Labyrinth of reflections (21 page)

We approach "Three Piglets". There's no 'rush hours' in virtuality: zone time canceled this term but some random fluxes and refluxes happen. For instance, now the hall is packed.

We elbow our way to the bar and I shout, "Hi Andrei!" to the bartender.

– Hi-hi… – says Andrei, giving a glass of cocktail to somebody, – And who are you?

Wow, it's really him, not a program.

– Leonid, – I reply.

Andrei knits his brow, he never saw me in this body and makes precautions.

– Hey man! – I say in a scary whisper, – What's wrong? Tortured by taxes again? The racket filched your file stuff? Just tell, we'll find…

Andrei leans over the bar and shouts:

– Ah! Haven't recognized you! Just look how you've grown! A real man!

Vika hesitates nearby patiently, obviously feeling out of place. Just like I did in the brothel's recreation zone.

– You want it as usual? – asks Andrei and outstretches his hand towards the bottles.

– Gin-Tonic, fifty-fifty, – I smirk, – It's me, it's me. We'd like to sit somewhere above the river. Alone.

Andrei frowns slightly and looks under the bar, at the terminal.

– Are all channels busy? – I'm horrified.

– We'll find one for you, – decides Andrei. He pushes some button, – A penny deal… Oh, what a perfect timing! Sudden disconnect, one channel's free! Go ahead, quick!

I grab Vika's hand and pull her to the stone wall of the restaurant. In the tambour I order:

– Individual space for us two. No access to anyone else.

– Acknowledged, – whispers the ceiling, – No access. You're guests of the restaurant. "Three Piglets" wishes you a nice rest.

– How cool, – says Vika ironically, – And you're their permanent customer?

– Yes.

I don't tell her all the tiny details, like about that little diver's fraud when I found and kicked some racketeers' butts. They stole original financial files from restaurant's owner. If I failed to persuade that gang of undereducated hackers, Andrei would have to fork up quite an amount… either for racket or for Deeptown's tax inspection. But in this case… everything ended in peace, even racketeers were happy… to get out of this so easily.

We enter the autumn.

Vika stops for a second looking around, picks decayed leaf from the ground, crumbles it in her hands, touches the tree trunk.

I wait. Usually I waver the same way when I enter unfamiliar virtual spaces. I also usually leave the deep to evaluate the real look of the landscape. Vika can't do that but spatial designers must have their own methods.

– Beautiful, – she whispers, – Maybe Carl Siegsgourd himself worked. I'm envious.

– Yours is not worse. – I console her but Vika shakes her head.

– Not in everything, he has an excellent sense of measure, while I can be carried away easily.

She kicks fallen leaves in childish manner, they slowly fly up and fall down again. Their flights are over already.

– Let's go, – I take her hand and lead her to the river. The table is laid for a banquet. The specialty of the house – fried pork 'a-la Piglet' is on the table in a big plate, also my favorite mulled wine and decent set of other wines.

Vika doesn't look at the table, she stands by the steep looking in the distance. I stand by her side. The stream washes over leaves of a fallen tree on the opposite bank. Looks like it was a storm lately. This space is alive too, just as Vika's mountains.

– Thank you, – says Vika and I feel great. I think I yet should show her the sea shore and the part of old Moscow that are adjoined to the restaurant but all this – later. I'm sure that we'll yet have time for that.

Otherwise why is everything?

– You know, I leave my space very seldom, – says Vika, – I don't know why.

She hesitates, then goes on:

– Maybe I'm just afraid to meet those who comes to us… to see them as the ones they can be– kind, cheerful, nice people.

– Why?

– Then it'll be true that all people are bifacial. You know, we're a garbage can Leonid. The one in which all shit which was accumulated in peoples' souls is dumped. Fear, aggression, unsatisfied desires, disdain to themselves. I think your "Labyrinth" is the same in this way.

– It's not 'mine'. I'm there for business.

