Children of the New World Page 11

  “All the way. I want to see your face.”

  He glares at me, tries to look angry, but the oddity of being out here together in the cold has affected him and I can see his fear. He reluctantly lifts off his mask. “There, you happy?”

  All the time I was following him, I imagined myself yelling when we got to this point. I envisioned a fistfight with a slasher-punk drug dealer. Now all I feel is the smallness of our bodies and a palpable loneliness—the two of us lost in this enormous plaza. “No, I’m not happy,” I say, and lean my bike against his. “You know it’s dangerous coming out here like this, don’t you?”

  “What’s dangerous about it?”

  “You don’t know who could be out here.”

  Max gives an ugly laugh. “Right,” he says. “Look at all the people.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic. There could be people out here. Their tents could be anywhere. Please … I just want to know what you’re doing here.”

  Max doesn’t respond. He looks down at the ground and kicks a loose chunk of blacktop with his combat boot, breaking it in half with his heel. “Don’t you ever feel like things are boring?” he finally says. He looks at me. “Like colors get boring?”

  I understand him better than he knows. In those brief moments when I’d been watching the flickering dot, I, too, had seen long-forgotten colors: the muted yellows of winter grass, the brown of tree bark, the rich black of earth. “What about Deathworld?” I ask.

  “Deathworld is boring. You beat a hundred zombies, get a golden skeleton bone, and save the girl that the zombies kidnapped. I used to be excited about that, but now it’s just like, great, I get to save this girl and make out with her for the hundredth time.”

  “They let you make out with those girls?”

  “If you know the codes.”

  I look at my son. The sunlight highlights the few pale freckles on his cheekbones. His hair is in bangs around his face. He looks much more like a young man than the boy I remember. “You know, you’re a good-looking kid.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Without the mask, you’d have a lot of girls interested in you.”

  “Nobody wants me with or without the mask. All they want is some fake avatar dude with a six-pack and three dicks.”

  I have no idea how to respond; Max just described my own avatar. I let out a long slow breath. “I guess I don’t know how you meet girls nowadays,” I say.

  “You don’t meet girls, just their avatars. It’s stupid. Soon everybody’s going to stop having kids and we’ll all just die. Did you ever think about that?”

  The truth is, I’ve ignored this fact. I’ve wanted to think that Max will go to college online, that we’ll help him find a room for rent somewhere nearby, that he’ll meet someone in one of his courses, fall in love, have kids one day. I’ve envisioned myself as a grandparent from time to time. For the first time I realize how far that vision is from reality. I look at the smashed Toys“R”Us window. “Max, you’re not in trouble, but I don’t get it. Why are you here?”

  Max is quiet, debating what to tell me. He breaks up more of the blacktop, kicking it into the parking lot. Finally he looks up. “What is this place, anyway?”

  “You used to have to come here to get stuff, shop for groceries, buy clothing.”

  “Really? Was it fun?”

  I look at the empty toy store, where the rusted racks stand like skeletons in the windows, and I have a brief flash of what the place once looked like: the aisles of stuffed animals, dirt bikes, and video games, glossy beneath the lights. We watched these stores wither away, the shelves empty, the customers vanish, until the mall became a wasteland of dollar stores and Indian grocers. It’s easy to forget what things were like. “It was nice in its own way,” I say.

  Max looks up at me. “You know, whenever I play Tennis, the ball always bounces smoothly and makes the same sound. But that’s not what happens in real life. It bounces differently.”

  “But this isn’t playing Tennis. You need another person.”

  “Yeah, I know that, but what else am I supposed to do?”

  “I don’t know, but this isn’t the way to—”

  “I want to be outside. I want to ride my bike.”

  “Okay,” I say, putting up my hands. “I get it.”

  Positioned as we are, looking at one another, we don’t notice the man until he moves. He’s at the far end of Lot C, a dark, skinny shadow of a man clearly facing us. It looks as if he’s wearing some sort of jacket.

  “Dad, who is that?”

  “I don’t know.” The man makes a movement in our direction. “Come on,” I say, “let’s get out of here.”

