Wastelands Page 11

  Under each of the suits was a light metal frame, sort of like a bicycle with a seat but no wheels, but with a headrest too. Around the web they were setting up the televisions in an arc facing the seats. The suits each had a number on the back, and the televisions had numbers on top that matched.

  When Gloria turned up she didn't say anything to me but she handed me some donuts and coffee.

  "This is just the start," she said, when she saw my eyes get big. "We're in for three squares a day as long as this thing lasts. As long as we last, anyway."

  We sat and ate outside where we could listen to Fearing. He went on and on. Some people were lined up like he said. I didn't blame them since Fearing was such a talker. Others listened and just got nervous or excited and went away, but I could tell they were coming back later, at least to watch. When we finished the donuts Fearing came over and told us to get on line too.

  "We don't have to," said Gloria.

  "Yes, you do," said Fearing.

  On line we met Lane. She said she was twenty like Gloria but she looked younger. She could have been sixteen, like me.

  "You ever do this before?" asked Gloria.

  Lane shook her head. "You?"

  "Sure," said Gloria. "You ever been out of this town?"

  "A couple of times," said Lane. "When I was a kid. I'd like to now."

  "Why?"

  "I broke up with my boyfriend."

  Gloria stuck out her lip, and said, "But you're scared to leave town, so you're doing this instead."

  Lane shrugged.

  I liked her, but Gloria didn't.

  The doctor turned out to be Gilmartin the advance man. I don't think he was a real doctor, but he listened to my heart. Nobody ever did that before, and it gave me a good feeling.

  Registration was a joke, though. It was for show. They asked a lot of questions but they only sent a couple of women and one guy away, Gloria said for being too old. Everyone else was okay, despite how some of them looked pretty hungry, just like me and Gloria. This was a hungry town. Later I figured out that's part of why Fearing and Kromer picked it. You'd think they'd want to go where the money was, but you'd be wrong.

  After registration they told us to get lost for the afternoon. Everything started at eight o'clock.

  We walked around downtown but almost all the shops were closed. All the good stuff was in the shopping center and you had to show a town ID card to get in and me and Gloria didn't have those.

  So, like Gloria always says, we killed time since time was what we had.

  The place looked different. They had spotlights pointed from on top of the vans and Fearing was talking through a microphone. There was a banner up over the doors. I asked Gloria and she said, "Scape-Athon." Ed was selling beer out of a cooler and some people were buying, even though he must have just bought it right there in town for half the price he was selling at. It was a hot night. They were selling tickets but they weren't letting anybody in yet. Fearing told us to get inside.

  Most of the contestants were there already. Anne, the woman from the van, was there, acting like any other contestant. Lane was there too and we waved at each other. Gilmartin was helping everybody put on the suits. You had to get naked but nobody seemed to mind. Just being contestants made it all right, like we were invisible to each other.

  "Can we be next to each other?" I said to Gloria.

  "Sure, except it doesn't matter," she said. "We won't be able to see each other inside."

  "Inside where?" I said.

  "The scapes," she said. "You'll see."

  Gloria got me into my suit. It was plastic with wiring everywhere and padding at my knees and wrists and elbows and under my arms and in my crotch. I tried on the mask but it was heavy and I saw nobody else was wearing theirs so I kept it off until I had to. Then Gilmartin tried to help Gloria but she said she could do it herself.

  So there we were, standing around half naked and dripping with cable in the big empty lit-up bowling alley, and then suddenly Fearing and his big voice came inside and they let the people in and the lights went down and it all started.

  "Thirty-two young souls ready to swim out of this world, into the bright shiny future," went Fearing. "The question is, how far into that future will their bodies take them? New worlds are theirs for the taking—a cornucopia of scapes to boggle and amaze and gratify the senses. These lucky kids will be immersed in an ocean of data overwhelming to their undernourished sensibilities—we've assembled a really brilliant collection of environments for them to explore—and you'll be able to see everything they see, on the monitors in front of you. But can they make it in the fast lane? How long can they ride the wave? Which of them will prove able to outlast the others, and take home the big prize—one thousand dollars? That's what we're here to find out."

  Gilmartin and Ed were snapping everybody into their masks and turning all the switches to wire us up and getting us to lie down on the frames. It was comfortable on the bicycle seat with your head on the headrest and a belt around your waist. You could move your arms and legs like you were swimming, the way Fearing said. I didn't mind putting on the mask now because the audience was making me nervous. A lot of them I couldn't see because of the lights, but I could tell they were there, watching.

  The mask covered my ears and eyes. Around my chin there was a strip of wire and tape. Inside it was dark and quiet at first except Fearing's voice was still coming into the earphones.

  "The rules are simple. Our contestants get a thirty-minute rest period every three hours. These kids'll be well fed, don't worry about that. Our doctor will monitor their health. You've heard the horror stories, but we're a class outfit: you'll see no horrors here. The kids earn the quality care we provide one way: continuous, waking engagement with the data stream. We're firm on that. To sleep is to die—you can sleep on your own time, but not ours. One lapse, and you're out of the game—them's the rules."

