|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Website content may offend and disturb. Content includes horror, murder, torture, military carnage and occasional incidents from the adult side of adult life. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Is that deliberate or accidental?" said Ida.
"The waterlessness of the moid, you mean?" said U-scampi. "Oh, don't do that tiresome AI logic thing on me," said Ida, who was stressed, and in no mood to be trifled with. "I meant, did you meet me by accident?" "Unless you're paranoid, you must believe I did," he said. (He? Yes. All cameras are male. Nurture is not to blame - it's the way they're manufactured.) "I am paranoid," said Ida, decisively. "And I am innocent," said U-scampi. "Well, Mister Innocent - " "U-scampi, please." "Mister Snoop-lens, or whatever you call yourself," said Ida, "now that we've met, how about guiding me out of here?" "I'm a photojournalist," said U-scampi. "I don't do guiding, its interventionist. Us photojournalists just take pictures." That was true. Ida had once seen a rather long sequence of photojournalistic pictures which detailed how a crocodile chased, caught and devoured a child in a slow wheelchair. A noninterventionist to the core, obviously. "My karmic destiny," said U-scampi, "is to record your slow, agonizing death in the moid, from which there is no escape, then bring that record of your death to the wider world." "There is a logical flaw in your argument," said Ida. "If there's no escape from the moid, you won't be able to bring my death to the wider world." "I'm more survivable than you are," said U-scampi, complacently. "By the way, what kind of music would you like played at your memorial service?" Really, of all the useless things you could have found in the moid, a photojournalist was about the worst. Now even Ida's freedom of action was gone. If she dared pick her nose - which she didn't - then U-scampi would capture the moment for a transcosmic audience. Dying teenage girl picks nose in moment of unbearable pathos. She had rather hoped to find a hero of the moid, a figure familiar to all avid consumers of the cheaper television dramas. The hero of the moid is typically male - tall, handsome, possessed of independent wealth, and given to smiling whitely, though he is never shown using either toothpaste or dental floss. "A hero of the moid," said Ida, "knows what to do." Yes, and his adventures in the moid are characterized by flash and glamour. He invariably finds some female fashion plate in need of rescue; and, having rescuing her, he invariably manages to find a haven for the pair of them in some place where the beds are double, the waiters servile, and the wine flows in fountains. "Hero of the moid?" said U-scampi. "What are you talking about?" "Myself," said Ida, girlfully, striking her most stalwart attitude. What terribly bad luck! To find a camera when you were longing for a hero. Ida was starting to feel resentful. After a long and difficult twenty-four hours in the moid, twenty-four hours in which she had been mentally violated by weird aliens, threatened by robotic death machines, sexually menaced by bedraggled beachcombers, and variously starved, dehydrated and terrified, she felt she was owed the rest of the package - the smiling hero of the TV dramas. But it seemed that what the magazines said was true: good men are scarcer than you think. As Ida wandered on randomly through the hot white mists of the intercosmic wastelands of the moid, U-scampi flew around her in lazy figure eights. "Do you have to fly around like that?" said Ida, crossly. "Couldn't you just settle in one place and stay there?" "I need the photo angles," said U-scampi. "You have plenty enough to generate any photo angles you want," said Ida. "By computer gimmickry?" said U-scampi, sounding shocked. "Oh no! That would be unethical! The audience is paying for verisimilitude! Girl dying for real in wilderness." "Young woman, thank you very much," said Ida. "I'm nineteen years of age. That's a woman, not a girl." "Not in my dictionary," said U-scampi doubtfully. "Say, could I ask you a favor?" "What?" "Could you cry a little? The audience doesn't really go for this stoic stuff. They'd like to see you emote a bit. The stubborn bloody-minded thing won't help your ratings, you know." "What do I care about my ratings?" said Ida. "Well," said U-scampi, "if we could do an exclusive interview - and, under the circumstances, you're not likely to do any other kind - I can offer you a top-money contract. You'd die rich. Your parents - I'm assuming you have parents, right? - could use the money, couldn't they?" "What kind of interview?" said Ida. "An emotive one," said U-scampi. "As a lead-in, I'd like you to cry a little." "But that would be faking!" said Ida. "No, not at all," said U-scampi. "I'd merely present the images to the public. If they assumed that you were really sobbing your little heart out, that would be their error of interpretation. I wouldn't be mistruthing, would I now? Besides, if you let yourself fake it, I'm sure you'd soon be crying for real." This was uncomfortably close to what Ida was thinking herself. As she crunched over the whitish dunes of the moid, tired and thirsty, her emotional resources were getting more and more depleted. "Well," said U-scampi. "Is it a deal?" "I don't have time for deals now," said Ida, spotting a blur of orange amidst the white mists of the moid. "I see a tarj!" And so she did. She could see an orange tarj - one of those pillars of revolving color which served as portals to the moid - barely a hundred paces distant. She started toward it. "Ta da da da da DAH, ta da da da da DAH," said U-scampi, striking up triumphalistic background music. "And, as we watch, we see Ida Brahma - and what a plucky girl she is, isn't