The Illusionists (3 page)

‘I suppose not.'

‘Why do they like it so? They should just visit Angle Tar. T'would be the real thing.'

‘Don't be silly. They wouldn't be allowed. And anyway, most people prefer a game to real life.'

‘Is it a story?' said Rue.

‘Not at all. It's just wallpaper, so it's not as sophisticated as the game. It's a set of pre-programmed clips, repeated. That's all. We'll play later.'

She turned her head, sensing that he wanted to show her more. It was annoying, though. There was so much to see and learn that she felt like she didn't have time to take it in. Wren was always moving forward, onto the next thing. At least she could count on never growing bored.

‘How does it work?' she said, looking up. The ceiling had changed, too. It was an endless, textured black, peppered with small dots of light, stars that twinkled and winked. It was just as a night sky in summer would be, a clear one with a still wind.

Wren shook his head. ‘I couldn't begin to explain. Some of the mechanics I don't even understand myself. It changes your perceptions of what you see, and hear, and touch. I don't think they've been able to do taste or smell yet. Surface Life overlays everything you see around you with Life. There are trees lining the streets, outside, now, and the buildings will have beautiful paintings on their outside walls. There are gardens that are bare of art outside of Life. A lot of World artists only make art that can be seen in Life, nowadays. The weather in the sky is simulated in Life, and changes with the seasons. Everything in World is more beautiful in Life.'

‘But why not make all that real?'

‘If it's not real, it can't hurt anyone or cost so much. Do you know how much credit it would cost to run a garden, the people to maintain it, the space? It's so much better for our environment to have the things people want in augmented reality, rather than really existing. So much less damage, so much less cost. And, you'll see, Life is how everyone in World connects. You can meet up with anyone you like in Life, people from three thousand miles away. You can talk to whomever you want, and you don't have to take a ridiculous journey to get to them. You can buy anything, or learn anything, in Life. If you don't know the answer to something? Jack in, find it in Life. All the knowledge of its citizens, everything it's ever achieved, resides in Life. Isn't that incredible? Everyone with access to the same knowledge – no more elitism, no more barriers because of where you live or what family name you have or how much money you have, like in Angle Tar. Everyone with the same advantages, the same choices.'

It was a fairy tale. It was everything that Angle Tar was not.

‘Let's turn to languages,' said Wren, lifting his hands and playing them on an invisible piano.

‘What are you doing?'

‘Looking through my personal account. You won't see what I see because Life recognises my signature and shows some things only to me. I'll show you how to access your account, though it'll be empty at the moment, of course. Ah!'

With a pleased look, Wren lifted his hand up and withdrew, from thin air, a long, blue rod that glowed pleasantly.

‘This is the World language. My manager got it a few hours ago and sent it through to me.'

Rue stared at the rod. It looked alive.

‘What do you do with that?'

‘It's just a data stick,' said Wren, waving it. Its glow left blue trails in the air. ‘It only exists in Life. I want you to take it, and push it into your head.'

Rue laughed nervously.

Wren nodded.

‘No,' she said. ‘That's  …  stupid.'

‘I know it sounds it, but trust me. I can't push it into my head to show you – I'd use it up and we'd have to get you another one, which would be impossible anyway. Just  …  take it. And press it against your head. Then slide it in.'

‘You do it,' said Rue, feeling a horrible urge to laugh again and swallowing it. She had a feeling Wren wouldn't appreciate it. His face was quite serious.

‘All right. If you trust me.'

‘I do, of course I do.'

Wren shifted up closer to her and she gazed at the rod.

‘It's humming,' she said. ‘Is it meant to do that?'

‘All data makes a sound in Life, don't worry.'

‘It's warm.'

‘That's so it feels pleasant when you have to absorb it.'

The sensation of the rod next to her skin was strange because it didn't correspond to what she was seeing. Against her, it felt like a leaf of paper, but when she looked at it, she could see its thickness, its weight.

‘It tickles,' she said.

‘It will do a lot more than that. Ready?'

‘Yes.'

It slid into her head.

The blue glow that gently suffused the room sharpened to a point, and the point was piercing the side of her skull. It was not painful, exactly. It was more as if her brain had been thrown into a jug of bubbling water. The shock shut her down. She couldn't remember with any certainty afterwards whether she had been able to think throughout the whole thing, to wonder at what was happening. It was a shame, somehow.

She felt a hand touch the side of her face.

‘What?' she said. A part of her was momentarily delighted that she still had the ability to speak.

‘That's it.'