  Max and I hurry onto our bicycles, looking over our shoulders. Behind us, the man has stopped and is deathly still. He raises a hand as he watches us go, as though waving. Then the buildings swallow him and we’re back on the roads, where a couple trucks are still making deliveries. We pull far into the shoulder and they roar past. We both keep looking behind us as we ride, but the man from the mall is long gone. The sun has disappeared, and high above, purple spreads across the light blue, and the first stars push their way through the sky. There are a few wisps of clouds, and snowflakes have started to fall, laying themselves softly on the roads and sidewalks. My hands feel frozen on the handlebars. I bring one at a time up to my lips and blow hot air across the knuckles to warm them, my fingers burning with the blood beneath.

  We’re a couple blocks from home when we see them. Max’s brakes screech and his tires scratch against the salt as he comes to a stop. I, too, am caught by surprise and break quickly, coming to a whining halt. There must be at least a hundred of them, the herd stretching all the way from the front lawn on the east to the kitty-cornered marsh across the street. The deer stand at attention, their necks raised, their ears extended, every muscle rigid beneath their fur. A couple in the back step quietly to gain a better view of us, their long brown snouts breathing small clouds into the falling darkness.

  Max puts his foot down onto the ground and steps off his bicycle. “Wow,” he whispers.

  “I know,” I whisper back.

  The world is quiet except for the hooves on the concrete and Max’s breathing. Between the jigsaw of houses, another herd is migrating past the rotten swing set of an English Tudor. Above us, a V of birds crosses the sky, their honking close. I shut my eyes and imagine the grid of streets where my son and I stand, visualize beyond to our house where Ann is waiting for us, alone and worried, and farther still, far beyond our subdivision, to where the geese head toward warmth and herds make their way beneath the arc of evening sky. I want to tell Max that I love him; that he’ll always be my son; that somehow everything will be okay again. But maybe that’s too far from the truth. So, instead, I put my arm around him, and we stand together in the falling snow, watching the deer return to their migration.

  THE PYRAMID AND THE ASS

  ON THE EVENING when most of the civilized world was watching the Oscars on Innervision, Douglas Duncage, Ninth Incarnation, was having trouble enjoying the glamour. He sat on a leather couch in his Manhattan penthouse, sucking a Keebler Frozie Mocha, watching Natasha Smoker, Sixth Incarnation, receive her award. Her kimono fluttered in his vision, soothing his retinal sensors with silk. Innereye’s color loss was mitigated by its sensitivity to texture, a small trade-off. Douglas felt the jolt of weight as Natasha Smoker’s fingers wrapped around the award. Satellite impulses triggered the release of serotonin, and his eyes welled with tears. Her performance in Noah’s Ark had been phenomenal; everyone had cried when she rescued the baby gorilla from the rain.

  When the commercials appeared, Douglas focused his internal mouse, blinked his right eye to click the mute button, and activated his parietal lobe to open his eyemail. Superimposed over the commercials came the bright white of his inbox folder. He’d received seventeen new eyemails since the last commercial break. Over half were work related; three were in response to his EyeDate profile; and four were f
rom Americannewswatch.com. The news was grim. A group of radical Buddhist terrorists, known as the Sword of Transcendental Wisdom, had kidnapped an ecotour of Americans in Tibet. On a televised broadcast, the Dalai Lama denied responsibility for the kidnappings, once again condemning Soul Co. “The use of laser technology has corrupted reincarnation for profit and disrupted the natural balance of life and death,” he declared.

  Fucking Buddhists, Douglas thought as he mentally scrolled down the page. It was the fifth kidnapping this month and Douglas knew enough about Buddhist terrorists to predict the outcome. Chips would be pulled from spinal cords, eyescreens would be sliced open, and the tourists would never be seen again.

  Being kidnapped by Buddhist terrorists was Douglas’s worst fear, and he full-heartedly approved of George W. Bush, Tenth Incarnation’s, declaration of war on Tibet. Unfortunately, the Dalai Lama had escaped into the Himalayas and was now holed up in some cave, from where he sporadically broadcast televised screeds against America. If only they’d nuke the Dalai Lama; nuke Bush’s critics with him. He knew their liberal discourse all too well: Bush shouldn’t be permitted to be reelected for the nineteenth time just because he was in a new body; America was only in Tibet for the Himalayan quartz crystals; the U.S. government had helped fund the Sword of Transcendental Wisdom in exchange for reincarnation info; yadda, yadda. The sooner Tibet became a U.S. protectorate like Syria and Iceland, the sooner there’d be peace.

