Perion Synthetics (55 page)

So many voices speaking to her, and all she
wanted to hear was one.

Kaili closed her eyes, brought up her
personal construct, and screamed into the unending darkness for her sister.

Nothing echoed back. Anela Zabora had not
spoken since Perion City.

In the construct, Kaili collapsed on the
floor, sobbing.

“I’ll wait,” she said, speaking into her
hands.

“Are you okay?”

Kaili opened her eyes and saw the woman with
the knee-high boots standing in front of her.

“It’s a man, isn’t it?” she asked,
scrunching her nose and raising an eyebrow.

“No,” said Kaili. “A woman.”

“Oh, oh.” Knee-highs wandered away to the
sinks and pretended to wash her hands.

Kaili stood and began to undress. She kicked
off her shoes and placed them in a cubby inside the locker. Taking off her
socks allowed her to feel the soft, microfiber mat on the floor running the
length of the lockers. There were two plastic hangers on a small steel rod
inside, and she used them to hang up her sweater and blouse. She folded her
pants and began removing the rest of her jewelry.

“Is that why you’re here?” asked the woman
from the sinks. “Did she break your heart?”

Could a memory break a heart?

“It’s not like that,” said Kaili. She pulled
a white robe out and hung it on the locker door. With a quick snap of her
fingers, she undid her bra and slipped the robe on.

“I’m pretty sure my husband is cheating on
me.” The woman dabbed a washcloth on the makeup beneath her eyes. “Which is
fine with me;
I’m
certainly not going to fuck him. I’ll spend his money,
yes, but a woman’s got to have standards.”

Kaili nodded as she folded her underwear and
laid them on the pile of clothes in the locker. She shut the door, set a random
combination on the keypad, and locked it.

“Maybe he could pay for mine too,” said
Kaili.

The woman was still chuckling politely as
Kaili exited the locker room.

She walked down the hall in the plastic
sandals and sat down on a long, white divan in the relaxation room. A small
laugh escaped her lips. She had to tell herself it was okay to find humor in
the strange things said by Bonnie Diaz. Knee-highs would have laughed too, had
she known Bonnie Diaz was the primary shareholder at Diaz Investments and that
her recent stock maneuverings in regards to Perion Synthetics had netted almost
four million dollars. To have come out of Perion City with nothing and
everything warranted both regret and happiness. If Anela were still around, she
would have probably told Kaili to only look on the bright side.

And yet, it wasn’t the same as hearing her
sister’s voice in her head.

“Ms. Diaz?”

Kaili looked up and saw a girl in purple
scrubs standing in the doorway.

“I’m Ginger,” she said. “I’ll be assisting
Dr. Jenkins today. If you will follow me, I’ll show you to your room.” She
waited for Kaili to join her in the hallway and then led her around a curve to
the left. “We’re going to be in the fifth room on the right.”

Room five was rectangular, barely eight feet
across but double that in length. The pod sat on a thick, metal pike in the
center of the room with its doors open; the inside glowed yellow from the
lights beneath the stasis gel.

“And you’ve got no biochip, is that correct?
No Guardian Angel no one told you about?” asked Ginger.

“No,” said Bonnie Diaz.

“I’d rather die,” said Kaili Zabora, to
herself.

Ginger closed the door and rolled a cart
closer to the pod. She pulled a tray of electrodes from a metal box. “If you’ll
take off your robe, I can get these placed and have you draped before I bring
Dr. Jenkins in.”

Warm air rose from vents on the floor,
providing a blanket of heat so Kaili could feel comfortable standing naked
while Ginger applied electrodes to various points on her body.

“Have you ever done this before?” asked
Ginger.

“Not like this,” said Kaili.

“It’s the way of the future. We’re building
another location downtown and next year we’ll have an office in Westport.
Couple decades from now, we’ll all be living like this.”

The construct bloomed; within it, warehouses
grew in a massive grid, each one containing racks upon racks of stasis pods,
their occupants’ bodies suspended while their minds wandered the endless sea of
empty registers in VNet.

“We’ll see how my body takes six months,”
said Kaili. “Then we’ll talk about spending the rest of our lives jacked in.”

Ginger smiled as she gave Kaili a once-over.
“You’re going to be fine. When you come out and get a look at what we’ve done,
you’ll fall in love with yourself.” She stepped aside and gestured to the pod.
“If you’d like to lie down on your back, I’ll get you covered up.”

Kaili sat down on the lip of the pod and put
one foot at a time into the stasis gel.

“If it’s too hot, let me know,” said Ginger.

Maybe those lights at the bottom were
actually heat lamps.

Kaili let the warm gel envelope her body. It
rose in swells on the sides of her legs and ribcage. It trickled into places
that made her smirk.

Ginger laid a white towel over Kaili’s body,
covering everything from her ankles to her neck.

The gel nipped at Kaili’s earlobes and she
shuddered.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” said
Ginger. “Stasis is perfectly safe.”

Kaili laughed. She could give a shit about
going under for a while.

“It’s not that,” said Bonnie Diaz. “I just
haven’t been to VNet in forever.”

Ginger put her hands on her hips. “How long
has it been for you?”

Since before Perion, thought Kaili.

“A decade or more, give or take.”

“Well, then you’re in for a surprise, aren’t
you?”

The door opened after a curt knock. An older
man with features like Chuck’s walked in carrying a palette. He glanced at
Ginger and then smiled at Kaili.

“Ms. Diaz, how are you? Comfortable?”

Kaili nodded as the gel clung to her hair.