she? - heads toward the beckoning doorway which may offer her salvation or doom." The word "doom" was followed by a thunderous roll of suitably doomish drums. Ida stopped and sat down. "What exactly do you think you're doing?" said U-scampi, switching off the background music. He circled her, waiting. "Well? You can't just sit here, you know." "Yes I can," said Ida. "I'm on strike." "On strike?" said U-scampi incredulously. "But you can't go on strike! This is real life, not a theatrical performance. You're a real person, not an actor. Real people don't have the option of going on strike." "I think they do, you know," said Ida. "I can, and I have, and I'm on strike until further notice." And, whistling a little to herself - her throat was so dry that humming would have been uncomfortable - she started to pick her fingernails. U-scampi circled a little, waiting. "Oh, all right," he said, finally. "What do you want?" "No more background music," said Ida. "And no voice-overs." "But the public likes them," said U-scampi. "Then add them in afterwards!" said Ida. "But I work for an organic news news service," said U-scampi. "Free-range news. News with no additives. We add nothing - absolutely nothing - to the authentic record of the real world." "But you're manipulating the real world just by being here," said Ida. "After all, if you weren't here, I wouldn't be on strike. And, anyway - what gives you the right to do this snooping thing at all? I'm a private person, aren't I? Yes, I am. I'm sure of it." "You're out of your depth," said U-scampi. "No," said Ida. "Listen to me, Mister Photoface - " "U-scampi, please." "Listen to me, Spy Guy. I, Ida Brahma, hereby invoke my legal rights not to be snooped on by the media. I refuse you the right to record me. I refuse you the right to play, broadcast, and, uh, document - no, that's not it - disseminate, that's the word - you may not sperm out any of this pornography of death stuff to the waiting world. Is that clear?" "It's clear that you don't understand the law," said U-scampi. "Oh yes I do," said Ida. "I am a private person, and the media needs my permission to report on my life." "Not if you're a current event," said U-scampi. "A what?" said Ida. "A current event," said U-scampi. "A hurricane, a meteorite strike, a space wreck - the media doesn't need signed permissions. We just go in and report." "I'm lost," said Ida. "That doesn't make me a current event." "People in danger of dying because of their involuntary presence in an inimical environment are current events," said U-scampi, unshakably. "Trust me - it's been tested in law. If you fell off a ferry and started drowning in the harbor, you'd be a current event. By exactly the same token, now that you're lost in the moid, you're equally a current event. Look - there's a tarj just over there. Why don't you go through it?" "Go away," said Ida. "I want to pick my nose." "Do you really want to die alone?" said U-scampi. "Alone, and unobserved? A death of hideous loneliness, with no witnesses?" "Yes," said Ida. "If possible. It sounds much better than the alternative, which I suspect to be death with background music." "Very tasteful background music," said U-scampi. "Sobbing strings. Low. Unobtrusive." "I'd rather be eaten by crabs," said Ida. "Well, maybe I can find you some," said U-scampi. And he flew off by himself, and vanished into the orange mists of the tarj. Perversely, as soon as he was gone Ida started to feel lonely. She noticed, as she had not done for some time, the hissing white noise which was the constant sonic background in the moid. Five minutes later, U-scampi returned. "Good news," he said. "I've checked it out, and it's safe. There's water. Well - what are you waiting for?" "A deal," said Ida. "What kind of deal?" said U-scampi. "No background music," said Ida, "and no voice-overs." "That's impossible." "Well, how about this. How about you play the background music so softly that I can't hear it. And you do the voice-overs likewise. Then, later, you could amplify them. For the audience, I mean." "I'm not sure," said U-scampi, doubtfully. "It wouldn't be strictly authentic." "Then, how about this," said Ida. "For any really important event, we can have background music, but no more than ten minutes in the hour. Deal?" "Deal," said U-scampi. And, with that, Ida got moving, in the direction of the orange tarj. Ida pushed her way through the orange mists of the tarj, the portal from the moid, and emerged onto the surface of a planet somewhere in the transcosmic vastness of Known Reality. (At least, she hoped she was still somewhere in Known Reality, though, the moid being what it was, it was theoretically possible that she might have come further.) U-scampi circled, recording diligently, as Ida surveyed the landscape. Desert. Ruinously hot. Landscape of red rocks. Jumble-smash chaos. Red rock, red sands. And cactus plants. And ants the size of her thumb, so remorselessly busy - they were deconstructing what looked to be the last remains of a dead camel - that just looking at them made her feel exhausted. And dry watercourse gulches. Just looking at that landscape made her feel more thirsty than ever. The worst thing was that she had no recollection of ever encountering this desert landscape in any of her researches; and, though she had never methodically researched the moid, books and films and comic strips about it had been a routine constituent of her data inputs since earliest childhood. Growing up near the green tarj, one of the interfaces of the morphologically variable transcosmic topological integration known as the moid, she had always been interested in alien environments. Yet this planet was totally unfamiliar. "But just how many planets have you visited, Ida-zan?" A count revealed just the two: the planet of the