Rue looked around. Her head was too slow, as if it had trouble catching up with the rest of her.

‘Thassit?' she said.

‘It'll take a few hours to integrate properly with your brain. And it'll work a lot better after you've had some sleep.'

‘Can we talk World now, then?'

‘Not yet, my Rue. But very soon. A few hours.'

‘I can sleep now.'

Wren grabbed hold of her arm. Without really being aware of it, she had started to fall sideways towards the bed.

‘No, no,' he said. ‘You shouldn't sleep yet. It might not sit right. You need to stay awake as long as you can.'

‘Sleep,' she insisted without any strength. Her head felt enormously heavy and unbalanced. It was the weight of all that knowledge, she thought, and resisted the urge to giggle. She felt Wren squeeze her to his side.

‘No,' she heard him say. ‘Come on. Let's take a walk.'

Cho slid into Life, easy as thought.

It began, as always, with a feeling like listening to the opening bars of her favourite song.

A tingle.

A long, wavering note of anticipation.

A sudden, gentle rush.

Underneath, there was relief, crashing waves of warm comfort. And guilt that she had succumbed again.

It took its moment. There was always a boot-up time, a black lag from the surface Life that everyone used; the virtual reality that made trees appear and buildings look beautiful, made a fake sun shine in a fake sky. Surface Life took no time at all – the entire population of World was walking around in it, pretty much all the time.

But full immersion into Life stole a black lag from you. Some people hated that moment of darkness and nothing. Cho loved it. Anticipation.

They called it High Immersion Life, or HI-Life. In HI-Life, you could create and explore entire virtual worlds while your body stayed in reality where you left it, unresponsive, as if you were sleeping. You could hide yourself in a fairy land if you wanted to, or a house made entirely out of cheese. There was a place and a party and a game for everything, somewhere, no matter how strange.

But the one thing you couldn't hide was your identity. It was understandable. How would you know anyone's agenda in a virtual reality if they couldn't be tagged and recognised? There were many, many games and social simulations where you could cloak yourself in an avatar, a representation of you that would look as bizarre or as normal as you desired. But your identity remained the same. Anyone could see who you really were and what you looked like out of Life simply by accessing your profile info. There were no disguises.

Unless you were a hacker, of course.

Cho accessed her Life account. It pulled together around her, manifesting as a small, comfortable room. She had spent a long time buying Life products to decorate her room. It was a sanctuary. No one could access it save her. No one could see it save her.

It was, she liked to think, the absolute opposite of her bedroom in the real.

Spindly tables had tiny jewelled boxes scattered on their tops with nothing in them. Marble figurines of extinct elephants trumpeted at each other across swathes of red-and-gold glittered cloth. Five clocks hung on one wall, of varying sizes. One was completely transparent, so you could see the mechanisms inside it, but there were no cogs, just a series of tiny hammers poised above rounded nodes. On a table sat a group of interconnected glass candle holders, delicate and winding, and an old-fashioned set of scales. In a corner on the floor, eight marble balls clustered together on a little wooden plate, a couple of them as big as a fist. The kind of balls that looked like star systems or planets, with swirls and whirlpools of colour streaking their surfaces. There was a huge Chinese dragon by one wall, a deep mauve colour, carved and intricate and lovely and almost tacky but not in here, surrounded by this oddness, and it came up to the bottom of her ribs when she stood next to it. There was a thick glass jar of sand, and three keys – giant brass things that were heavy when she picked them up and played with them, which she liked to do. A telescope in one corner. To look at what, exactly? Yet she loved it. It didn't matter that neither the room itself, nor anything it contained, was real in a physical sense. It looked real. It felt real. That was the beauty of Life.

Fat icons hung in the air around her head, representations of all the games and social sims she had bought, all the shops she had an account with. They glittered and winked like jewels, enticing. She reached for one and it flew gracefully towards her. Apt because it was a flying game.

Her avatar in this game was a hawk. She had never seen a real one, and she had never met anyone who had. It was hard to imagine the kind of place where it was normal to have hawks roaming, flying about in the sky as if they belonged there. But she knew there was such a place. It was a place her brother had abandoned her for.

Being a hawk in this game was a beautifully physical thing. When you took on the avatar, you
felt
your body shape change. Your torso tilted forward, stomach rounding. Your face elongated, mouth growing hard and sprouting outward. Wings pushed out from your shoulder blades, inch by giant inch. It was a delicate, complex, joyful piece of programming. Cho had contributed some of the code to it. Some people found it off-putting, feeling their bodies change like that. Others, like Cho, couldn't get enough of it.

