Alternative Dimension (6 page)

9 the goddess calira

A little further along the beach, an entirely different scenario was being played out. Jeremy Coulson, or Jeb, as his few friends called him, was as unreconstructed as they come. Amongst William’s list-makers, he’d be the ring-leader. When he’d found AD, it was as if he’d stumbled into Wonderland. He couldn’t believe it and, from the moment he glimpsed his first female avatar he was hooked. Jeb loved women – well, ‘loved’ wasn’t the right word. He had no desire to be in any sort of permanent relationship with one, but he needed them in his life. Not to talk to or be friends with, of course. That was what guys were for. But women, with their breasts and curves and eyes and hair, they were essential. And in AD they were gorgeous, and they showed it and paraded around with cleavage spilling out and skirts up around their butts. It was paradise.

For Jeb, there was no real separation between AD and ND. He called his avatar Jeb, gave him all the same appetites and took every opportunity to indulge and satisfy them. He wasn’t into all the Gorean stuff but he liked wandering around their towns and villages because there were so many beautiful slaves, kneeling around naked, some of them with profiles saying he could do more or less do what he liked with them, as long as he checked first with their master. And there were the clubs, the naked beaches, the porn enclosures. And some of the women were worse than men. They’d actually asked him if he wanted a fuck. His reply never varied. ‘Do bears shit?’ he said. (He knew that there was an expression something like that which was a cool way of saying yes.)

All of which meant that he racked up a very impressive total of fucks. Each night, he’d come home from work, phone for a pizza or bang something in the microwave, and settle down for some serious sex. He had so many women that, in the end, he’d created a special folder with sub-folders for the various categories. The main one was called ‘FUCKS’. When he double clicked on it, as well as the more conventional ‘BLONDES, BRUNETTES, REDHEADS, BALD,  there were AMPUTEES, CONTORTIONISTS, FAIRIES, LESBIANS, MERMAIDS, NURSES, VAMPIRES and ZOMBIES.

Under each sub-heading except one, the names were in double figures. The only exception was LESBIANS, which contained one hundred and thirty-seven. Needless to say, this did not strike Jeb as anomalous. (Not that he knew the word, anyway.)

An extract from his conversation folder gives a flavour of the nature of these exchanges. One night, after three Asians, a Bald Athlete, and thirteen Lesbians, he wandered into one of his favourite spots – a store which sold action hooks. Near one of the corners, he saw a mermaid looking at a pair of hooks called ‘Standing Room Only’. He went up to her and this is the conversation that followed:

JEB: Wanna try them?

MERMAID: What?

JEB: The hooks. Wanna fuck?

MERMAID: No.

JEB: Why not?

MERMAID: Well, the name of them.

JEB: So?

MERMAID: I’ve got no legs.

JEB: What d’you need legs for? We’ll be lying down.

MERMAID: OK.

As you can see, romance was a foreign country for Jeb. Occasionally, a woman would try to intensify the experience by describing in relatively poetic terms the various anatomical changes she was feeling in herself or seeing on him, but Jeb’s vocabulary was limited to a couple of synonyms for ‘fuck’ and he’d just mute her until they’d finished.

Then, on the beach a few metres along from Jason and Shylle, he met Calira.

Calira had achieved the impossible. In a virtual world full of beautiful, sexy women with flawless complexions, lovely faces and perfect figures, she surpassed everyone. She’d found a hair colour that carried tints of both spring and autumn, highlighted by the gold of a sunset. Her dark, dark eyes were flecked with silver, her half-parted lips shone plum-red and full, and the curves and proportions of her breasts, stomach, hips and thighs had rhythms and a perfection that were indescribable. Jeb saw her lying on the beach, her skin like pale chocolate against a dazzling white towel. For a while, he just looked, because even he knew that he would have to produce something special to get her attention and ‘Wanna fuck?’ was not the answer. But that, with variations, was all he had and, if he didn’t move soon, some smart-assed guy would come along and start chatting with her.

He sat down, hesitated a while, then said, ‘Nice day’.

Calira looked at him and smiled.

‘Yes,’ she said.

Jeb nodded and looked out to sea. So far, so good.

‘Hot,’ he said.

‘Yes, it is.’

‘No, not the weather. I meant you.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Calira.

‘You’re hot,’ said Jeb.

‘Yes,’ said Calira. ‘It’s the sun.’

‘No. Hot – like sexy.’

‘Ah, I see. You mean I look suitable for carnal congress.’

‘What?’

‘Others have said the same thing to me. Not in quite the same way, but in essence they were conveying the fact that they found me attractive and wished to practise intercourse in one form or another.’