– Then it's easier for you. But who comes to us? Milksops who can't wait to become men… who grew tired of being ones, some guys pissed off by their girlfriends with a wish to swagger… Some of them come and try all albums. They say: "We must try everything in this life."…

Again I restrain myself and don't ask why the hell does she work there then.

– Why do we drag the worst that we have in the future with us? – says Vika

– Because it does exist and we can't do anything about it. Just imagine that everyone around us are gentlemen in tuxedos, ladies in evening dresses, everybody speak in clever beautiful words, are nice and civilized…

Vika laughs softly,

– I don't believe in this.

– Neither do I. No society change, be it technical, social or a complex one like the Deep, ever changed individual moral principles. Everything was postulated: from disdain towards the bond-slaves to brotherhood and equality, from ascetism to complete license. But the choice was always made individually. It's stupid to say that virtuality have made people worse than they were and it's naive to hope that it'll make them better. We were given an instrument and it depends on us whether we'll build using it or crush skulls.

– Wrong instrument, Lenia. Everybody understand that they are really at home or at work, sitting by a computer in a helmet or just gazing at the screen and therefore everything is allowed. It's a game, a mirage.

– You're speaking like Alexandrians.

– No, I don't like their approach either. I have no wish to turn into the stream of electronic impulses.

– Vika… – I put my hand on her shoulder, – It's not worthy to guess or worry. The Deep is only 5 years old. It's yet a child. It grabs everything it can reach, speaks nonsense, laughs and cries irrelevantly. We have no idea what it'll grow into, we don't know whether it'll have brothers and sisters that will be better. We just must give it some time.

– We need to give it a goal, Lenia. We have dived into this world without defining for ourselves what have we left behind. Being unable to live in one world we have created another one and we don't know where to go, what to aspire to.

– The goal will appear, – I say without great confidence, – Again, just allow it some time… let the Deep to become aware of itself.

– But what if it did already? – says Vika mockingly, – …and became alive? Like in imagination of those people who never been here? Maybe there are people here among us that don't exist in real world? Reflections of void? What if you or me don't really exist at all? And what if all our ideas of reality are just fantasies of the Net that became alive?

Suddenly I feel scared.

No, I don't think that I don't really exist.

And I'm almost sure about Vika.

But I think I know the candidate for being the 'reflection of void'…

Vika goes on as if wishing to drive me crazy:

– Just imagine how it can happen. Hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of computers are already plugged into the Net permanently. Flows of information rush between the continents, accumulate on different hosts/routers, in machine memory. Nonexistent spaces live according to their own laws, change. Leaves are falling, our steps leave traces, our voices start avalanches. Information copies over, becomes tangled, mixes. Docile programs create plaster casts, shells but who knows how soon those shells will be filled with real intelligence?

– Any hacker will die of laughter listening to you, – I say in a 'wooden' voice.

– I'm not hacker. I just see what is going on around and I try to imagine what would somebody who came from nowhere think if he appears in Deeptown being sure that he is alive and real? Grimacing buffoons? People running around in "Labyrinth" and cheerfully killing each other? Psychos having fun in brothels? Everything that exists in reality we have here too. The sky and the Sun, mountains and seas, cities and palaces. Spaces within spaces, the mixture of times and nations, merits and vices. Everything! Everything and nothing. We need only what we hate in real life. Death, blood, fake beauty and borrowed wisdom. So what might the Deep think of people if it learns how to think?

I stay silent, remembering Unfortunate who kills monsters with a pistol but never shoots at players. Who doesn't tell his name and address. Who have spent two days in the virtuality already but his tongue doesn't falter of thirst and his feet don't stagger. Who doesn't understand that the kid that flees from mutants is nothing more than a hundred kilobytes of a program on the 33rd level's server.

I remember the words of Man Without Face: "Something have changed now." This was the direct hint, together with memoirs about 'Invisible Boss' and 'Lost Point'. Something had happened that doesn't have any analogies except in the folklore.

I start to shiver.

