Janus looked back to the end of the alley, where the people thronged and sang and waited for the bells to ring. All of it seemed distant, and of little import as he turned back to the doorway. The strung beads swayed slightly, as though inviting custom. Quickly, before he could change his mind, the former pop star entered the parlour.
'Mr Fontaine, I presume?'
All was darkened purple within, and the thick scent of incense hung over a deeper, more rancid smell, barely cloaking it. Janus waited for his eyes to adjust. 'Do you recognize me?' he asked of the voice, whose owner could not yet be seen.
'No. I assumed it was you.'
Now a figure, a man, an old man, emerged from behind a low counter. He was carrying a book, a ledger of some kind. 'You have made an appointment,' he announced, in a voice as smoky as the room.
'Appointment? No ... I...'
'Oh, it's all down here.' The old man had opened the book, was running a finger down a page. 'Mr Fontaine. Eleven-thirty p.m. You are slightly late, but never mind. Shall we choose?'
'Look... I...'
'Quickly. Which shall it be? One, two? Three, four? Five or six?' The man was gesturing in turn to each of six doorways, all of them hidden behind velvet curtains. 'You have the payment, I presume?'
'Yes, I have it here.' Janus took out his wallet. Once again he felt the pull of circumstance. 'How much will it cost me?'
'Well that depends, of course, on which booth you choose. Each is quite delightful, in its own way. And together they offer every possible desire. Will it be submission, or domination? The English vice, perhaps? Bondage is always popular, whereas the animal is a more select taste. Or else you are a user of criminal devices? Which will it be, I wonder?'
Janus looked at each of the booths in turn, trying to make his mind up. His eyes, filled with the incense, started to water. The room seemed to revolve slightly, as though on a slow treadmill. Another doorway, another curtain appeared beyond the first six.
'What's behind there?' he asked.
'Ah, booth number seven. You truly are a connoisseur, Mr Fontaine. Perhaps it is beyond your means?'
Janus opened his wallet, took out all the money that remained. This substantial roll of cash he silently handed over. The man smiled, gently, as he flicked through the notes. 'You have chosen wisely. Please, enjoy ...'
Janus walked, slowly, over to the seventh booth. Distantly, as though from another country, another time, he could hear the chimes of midnight, the cheers of the crowd, the dull whiz and pop of fireworks. Hesitating only for a second, he pulled back the curtain, and stepped through.
PIMP! - THE BOARD GAME
This is by far the most complete of all the items on exhibit at the Museum of Fragments. It was dated and copyrighted in 1997. All of the more obscure terms can be found in any good dictionary of the late twentieth century. (See addendum* for further, more speculative remarks.)
(text begins)
CONTENTS
1 game board, depicting a stylized map of the Soho area of London; 4 playing pieces (Pimp, Prostitute, Punter, Pig); £100,000 in play money, of various denominations (not to be used as legal tender); 30 assorted Pleasure cards; 30 assorted Punishment cards; 30 assorted Fetish cards; 4 Sexual Stamina Charts; 2 dice (six-sided, twelve-sided); 1 instruction leaflet.
INTRODUCTION
The game of Pimp! is to be played by four players, who choose by luck of the draw to play either the Pimp, the Pro, the Punter or the Pig.
Each player has a different objective, which they may undertake alone, or by forming alliances with other players.
Movement around the board is governed by the throw of the dice, or by utilizing any stamina points they may have won during play.
The winner is the first player to reach their given objective, or to find themselves the last player alive.
RULES OF PLAY
Players begin the game at their designated starting locations, as marked on the board: the Pimp at the Pad; the Pro on the Street Corner; the Punter at the Pub; the Pig at the Police Station.
Each player starts the game with the following amounts of money: the Pimp receives £100; the Pro £50; the Punter £200; the Pig £1,000. The rest of the money forms the Bank. Money can be lost or gained during play, depending on the skill of the player. If any player's resources dwindle to zero, they are deemed to be out of the game, unless they can persuade any of the other players to lend them money.
All players receive 6 sexual stamina points to begin with. These may be supplemented by certain Pleasure cards, or else gained by visiting the Drug Dealer's pad. If a player's sexual stamina drops to zero, they are deemed to be out of the game.
All players receive 2 Fetish cards to begin with. Others may be gained during play.
Pleasure and Punishment cards are to be taken up whenever a player lands on the designated squares (the telephone booths), or when forced to take them by another player. All actions described on these cards must be undertaken immediately, unless the player can 'buy' his or her way out of it. Fetish cards, however, can be used as desired, as long as the player has the required sexual stamina.
To successfully complete an objective, the winning player must get back safely to the correct starting location.
OBJECTIVES
The Pimp must take all the money off all the other players, without being arrested by the Pig. The Pro must not leave him; the Punter must not beat him in combat.
The Pro must get through the night with her initial resources intact, and without being arrested by the Pig. She must not fall in love with the Punter, or get beaten up by the Pimp.
The Punter must have sex with the Pro, without being arrested by the Pig. He must try to get the Pro to fall in love with him, thereby not having to pay her. He must not be beaten in combat by the Pimp.