You could play the flying game in multi mode, in a sky full of other avatars as people in Life from across the world played with you. You could compete for points, collecting small trinkets from hard-to-reach places. But Cho preferred single-player mode. Alone in a sky so big it felt limitless, dipping and swooping, and feeling the wind, and doing nothing but being absolutely free.

She loaded up her avatar, waiting as the code adjusted to her account details. Then she felt herself slowly tipping forward, feet spreading, legs tucking under her. Delicate itching across her back as if tiny mice ran over her skin, their claws skimming her nerve-endings. Sprouting wings and feathers.

When the avatar had loaded, she entered the game space. Her nest was tucked into a hole halfway up a cliff. She had done it deliberately so that the only way she could leave her starting point was by throwing herself into the sky.

She felt the wind ruffle her feathers as she peeked a clawed foot over the edge.

Nothing below.

Her heart was pounding. It didn't matter how many times she'd done it before; it felt as real as ever. That was the brilliance of Life.

She turned slightly, sticking her shoulder out, and rolled downwards into emptiness. She could see a patchwork of vague dark green forest far below. The wind whistled in her ears.

She fell.

Opened her wings, trying to catch an updraft.

For several long, horrible, wonderful seconds, nothing happened.

Then finally, one slammed up past her belly and buffeted her wings, stopping her descent.

She floated into the yawning, empty sky.

FREE!
said her mind, ecstatically.

And then she let it shut off, thinking of nothing but wind and blue. And peace, just for a while.

In Life, you could become something else completely. You could live a second, third, fourth, seventh existence. You could play endless games and roam worlds that didn't exist outside of the implant in your head. It was endlessly amazing, endlessly inventive. The most incredible, celebrated artists in World were Life programmers. It was imagination made tangible, shared with millions upon millions of people, all living, working, gaming in it together.

It was better than the real. It was what the real
should
be.

The ultimate in existence.

And it was slowly killing them all.

The box glowed, beckoning to her with flickering blue fingers.

It was surprisingly easy to get used to. A lot of people never switched between reality and Life, preferring to spend most of their waking hours jacked in. For those who didn't, it was as easy as flicking a switch inside your head, wherever you happened to be at that particular moment. But Rue, with no implant, had to content herself with being holed up in Wren's room, chained to the box, whenever she wanted to go into Life.

Wren was gone a lot. It was his job, he said. He never told her exactly where he went, though she asked all the time. Occasionally, he came home very late at night and went immediately to bed. Sometimes he even looked a little bit ill. Once, he'd come home and locked himself in the bathroom for an hour. She'd heard the unmistakable sound of retching. When she banged on the door, he didn't answer, so she talked to him incessantly through it, threatening to break it down if he didn't tell her whether he was all right. All she'd got for her trouble was an irritable plea for her to stop banging and that he'd be out in a minute. And when he finally emerged he just shrugged it off, saying he'd eaten something bad at work.

She wanted to help him, to comfort him. But he wouldn't allow it, fobbing off her attempts with a small smile and insisting nothing was wrong. He was just busy. And what could she do? She had no way of finding out what was wrong without him telling her.

Her day currently consisted of this: when Wren left in the mornings, she could use his box and go into Life. When she was hungry, she could go into the social room and order food. He seemed to think that those two things should be enough for her.

They weren't.

He'd told her not to go wandering outside the apartments. Her appearance might get her into trouble. People would automatically think she was a Technophobe. He'd said there wasn't much to see, anyway, without an implant. She had pressed him as hard as she could, stoically enduring his shutdowns until he'd finally given in and programmed what he called her ‘retinal scan' into the outside door key, just to ‘stop her incessant questioning'.

So she went out, exploring the city.

On leaving for the first time alone, she'd stood outside the building, wrapped up in World clothes that sat funny on her, bunching in places they shouldn't bunch and stretching in places they really shouldn't stretch. She had breathed in, nervous and excited. The air was flat.

She promised herself she wouldn't go far, in case she got lost. Just wander for a few minutes at a time, checking that she knew how to get back. And then she set out, her eyes widened to catch all the incredible sights that she would undoubtedly see.

But the thing that really irked Rue was that Wren had been right.

Without Life, the city was dull. All the buildings were made of the same shade of grey-coloured materials. She didn't see why exactly that had to be, but Wren just shrugged and said it was necessary as the platform for Life. The streets were uniform and wide, much wider than Capital City streets, but there was nothing much else to say about them. It was hard to remember any detail at all. Everything was so  …  neat.