Jeb lifted his mirrored shades and looked at her.

‘What did you say?’ he asked.

‘I said “Others have said the same thing to me. Not in …”’

‘No,’ said Jeb. ‘I mean what did you say when they asked you for a fuck?’

‘It depended on the circumstances. Sometimes I told them I considered the act of penetration to be a form of violation, an invasion of an inner sanctum which should be the preserve only of the higher priests.’

‘You fuck priests? Cool.’

‘No. I was speaking metaphorically. I’ve often thought, jokingly, of the linguistic relationship between ‘hole’ and ‘holy’.’

She slid her hand down across her stomach and cupped it around the little mound between her legs.

‘Here,’ she said, ‘down deep, this … entrance. In many ways it’s a shrine, a secret place. For so many men, and women too, it’s a Holy Grail. They spend their lives seeking it, yearning for the completeness it will bring to them.’

She moved the other hand up to her breast, curling the fingers lazily beneath it. Sitting at his computer, Jeb was sweating and breathing hard. Usually, it took two or three minutes on one of the more energetic action hooks to achieve that.

Calira continued, the characters appearing slowly, lingeringly on the screen.

‘They begin their journeys at my lips and breasts, using fingertips, lips and tongues to find their way to me, to try to tease from me the route their pilgrimage needs to follow.’

She lifted her lower hand gently then patted it back down.

‘And this is always their goal. This mysterious valley, the tiny hillock at its head, the holy cavern lying deep in its interior.’

‘Fuck me!’ said Jeb.

It was an exclamation, not a request. Nonetheless, Calira chose to answer it.

‘I’d have to consider that carefully,’ she said. ‘I can tolerate religion but not fanaticism. It all depends on the route you might take to that dark interior.’

‘What? Where?’ said Jeb.

His breathing was faster.

‘I prefer acolytes to move softly to the entrance, with reverence and respect. They should begin to pay their homages with soft touches and softer words, dwelling on the threshold, taking time to prepare themselves for what lies beyond.’

Jeb only half knew what she was talking about, but her moving hands and his own breathlessness began to stir pulses in him.

‘And, if I do allow them access to the entrance, they must be worthy of the sacredness of what they will discover in its interior,’ said Calira. ‘They must be strong enough to ride the torrents within, scale the smooth walls, reach for the central truth. They must release the Gods for me.’

‘OK, OK,’ said Jeb. ‘Can I try?’

‘Talk to me,’ said Calira. ‘Tell me of your journey, describe for me the vistas that open in your mind as you pass through the gates of my mystery into the moist and misty altars of our mutual deities.’

‘OK, OK. Don’t move, right?’ said Jeb. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

He logged off, switched off his computer, and phoned his pal, Daryn.

‘Hey, Dazza,’ he said. ‘I need some help. Wikipedia, a library, anything.’

In a small bedsit in Newcastle, Professor David Herrison leaned back in his wheelchair. He didn’t imagine that anyone as monosyllabic as this Jeb character would provide anything of value to his research project on affective linguistic variables, but on his screen, Calira, his avatar, lay back on her towel and waited.

10 DESCARTES AND THE RABBIT

The trauma of losing control of Red stayed with Joe. The absurdity of assuming anyone could link abstractions, thinking, freedom with some form of concrete realisation of them was obvious. On the other hand, by creating AD, he’d done something very close to that. Joe remained a romantic, unwilling to reject the possibility of transcendence. And yet Red’s exploitation of the gullibility of the FUCCers and the ease with which he’d turned their spiritual yearnings into a crazy articulation of flailing legs stressed the vast distances there were between the world of pixels and that of people. Nonetheless, Joe’s pursuit of the elusive synthesis continued and, on more than one occasion, he felt certain he’d found it. That time, for example, he sent Ross to the underwater caves off the coast of Chile.

Ross was talking about Descartes. That wasn’t unusual, it was the sort of pretentious stuff Joe had found himself doing more and more in AD. This time, though, it was slightly different. He was talking to a purple rabbit. Quite a tall one. Again, there’s nothing remarkable about that, not in AD. But this was one of those furry things that disconcerted him. She had the Bugs Bunny face and ears, but a near perfect figure: 36D breasts (he was pretty confident the size was right; he’d become an expert on avatars), slim waist, and a ‘two synchronised ferrets in a sack’ butt. He was getting enthusiastic about the ‘cogito’ bit of the Descartes and a bit concerned that, by the time he got to the ‘sum’ bit, his gesticulating hands might inadvertently clutch a furry lump of mammary gland and, in the process, undermine his whole thesis.