The Pig must arrest the Pimp. He must receive a bribe off the Punter. He must have sex with the Pro, without paying.
EXOTICA
Sexually Transmitted Diseases: if infected, a player will lose an escalating number of stamina points each turn. Cures can be found at the Drug Dealer's pad, or from the Ail-Night Chemist's.
Sex without a Condom card increases the risk of disease by ten points.
Various illegal drugs can be purchased from the Drug Dealer. If a player experiences a Bad Trip, two stamina points are lost. Poppers increase the strength of Pleasure cards by five points.
Any player caught in possession of drugs by the Pig loses 6 points, unless they give the drugs to the Pig as a bribe.
If the Punter is spotted by his Wife, he loses 5 points.
The Pimp must be male. The Pig must be male. The Pro may be male or female, or transsexual. The Punter may be male or female. If the Punter is male, and the Pro is male, the Punter is deemed to be Homosexual. Homosexuals play the game at greater risk.
If the Pimp is killed, any other player can become the new Pimp, except for the Pro, for whom there can be no escape.
The Pig may never be arrested, not even for murder.
Any player surviving Fetish Booth # 7 is deemed to have won the game, even if their overall objective is not yet reached.
(text ends)
* Addendum. The actual 'game', to which the above leaflet offers instruction, has never been found, nor any mention of it. This has led to certain theories stating that the game was meant to be played 'for real' on the streets of Soho. Some commentators have even speculated that the instructions refer not to a game at all, but to real life.
CHROMOSOFT MIRRORS (V.4.2)
The dramatic rise and fall of the Chromosoft empire has already been expertly charted, especially the part that Mirrors version 4.2 played in the short and dramatic end. I offer the following story as a more human addendum to the official history. It may illuminate a dark passing, if only with a single beam of truth. Concerned as they are with the bigger picture, none of the extant histories have managed to reveal the actual person responsible for the final, terrible error. It was, of course, Chromos
oft's policy that all mistakes be veiled by collective responsibility.
My grandmother, Elisa Gretchen, died before I was born. Any knowledge I had of her life came through borrowed memories, until my discovery of her private journal. I need not go into the details of this discovery, except to say that the primitive nature of the recording medium necessitated the expensive purchase of an antique cd-rom player.
Elisa was on the famous skunk team that came up with the original idea for the Mirrors technology (code-named the 'Alice' project), and was active during all stages of its development and demo-testing. Later on she was assigned to the troubleshooting team, which suffered heavily during the fretful launch period. Version 1.0 was riddled with bugs, and the new interface itself so strangely inhuman that the critics were quick to predict the company's demise, especially with its main competitors riding high on the 'back to nature' campaign of the fashionable DOS revival. Version 1.1 ironed out some of the problems, and v.1.2 introduced the new feedback loop dynamics. It was the major relaunch, with v.2.0, that really kick-started the product's unprecedented success. With a brand-new interface, greater thought-recognition software, and an inspired marketing campaign centred around the slogan, 'Chromosoft Mirrors — where's your head today?', the whole world turned to gaze in on itself.
The problem with Windows - the most famous interface prior to Mirrors - was that the more advanced it became (version 491.7!), the more difficult it was to use. And for all its increasing complexity, still all you ever did was use the technology; it never used you. Thus was the Mirrors project initiated. A new simplicity was called for, something beyond windows, beyond the blinkered one-way gaze. Although my grandmother makes no claim to inventing the actual concept, she does write that the name 'Mirrors' was her invention. It came to her in a flash, one evening in a Parisian hotel bathroom, 'after a rigorous bout of continental-style lovemaking', as she puts it in her journal.
It wasn't the first system to use thought recognition, of course, but the first to successfully marry it with a usable feedback loop. Put simply, previous attempts allowed you to change the screen by thinking about the changes, but only Chromosoft allowed the information to redirect your thinking in turn. The Mirrors system really was a new way of working, a new way of being.
Where's your head today? Gone downloaded.
As it did with the invention of the typewriter and the word processor, a new type of creation emerged from the mirror. Suddenly, 'speed of subconsciousness' novels were, all the rage. Punctuation mutated into mere rhythm, narrative dissolved, symbols became deeper, more dreamlike, more dangerous.
Version 3.0 introduced the concept to a network. Version 3.4, to the Internet. These were radical upgradings, with long-lasting social effects; because, although it wasn't strictly true that we were all telepathically linked, it certainly felt like it. The Internet's long-promised 'revelation of the global soul' suddenly seemed less of a pipe dream, more of a God-given right. Version 4.0 added little that was new, merely a cosmetic repackaging to fend off the latest clones. 4.1 was another tweakjob, and it was this version that became the standard for the next three years.
The public will always find its own use for technology, and usually in secret. Nowhere in the Mirrors manual did it warn against remaining connected whilst asleep. Nowhere in the manual did it even mention that such a thing could be done. And nowhere did it mention the effect this could have on the human psyche: the ability to get up in the morning, simply to access the correct document, and then to view, or rather review, your dreams of the night just gone. Could the company have seen how this would lead to a possible madness, a knowing of one's self that was too deep, too far-ranging?