She had money, or credits, as they called money here. Wren's mysterious employers, whom she was increasingly anxious to meet, had given her enough in her account to last months. She could spend them on whatever she wanted – once she got the hang of spending something that didn't physically exist in her hand.

But in Wren's city, there were no shops to visit, because everything you could ever wish to buy you bought through virtual Life shops. As fun as that was, it didn't have that tangible thing of going into a store, running your fingers lightly over cotton dresses and silk shirts. Desiring, because you could see and touch and smell those exquisite things.

Shopping alone was no fun, either. Clothes shopping made her mind inevitably slide towards the trips that Lea used to drag her on, to expensive boutiques and evenings filled with trying things on and giggling while Lea spent more money on a brooch than Rue would see in a month. It was  …  flamboyant and wasteful, she supposed, to do that. Worlders certainly seemed to think so. Clothes were unbelievably cheap here, and for a while she had been enamoured at the thought of all the new things she could own with just a handful of credits. All the brand-new versions of her she could make.

There were little eat places dotted about the city streets, where people could meet and order food and drink from the food units there. But all anyone in those places ever seemed to do, once they sat down with their food, was jack into surface Life and talk to each other there. Still, plenty of people went to eat places on their own, so she didn't feel strange about sitting at a table by herself, even though those solitary people were never really alone – they were surrounded by people in Life.

All in all there was hardly anywhere outside of Life to socialise, but that apparently didn't bother anyone because socialising, in World, was arranged.

According to Wren, everyone went to regular parties at other people's houses, and held parties themselves in their own houses. You would be messaged the time and place for your next obligatory party, and attend or host you most certainly did; if you missed any, a black mark was put against your Life account. What having a black mark on your account meant Rue didn't know exactly, but she understood that it wasn't good.

The great thing about the system, apparently, was that you got to regularly go to parties for free and, until you yourself were hosting, you didn't have to organise a thing – your local government team did everything for you. They chose who went to which house and when. They chose who hosted and who didn't. They chose everything, it seemed, very carefully. Rue thought this bizarre. No one else seemed to, though, so she filed it away as another custom she would have to get used to.

Wren had promised her that today, finally, something would happen. He had been trying to arrange a meeting between Rue and his manager, Greta Hammond, for weeks. A meeting, at last. Something, anything, to stop the slow, spidery sensation of listlessness that often seemed to creep over her nowadays.

Sat at Wren's little desk, the box in front of her, Rue flicked through her Life account. There was a letter sat in her message box, and she waved one hand over it. Wren had shown her how to open her mail, but she still couldn't get past the sensation that she was performing magic. The letter unfolded without her having touched it. She knew if she jacked out of Life, the letter would disappear. Everything she now saw would disappear, because it wasn't real. But because enough people had decided that what they saw in one reality wasn't necessarily more important than what they saw in another, the letter
was
real. It simply wasn't real everywhere.

The letter read:

Vela Rue –

I invite you to a meet. Wren has spoken so much of you and I am keen to see you for myself. Would today at fifteen hours be too short notice? Wren will show you to my office.

Greta Hammond

She had been told to expect as much from Wren, who had seemed a little short about the whole thing when he had mentioned it to her last night. Quizzing him never helped when he wasn't in a mood to talk, she had learned. Nevertheless, fifteen hours was the time he had told her to be ready, so here she was.

She followed the room link at the bottom of the letter. The link would take her to Greta Hammond's location in Life. Touching it with her finger, she waited as the console flickered.

There was that blackness again while she dropped into full immersion, and her body in the real went a little limp in its chair, her eyes peacefully closed. Funny how similar descending to full immersion felt to the place in between places, that space of nothing and creeping strangeness that she used to find herself in when she practised throwing her mind in lessons with White.

It took a moment, but then the blackness passed, and there was Wren's avatar, standing in Life, waiting for her in front of an ordinary-looking door.

Wren was out on assignment and away from the house, and had only paused in his day to meet her in Life and introduce her to this Greta Hammond. Rue smiled at him, feeling her pulse skip in excitement.

‘I told you fifteen,' he said. He seemed anxious.

‘I know it. I'm not late, am I?'

‘Come on, come on.'

He took her arm and led her to the door. In a sudden flash of irritation she shrugged him off, and walked through before him.

The room beyond was the best-looking completely virtual place she had seen yet. Some of the places she'd encountered in Life were often a little flat, as if depth couldn't quite make the grade. But this looked and felt the part. This was someone's room, not just a manufactured space.

