King's County (11 page)

*

"It's pretty neat, right? Walter,
Richelieu and I designed it." Tyndall said after I rejoined them at
the table.

“Touch the knob next time. It's a lot
easier.” Walter said.

“Whoa, hey there...”

A dark, long haired woman in an orange
and black dress danced into our group and led Walter
away.

"How does it work - how does any of
this work? I understand it’s a hologram. Why can't I get near it?
And this room, there’s no space for all these people, yet they seem
real."

Richelieu patted me on both shoulders,
"He will explain it all; more than you will want him to - in time.
All we have is time, and I have an appointment in the next car.
Goodnight to you, boys."

He sauntered off. Within a few seconds
he already seemed to be twenty-five or thirty meters away. At the
base of the pyramid, which now dwarfed him, he vanished, passing
into another realm.

Tyndall handed me a highball
glass,

"Cognac, splash of coffee liquor,
splash of cream. The ice cubes are frozen banana chunks. Specialty
of mine... I’ll tell you about the holograms."

We hung around watching the others
mingle and chat. Tyndall seemed reticent to join in. He talked and
I was happy to listen. Of what he said that I understood was that
there were several of these party cars each in a different theme.
The cars had been stripped down to all but a few fixtures. Tables,
chairs, sofas, some hard physical items were still necessary. The
rest, the sunset, the pyramid, the walls and trees, even the
surfaces of the tables and chairs, were their current generation of
high resolution holograms.

The engineers had developed the
holograms beyond a simple visual effect. The spacious Mexican
courtyard was actually filled with real people. They were not part
of the illusion. But as the car would be much too small for
everyone to comfortably occupy the space, the holograms were
dynamic, adjusting instantly, as necessary, to give a continuous
effect. Someone who seemed six or seven meters distant in reality
was likely between only one or two meters away.

When I asked him how we all kept from
bumping into each other he smiled and lit a cigarette. He was the
one who had solved this problem.

"Subtle cues generated by the room's
controller. You see this big space - and it really isn't as big as
it seems - but you won't enter the space just anywhere at anytime.
You were beginning to discover this earlier," Tyndall
said.

"I had to force myself to touch the
wall. It felt weird and it got really unpleasant the closer I
got."

"It steers you in the right place. Sort
of like an old fashioned air traffic controller, or like a sheep
dog, except you don't really notice it happening."

“Until you fight it.” I
said.

Tyndall nodded, “Indeed.”

*

I downed my third cognac and we went
into the pyramid. At the base of it was a dark, indistinct
rectangle. Tyndall went first. He blurred for a second as he
approached the door then disappeared.

- One last step forward and the noisy
courtyard was gone. I almost lost my feet again.

I was in an antechamber. The heat and
smells of the last car were replaced by cool, clean dry air. The
walls and floor were made of gray stone blocks, the ceiling was
heavy, well-joisted hardwood.

Tyndall waved me forward into the next
room.

“This looks good. It’s a quiet one.
Let’s sit down and we can talk,” he said.

It was smaller, seemed smaller, than
the other room. Two arched windows on one side revealed a snow
covered mountain landscape. The room was lit by a rough iron oil
lamp chandelier. A massive blazing fireplace took up one
corner.

We sat at a table beside a hanging
tapestry. A handful of men deep in conversation were at the other
tables. There was no music. We drank big steins of cold beer and
took shots of peppermint schnapps.

"Let me ask you, this place in Seattle
you were sent to, what was it like, generally speaking. Was it very
clean and orderly?"

"Everywhere was. Very clean, and so
were the army facilities in Alaska." I said.

"But you didn't ask how it was so well
kept?" He said.

"Well, I noticed. My old base in
Wyoming was usually filthy. That was years ago. I figured these
things were now automated somehow, like everything
else."

"But you saw no, say, janitors or
maintenance workers, man or machine. Am I right?"

"I never saw anything. You're going to
tell me why."

"Yes, the same illusion as here. The
cities are full of these machines tending the landscape, cleaning
streets, cleaning up your mess - all carefully and efficiently
disguised." He said. "Of course here the holograms are hosted in
the structure of the train car. The cities and the military adapted
our system to run on board their devices. They display their
background to make themselves invisible."

"When I was in space I read about
Plato’s Cave."

"Right! That's what it is. But these
days I wouldn't waste any time trying to reach the other prisoners,
so to speak. I think you'll find them indifferent."

"You said the cities adapted your
system. Who are these people?"

"Whoever they are... Well, they're
nobody. I really wouldn't know how to keep up with that kind of
thing, even if I were interested."

"Well, they seem like they know what
they're doing, but Seattle was a mess underneath the surface. The
people there were insane."

"We’ve made a mess of everything,
everywhere. No doubt about that." Tyndall lost himself in a moment
of thought.

"Did you ever read anything about
inter-dimensionality?" He said at last.

"A little. Hard to understand and it's
all theoretical."

"I argue that the holograms create a
separate dimension," he said.

"Huh. Wouldn't it just be an illusion
of a dimension?" I said.

"Yes, what I mean is they create a
separate living dimension. One that has most properties of reality,
eventually, inevitably perhaps becoming indistinguishable from
reality – at least to our perception.”

I shrugged and he went on,

“Think about the concept of time. We’ve
conquered it in our lives. We’ve beaten death. The formula pills
beat aging. The chips do the rest to keep us healthy. Astronauts
like you could alter your perception of time with a simple pill. Ed
told us."

