‘Oh?’ Reeb tries to recall what he said, what Alexis might have said. But Donna isn’t interested in what she might have heard about herself.
‘You’ve never been back to your apartment?’ she asks, round-eyed.
Reeb is taken aback. He smiles, laughs unconvincingly. ‘Not yet.’
‘What are you afraid of?’
‘Nothing. Just, well, bad memories.’ I lost half my life there, he thinks, half myself, perhaps more than half. A bad thing in the walls had swarmed into his data-suit and sucked away his juice. He feels the place is haunted, perhaps by himself.
‘Your dog died there,’ Donna says.
‘Yeah. Now, tell me what you’ve been experiencing since I last spoke with you.’
Donna reaches out and puts a delicate hand on his arm, the right arm. ‘I want to experience your old apartment,’ she says.
‘Why? What for?’
She smiles an adult smile. ‘The People want me to.’
‘And what do they want to do that for?’ He smiles back at her, although he feels nervous. He is thinking about the place, his collection of old books, his wall paintings, the way the morning light comes into the main living space, the colour of the floor. He sees himself standing in the kitchenette, mixing an old-style Martini for a shadowy ghost sitting on the couch, out by the hearth. The whole apartment is lit by the flicker of holographic flames. He can hear a body shifting impatiently. The air is full of perfume. The owner of these shadows, these subtle noises, this perfume was, in Reeb’s memory, nothing but a human template. Later, he recreated this person as Elna, creature of dreams, modified to his taste. Elna never had to go home, live its own life, but the dream had existed only in the artificial world of recreation and had burned out along with his datasuit.
Donna’s small, pale fingers dig into his artificial flesh. He winces a little, brought back to the present. ‘When are you going to confront this problem, Reeb?’ she asks, in a voice very much like Meriel’s. ‘Until you confront the dark things inside you, they make you helpless. They are your weaknesses.’ She stands up straight, arms folded, and, for a moment, she is a young woman wearing a child’s dress. ‘Please, take me there.’
He doesn’t want to go, even though he’s sure the place will be cleaned up. He doesn’t want to see that place again and yet, at the same time, he does. Some of his life is still there.
Donna seems to sense his indecision. She doesn’t argue with him as Alexis would. She simply breathes some words at him. ‘Please, oh pleeeese, Reeb. I have to go there. I have to see. Let me help you. I can do that. Really I can. Take me there.’
The door is familiar yet strange. He puts his lock-card in the slot and, as if he’s never been away, the door opens. Donna steps past, steps inside. He stands on the threshold staring, his right side tingling, his heart beating quickly. He can’t go in. He can’t. It stinks too much. The smell comes out in a wave of sharp remembrance. Blinking, he watches as Donna goes to the far side of the living room and raises the blind, opens the window. The city comes inside; noise below. The only smell is of disuse, a kind of staleness, harbouring memories, but not reeking.
The girl turns round, a silhouette against the light. ‘I like it,’ she says.
The walls have been repainted in a creamy colour. The sofa has been replaced, an inoffensive yet nondescript piece of furniture. Reeb would not have chosen it himself, but he can see Becka hurriedly and distastefully ordering it from the mail order channel. As he looks at it, a memory resurfaces: frantic barking, teeth closing on the fabric of his suit, pulling desperately, the deadly current passed on. He looks away quickly. Everything else is just the same. His equipment, surprisingly, doesn’t even look slightly damaged, although the data-suit has gone. Most of it was burned into him; the medics removed it along with his ruined flesh. Reeb feels sick, yet detached.
Donna crosses the room on light feet and puts her child-like hands on his arms. ‘You must come inside,’ she says.
‘I don’t think I...’
She pulls him over the threshold. ‘You think it’s haunted here?’ she says, breathlessly.
He doesn’t answer. Now he’s here, he might as well pack some of his stuff together. The kid can poke around if she wants to. He can see into the small bedroom, the disarray which was caused by his mother throwing things around, looking for the items he asked her to bring him. It isn’t too bad for him here. He should have come before. He feels he’s been trying to spray plastic skin over a rotten wound. He might as well face reality.
