eXistenZ (3 page)

They were shown how to sit, and the game-pod was placed in a certain fashion on their laps. The UmbyCord was then uncoiled to its full length and one end was plugged into the port on the side of the game-pod.

The pod rippled in response.

The first time this happened, the volunteers reacted amazingly. The man on whose lap this first game-pod had been placed pushed back his chair with a scraping of its plastic legs and ripped open the front of his shirt. Half standing, holding the game-pod in place with one hand, he tried to reach behind himself with the other end of the UmbyCord and thrust the socket into the bioport that was already implanted in his back.

It was difficult for him to reach on his own, so the assistant swiftly moved in to help him.

Other people began to undo or pull their upper garments free of their waistbands.

Pikul watched all this with fascination.

A young woman sitting opposite the first man, not yet in possession of her game-pod, suddenly moaned. Her face was glowing with sweat and her hair was matted untidily around her face.

“My God!” she said in a low, aroused voice. “Oh my
God!”

She too stood up. Her eyes were glazed. She pulled frantically at the front of her shirt, ripping the buttons apart. When she had the shirt undone, she tossed the garment to one side. She wore no bra. Her chest was already shiny with perspiration. The bioport in her back glistened expectantly, and the woman reached around to grab it, caressing it with her fingers. She started to dribble with the passion of her sudden arousal.

A female assistant was quickly with her. She made her sit down, then retrieved the torn blouse and skillfully forced her to put it on again. The young woman continued to moan, so the assistant found a dampened cloth from somewhere and administered some cooling pressure to her forehead. Gradually, the woman volunteer calmed down.

Pikul realized that Levi and his staff must have been through this or similar situations many times before, and were prepared to deal with people’s reactions to the game-pods.

He leaned forward to look at the bioport on the back of the middle-aged woman closest to him. He had only seen it in magazine photos or on TV.

The port was flesh-colored and made of soft plastic, and it was embedded somehow in the woman’s back, right up against the base of her spine, just above the belt line. From more than a few inches away it was barely noticeable, resembling a faint operation scar. Close up, it could be seen as finely engineered flesh-ware, made to blend with the human body on which it was installed. The port itself was a small hole, about the diameter of an adult’s smallest finger. As the woman shifted about in her seat, Pikul noticed that an arrangement of electronic connectors inside the bioport glittered as the bright spotlights caught them.

Gradually, Wittold Levi and his assistants imposed order. One by one the volunteers sat in the semicircle of chairs, the UmbyCord running around their waists or draped over their shoulders, and plugged into the game-pod on their laps.

Each game-pod was quivering and rippling.

When the volunteers were settled, Allegra Geller moved in to take her place in the central chair. Levi helped her with exaggerated consideration, fussing around her, seeing to her every need. Once seated with the others, Allegra clicked open her case with deliberate delicacy and removed the pod from within it.

One by one the other players connected the spare socket of their game-pods to a central prosthetic pod, thence to Allegra’s own.

The Master Game-Pod. From Antenna Research.

Then Pikul was distracted.

There was a commotion of some kind close to the door and he had to wrench his attention away from Allegra and the others to see what was happening.

Someone was trying to force their way into the hall past a restraining group of men from the crowd.

Pikul squinted at the handle of his electronic wand as he hurried through the crowd, and found the On/Off switch. He turned it on. The wand hummed briefly, then continued to vibrate gently in his hand. He wasn’t sure exactly what it would do, but he guessed he was about to find out.

[
3
]

The intruder was a man in his mid-twenties, wearing blue jeans, a white T-shirt, and a shiny leather jacket. He was carrying a large vinyl case. He was in a state of excitement, but not only was that nothing new in this unusual meeting, it might have been caused by his efforts to get past the group of men blocking his way.

“Hold it!” Pikul said loudly as he approached. He held his wand at the ready. “Not so fast. Let me see your invitation, sir.”

In response, the young man thrust a card at him.

Pikul took it and tried to focus on it. It wasn’t easy: it was one of those cards using a holographic ID picture, as well as validating numbers printed in machine-readable type.

“What the hell is this?” Pikul said.

“One of your invitations to this meeting, you idiot!”