  Douglas blinked off the news report and checked the response to his EyeDate profile. Hi there, sexy. You sound high-tech. You want to meet later tonight? I get off work at ten. Blink me. K-5478. It sounded promising. Douglas checked the clock at the bottom of his vision. There was still time to ogle some Innernet ass before getting in contact with K-5478.

  Since the Personal Privacy Act had been passed, the number of online ass sites had greatly diminished. There were, however, still a couple of ass links available. Among these were Asian-male/female-ass.com, African-male/female-ass.com, and the somewhat troubling Buddhist-male/female-ass.com. This last one was certainly tempting. Douglas longed to see what terrorist asses looked like. He imagined them puckered and wrinkled from meditating all day.

  Whether Buddhist asses were puckered or wrinkled would remain a mystery for, as far as Douglas was concerned, that site was off-limits. There were rumors that Buddhist-asshad been set up by the U.S. government to monitor national security threats. To log on would be to mark every file of his soul as a terrorist. No thank you. He had no interest in joining the detainees in the Virgin Islands. Douglas mentally typed in Whitefemaleass.com instead. Within seconds a mountain of pure ass filled his eyes: two round mounds, not a hair on them, with a glorious crack running between the buttocks.

  As Douglas admired the perfection of the ass, the awful feeling reemerged. It was a pain he’d been suffering over the past year, and one that came with a very specific thought. I don’t feel like myself. The thought was particularly disturbing because there was, technically, nothing wrong with him. He was thirty-five, had accumulated enough credits over his incarnations to live luxuriously, had recently upgraded his eyedrive, and just last week had downloaded the latest version of Innercourse 4.0. What then could possibly make him feel not like himself? All the same, the feeling was there. And this feeling was sparked by the fact that the white ass in his vision evoked a tingling sensation in his groin, not altogether unpleasant but foreign. Back in his second incarnation he might’ve worried about his appendix, but they’d removed that organ from his cloned body incarnations ago. In addition, ever since procreation had become obsolete, erogenous nerve impulses had been scrambled. Douglas’s fear was, for this reason, unfounded.

  Yet there was the sensation again. A warm, maddening heat that made Douglas want to rub his belly against the carpeting, pull his pants up and down, and grind his ass against a wall. He squirmed on the couch uncomfortably, sweating as though he’d been having Innercourse. Douglas decided to schedule a lab technician checkup when he got back from his business trip. Perhaps there was something wrong with his microchip, some misfiring of synapses. Worse yet—and he really didn’t want to consider this—perhaps he’d contracted a virus.

  Douglas checked the clock: 10:14. K-5478 would be off work by now. He blinked off Whitefemaleass.com, activated VirusRub28, logged on to EyeDate, and sent K-5478 an instant blink. Within seconds she blinked Douglas back. “Hi there, D-6701, was wondering when you’d blink me.”

  “Wanted to blink you sooner, but you were working.”

  “If we get to know each other, I might be up for you blinking me at work.”

  “Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself.”

  “I’m tall, skinny, have nice hair, and a really great ass.” The last four words scrolled across Douglas’s vision seductively.

  “Oh yeah? I like asses.”

  “Me, too. What about you? What system do you run?”

  “Only the best: Eyedoc78, full brain-cell drive.”

  “Hmm … you must make a lot of money.”

  “I don’t do bad,” Douglas blinked, pausing for a moment before making his move. “Are we compatible?”

  “Mmm-hmm. Why? Can’t you feel this?”

  Douglas’s synapses fired as K-5478 tested his system with a packet. There was an immediate release of dopamine as Douglas’s chip warmed up. “Oooh, I can feel that. Go ahead and do that again.”

  “You like that? How about this?”

  “Oh yeah,” Douglas blinked. He used his occipital lobe to send off a long download from his hard drive.