  The earphones started to hum. I wished I could reach out and hold Gloria's hand, but she was too far away.

  "They'll have no help from the floor judges, or one another, in locating the perceptual riches of cyberspace. Some will discover the keys that open the doors to a thousand worlds, others will bog down in the antechamber to the future. Anyone caught coaching during rest periods will be disqualified—no warnings, no second chances."

  Then Fearing's voice dropped out, and the scapes started.

  I was in a hallway. The walls were full of drawers, like a big cabinet that went on forever. The drawers had writing on them that I ignored. First I couldn't move except my head, then I figured out how to walk, and just did that for a while. But I never got anywhere. It felt like I was walking in a giant circle, up the wall, across the ceiling, and then back down the other wall.

  So I pulled open a drawer. It only looked big enough to hold some pencils or whatever but when I pulled, it opened like a door and I went through.

  "Welcome to Intense Personals," said a voice. There were just some colors to look at. The door closed behind me. "You must be eighteen years of age or older to use this service. To avoid any charges, please exit now."

  I didn't exit because I didn't know how. The space with colors was kind of small except it didn't have any edges. But it felt small.

  "This is the main menu. Please reach out and make one of the following selections: women seeking men, men seeking women, women seeking women, men seeking men, or alternatives."

  Each of them was a block of words in the air. I reached up and touched the first one.

  "After each selection touch one to play the recording again, two to record a message for this person, or three to advance to the next selection. You may touch three at any time to advance to the next selection, or four to return to the main menu."

  Then a woman came into the colored space with me. She was dressed up and wearing lipstick.

  "Hi, my name is Kate," she said. She stared like she was looking through my head at something behind me and poked at her hair while she tal
ked. "I live in San Francisco. I work in the financial district, as a personnel manager, but my real love is the arts, currently painting and writing—"

  "How did you get into San Francisco?" I said.

  "—just bought a new pair of hiking boots and I'm hoping to tackle Mount Tam this weekend," she said, ignoring me.

  "I never met anyone from there," I said.

  "—looking for a man who's not intimidated by intelligence," she went on. "It's important that you like what you do, like where you are. I also want someone who's confident enough that I can express my vulnerability. You should be a good listener—"

  I touched three. I can read numbers.

  Another woman came in, just like that. This one was as young as Gloria, but kind of soft-looking.

  "I continue to ask myself why in the heck I'm doing this personals thing," she said, sighing. "But I know the reason—I want to date. I'm new to the San Francisco area. I like to go to the theater, but I'm really open-minded. I was born and raised in Chicago, so I think I'm a little more east coast than west. I'm fast-talking and cynical. I guess I'm getting a little cynical about these ads, the sky has yet to part, lightning has yet to strike—"

  I got rid of her, now that I knew how.

  "—I have my own garden and landscape business—"

  "—someone who's fun, not nerdy—"

  "—I'm tender, I'm sensuous—"

  I started to wonder how long ago these women were from. I didn't like the way they were making me feel, sort of guilty and bullied at the same time. I didn't think I could make any of them happy the way they were hoping but I didn't think I was going to get a chance to try, anyway.

  It took pretty long for me to get back out into the hallway. From then on I paid more attention to how I got into things.

  The next drawer I got into was just about the opposite. All space and no people. I was driving an airplane over almost the whole world, as far as I could tell. There was a row of dials and switches under the windows but it didn't mean anything to me. First I was in the mountains and I crashed a lot, and that was dull because a voice would lecture me before I could start again, and I had to wait. But then I got to the desert and I kept it up without crashing much. I just learned to say "no" whenever the voice suggested something different like "engage target" or "evasive action." I wanted to fly awhile, that's all. The desert looked good from up there, even though I'd been walking around in deserts too often.

  Except that I had to pee I could have done that forever. Fearing's voice broke in, though, and said it was time for the first rest period.

  "—still fresh and eager after their first plunge into the wonders of the future," Fearing was saying to the people in the seats. The place was only half full. "Already this world seems drab by comparison. Yet, consider the irony, that as their questing minds grow accustomed to these splendors, their bodies will begin to rebel—"

  Gloria showed me how to unsnap the cables so I could walk out of the middle of all that stuff still wearing the suit, leaving the mask behind. Everybody lined up for the bathroom. Then we went to the big hall in the back where they had the cots, but nobody went to sleep or anything. I guessed we'd all want to next time, but right now I was too excited and so was everybody else. Fearing just kept talking like us taking a break was as much a part of the show as anything else.

  "Splendors, hah," said Gloria. "Bunch of second-hand cyberjunk."

  "I was in a plane," I started.

  "Shut up," said Gloria. "We're not supposed to talk about it. Only, if you find something you like, remember where it is."

  I hadn't done that, but I wasn't worried.

  "Drink some water," she said. "And get some food."

  They were going around with sandwiches and I got a couple, one for Gloria. But she didn't seem to want to talk.

  Gilmartin the fake doctor was making a big deal of going around checking everybody even though it was only the first break. I figured that the whole point of taking care of us so hard was to remind the people in the seats that they might see somebody get hurt.