gray tarj and the planet of the pink tarj. Gonamek Daramantra and the beachcomber's beach. Counting this new, desert planet: three. So why did she feel as if she had been wandering in the wilderness for something like half a lifetime? "We are discoverers," said Ida. "And it's more hard work than you'd imagine from just watching it on TV. Okay, U-scampi, where's this water you were talking about?" "By the red rock - " " - great help!" " - with the yellow streak." And there it was. Water. A clear bright upwelling from the innermost recesses of the planet, from which Ida drank. And drank. And drank. Thirst quenched, she cast around for signs of civilization. And found at least one - an empty Suki-Suki can. This was infinitely familiar, since Suki-Suki, the pink candyfloss softdrink of the Zafari Jahar, was advertised everywhere. Ida looked in the can. It was totally empty. There was absolutely no Suki-Suki in it. Good. Ida hated Suki-Suki. "Come here," said Ida, washing the can in the water. U-scampi obeyed. "Now," said Ida, "record this." And she put the wet and dripping can to her lips, tilted back her head, then made gulping drinking movements with her throat. Then emoted. "Oh, Suki-Suki! A dream come true! I just love that liquid candyfloss!" "Exactly what do you think you're doing?" said U-scampi. "Shut up and record," said Ida. "No," said U-scampi. "It seems to me that you're trying to fake an incident that never happened. What's more, I suspect that you're doing so for your own commercial advantage." "What if I am?" said Ida. "I've told you," said U-scampi. "I'm in the verisimilitude business." "Oh, really?" said Ida. "But you're the one who wanted me to cry!" "Yes," said U-scampi. "But, if you were to cry, or to seem to be crying, you really would be holding your face in your hands and sobbing, or seeming to drink." "Right!" said Ida. "So right now I really am holding a can in my hands. Okay? A Suki-Suki can!" "Yes, but there's no Suki-Suki in the can," said U-scampi. "The can is empty." "I'm not saying it isn't," said Ida. "All I'm saying is that I love Suki-Suki." "But you're pretending to drink something," said U-scampi. In response, Ida wordlessly filled the empty can with water. "Now I'm not pretending," she said. "The can is full. I'm going to drink from it." "I refuse to have any part in this," said U-scampi. "I'm not going to record this." "What?" "You heard me. I'm going on strike." "Okay," said Ida, thinking it through. "How about this? You record my Suki-Suki incidents - and there are going to be quite a few of them before I'm done - and I'll cry for you. Once." "One of my colleagues got caught doing something like this," said U-scampi. "He lost his job. He's now running an obedience school for dogs." "I won't tell if you don't," said Ida. "Okay," said U-scampi. "Deal." So they recorded various improvised Suki-Suki product placements. What Ida had in mind was the famous "thirsts of real people" ad sequence, detailing how real people resorted to Suki-Suki in the face of death. Drinking it in burning buildings, on board sinking ships, on transcosmic space liners facing alien invasion and (in the most famous ad of all) just before facing a firing squad (the execution, fortunately, was canceled at the last moment). Ida was sure that the Suki-Suki people would pay real big money for her true-life experiences. All she had to do was get out of this alive, and she would be rich for life. Ida, a little daringly, had just tucked the Suki-Suki can inside her T-shirt - some of the Suki-Suki ads were downright dirty - when a strange man wandered into view, emerging from behind one of the huger desert rocks, a skyscraper's worth of splintered red. (What did you call those things? Stalagrams? Chonagoils? Buttes?) "Hi!" said Ida, spontaneously, waving. Then wished she had not. For she distinctly remembered the warning given in "A Student's Guide to Chastity": "For an unchaperoned woman to seek to attract the attention of a strange man lacks something of prudence." Back in Lon Tray Pay, Ida had laughed without resistance when Pollen had made fun of the manual, but out here, in what one might call the real world - it certainly felt a whole heap more real than sitting at a classroom desk - the manual was starting to make more and more sense. Still, it was too late. She had called out to the strange male, and, obedient to her invitation, he was approaching, leading his donkey. (Or was it a donkey? Maybe it was a, what did you call it. Burro? Or mule? Whatever.) U-scampi had vanished - a glimpse of his flickering shadow showed Ida that he had taken to the sky. She remembered, again, the photojournalist who had chosen not to intervene when the crocodile had started chasing the child in the wheelchair. But maybe the stranger was a good guy. Maybe. To judge by the gear carried by his donkey - which included, amongst other things, a gold-washing pan and a theodolite - Ida's strange man was a prospector. He was bearded, mustachioed, dusty, his knees rendered khaki with dirt, the rest of his clothing faded greenish leather studded with brass-yellow metal rivets. He wore a big leather belt, brown and cracked, from which there hung a sizeable hunting knife and a machete. A small black plastic cannister hung from a loop stitched into the leather of his left shoulder. What was in that cannister? Earplugs? "Hi," said Ida. "Peace, and, uh, all. All that. I'm Ida, Ida Brahma." In response, the prospector - very close by now - unslung his rifle and pointed it at her. "En-hen," he said, curtly. "Now, uh, let's not make any mistakes," said Ida, starting to back away, imagination livid with visions of herself being raped and shot (not necessarily in that order) by a sex-crazed lunatic. |
|
|
|
zenvirus.com. Copyright © 2000 Hugh Cook. All rights reserved. |
|
|