Donna stands in the middle of the room with her eyes closed, humming to herself. One hand is held out towards the far wall, against which the couch rests. Her face is frowning in concentration.
Reeb shakes his head and goes into his bedroom. This is where the ghosts would lie, not back in the other room, or splayed out on the floor, but here, healthy and whole. He looks at himself in the smoky mirror behind the bed, pulls down the collar of his shirt, scrapes back his hair. It is impossible to see the join between what is human and what is not human. The two materials have meshed invisibly. He has been told by the medics that his synthetic cells are no less part of him than the cells he had before; if anything, the new ones are more efficient and durable. There is no reason why he shouldn’t simply forget half of him is synthetic. He wishes he could. Turning away from the mirror, he opens a wall cupboard, but finds it difficult to summon any interest for his possessions inside. Perhaps he should throw everything away. Begin again.
‘Reeb?’ Donna is standing in the doorway. ‘You’re still in the wires.’ She looks small, hugging herself.
Her words make his spine crawl with unease. Why did he let her talk him into bringing her here? What was the point? There’s nothing left for him here. ‘Let’s go, then.’
She shakes her head. ‘No. You need that part of yourself. You need to connect with it again.’
Alexis and Meriel should have done something about her a long time ago. Computers dreaming? She’s out of her mind.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she says. ‘I know what you’re thinking, but it’s true. Part of you is in the wires here.’
‘We’re going, Donna,’ he says. ‘Come on. Don’t scare yourself.’
‘I’m not scared.’ She submits passively as he tries to lead her out of the apartment. Before they reach the door, she says, ‘You were in a dark red room, like a womb. The light was red. Someone was with you. They were very dark. Their hair felt like feathers under your hands. They were like a shell-fish, like a cat, like a bird. The name was Elna.’
Reeb drops the girl’s arm as if it has burned him. A hi-res dream, a ghost’s dream. How can she know the last thing that was playing in his mind before the swarm came down the line?
Donna looks troubled. ‘I don’t want to invade you,’ she says, ‘but I have to make you see I know what I’m talking about. I’m not mad.’
‘How do you know that?’
She shrugs. ‘It’s in the walls, your leisure-station, the heating ducts. It’s all there, and the People thought it all to me.’
‘What are the people, Donna?’ He wonders whether they could actually be real. Has she been telling the truth?
Donna turns away from him. ‘Oh, the People are only parts of me, that’s all. I call them People because I want it to be like a movie, or, like having friends. I’m friends with all the parts of myself, and they speak to me. Some are smarter than others.’ She holds out her hands to him, as if she wants to touch him. ‘Your data-suit’s been replaced, Reeb. It’s in the drawer under the monitor. You can take back what you lost, if you want to.’
‘I can’t take back the flesh,’ he says sharply.
‘That is replaceable, it doesn’t matter about that,’ Donna replies. ‘You’ve left stuff behind though that does matter. Feedback.’
He feels awkward putting the suit on in front of Donna, he feels vulnerable. She is quite familiar with the equipment, which surprises him. ‘I have stuff like this in
my room at home,’ she says.
Is that all? Reeb hadn’t imagined her secret playthings would be anything as mundane as data-suits.
‘There are two suits here,’ she says.
‘There shouldn’t be.’
Donna pulls a face and shakes out the wired fabric. ‘But here it is. For me. I need it, so here it is.’ She smiles. ‘You see?’
It’s only further compensation, Reeb thinks. Two suits left in the apartment to replace the one that fried him. Most people would never think of putting one of the damn things on again. If the suits are a gift from the property agency, it’s in the worst taste.
‘Ready?’ says Donna. For a moment, Reeb wonders whether he is afraid. Not of being hurt again, but of Donna herself. There’s something too eager about her. The hood goes over his eyes.
‘Relax,’ Donna murmurs. ‘You’re on your way.’
He feels claustrophobic for a few seconds until Donna connects him. At first, it is all fuzzy; black and white static, noise-sight. He is hooked into nothing but the main power system. The program they are running is the day-time purr of appliances ticking over, the nowhere hiss of mindless, directionless, formless energy. This is crazy. The girl is crazy. There’s nothing here. Nothing.
