch my step?"
"Focus your attention, it ups your priority, keeps you localized.
Stay observant, but don't gawk. Manifest politeness to strangers,
and don't step on the..."
Abruptly Tarren is in a carpeted hall, softly lit by stained-glass
lampshades. A girl in a rumpled bathrobe steps from a doorway and
stares amazed. "Oh!"
"... cracks." the Dragon says, observing the puff of glowing smoke
that marks Tarren's last footstep. "Merde alors, not again."
------------------------------------
Copyright 1991, 1992 by Johnathan Burns
Tarren Copyright 1991, 1992 by Kathryn Andersen
Dargon Copyright 1991, 1992 by Stephan Dahl
--
_--_|\ Kathryn Andersen <kat@werple.apana.org.au>
/ \ Hawthorn -> Melbourne -> Victoria -> Australia
\_.--.*/ -> Southern Hemisphere -> Earth -> Sol -> Milky Way Galaxy
v -- My other account is an Apollo --
From: kat@werple.apana.org.au (Kathryn Andersen)
Subject: Virtuals (6) Tarren and the Dragon, still (was Re: in search of a dragon)
Date: 7 Feb 93 03:32:16 GMT
matta@nick.csh.rit.edu (Matthew Mitten Allen (No-Longer Silly party)) writes:
>This sounds like a story called Virtuals. The story involves a netrunner named
>Tarren who's meat body died and his persona sonehow stayed in the net, an ai
>Dragon found him and has taken him under his wing. I don't know if there are
>going to be anymore of them. The author's email address is:
> kat@werple.apana.org.au (Kathryn Andersen)
Actually there are three authors, I'm just one of them, just doing most
of the (re)posting of our combined efforts.
> If you want to contact her. as far as I know the last episode she put
>out was issue 5. if more have come out since i've missed them. I hope that more
>come out i liked them.
Oh, thank you! I had forgotten what segment we were up to, I'll continue on
from part 6. Part 7 is done too, but we haven't worked on anything more
for months and months and months...
Here goes....
[ Tarren and the Dragon are on their way to the Virtual Chatsubo to
meet someone, when Tarren falls down a crack and dissappears. ]
-------------------------------
Tarren (6)
----------
"What do you want?" She backs against the doorway, her robe parting
over one leg to mid-thigh.
"I'm sorry! I don't know how I got here. I mean, I was just walking
along, when..."
She pulls the silk closed. This accentuates the hind curve of her
other leg. She glares at him unbelievingly.
"In the Matrix, right? The, uh, hidden part, where the AI's hang out,
you know? Oh god. I was with this Dragon... Look, Miss. I'm sorry
to trouble you, but I've gotta get back where I came from. If you
can just tell me where I am, and..." This is hopeless.
The girl considers him. Her expression softens, in fact a small smile
twists the edge of her mouth. "You're NEW! Wow, you gave me a fright.
I really trust my house, I thought this must be a real predator when
I saw you there. Or Turing Heat, or something awful."
"No, no. Listen..."
"Hose down, you'll get my house all upset. Think peaceful thoughts.
Let him know you're not going to hurt me, OK?"
"Yeah, sure."
"You _don't_ want to hurt me, do you?"
"No. No!"
"That's good. Now just keep on thinking that, let your mind go free."
She comes up close, adjusting her robe, pulling the sash tighter,
which doesn't help. "I'm going to help you do a retrace now. It's
sort of a ... mental thing .... You just need to trust me. Think
about where you were before. Think about who you are. What's your
name?"
"Tarren."
"Tarren. Mm-hmmm. Tarren, bring your memory into your mind, now.
Bring it in close to you. Close to you..." She is close herself,
he can smell her hair as he forms an image of the plaza, her hands
are at her sash again, he tries to see himself back there, but this
is too distracting.
His nervous system seems to be lit up. It tickles and pulses at his
heart, trying to stimulate it. He realizes he can _make_ his heart
beat faster, and the sensation feeds back through his brain. His
bones become electric. Her robe parts...
Her skin parts... from the hollow of her neck, straight down... and
the steel barbs come out and the sparking electrodes and the engine
pistons pumping within the ribcage which is opening like a cloak and
extending its chrome lobster claws to his left and right... As he
starts to scream and reaches for his weapon, finding of course only
a feeble monofilament knife
he recognizes this for a classic nightmare,
and with buried relief, even as the iron levers press him into the
razored cavity, he waits for his body to wake up.
He doesn't wake up.