They were standing on the pebbles of an underwater cave. Breathing without difficulty as the tropical fish swam around them and two couples from Denmark and Holland got more and more enthusiastic about the sets of action hooks strewn among the rocks there.

The rabbit seemed unaware of them.

‘It’s the “I” in “I think” that’s the problem,’ she said.

Joe knew that. Everybody knows that. But this was a pedantic rabbit. She needed to spell everything out. Joe decided to try to disorientate her.

‘Kant,’ he said.

Her hesitation was brief.

‘Not only the name of the writer of the “Critique of Pure Reason”’, she said. ‘An apt description of its hypothesis, too. And,’ she added, ‘just a vowel away from encapsulating the man himself.’

One of the Danes stood up, a blonde, bronzed individual with ludicrous shoulders. A line of (Danish) chat splashed across the screen, followed by lol. Joe thought it was probably a Danish joke about sex.

A dachshund appeared from behind a clump of seaweed.

‘Nice put-down, Doris,’ it said to the rabbit.

That puzzled Joe. Her name tag identified her as Drindle Pinkneery.

‘Doris?’ said Ross.

‘Yes?’ said the rabbit.

‘No, I mean – why did he call you Doris?’

‘LOL. That’s my real name. Dennis is my husband.’

‘Dennis?’ said Ross.

‘Yes?’ said the dachshund.

The Dane settled back into the action hook athletics. Joe looked at Ross. Young, dark hair, good looking. Not for the first time, the experience of virtuality disorientated him. He was, after all, a highly respected IT designer, with his own major company and millions in the bank. Why was he here on the sea bed talking about the nature of existence with a purple rabbit and a dachshund? He sighed; it was a question he seemed to be asking himself almost daily.

‘Wet here,’ said Dennis.

‘It’s symbolic,’ said Doris.

‘Of what?’ asked Ross, immediately regretting prolonging his stay with them.

‘All sorts of things,’ she went on. ‘The womb, lubrication, rain.’

‘Wetness isn’t a symbol of rain,’ said Ross. ‘It’s a characteristic of it.’

‘Alright, just the womb then,’ said Doris.

‘Dominicans,’ said Dennis.

‘What?’ said Ross. (Joe was beginning to feel as if he was being subjected to some sort of brainwashing.)

‘Founded in 1214,’ said Dennis. ‘Preached the gospel, fought against heresy. Great intellectual tradition, bags of philosophers.’

‘And the connection with the womb? Or wetness?’ said  Joe, trying to make the words look sarcastic on the screen.

‘Ah,’ said Dennis, tapping the side of his nose with a paw.

Doris laughed.

‘Dennis,’ she said, ‘stop teasing him.’

‘Well, he should have realised by now,’ said Dennis.

‘Realised what?’ said Ross/Joe.

‘You think, therefore you are,’ he said.

‘So?’

‘Who are you?’

‘Ross Magee. Check the name tag.’

Dennis shook his head. Briefly, Joe admired the animation. So realistic. He allowed himself a small grin of pride.

‘That’s just a tag,’ said Dennis. ‘I asked who you “are” – from “to be”. What’s your essence?’

‘What’s yours?’ replied Ross.

‘I have none. I’m a dachshund,’ said Dennis.

Joe thought that, for a dachshund, he was a smug bastard.

Suddenly, Ross was being hugged by Doris. Her furry arms were around him, her huge hairy breasts were crushing into his rib cage.

‘Let’s get back to wetness,’ she said.

Joe was taken by surprise.

‘Only if you take your head off,’ said Ross, as Joe warmed to the idea of the breasts, convincing himself that Ross wasn’t feeling rabbit mammaries against his chest, but a thick woollen bikini top.

‘But that’s where my cogito happens,’ said the rabbit. ‘Without my head, I don’t exist, can’t exist. Without that, no wetness.’

Suddenly, it hit Joe. She was right. This tall, purple rabbit was right. Here was Ross, sharing (on Joe’s behalf) a womb with two Danes, a Dutch couple, a rabbit and a dachshund. They were all breathing under water. Impossible elements. Chaos, mayhem. All held together by the power of thinking, the willingness to believe that we can live our dreams. In his study back home, Joe spun round in his chair and looked out over Hampstead Heath. The Cartesian duality was a myth. The Frenchman said the body was a machine but the soul couldn’t be defined by the laws of physics and yet the two acted on one another. Well, here and now, if Ross played his cards right (and somehow got rid of the dachshund), he could make this rabbit pregnant. Descartes didn’t think of that when he was writing his Discourse on the Method. Joe was back in control.