Then, out of nowhen, he is aware but dreaming, jacking into a tactile visualisation. The light is red around him. His body throbs in anticipation and there are feathers beneath his hand. For the first time since the accident, he senses a feeling of desire, his body is waking up, but this is only a dream, isn’t it? He is in a dark place, surrounded by a sense of breathing, perhaps his own. There is also a feeling of confinement. Reeb flexes his arms, his fingers, breathes in through his nose. He does not know where he is.
‘In the wires,’ says Donna, close by, yet far away.
This is not real, Reeb thinks and attempts to extend his awareness. He feels the presence of Elna, his animal-human companion, but cannot see it. Part of him can sense the touch, but it is incomplete. There is no sound, no chirrup of welcome, no sensuous brush of fur. Red light pulses swiftly round him, and for an instant, he is back fully in the old dream; that of feathers and sex, warmth and envelopment. He sees Elna’s slanted slitted eyes, open mouth, small, pointed teeth. The eyes blink in greeting, the velvety throat purrs. Then, it has flashed past him, just a fragment, like an echo of a cry.
‘Come to me,’ Donna says.
‘Where are you?’ Reeb gropes blindly, fighting vertigo, nausea. He has never experienced anything like this before. He is nowhere. What if he can’t return? That is ridiculous. All he has to do is disconnect, press the stud in his arm, which in reality will end the program run. But there is no program. He’s hooked into nothing.
‘Here!’
He blinks and Donna is standing beside him. ‘How did you get in here?’ he asks. A stupid question. Donna knows what she is doing. He is aware of that.
She holds out her hand. ‘Come to my room,’ she says. ‘My playroom. All my things are there, the things that I like.’
Ahead of them is a plain white door. It could be any door, but Reeb knows it is the one that leads to Donna’s playroom. As they approach it, it swings open and a strong light pours out.
‘Here we are,’ Donna says, gripping Reeb’s hand. ‘Home again.’
The room is full of things. Things and people. Creatures like automatons, beautiful dolls. Puppets hang from the ceiling, which is a blue sky, the impossible blue of childhood memories. The puppets swing on invisible strings. They are objects of human desire; cars, gleaming household goods, jewellery, expensive consumables, silk and real leather, but at the same time they are effigies of people. There are no walls to this room, only a ceaseless rush of colour and visual noise; scenes flashing by. Reeb sees dark forests, beaches, city-scapes, alien lands, the interiors of immense houses.
‘Look,’ Donna says, pulling on his hand, jerking him out of a stunned stasis. ‘I have something of yours here too.’
They push their way through the dangling feet of the puppets and Reeb sees two yellow eyes glowing from the darkness of a forest. There is a throaty purr and a sinuous shape slinks towards him, dragging its landscape with it.
‘Elna,’ he says. ‘You reconstructed her.’
Donna shakes her head. ‘Oh no,’ she says. ‘No need to. I have the dreams of all the machines here, the computer dreams. I collect them. I bring them through.’
Elna drops to its belly in front of them.
‘Part of you,’ Donna says. ‘Take it back now.’
Reeb has to fight to escape Donna’s tight-fingered grip. His hand is damp. So real. It feels so real in here. He could almost believe she’s somehow flipped them out of his apartment into her own surreal world. He never doubted it wasn’t real for her. Is it possible to share a dream?
‘Open the door.’ Donna’s voice has become hard. She is holding to her breast the hand that Reeb wrenched himself away from, as if he has hurt her. ‘Open the door, and you’ll find Merry and Alex getting stoned, as usual. You doubt me, don’t you?’ She smiles at him and walks towards the door, which is closed.
‘Don’t open it,’ he says. ‘Donna, get me out of here. It’s too crazy. Take me back.’
‘You are back,’ she says. ‘Stupid. I let you into my world and you’re too stupid to believe it.’