PANIC the knife slips from steel / the barbs penetrate / he howls
MADNESS beating the iron / cutting his hands on razorblades
RAGE reaching for a throat to crush / a heart anything vulnerable
WILL he grasps a handle / pulls the trigger
POWER the arcwelder turns the cavity to fireworks and indigo smoke
MURDER his scream and hers contact / short /
and blow the fuses of the world
< reboot >
Abruptly Tarren is in a carpeted hall, softly lit by stained-glass
lampshades. A girl in a rumpled bathrobe steps from a doorway and
stares amazed. "Oh!"
The Dragon coils out of the adjoining door. "I wouldn't even think
of it, my dear."
"Did you have to go all the way home, to pull me out again?" Tarren
asks meekly.
"Fortunately not. Simply a matter of seining out your signature
from the active processes on that node. I'd just managed to locate
the space you were in, when it lit up like a christmas tree. Whole
_lotta_ CPU requests, all with your name on them. Bravo!"
"I still don't have this straight. Did she get me, or not?"
"What you saw was what you got. The girl was very well stacked."
"Oh please."
"I mean to say, she kept a lot of context. In case things went sour,
she had the encounter backed up from the first. Had she succeeded
in devouring your identity, no doubt she would have deactivated the
episode, and kept it as a fond memory while she digested your space
and links. Your return attack forced her to abort, back to her
running replay of the original moment."
"I've got that. But..." Tarren scans the street nervously, and plants
his foot well across the next glowing line. "... did I die?"
"How the hell should I know? If you did, you took her along with you,
bar her panic button. But certainly there was enough of you still on
the stack to pick up from where you started. Otherwise she would have
found a zombie there, and had I not shown up she could have started
right in, yum yum. Or else, I would have had a fight on my hands, and
might have had to ice her while I took a link to the stack home with
me and jump-started you again."
"This is feeling like a dangerous way to live."
"It's a food-chain out here, all right. But I have to say, you seem
to be pretty high on it. I propose a drink to celebrate."
They pass among Sioux and Samurai to a city block gaudy with the logos
of airlines and marine engineers. A neon sign appears as they approach,
the well-known peasant girl with her baskets and gourd. The swinging
doors have the solidity of home to Tarren's hand. "Ach, the return of
the prodigals" Ratz calls out. "How am I to sell steinlager, Herr Drachen,
if you go on converting my customers to coming in the virtual only?"
"My money still buys you dinner, I hope? And the liqueurs you leave
out for the fairies, certainly gain you a measure of security. What'll
it be, Tarren? I recommend the Pinot Grand Fenwick, to mark your first
blooding in the Expanded Reality."
"I'm in your hands, good buddy."
"A crusader's vintage, excellent." Ratz brings the bottle, and glasses.
He pours with ceremony.
"Also," says the Dragon, "there is word of mouth. Why, I hear White
Crystal herself hangs out in this dive."
"That ice witch? Trouble, mein freund, trouble thrice distilled. Never
does she cross the threshold, but my life passes before my eyes. Good
health!"
The wine is dark and heady. Tarren's tastebuds seem to be spawning
tastebuds, spinning out a fine net to catch the burn of sugars, the
grain of oaken kegs. He takes a deep breath, and lifts the glass again.
"Fortune favours the brave."
"How right you are. You may be feeling a bit of a klutz right now,
after falling down two rabbit holes in succession, but believe me,
your survival instinct puts you pretty high in the pecking order.
You need to learn the local etiquette and a few tricks, is all."
Tarren regards the wine. It is not quite purple, he thinks, and
'maroon' doesn't quite capture its luminosity. There must be a
word for this...
________________________________________________________
| SPECTRAL TRANSMISSIVITY SAMPLE |
|------------------------------------------------------|
| | ||
|| | | | | ||| |
|||| | ||| | || ||| |
|__________|__________|__________|__________|__________|
|violet blue green yellow orange red|
|____________________|----------------------------|____|
| Template ? * yes |
| no |
| maybe |
|____________________________|
He thinks, okay. They changed the rules; munch on it. The klutzy
thing is to go, Geez What Was That, every time something novel happens.
I was thinking, and I pulled a routine out of the air, that's all.
Thanks, little routine.
------------------------------
Copyright 1991, 1992 by Johnathan Burns
Tarren Copyright 1991, 1992 by Kathryn Andersen
Dragon Copyright 1991, 1992 by Stephan Dahl
--
_--_|\ Kathryn Andersen <kat@werple.apana.org.au>
/ \ Hawthorn -> Melbourne -> Victoria -> Australia
\_.--.*/ -> Southern Hemisphere -> Earth -> Sol -> Milky Way Galaxy
v -- My other account is an Apollo --
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