“What?” Pikul looked more closely and realized that it was exactly as the young man had said. The wobbling hologram suddenly steadied, to reveal a 3-D picture of the man in front of him, as well as his name: Noel Dichter.

With his credential established, which he must have known all along it would be, Dichter was already looking anxiously past Pikul into the body of the hall. He heaved on the strap of his vinyl case, easing its weight on his shoulder.

“Oh God,” he said. “I hope I’m not too late. Did I miss the port-in?”

Pikul was still trying to assess this newcomer. He seemed no different from the others already present, but exuded a nervous tension that made Pikul wary of him, and Antenna Research, he knew, considered Allegra Geller an irreplaceable asset.

“Yeah, they’ve started,” he said. “But it’s only the first wave. You can probably be part of the second wave. It’s going to go on all evening.” Pikul again read the name on the card. “Okay, Noel Dichter, let’s see you with your arms up. I have to scan you. Metal and heavy synthetics not allowed.”

“What is this?” Dichter said, incredulous. “A weapons check?”

“It’s more for recording devices,” Pikul said through his teeth. He was concentrating on the radio-intensity receptor control on the stem of the wand. “There’s a lot of serious money invested in these games. Industrial espionage happens and, no offense, Mr. Dichter, we got to make sure it isn’t going to happen here. Now, what have you got in this case?”

“I brought my game-pod,” Dichter said. “It’s got original Marway tissue architecture. Kind of obsolete now, I guess, but I was still hoping . . . Even though I can’t afford one of your Antenna MetaFlesh 15 upgrades, I’ve figured out a method of virtual porting that I thought might—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Pikul said, because for him not much of this made sense. “You won’t need it tonight, whatever it is. Everything’s provided for here by Antenna. Call it corporate hospitality.”

Dichter suddenly stiffened. “My God!” he cried. “Is that who I think it is?”

“Is who who you think it is?”

“That young woman, up on the platform! Is that Allegra Geller?”

“Yeah,” Pikul said, with almost paternal pride. “That’s her. She’s really something, isn’t she?”

“What’s a star like her doing here? A product launch in the back of beyond?”

“Out here in the boonies is where the real people live, you know. Real fans. Just like you, Noel.”

“Yeah, well, you said it. Just like me.”

Dichter had scanned clear, so with no further reason to delay him, Pikul handed his vinyl case back and waved the young man in.

Dichter went across and joined the press of people close to the platform.

Not wanting any more late arrivals to get in without his say-so, Pikul turned the lock on the door and pocketed the key. Then he wandered back to the crowd, stopping not far from Noel Dichter.

On the platform, in the center of the semicircle of linked game players, Wittold Levi finished a number of checks on the UmbyCord connectors then nodded toward Allegra Geller.

“Okay, everything seems to be in order. Are you ready, Allegra?”

She was looking pumped up, her face tense and elated, her fingers playing restlessly over the soft mound of her game-pod.

“Sure thing,” she said, her voice almost singing. “This is always my favorite moment.”

A wave of excited laughter passed through the crowd. Levi stepped down from the platform and went to stand amongst the audience. Allegra looked around at the other players.

“I’m about ready to start
eXistenZ
by Antenna Research,” she said, her words faltering a little. She bit her lip. She went on in a much softer voice, making everyone strain forward to hear. “This will be downloaded into all of you. Let me warn you that you’re in for a wild ride, but I’ll be right there with you. Our assistants will be here in reality, just in case there are problems. But nothing will go wrong, because nothing can go wrong. Remember always it’s just a game, a simulation. Don’t panic, no matter what happens. When it’s through, I’ll see you all safely back here. It might seem like a long time while we’re playing, but that’s subjective time dilation. In reality, we will be playing for only a few minutes.”

Again there was laughter, but this time it was confined to the twenty-one players on the stage. Also, it was now the nervous laughter of people uncertain of what was about to happen to them.

Allegra quickly brushed a finger over a nipplelike protuberance on the game-pod in her lap.

Immediately, the other players closed their eyes and went rigid. Their hands, resting on the pods in their laps, stiffened, and the knuckles began to show white. Meanwhile, the game-pods began a rhythmic, peristaltic rippling.