He knows, if she opens the door, and he steps out into reality as she described it, he will go mad. If he walks out into Merry and Alex’s apartment, the shock could kill him, because it wouldn’t be possible. It isn’t possible. Why even be afraid that might happen? Even if it did, it couldn’t be true reality, but only be further evidence of Donna’s virtuosity in programming leisure software. She’s always been on the wrong side of the camera, he realises, but perhaps this is all too weird for public consumption, too detailed to be comfortable. Elna has curled a fingered paw around his ankle. Instinctively, he extends a hand to caress the feathered head. Elna has never felt so real to him before.
‘Do I open the door or not?’ Donna asks.
He shakes his head. ‘No, I believe you.’
She relaxes, folds her arms. ‘Good. Now, fuck your animal-person. Do you mind if I watch?’
‘Donna!’
‘Oh, you’re not shy are you? It’s easy. I can do it, so can you. I only want to help you, Reeb. Take back what you lost. Be a man again.’
‘I’m not into this, Donna.’ He feels for the disconnect stud, the bump on his non-real arm that corresponds to the button on the data-suit, back in the apartment. He tries to concentrate on the fact that he never left there; this is just an illusion. No need to be worried.
‘Don’t bother doing that,’ Donna says. ‘It won’t work. I brought you here, down the wires. To my playroom. I collect the dreams of machines here. I collected the dreams of your machines. Aren’t you pleased? You thought Elna was dead, didn’t you?’
Reeb puts his hands against his eyes, shakes his head. Donna makes a sound of distress and hurries towards him on her tiny feet. ‘Oh, I’ve scared you. I’m sorry. I was showing off. Silly. Like a kid. I’m not that, I don’t want you to think I’m that. Look, the animal has gone. I made it go. But there’s me. There’s me!’ She leans against him, a Reeb that is not real, that cannot be flesh and blood, a dream icon. He closes his eyes and she puts her arms around him. She feels warm and solid against his body.
‘Whatever is given to you here can be taken back to reality,’ she says, and kisses him. ‘I promise.’
Child-woman, dream lover of a multitude of leisure sleepers, at home in her true medium; the non-real, the fantastic. There are no feathers beneath his hands.
Donna can feel computers dreaming, or so she says. She collects the dreams of machines, or so she thinks. The dreams of people are in the machines, a planet network of active imaginations hooked into their made-up, make-believe worlds. Artificial reality is taking over; it has its own children. Donna feels the dreams of people. There are others like her. She is not unique.
The Pleasure Giver Taken
I am not by nature vindictive; neither am I particularly vengeful. If the slight is slight, I am prepared to overlook it. Not for me the grinding anguish of damp, dark nights nursing an over-ripe grievance. I have seen the unnecessary consequences of such behaviour and decided long ago that the boredom of it is superseded only by its utter pointlessness. Me, I can turn my back and walk away. Anytime. Well, nearly anytime. Naturally, the exception proves the rule, otherwise there wouldn’t be a story to tell and far be it from me to tire you with a fruitless paean to my self-restraint.
At the time I had just successfully walked away with pride intact from the kind of insult that normally severs all philanthropic feeling between mind and soul forever. I walked away laughing. I didn’t want to live with the woman. For God’s sake, I’d made that clear from the start, but they never quite believe you even when you spell it out in words of single syllables. When you try to exercise your prerogative of escaping their nerveless clutches, they have the effrontery to complain, and then, if they feel the occasion merits it, they try to destroy you. I didn’t want to get involved in that kind of mess, so Lenora Sabling had been left screaming at her mirror, claw marks visible only on my credit statements. I knew her tactics would never work. The plans lacked decisiveness, and the killer instinct was completely absent. She was a fool; I could have taught her so much. During those months I spent being a woman for the job on Leda 217B, I never disgraced myself by histrionic displays. I can’t understand why other people can’t live up to my standards or why they have to deliberately misconstrue my intentions. I’m neither dishonest nor hampered by outmoded concepts of morality; a combination of traits that once very nearly broke my heart. I try not to think about it nowadays. Lenora, by contrast, feasted on my income rather than my affections. She began to bore me with tedious possessive inclinations that were dangerously near to getting out of hand. It wasn’t just a self-preservation measure to leave the planet; I had work elsewhere. Goodbye, Lenora. It was nice knowing you.