Where's your head today? Why, it's playing with the burning giraffes, dancing with a turquoise lobster on the top of a grand piano, thank you, Mr Penguin.
Many were affected by this dream-knowledge, and many did not make the journey back from the twisted, inner world.
I can now reveal that it was my grandmother, Elisa Gretchen, who developed and introduced the disable dream switch to version 4.2 of the Mirrors system. Approximately 6 per cent of the world's population activated this facility, before the dangers of it were realized. Could Chromosoft, could my grandmother, really have so easily forgotten the feedback loop in the user/device interface? Her journal mentions little of the moment of invention, and even less of the subsequent events, except to note the 'burning sense of shame that welled up within me, a shame that persisted even after the corporation had taken control of all responsibility'. Her last recorded entry reads simply: 'I can do no more.'
Chromosoft Mirrors was taken off the market by government order, and all existing devices were recalled, and trashed. By then it was too late for the 6 per cent who had already succumbed to the censoring loop. Those darkened, veiled unfortunates, who would never dream again.
I need hardly add that my grandmother was one of those unfortunates.
CLOUDWALKERS
Scattermasked, working the all-night leisure zones, keeping check on the flotsam and jetsam that played the cheap graveyard rates. It was the end of a five-night shift and some dumb-arse flot had got himself hooked on a pirate trans. By the time we got there the game was frozen solid and overlaid with these stupid dancing prawns. Low-level broadcast, most probably from Beenie's Fishorama over on Level 5. There was no slogan, no slugline, just the prawns. The advert was in the image, and by now the desperate need for some seafood would be implanted in the kid's head. Another two kids, bystanders, had also got caught in the thrall, which was what we called this state of freeze, and a girl standing nearby was saying, 'Best do the deed, lady.' Gumball came up then, saying he'd got a warning bleep from HQ, a nasty on line. 'Come on, Muldoon. Leave the flot till later, eh?' And he pulled the gum out of his mouth, a livid blood-red it was, stretched it full size, and then snapped it back in with the practised tongue-flip.
'No. Only take a minute. And get that mask on.'
'I was only renewing the flavour.'
'That's an order.' I had the spoiler gun out, checking the load and the flush on it. Some of the flots were still unholed enough to notice the noise, and their eyes were bleary and game-fried as they watched me handle the weapon.
'Muldoon, what's wrong with you these days?' Gumball had his scattermask back down, his voice muffled by it. 'You want to lose a big score?'
'Get the van started, Gum. I'll be there.'
Finally I swung the spoiler over to the screen, took aim, fired. The game-screen seemed to melt for a second, turning pixelshima, and then came back online with a hard reboot. The prawns were dead adverts, and the game was back in play. The flotboy jerked into action, fingers jabbing automatic at the duck-and-dive buttons, too damned slow. Screen death. 'Shit! How did that happen?' His freshly thawed spectators laughed some, till they all noticed me standing there, mask down and the needle in my fist.
'Oh shit!' said the player. 'What did I get? Say, my friends, let's go catch some seafood.'
I went to jab them, but Gumball stepped in, caught my arm. 'We'll catch the flot in Beenie's later, give him the spoiler shot there. Come on now. We got a nasty. Big prizes!'
I came out of it then, this voodoo mood I was in. I felt like I'd come unfrozen myself, and that made me shudder. Got me thinking about Parker again. I pulled up my mask to get some air. It was safe, now the advert was dead. Most of the flots had gathered around the action, and some jets in there as well, slumming it. Flotsams were those that society had thrown aside; jetsams had left of their own free will. And all of them had eyes for the spoiler gun hanging from my belt. I could see them clocking up imaginary scores, dreaming their brains away with thoughts of getting their sweaties on such a piece. One of them in particular, the cheeky young jetgirl that had been telling me my job earlier, she had this look of complete 'shop' on her face, the illegal kind. Gumball had seen the look as well. 'So join the commcops, knucklebrain,' he spat at the kid, 'you want some good leisure.'
A minute
later we were back on mission, riding the jeep through the shopping lanes, towards the up-chute. Gumball, jaws hard at it still, had switched to manual drive. I swear I never saw a man put so much into chewing gum, it was like an art with him, and never a word was said without it coming round the sides of a sticky lump of Gob Spectrum. He claimed it made his head slick, and he sure drove like it; crash-wired and genetic, with the siren singing hosanna and the usual darktime shoppers screaming wild to get out of our flight path. Meanwhile, I pulled the new job-stats out of the dash.
Incident: rogue campaign Location; Dollberg's, Unit 1572, Level 10
Product: unknown Transmission Source: unknown
Range: unknown Public Reaction: 15 frozen, 9 at risk
Code:APXC
'Will you look at that!' shouted Gumball. 'We got us an Apex rogue. Didn't I tell you this was a big scorer? Bring on the bonus!'