  Ed was giving out apples from a bag. I took one and went over and sat on Lane's cot. She looked nice in her suit.

  "My boyfriend's here," she said.

  "You're back together?"

  "I mean ex-. I'm pretending I didn't see him."

  "Where?"

  "He's sitting right in front of my monitor." She tipped her head to point.

  I didn't say anything but I wished I had somebody watching me from the audience.

  When I went back the first thing I got into was a library of books. Every one you took off the shelf turned into a show, with charts and pictures, but when I figured out that it was all business stuff about how to manage your money, I got bored.

  Then I went into a dungeon. It started with a wizard growing me up from a bug. We were in his workshop, which was all full of jars and cobwebs. He had a face like a melted candle and he talked as much as Fearing. There were bats flying around.

  "You must resume the quest of Kroyd," he said to me and started touching me with his stick. I could see my arms and legs, but they weren't wearing the scaper suit. They were covered with muscles. When the wizard touched me I got a sword and a shield. "These are your companions, Rip and Batter," said the wizard. "They will obey you and protect you. You must never betray them for any other. That was Kroyd's mistake."

  "Okay," I said.

  The wizard sent me into the dungeon and Rip and Batter talked to me. They told me what to do. They sounded a lot like the wizard.

  We met a Wormlion. That's what Rip and Batter called it. It had a head full of worms with little faces and Rip and Batter said to kill it, which wasn't hard. The head exploded and all the worms started running away into the stones of the floor like water.

  Then we met a woman in sexy clothes who was holding a sword and shield too. Hers were loaded with jewels and looked a lot nicer than Rip and Batter. This was Kroyd's mistake, anyone could see that. Only I figured Kroyd wasn't here and I was, and so maybe his mistake was one I wanted to make too.

  Rip and Batter started screaming when I traded with the woman, and then she put them on and we fought. When she killed me I was back in the doorway to the wizard's room, where I first ran in, bug-sized. This time I went the other way, back to the drawers.

  Which is when I met the snowman.

  I was looking around in a drawer that didn't seem to have anything in it. Everything was just black. Then I saw a little blinking list of numbers in the corner. I touched the numbers. None of them did anything except one.

  It was still black but there were five pictures of a snowman. He was three balls of white, more like plastic than snow. His eyes were just o's and his mouth didn't move right when he talked. His arms were sticks but they bent like rubber. There were two pictures of him small and far away, one from underneath like he was on a hill and one that showed the top of his head, like he was in a hole. Then there was a big one of just his head, and a big one of his whole body. The last one was of him looking in through a window, only you couldn't see the window, just the way it cut off part of the snowman.

  "What's your name?" he said.

  "Lewis."

  "I'm Mr. Sneeze." His head and arms moved in all five pictures when he talked. His eyes got big and small.

  "What's this place you're in?"

  "It's no place," said Mr. Sneeze. "Just a garbage file."

  "Why do you live in a garbage file?"

  "Copyright lawyers," said Mr. Sneeze. "I made them nervous." He sounded happy no matter what he was saying.

  "Nervous about what?"

  "I was in a Christmas special for interactive television. But at the last minute somebody from the legal department thought I looked too much like a snowman on a video game called Mud Flinger. It was too late to redesign me so they just cut me out and dumped me in this file."

  "Can't you go somewhere else?"

  "I don't have too much mobility." He jumped and twirled upsid
e down and landed in the same place, five times at once. The one without a body spun too.

  "Do you miss the show?"

  "I just hope they're doing well. Everybody has been working so hard.

  I didn't want to tell him it was probably a long time ago.

  "What are you doing here, Lewis?" said Mr. Sneeze.

  "I'm in a Scape-Athon."

  "What's that?"

  I told him about Gloria and Fearing and Kromer, and about the contest. I think he liked that he was on television again.

  There weren't too many people left in the seats. Fearing was talking to them about what was going to happen tomorrow when they came back. Kromer and Ed got us all in the back. I looked over at Lane's cot. She was already asleep. Her boyfriend was gone from the chair out front.

  I lay down on the cot beside Gloria. "I'm tired now," I said.

  "So sleep a little," she said, and put her arm over me. But I could hear Fearing outside talking about a "Sexathon" and I asked Gloria what it was.

  "That's tomorrow night," she said. "Don't worry about it now." Gloria wasn't going to sleep, just looking around.

  I found the SmartHouse Showroom. It was a house with a voice inside. At first I was looking around to see who the voice was but then I figured out it was the house.

  "Answer the phone!" it said. The phone was ringing.

  I picked up the phone, and the lights in the room changed to a desk light on the table with the phone. The music in the room turned off.

  "How's that for responsiveness?"

  "Fine," I said. I hung up the phone.

  There was a television in the room, and it turned on. It was a picture of food. "See that?"

  "The food, you mean?" I said.

  "That's the contents of your refrigerator!" it said. "The packages with the blue halo will go bad in the next twenty-four hours. The package with the black halo has already expired! Would you like me to dispose of it for you?"