eXistenZ (11 page)

“Are you serious? This is where you were years ago?”

“No, it’s not real. It’s a simulation. Remember, we’re ported together in the game-pod.
eXistenZ
has complete access to both our central nervous systems. The games architecture we experience in the game will be based on our memories, our anxieties, our preoccupations . . .”

“Not ours,” Pikul said. “Yours maybe.”

“At the moment my memories are probably predominating. But that isn’t necessarily the rule, and your unconscious can and will take over at any time. It’s just that I’m more used to the game than you, I know some of the moves. You’ll catch on soon enough.”

“Are you serious?”

“You keep saying that. Let’s have a look at some of this stuff.” She turned to the nearest rack and began sifting through the packages on display. “Look at this. Games I’ve never even heard of.
Biological Father.
What the hell kind of game could that be?
Hit By a Car . . .
not much imagination needed for that one!
Shop Rage. Theme Supermarket. Landlords on the Rampage. Beastmaster of Avalon. Viral Ecstasy. Chinese Restaurant.”

“The excitement is mounting,” Pikul said sardonically. “I can hardly wait to play
Biological Father
. . . a shoot-’em-up arcader, right?”

“Listen to this.” Geller was reading the back of the
Viral Ecstasy
box. “When you play this, you get to invade a specific human body—you can choose from a whole library of historical characters—then you create ingenious viral strategies to cope with the efforts of the body’s immune system to destroy you . . .”

“That sounds like it’s about as much fun as having our friend Gas put in a sicko bioport.”

“It’s just one of the games I picked up at random,” she said defensively.

“Not entirely randomly. Not if it comes from your subconscious.”

“It might have come from yours,” she pointed out.

“Oh,” said Pikul, who hadn’t thought of that. He swiftly changed tack. “Look, can you explain something to me? All this stuff on these racks reminds me of what we’re doing. We’re in a game, okay, but what precisely is the goal of the game?”

“To win,” she said. “To finish the game ahead of the game. Nothing special about it.”

“No, I mean what’s the objective?” Pikul persisted. “What are the rules? You keep going on about how wonderful
eXistenZ
is, but you’ve never actually said anything about what it
does.”

“Not all games do something.”

“You play them to do something.”

“No you don’t. Some you just play.”

“Okay, I’ll grant you that. There aren’t likely to be a lot of thrills in
Biological Father.
Or none that I can imagine, anyway. But that game isn’t state of the art. Your game supposedly is. What’s the objective, how do you win?”

She sighed, looking him in the eye as if to try to determine how seriously he meant the questions. She allowed her hand to play lightly across some of the blister packs while she answered.

“The beauty of
eXistenZ,”
she said, “is that it changes every time you play it. It adapts to the individuals who are playing it. The result is that you have to play the game to find out why you’re playing the game.”

“But that’s kind of cheating, isn’t it?” Pikul said stubbornly. “Not to say confusing.”

“It’s not confusing at all. And it’s not a cheat.
eXistenZ
takes a much more organic approach to gaming than the classic, arbitrary, rule-dominated games. It’s the future, Pikul. You’ll see how natural it feels. Where we are now . . . doesn’t this feel natural?”

“You mean this shop for computer geeks is the
future?”

Pikul shrugged his shoulders expressively, trying to show the antagonism he felt toward the dozens of intent game customers crowding the aisles of the store. None of them showed any reaction; indeed, hardly any of them showed any awareness that he and Geller were even present.

Pikul looked around and saw something half familiar lying on the shelf beside him. It was a game-pod. He picked it up and showed it to Geller.

“Did you ever see anything like this before?” he asked.

The pod was contained within a gel-pak that was even more bizarre and otherworldly than Geller’s own tissue pod. They both examined it with interest. It seemed lumpier than Geller’s, less well-integrated or developed. Although the flesh was as venous as her pod’s, there did not appear to be the same underlying organic logic, the sense that it had been ripped somehow from a living being. This pod had an arbitrary, thrown-together feeling. They turned it around in their hands, then over on its back. On the underside they came across a corporate logo, and a name:
CORTICAL SYSTEMATICS.

A hand reached between them, from behind, and gently but firmly took the pak away from them. They turned to see who it was.

The man was large and bulky with thinning gray hair. He had a pugnacious air and seemed irritated that they’d been showing such interest in the game-pod. Swinging from his jacket lapel was a name badge: D’A
RCY
N
ADER.

“This game-pods are most delicate,” he said, in an accent even more fractured and alien than Kiri Vinokur’s. “I’ll haff to ask you more careful to be, when you are hantling them.”

“We weren’t doing any harm,” Geller said. “We’re just interested customers.”

“Ma’am, I do unterstand. But in common wit many retail outlets, we haff to be careful of pilferage and breakings.”

“Yes,” Pikul said. “I can imagine.”

“You know vat a game-pod is?”

“Sure. We’ve just never seen that one before.”

“Cortical Systematics ist the latest and hottest player. Ist not just a new game, but a whole new system.”

Pikul said, “Yeah yeah, I’ve heard all—”

“Will it work with an industry standard bioport?” Geller said, deftly interrupting him.

But Nader was looking more carefully and curiously at them.

“I haffn’t see you two around this place before, haff I?” he said.

“Well, no—”

“This ist my place.
Haimische,
isn’t it? Funky?”

“Yes, well, we’re new in town,” Pikul said. “Whichever town this is—”

“Welcome to D’Arcy Nader’s Game Emporium,” he said. “I am D’Arcy Nader, as you might haff noticed, and I’ll be plissed to help you with anything you might be interested in.”

“Thank you,” Geller said. “But at the moment we’re just looking.”

Nader glanced along the aisle, side to side.

“I think I might haff what you’re looking for,” he said softly.

