5
How in the world did I get roped into attending a baby shower for a proxxid?
“Congratulations, Commander Strong!” I said enthusiastically, smiling as I reached out to pump his hand.
Rick smiled back and shook my hand, rolling his eyes slightly. “Thanks, Bob. Is Jimmy coming?”
“You’d know more than me, Commander.” Turning to his wife, I said, “And, of course, congratulations to the lovely new proxxid mother.” I laughed and reached over to kiss her on the cheek, looking down at the baby in her arms.
“And this lovely lady is?” asked Commander Strong, looking toward my date.
“Oh, ah,” I mumbled, turning to introduce my newish girlfriend. “This is Nicky.”
Nicky graciously introduced herself to the Strongs. I nodded, smiling, and then left them to it, wandering off toward the alcohol stand. I doubted Nicky wanted a drink, but I sure did.
A baby shower. How did I let these things happen to me?
Any party was, however, a great reason to get stoned. With that thought, I popped a tab of MDMA from my pocket into my mouth. Virtual drugs weren’t bad, but they weren’t quite the authentic experience, and I liked to style myself as a retro-abuser.
Just another great day in the world of Bobtopia.
Grabbing a drink, I walked over and sat down on a couch. We were waiting for some last person to show up to sing the birthday song, a crazy ritual someone had started for proxxid births.
Actually—we weren’t really waiting, since everyone everywhere knew exactly where everyone else was at any moment. We were just, well, what the hell are we doing?
I guessed we were waiting, but we all knew exactly how long we had to wait. There’s a difference, no? Perhaps we’d reached the end of waiting, and we were now experiencing some new verb that defined what waiting was, when we all knew exactly how long we had to wait.
I decided, right then and there, that I was going to call it phwaiting. Immediately, I published my inspiration into my social cloud. With my creative work done for the day, I scanned some Phuture News flowing across the bottom of my display spaces.
More celebrities were about to drop dead, or start doing tons of drugs, or stop doing them and go into rehab.
Boring.
Flicking my phantoms, I opened an overlay and researched the definition of “wait.”
Wait: transitive verb—to stay in place in expectation of.
This seemed to amount to what we were already doing. I guess we don’t need a cool new word. Already, my proxxi was splintering me over four thousand variations on the idea of waiting from the remaining distinct human languages. The inspiration was hollowed, and I posted an announcement regarding the death of phwaiting back into my social cloud and watched the meme explode and die.
At the same time, a fast-trending news report splintered that the Chinese were talking about sending a manned mission to Mars. It had been about thirty years since China had last landed men on the moon—on their best guess of Mao’s birthday one holiday season—but their plans for a permanent moon base had fizzled when the water deposits there had proven harder to extract than imagined. Now their new grand plans seemed ludicrous, even if Mars—and half of the rest of our solar system—seemed to be practically teeming with life.
Why spend any time or effort moving a physical body around when you could just flit anywhere in an instant using sensor networks? Everything that was happening in the outside world seemed amazingly wasteful and nonsensical to those of us who lived on the inside of Atopia—but then again, soon everyone would be as blessed as we are.
Bored, I collapsed most of my displays and opened up an overlay to watch a new game my friends had started. Sid, Vicious, Martin, and my own proxxi, Robert, were hot into an apocalyptic otherworld battle, pinned down in a cave by an android army and flanked by giant armored worms. It looked like a lot more fun than what I was doing, so I tried to splinter in, but Sid blocked me. That annoyed me, but he was right. Either I had to be there fully, or not at all. It wouldn’t be fair to the rest of them. Anyway, I could just joyride in Robert if I wanted to experience it.
The rest of my displays held forth on a multitude of other live wikiworld feeds. The Bieb was just delivering his inaugural address as the 52nd President of the United States, and in an interesting first, was singing the first few lines of his speech.
I guessed that the “Bieb Bill” had passed allowing nonnatives to run for the highest office.
In another feed, Manchester United had just scored in a Premier League game, and they were replaying the goal with a stimcast of the hapless LA goalie that ended with him crashing face first into one of the goalposts, breaking his nose in a bloody explosion of pain.
What they managed to broadcast was a pale reflection of what his pain would have really felt like. Sensory broadcast technology was still in its infancy outside Atopia, but all that would be fixed soon with the release of pssi.
Flicking off the news feeds, I focused back on the battle the boys were in. Someone had just blown Martin’s head off. I sighed. Martin was hopeless.
I checked my dimstim stats and a few dozen people were still logged into my body. Christ, I was bored out of my head, and there were still people who would prefer to be me than do whatever boring shit they could be doing on their own.