  “Mmm, I love it when you send me slow downloads. Oooh, God, it’s taking so fucking long to download!” As the words scrolled across Douglas’s vision, a large file imported into his brain. He leaned back into the couch, head sinking into the leather, as he transferred another large file to her.

  “Oh, God, give me another. Go ahead, my system can take it.”

  He gave her a couple terabytes.

  “Mmm … fuck yes. Keep going. Don’t stop.”

  Douglas hadn’t meant to stop, but he’d mis-blinked and turned Innervision back on. On the screen Brad Pitt, Tenth Incarnation, was pitching Soul Co. Suspend your soul in your own personal quartz crystal till your NewSelf is ready for reincarnation! Heaven can wait, till then there’s Soul Co.—Douglas blinked off the commercial. “Can you take a torrent file?”

  “Ohhhh, baby, I’m a torrent player,” the words moaned. Douglas sent off the file.

  “Mmmm, two can play at that game.”

  Douglas felt his brain struggling to download the full capacity of the torrent file K-5478 sent him. “You’re getting my system so hot!” he blinked, trying hard not to overheat. His hands clawed into the couch as he struggled to type “Yeslh!” And now she was sending him file after file. As one file disappeared, another rode in behind with rhythmic succession. Downloads tumbled atop one another, opening and downloading, and he kept his internal eye on the mouse, scrolling and clicking, scrolling and clicking.

  “Oh m;y Goddd, these files just keep opening and opekning. You’re ducking beutful,” she mistyped.

  “You’re so fixking hort!” he trembled to think, and then his chip was buzzing with the electronic hum that comes in those magnificent seconds before all Innernet vision goes blank. “Gjdk! Gpd! GFOD!” he chanted, and she joined him, “Gjdi, Gid, GODu!” He hung on, sending off another file, and another, his screen vibrating, the hourglass turning back and forth, and as he received one last file, he sent off a final download with numerous attachments.

  “Godalkdjj;lD;oiuaelmmm…” came the response.

  “ASOLAKERJL;ENDL.CHKLE;N!!!” Douglas managed, his eyescreens flickering as he slid back against the couch. Slowly, his system rebooted itself, whirring beneath his skin. A few words landed on his eyescreens.

  “Thanks, D-6701. Blink me again sometime.”

  “Sure will, K-5478,” he blinked and logged off.

  * * *

  INNERCOURSE HAD BEEN good
that evening, and that, along with the emotional effects of the Oscars, left Douglas feeling altogether exhausted as he curled into bed and pulled the comforters around him. Douglas felt so tired that he decided not to download his dose of Seconal, and it was due to this that he had another of the unusual dreams, which had been plaguing him for the past year.

  He dreamt of the woman again. They were standing on top of a large temple. He was placing the last stone into the top of the monument when he saw her. The stone slipped and fell by his feet. “They’re coming,” she said. Far below, the city blinked neon into the night. Large signs extended from the jungle of streets and houses, the glowing arches of an M lighting the urban landscape. Then he saw the dark bodies of tanks, and choppers cut the air. “We didn’t make it!” the woman said. From below a voice yelled, “Fire!” A mortar shell exploded, bricks shattered, and white rubble rained down around them. The woman took his palms and folded them over his abdomen. “This is how you remember your memories. You’ve got to remember who you are. Remember why you left and find us. We’re going to build the temple again.”

  One of the helicopters dropped explosives. The walls split open, and the temple crumbled beneath him. As Douglas fell, the outline of the woman, standing far above him, receded into darkness.

  * * *

  DOUGLAS AWOKE, DEEPLY shaken, to a lovely May morning. This would be the last time he went to bed without Seconal, he promised himself. He took a shower, got dressed, and fixed himself a bowl of Keebler Puffy Treats. He sat at his kitchen table, eating the cereal, and scrolled through his eyemails. There was an eyemail from Phillip Monto, Ninth Incarnation, the meet-and-greet courier that Douglas was flying in to connect with. The eyemail invited him out for dinner and drinks that evening, courtesy of Soul Co.’s Denver Division. There would be a Hummer waiting for him when he arrived. Douglas checked his personal eyemails. There were a couple responses to his EyeDate profile and then another series of upsetting messages from Americannewswatch.com. The Dalai Lama had issued a new speech.