“You do?” Pikul said.

“Follow me, pliss.”

Nader turned away from them and stepped along the aisle toward the back of the store. Here, there was a warped and grimy door, with no sign on it.

Nader pushed it partly open, then beckoned urgently to Geller and Pikul. A couple of the other customers saw him signaling and seemed about to go along too. Nader gave them a warning look.

Geller went through the door first, with Pikul following. Before the door closed behind them, Pikul happened to look back. He saw that Hugo Carlaw, the sour-faced cashier they’d noticed when they arrived, was writing something down on a pad of paper. He looked vengeful and self-important.

Beyond the door was a dimly lit stockroom, jammed to overflowing with crates and cartons. Long and high vertical racks held a dizzying range of components for computers, old-fashioned game consoles, and parts of organware, nakedly scattered about in varying stages of construction or repair.

Nader indicated some wooden crates, and Geller and Pikul sat down on two of them, feeling disconcerted by Nader’s sudden air of menace. He prowled around them for a moment, then took down two more gel-paks from a shelf.

He studied Pikul and Geller, hefting the paks in his hands.

“All right,” he said. “Who vos it that sent you?”

“None of your damn business, I’d say,” Pikul retorted. “We’re here and that’s all that matters.”

Pikul heard himself say the words, and felt a jolt of surprise. Had he disrupted the game already?

“Hey, Pikul,” Geller said softly beside him. “Don’t blow it.”

“Blow what?”

“The game,” she said. “What else?”

“God, what happened? I didn’t mean to say that!”

Geller was looking strained, but to his relief, she laughed.

“I guess it wasn’t you,” she said, “but your character. The game version of you said that. It’s a kind of schizophrenic feeling, isn’t it? But you’ll get used to it soon enough. There are certain things that have to be said by the game players to advance the plot and establish the characters. Those things get said whether you want to say them or not. The trick is not to fight the sensation when it comes. Go with it.”

“Okay,” Pikul said, feeling somewhat better. “But what you just said . . . should you be saying that in front of him? In front of Nader?”

“Look at him. He’s in memory-save mode.”

Pikul glanced back. Nader didn’t appear to have heard or reacted to anything. He was still standing with the gel-paks in his hands, waiting for a reply to his question. His eyes were closed and he was humming the Antenna Research corporate theme song. His only movements were a slight rhythmic waggling of his head and a foot-tapping motion.

“What’s he doing?” Pikul asked.

“He’s gone into a game-loop. Programmers do that to save memory, or to avoid the program hanging. In the old type of games, you never saw it actually happening, but we’re talking cutting edge here. Everything is upfront, laid out before the players. It paradoxically adds to the aura of reality to put in reminders that what’s going on is largely unreal or imaginary. Nader’s locked up in the loop and he won’t come out of it until you feed him a proper line of game dialogue.”

“Which would be?”

“Whatever you like. But it’s got to be something he can respond to, within his role in the game.”

“That’s tricky.”

“No it isn’t.”

“Yes it
is.
You still haven’t told me what the object of the game is.”

“Okay,” Geller said. “You restart him by repeating your last line. The program ignored it the first time because it didn’t know it. But it has heard and learned that now, so it will recognize it the second time. If you include Nader’s name, he too will know you’re addressing him.”

“So if I say everything twice, the program will catch on without a pause?”

“Not necessarily. But it sometimes helps, if a game-loop starts.”

“All right.” Pikul turned toward the store owner. “We’re here, D’Arcy Nader, and that’s all that matters.”

Nader instantly broke out of his loop. He chuckled.

“You’re right,” he said. “That ist all that matters.”

“What’s next?” Pikul whispered to Geller.

“Get back to the plot. Why did we follow him in here?”

“Got it!” Pikul looked back at the man. “Well, Nader, you said you thought you had what we’re looking for.”

“I haff. Why you want it?”

“You offered it to us. Didn’t you?” Pikul turned to Geller. “Didn’t he?”

“He did,” Geller said. She was regarding Nader with an expression of acute interest, clearly trying to fathom what was going on.

Nader said, “In which case . . . you’re going to need these micropods, so you can download your new identities.” He held up the gel-paks. “I assume you do both haff those industry-standard bioports you mentioned?”

“Yes,” Geller said. “We’ve both installed bioports.” But she looked a little doubtful, and said to Pikul, “We do, don’t we?”

“I assume we do. I mean, here in the game. Of course, we might not.” A depressing thought suddenly struck him. “If we don’t, I’m not having another one inserted!”

“We’d better check,” Geller said.

Nader went into memory-save mode and Geller pulled her shirt out of her jeans and turned her back toward Pikul. He took a look. Her bioport was there, although to his eye it looked slightly rougher, more puckered, more organic than it had in her nongame life.

“Yeah, it’s there,” he said. He told her how its appearance was a little different.

Geller grabbed his shirt and did the same for him.

“I see what you mean,” she said. She turned back to Nader, who was humming the theme song again. “Yes, we both have bioports, D’Arcy Nader.”

Nader jerked back into action.

“Good. Port in, and these vill tell you all you need to know for now.”

Pikul and Geller inspected the gel-paks, Pikul feeling suspicious about the one he was holding. It bore the Cortical Systematics name and logo.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“Looks much the same as the one I use,” Geller replied. “A miniature version of the same thing.”

Nader said, “I’ll leaf you two while you finish up in here. It would not be good for us all to be seen together.” He smiled in a sinister way, as if this had been a significant thing to point out. He headed for the door, where he paused. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” he said by way of departure.

He chuckled, then went out and closed the connecting door behind him.

[
13
]

“I assume that Mr. Nader is our entry point into the game,” Pikul said.

“Yeah. Kind of disappointing, don’t you think?”