Glancing at my bio-stats, I could see my heart rate was hovering in the mid-forties, my cortisol was a little high, my insulin low, but all systems go. Those stats would be moving around as soon as the MDMA hit. Looking good, Bob, I told myself. If your heart rate was any lower, you’d slip into a coma, and that sounds pretty good about now.
The room was crowded with people milling around, getting drinks, engaging in small talk, and doing whatever tiring stuff adults did at a baby shower. One side of the room was lined with retro-modern impressionists to match the sleek, minimal décor of the world they’d created for the event. The other side was a terrace, open to the outside, looking down from a few stories up onto the leafy beach promenade of east Atopia.
While I waited for the drugs to hit my bloodstream, sulking seemed like a good option, so I opened up Bunnies and sent a sub-proxxi to get me another drink. Innocent little rabbits appeared floating in space in front of me, exiting their underground warrens, sniffing the ground for food.
I flicked my finger at one of them, and a fireball magically issued forth, flaming toward the hapless little creature. It looked up, confused, and then squealed as the fireball engulfed it, crisping it into a pile of ash. The other rabbits ducked for cover, and then, slowly, crawled back out to sniff at their erstwhile compadre.
My eyes narrowed as I lined up my next victim.
“Bob, what are you doing?” came a subtext from Nicky. “Could we just be a little sociable?”
I grumbled and shut off Bunnies. Lucky little bastard didn’t know how close he came to the big ticket.
The sub-proxxi was back with my drink and I thanked him. Turning off my kinetic-collision subsystems, I rolled out of the couch’s embrace and stood up to stride purposefully through one of the remote guests, a round and balding little man who affected a shocked look.
Serves him right if that’s the best he can project. Someone should tell him he could look any way he wants.
My brazen etiquette violation earned some raised eyebrows, and the party was feeling way too crowded, so I decided on further anti-social behavior and I flipped my pssi off at everyone. The lush environment of the metaworld projection immediately disappeared as I slipped into identity mode and the featureless confines of the small, rectangular room we were actually in appeared around me.
That feels better. I took another gulp of my drink, feeling refreshed as my own senses connected me to the world, everything taking on a colorful sheen. On the other hand, that could be the ecstasy kicking in. The few people who remained in the small room were mostly in a corner near Nicky, still chatting with Cindy Strong, who was now cradling empty space in her arms.
Nicky looked over, her eyes flashing at me.
I imagined knives shooting forth from her, pinning me helplessly and gorily to the wall before a crushing shockwave of disappointment finished me off in a splatter of social distortion. The ferocity of the image compelled me to click my pssi back on, and the hubbub of party re-saturated my senses. Luckily, what I’d felt before was the MDMA, so I felt much happier about everything, on the whole.
By that point, Nicky was completely pissed. She grabbed me by the arm, pulling me around the corner and into the hallway where we could be alone. Sort of alone—my dimstim stats instantly shot up as the social cloud sensed my mood and the coming fight.
“I thought you said you wanted to come here! You’re embarrassing me. Can I ask you a question? Are you stoned again? Can you shut off your fucking dimstim for a minute, please?”
“That’s two questions.” I shrugged. “And no to both of them. Sweetie, my dimstim is my work, my bread and butter, and good or bad, I can’t just shut it off.” I tried to smile winningly at her.
She stared at me in silence.
“Okay, yes, I am a little stoned,” I admitted.
She rolled her eyes. “How can you call that stupid dimstim work? And this thing with your brother.…”
With a hidden phantom, I dialed up a Dragon skin when she wasn’t looking. “My dimstim’s how we met. Don’t knock it, and don’t bring my brother into this!” Narrowing my eyes, I added, “And at least I work.”
She’d annoyed me now, so I was purposely pushing Nicky’s biggest button. This was going to be good. She didn’t like being reminded she was daddy’s little girl.
“Bob, all you do is sit around all day playing games, or simulating vacation time for a bunch of meta-perves,” she snarled as her voice gathered momentum.
The Dragon skin began to take hold. Her eyes flashed at me while her face and upper body began to morph into a cartoonish and slightly frightening form in my display space.
“At least I make my own money,” I pointed out.
At that moment, I couldn’t help letting out an enormous yawn right in her face, which really set her off. What else had I taken? It couldn’t have been the ecstasy—that didn’t usually make me yawn. Or wait, had I taken some mushrooms before as well? That must be it. Or was it acid? Was I candy-flipping or hippy-flipping? I frowned, trying to remember.
“Let me FINISH!” she barked, barely containing herself.
The Dragon skin was working itself up nicely now. Her eyes bulged out as her neck elongated and sprouted a row of ridges. Her skin took on a distinctly scaly texture.