The woman before her was petite and lovely, her golden hair done up into a bouffant kind of style and with a little too much paint on her eyes. Her cheeks were patterned with a trace of dark green scales, which set off her colouring handsomely. Wren had told her that Greta was middle-aged – it didn't show, but then again it rarely did in World.

Rue shook off her nerves and opened her mouth to say hello.

‘You didn't knock.'

‘I wasn't told to,' said Rue.

Greta smiled. The smile didn't reach her eyes. Her gaze flickered briefly over Rue's shoulder to Wren, who had come in behind her. She gestured with her hand, something that presumably meant sit. Rue did so, taking one of the hard metal chairs in front of Greta's desk. Wren took the other beside her. The chair squeaked when he sat on it. It was a perplexing thing, to create a virtual chair that squeaked, but fitted nicely with what Rue had seen of Greta's personality so far. I'm in charge, said Greta, with everything she had.

You're a bit of a sot, aren't you, Greta?
thought Rue, relishing the chance to use a slang word going about Wren's friends at the moment.

The World language had settled within her like a blanket. It took an effort to switch between Angle Tarain and World, but she hadn't spoken a word of her native language for days, so didn't see this as much of a problem. She still couldn't quite keep up with the constantly shifting nature of World speak, but could at last talk to people and understand them, even if the data stick had given her a kind of stiff and formal version of the language.

‘So. Wren tells me you're an orphan,' said Greta, folding her hands together. ‘How can that be?'

‘I suppose it can be when your parents leave you on a farm doorstep with no explanation,' said Rue.

‘Orphans are a rare phenomenon in World. I'm curious as to how it happens.'

‘So am I.'

‘Do you have any other family you are aware of?'

‘No.'

‘Good. Hopefully that will have made the transition easier. It's one of the reasons Wren picked you, and I'm pleased he hasn't faulted in that area.'

Rue frowned, picking over Greta's words.

‘Why are you telling me this?' she said.

‘Because a little bit of truth never did anyone any harm. I want you to be under no illusions, Rue. You were hand-picked, so you can feel proud of that, if you wish. But the rest of your Angle Tar group was also tested. In most cases, they would have found the transition too difficult.'

‘Because they have families?' said Rue, incredulous.

‘That's only a part of it. There were other factors.' Greta looked at Wren. ‘You can leave now. You have projects to finish.'

Wren stood up and bowed. ‘My lady,' he said, with the merest touch of playful insolence, and moved out of the room.

Rue felt her heart sink. She didn't want to be left alone here. She needed Wren; she couldn't navigate this strange culture without him.

‘So, Rue,' Greta began, but Rue cut her short.

‘Wait a minute,' she said. ‘Just  …  please.'

She had barely begun to process the revelation that the rest of her group had also been approached, and presumably by Wren; the thought of him seducing them with his strangeness and loveliness and promise of an incredible adventure made her cheeks flush. So she wasn't the only one he had done
that
with, then.

Did she care?
Should
she care?

‘What is it?' said Greta.

Rue searched for the right questions. ‘So Wren picked me because I'm an orphan? How did he know anything about me in the first place?'

‘I'm sorry, I can't tell you that, much as I'd like to. It's a part of a larger operational issue.'

‘What does that mean?'

Greta raised a brow. ‘It means I can't tell you.'

Rue wanted to press it, but kept silent instead.

‘Do you find him handsome?' said Greta, with a smile.

‘What?'

‘It's an easy question, I'd have thought. Do you find Wren handsome?'

Rue watched her, but those constructed green eyes gave nothing away.

Was this some sort of test? What was the right answer?

‘Yes,' she said, cautiously.

‘Naturally. You know he didn't used to look like that, don't you? When I first met him, he was a podgy, rather drab-looking boy. He knows how to disguise himself, that one. He's good at showing you what you want to see. That's why he's so useful to us. That and his Talent.'

Rue felt herself diagnosed under that gaze, but Greta's expression was warm and pleasant.

‘Which brings me to you,' she continued. ‘In many ways, you're quite different to Wren. His Talent is obvious, ridiculously so. He likes to flaunt it. You don't. You're shyer, and sweeter, than him. A less complex nature.'

Rue couldn't help it. Her eyes narrowed.

Greta laughed. ‘Oh, don't take it as an insult, I meant it in quite the opposite way. That's an attractive quality. And you're naturally pretty, which is another point of difference to Wren.' A little smile spread across her lips. ‘Very pretty, actually.'