“So what does that mean? We're messing
with nature and that will eventually bring on our downfall? Or
we're becoming isolated by our technology and we've lost the true
meaning of life. Or did we kill God with our hubris and we're now
alone in the universe? Choose your cliché.”

“You really did read those old books.
Maybe all those things're true,” He said and laughed at my teasing
him. “But no, what I mean is that what's real has become less real
and what's not real has become more real - whatever is coming out
of this new world will not resemble anything we've seen before.
That's my only prediction. This is a beginning as well as an
end.”

“I don't know. It doesn't feel like a
beginning.” I said.

“But it always is. Nothing can stay the
same forever.”

We hung out drinking a little while
longer but kept the conversation light. A blonde woman in an alpine
getup that showed off the top of her breasts brought us fresh
drinks when we needed them.

Tyndall was quiet for a minute. He was
asleep in his chair. I left him at the table and the waitress
showed me to a small bedroom. A single narrow window looked out
high above a forested, snowy valley.

I passed out on the cold bed for a few
hours. When I awoke, I wasn’t alone. The waitress was in the bed
waiting for me.

I slept again, better than before, and
woke up feeling pretty good, considering. The waitress was gone.
She hadn’t spoken a single word since I'd rolled over on top of
her.

Outside, the fire was out. The hall was
empty. I took a seat in the middle of the room and rested. There
was the sound of a storm outside.

The effect was perfectly realistic.
Wind driven snow was tapping on the window and accumulating on the
sill. I could smell the oil in the lamps in the
chandelier.

I studied an intricately inlaid,
lacquered metal suit of armor that was set up against one wall. The
hangover hit me, a dumb pounding in my head. I needed to take my
time, to take advantage of the moment alone and relax. The moment
didn't last.

"Whoa! What are you doing?" It was Ed.
"Hey, c’mon. It's going on in there, not here."

"Jesus, are you OK?" I said. Ed looked
rough. He had been going nonstop since I last saw him. His eyes
were bloodshot saucers.

"Am I OK? I'm fine. You're the one
hanging out in a library with no books. You’ve got to come see the
next car. C’mon." Ed put his arm around my neck and dragged me over
to the door. He was sweating booze.

"Captain, I think you'll like this one.
We spent a lot of time on it - it's exactly like Miami. And Miami
is dirty."

*

Ed wasn’t wrong. The heat hit me in the
face with a whiff of the swamp. We were on the doorstep of a white
stucco mansion.

Inside was a wild crowd. Bassy,
frenetic Latin music necessitated shouting to be heard. Walking in,
Ed immediately raptured off into the fray while I planted in one
spot.

People were everywhere. Relaxed men in
linen suits and chatty women in flashy, oversized jewelry gestured
with their hands through the noise. Beautiful women in bikinis and
high heels flirted with shirtless, hairless well-tanned dudes in
shorts.

I watched two of the guys carefully
craft a long line of white powder around the edge of a grand piano.
They stopped midway to argue something. Patiently watching them
from an alcove was a huge tiger held there with heavy golden
chains.

"Hey, do you want a girl?" Ed
reappeared to pull me over to a small white engraved door. "Here.
Go in here," he said and pushed me in.

Facing the door in a chair was a woman
with her legs crossed. She was thin with short, straight dark
brunette hair and wore a black lace dress and black
hose.

She sat high on the chair and I
realized she was in another woman’s lap. Seeing my recognition, she
uncrossed her legs. The other woman’s legs moved precisely with
hers.

There wasn't another woman. The two
pairs of legs moved again, synchronized, recrossed and then opened
and raised. She wore nothing under the dress; she had two
genitalia, one on top of the other, both with neatly trimmed
straight black hair.

The woman undulated her hips, grinding
on the chair. The legs spread wide then bent sharply at the knees.
Her mouth opened showing teeth while her eyes locked onto mine. She
extended a long finger and curled it inward beckoning
me.

*

"Is that cocaine?" I asked a muscle
man. He and his friend had completed and were admiring an even line
tracing the gilded edge of the grand piano.

"Yeah. Dive in, man." he said. They
were proud of their work and were excited that I had acknowledged
it.

I managed to take in about three
centimeters and pulled back. My head went entirely numb and
swelled, the room went dark and quiet... and then came back. My
hair burned at the roots and was quenched in ice. They looked at me
with knowing smiles and giggles then became vibrating orange lumps.
I stared up at the white and gold Rococo ceiling to get away from
them.

Ed came up from behind and hugged me to
his side,

"Not bad, Cap. Just wait, just wait, it
gets even better.”

“Better?”

“We’re finally home, bro."

*

I found Walter on a sofa by himself in
a corner of the mansion. He was drawing patterns of letters and
numbers on a table from a mound of cocaine.

"Hey, new guy," he said. "So what do
you think of this place?"

"It's insane, everything about it." I
said.

"Yeah it is. But you’re still here.
I've actually never seen anyone leave."

"I’ll be leaving soon. I'm afraid of
what will happen if I don’t."

"Maybe you should. You’ll still have
access lots of places, I would think. Maybe go east." He pinched a
bit of the powder and sniffed it up hard.

"We tried this Miami theme party once
before, I don't know, a while ago. Well before your buddy Ed got
here. We brought in a whole roasted alligator, a big one, 16 footer
- head, tail, everything - the hollowed out parts were stuffed with
soft-shelled crabs. Laid that sucker out on this huge platter and
surrounded it with roasted, garlic-roasted iguanas. All kinds of
fruit and vegetables, whatever, around the platter, you know, a
real spread and a bunch of live iguanas, too, for decoration." He
paused to take another pinch.