“The only reason your stupid dimstim makes any money is because I let you have sex with me on it. I swear to God I have no idea what I was thinking.…”
I began to shrink a little from the Dragon, but couldn’t help goading her.
“Oh yeah, all my success is only due to the fabulous Nicky.”
Holy smokes. The Dragon skin was amazingly scary when you were stoned. I shook my head and started laughing.
“STOP cutting me off!” she screamed.
She always had quite the temper. Her eyes had now bulged outward into huge melon-sized orbs with slatted cat pupils, and her head was bobbing side to side on a long neck that grew outward from her blouse, while a great, gray-pimpled snout sprouted from where her nose had been.
Fangs menaced.
Smoke began to curl from nostrils.
Fireballs spewed from her mouth.
And I cowered, giggling.
“Do you have that goddamn Dragon skin on? Jesus, Bob!”
With that she turned tail, literally, and angrily stomped past me to storm out of the party. She left little burning patches behind her in the carpet.
“Nice.”
It was Sid. He’d been ghosting the dimstim version of events and now stood leaning on the wall of the hallway. I guess he’d already been killed in the battle I was watching. He laughed and shook his head.
“I’m not sure that’s the way to hold down a relationship.”
“Ah, she wasn’t the one, and anyway, she’s the one that chased me down.”
“Women—they always think they can change you, huh?”
“I guess.”
A pause while we looked at each other.
“Ready for some skin shopping?” I asked. I needed to get out of there.
“We’re going skin shopping?”
“Yes, my friend, I have decided my skin closet needs refreshing.”
As great as it was, the Dragon was getting old, plus it would be sad to use the Dragon on any girl after Nicky. I needed a new mythical creature with which to annoy the next woman in my life—I had a feeling Nicky wasn’t coming back anytime soon.
Sid shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”
I sent a quick apology note about my little spat to Rick and Cindy, and as we flitted out, I heard Sid asking, “What skins did you have in mind?”
We appeared in what, for all intents and purposes, looked like a shoe store in 1920’s London, somewhere off Saville Row. Little boxes, whose covers danced with images and logos, lined the walls and aisles, and a smarmy synthetic salesman glided up to us.
“What can I do for you boys?” he asked, smiling.
“I don’t know, not sure.” My head wobbled on my neck. “What have you got that’s new?”
He looked us up and down. “You looking to skin up, or to skin out?”
“Either way, or both, just show us anything new,” replied Sid. Seeing my eyes swimming, he added, “And hurry up, please.”
“Hmmm,” noted the salesthing as he put one hand to his chin. With the other he began swiping the wall, and the little boxes swept left and right and up and down at a blurring pace.
“We’ve got some new designer skins that do a great job of making everyone look good naked,” he began.
Both Sid and I rolled our eyes.
“You’re right, boring. How about this—more subtle—we’ve got some nice intelligence skins that make you look and act smarter.”
“Thanks, buddy.” I frowned. “What are you getting at?”
“Nothing at all. How about this then?” He pointed to some animals charging across a grassy plain. “We have a great new Skins of Asia line. The Snow Leopard is all the rage.…”
“Nah, no animal stuff.”
“How about something more clever, then? We have some that read your cognitive profile and make subtle changes to your wife or girlfriend to make them—”
Sid cut him off. “No wife or girlfriend stuff, please.”
Smarmy the Salesman tapped his finger to his mouth as he simulated thinking. “Okay, boys, I have something really special—it’s our new top seller.”
My interest piqued. “Go on, my smarmy friend.”
“We call it HappyTime. A reality skin that makes subtle adjustments when you talk or interact with people you know. It’s guaranteed to help you lead a happier and more stress-free life.”
“Sounds good,” said Sid. “So what does it do?”
“It makes slight changes in your perception so that you get the impression that you’re better off than your friends and family, diminishing the effects the further they are from you personally.”
Sid smiled. “And how does that work?”
“It doesn’t actually change anything, it just gives you the sense that your friend isn’t as happy with his new relationship as he really could be, or modifies how much you hear him telling you he makes at his new job,” Smarmsworth explained. “Little things, so that you still get the gist, but modified, so you feel like you’re doing better than they are.”
“And it works?”
“It works like a charm, proven by extensive research. You will lead a happier life, my friend, guaranteed or your money back.”
“Hey, Sid,” I asked Sid.
“Uh huh.”
“Am I actually getting paid big money for surfing and boozing all day while you slave away as a programmer at Solomon House?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, cool—I thought maybe I had HappyTime on already and I’d forgotten.”
“Fuck off, Bob.”