Pikul moved over to Wittold Levi.

“Allegra Geller seems shy,” he said quietly. “It wouldn’t have occurred to me that a big star like her would be shy.”

“That’s what a lot of people like about Allegra,” Levi said. “She spends most of her time alone in her studio, designing the games. I sometimes think she’d be happier if she never had to show them to anybody.”

“She doesn’t like this adulation?”

“I don’t know about that. No matter what she says to make people feel good, it’s what she’s doing now that she’s nervous about. Porting in with her fans. She says it’s too intimate, too much of an intrusion.”

“Then why does she do it?”

Levi glanced at him, grinning slyly. “I guess you could say we make her do it,” he said.

“We? You mean the game company, Antenna?”

“That’s what I mean.”

“Why?” Pikul asked.

That look came at him again, but now Wittold Levi was no longer grinning.

“I haven’t seen you before,” he said, suspiciously. “Are you with Antenna, or did an independent security contractor send you?”

“I’m with you,” Pikul said at once. Inwardly, he resented the man’s tone, but he fished in his back pocket for his ID and showed it to Witt. “I’m working through the Antenna management training program. Security is what I’m doing right now, but I want to end up in marketing and public relations.” He held up the electronic wand. “To be completely honest with you, most of what I know about security is confined to knowing how to switch this sucker on and off.”

Levi ducked back from the wand, which Pikul had waved incautiously at him.

“Okay, then you’ll know that corporately we’ve spent a fortune developing
eXistenZ.
We all realize it’s a risky project. Allegra Geller might have to make more changes yet, and these kind of seminars are just about the only way we can convince her there might be a problem.”

“By a problem you mean bugs?” Pikul said. “You’re saying there are bugs in her new game?”

“All gameware has bugs, but we can iron them out as part of the testing and evaluation procedure.
eXistenZ
is a lot more than a game, though.”

“Yeah, right. It’s a game
system.
I heard you say that. It’s a kind of emphasis you keep making.”

“There are some top people at Antenna who are worried that
eXistenZ
is an intellectual program, too complex, too weird and artsy.”

“What do you think?” Pikul asked.

“Me, I think it’s the hottest product Antenna has ever had, marketwise. And Allegra’s not bothered by accusations of being highbrow. Not until she faces her fans. She hates to be rejected in the flesh, so from time to time we bring her out and let her take some of the heat.”

“I’ve heard that she’s sensitive,” Pikul said admiringly.

“I guess you could say that’s what she’s good at. We pay Allegra Geller for being sensitive.”

A strange, choral humming could now be heard, filling the high vaulted roof of the old church building. Pikul and Levi turned their attention back to the stage, where the participants were rocking and swaying in their seats, moving in time with the pulsing, throbbing pods in their laps.

“What’s going on now?” Pikul said quietly to Witt.

“That’s the new Antenna Research theme song. We thought this might be a way to launch it. Anyone who plays
eXistenZ
is going to be familiar with that tune.”

Loyally, for at heart he thought he should at least attempt to be a good company man, Pikul tried to hum along. He gave up after a few bars.

“That’s catchy,” he said.

Levi made no response but he too began humming, emphasizing the important notes, urging Pikul and everyone else to join in. Soon the whole room was humming along.

Everyone in the room, that is, except Noel Dichter. Pikul, never at ease with community singing, had started to glance around the room nervously, and within moments he noticed what Dichter was doing.

The young man had moved to the edge of the platform and was fumbling with the catches of his vinyl pod case. As the flap swung open, Pikul saw the fleshy mass of an old game-pod resting inside. At first he thought Dichter was going to take it out, but to his amazement he saw the man thrust his fingers straight into the resilient organic mass of the pod.

Moments later he pulled it back out, but now he was holding something small and irregularly shaped.

At first sight Pikul thought it was the half-decayed cadaver of a small animal, like a large rat or a small dog. It was made of bone and gristle and had fragments of furry flesh attached to it. Dichter used his free hand to strip away a few pieces of the gelatinous game-pod flesh still clinging to it. He held it up briefly to his eyes, checking or inspecting it.