Accidents can't happen fifteen times in a row – "Labyrinth"'s divers would rescue Unfortunate… if the Net itself wouldn't resist that. There's nowhere to get Unfortunate out, he lives in this world only. He's chained to "Labyrinth"'s world, the world of shooting and betrayal, blood and ruins. He dies and resurrects not understanding what happens to him.

– Vika… – I whisper, – Vika, God forbid…

– What? – she looks at me and makes one step from me, – What's wrong with you?

– God forbid you're right… And I do think you're right.

She grabs my hand, squeezes it strongly, almost painfully and shouts:

– For how long have you set your timer? Where do you live? Lenia, wake up! You're alive, you're real! I'm talking nonsense!

It feels funny: Vika was scared for me.

– I'm fine, – I say, – I'm alive and real. I'm not having Deep-psychosis. But I know the guy who can't be alive.

As strange as it seems, Vika calms down. If I were her, I would feel even more scared.

– I had met those too… – she declares.

I shake my head.

– Vika, I know a man who behaves just as in your fantasy. He doesn't tell reality and virtuality, he lives in the Deep, not plays.

She gets it instantly, – In "Labyrinth"?

– Yes.

– This is called lost sense of reality… it's neural related, but nothing more.

– I saw what is it when the nervous system fails… This… is different.

– Lenia, – Vika smiles, – I've told lots of nonsense and scared you… You know, similarities are confusing.

I want to tell her about Man Without Face and Unfortunate. About accidents that became systematic. But I signed the contract and promised to keep it confidential.

And also – I'll have to confess that I'm diver.

I have enough experience of such confessions.

I can imagine what do the girls think kissing the diver, "Now he'll leave the Deep and my face will turn into the mask of tiny pixels. He's free here and I'm a prisoner."

I don't want Vika to think so, don't want it to be a wall between us.

– You're right, – I whisper and Vika snugs close to me.

We stand above the steep, kissing each other, the river roars below and the wind tousles our hair. A lonesome bird's cry, a momentary flash of the sunlight is the clouds, the leaf carpet beneath our feet. It's soft and smells spicy. I take off Vika's dress and she helps me to undress too. I kiss her body, my lips touch the live warmth, it's not me in the Deep but the Deep inside me, it's our world around, I'll never leave it, we'll get lost in these forests and will find a way to the mountains seen from her window.

Vika whispers something but I can't hear words, we are too deep, we left the boundaries of all spaces.

Then there comes a short moment when spaces merge.

We are together despite all distances and uncertainties.

– Don't leave me Gunslinger, – whispers Vika, – Just dare to leave me.

– I'll never leave you, – I say. We snuggle together, the wind slides against the skin, damp leaves cool my back, I look up but clouds whirl circling above, one moment – and I'll fall into the sky, will lose myself in realities following Unfortunate.

– Who are you Lenia?

But I can't answer, I hug Vika again and our lips touch making all words empty and unnecessary.

My time is up, – whispers Vika, – I'll have to leave… soon.

I understand, hug her even tighter as if I can stop the timer on the opposite end of invisible thread, to hold her in the Deep for a minute, for a second longer…

– Come to me again, – Vika raises her head and rises on her elbows above me, – Come today, I'll wait for you.

I nod, reach out for her but it's too late.

Her body turns pale and dims, dissolves in the cloud of violet sparks, the dress melts on the ground like a handful of snow. One moment and I stay alone under the sky that wants me to fall into it, to be lost in cloudy fog, to become one more human who doesn't understand the border between the worlds.

And Vika will be with me always, we'll become equal and I'll never have to answer the question with a kiss…

I shake my head and force myself face forward into withered leaves.

It happens, all divers know the moment when they want so much to become just like the others.

I need to flee.

Abyss-abyss, I'm not yours… Let me go…

Tiny screens before my eyes, cool wind from the conditioner.

– Ate me? – I asked the Deep, – Tasty, huh? Aren't your teeth aching?

The deep was silent. It had nothing to answer, it have lost again.

As if the world have broken into two halves, the one where it was love and the one where I was rolling on the floor hugging the void. Damn this split personality after which one feels himself an idiot!