“Good, well, your vitals look fine. Nothing
showed up on the tox screen. Let’s get you jacked in so we can get started on
your treatments.”

“Sounds good,” she replied, not really
listening. The warm cocoon pulled her towards sleep.

“Ginnie, let’s get the sedative going.” Then
to Kaili, “We’re going to take your brain offline for a while until we’ve got
you stabilized. Then you’ll wake up, so to speak, and be logged into VNet for
the duration. You’ll be on a temporary Soleil Rouge permit, so you’ll be
getting a specialized Personal Assistant to explain the accommodations to you.
They will be able to answer any questions you have, including the progress
we’re making out here. Do you have any questions for me?”

Just do it, she thought. She could see
herself standing on the edge of the infinite rabbit hole, just waiting for
someone to push her in.

“No,” she replied.

“Great, then I will see you on the other
side, Ms. Diaz.”

A plastic mask came into view; Ginger placed
it over Kaili’s nose and mouth. “Breathe deeply and slowly,” she said. “Start counting
back from one hundred.”

“One hundred,” said Kaili. “Ninety-nine.”

“Sleep tight,” said Ginger. “Dream of
beautiful men in warm climates.”

Her face lost all definition and turned to
smoke. Kaili grasped at it with her mind as she fell into the void.

For a time, she walked the beaches of San
Diego with Rick as the sun forever set on the watery horizon.

And then, lucidity pulled her into a
construct.

She found herself sitting on bent knees in
the center of an ill-defined space. Ribbons of light shot out from beneath her
at ninety degree angles. They repeated, shifting a few degrees, until they had
constructed a blue-white floor of viscous light. Kaili felt the pressure
increase on her knees.

Behind her, footsteps sounded, perhaps made
by Le Soleil Rouge’s custom Personal Assistant.

It took an eternity to turn her head.

Standing there in her blood-red dress was
Anela.

Kaili fought to find her voice. “Are you…
are you real?”

Anela simply smiled as she offered her hand,
electric current pouring from her fingers.

The taxi crept along the streets of Umbra, dodging
bleary-eyed youths who couldn’t be bothered with crosswalks. David Yates
observed the distracted population from the back seat, tired from his trip, but
unable to tear his attention away from the sensory overload pouring in through
the half-open window. Umbra blocks were tightly packed; the neon of one
storefront bled into the next, creating a never-ending pastiche of dancing
lasers, scrolling code, and inviting women. Together, it was a light show that refused
to be ignored. When Yates looked down, he saw it reflected in the puddles on
the evercrete sidewalks. Looking up revealed lustrous animations racing along
the Umbra Canopy.

A young girl in a tattered, brown jacket
stumbled into the street, causing the taxi to brake abruptly.

Yates held tight to the metal cylinder in his
lap.

“Open your eyes, sugar tits,” said the
driver, barely audible over the thumping of distant bass reverberating through
the car.

He didn’t know how wrong he was.

If anything, these lost and wandering sheep
needed to close their eyes against the unreality surrounding them. Umbra was an
optical delight like no other, but it held no real information, no truth. The
people walking its streets were neon blind, unable to see anything but the
pretty veneers and flashing lights. They needed a thick tarp cast over the
world, and not just for the sake of their sight, but for all of their senses.

More than anything, they needed to silence
the many voices in their heads, the entertainers and celebrities and
advertisers who drowned out their own common sense.

The taxi bit the curb at 301 Nand Street and
came to a stop, its gears grinding as the driver forced it into park.

“Saint Barbara’s in less than twenty
minutes. What’d I tell you?”

“Thank you,” said Yates, thumbing away
twenty-five bucks on the meter.

Warm and misty air had settled in Umbra.
Yates felt it reach over his blazer and into the collar of his button-up. Sheep
crisscrossed in front of him, the pierced nipples of men and women poking
through tank-tops and cut-off shirts. They barely glanced at the tall man with
the square haircut as he maneuvered through them to the front doors of Saint
Barbara’s.

An access panel lit up at his approach,
casting a blue light over the
no trespassing
sign hung above it. Yates
tapped out the code on the worn buttons and got a harsh beep in return. The
blue LEDs flashed red. He tried again with similar results.

“That’s Umbra for you. Everything’s amazing
but nothing works.”

Yates turned to the voice and saw a
middle-aged man step out of the crowd. He was dressed in black except for lines
of neon green streaking across his button-up at random intervals. His slim face
held augmented eyes of a similar emerald color.

“Mind if I try?” he asked.

Yates took a step back and watched as the
man typed the same code and then banged on the door just above the keypad. The
panel responded with a whir and switched from blue to green. The man nudged the
door open with his knuckles.

“Thank you,” said Yates, extending his hand.
“Mister…”

“Gattis, Frank Gattis. And it was nothing.”
He turned to peer inside. “I remember when Saint Barb’s closed in what… ’08? Would
you mind if I came in and took a quick look around?”

“All are welcome, my son,” said Yates.

Gattis was able to find the light panel to
the right of the doors; the can lights in the ceiling were still in good shape
and ramped up to a warm glow.

The church wasn’t even half the size of the WG
in Perion City, but Yates hadn’t purchased the building for its main chapel. He
looked around for the doors to the right and left of the cramped rostrum. They
led to a space in the back originally used as dorms. There were ten, eight by
eight rooms, each just big enough to hold the deprivation tanks he had ordered.
With those tanks, he would transport the distracted throngs to what he saw as a
silent nirvana, a state of being free of the feed.

“Well, they certainly let this place go to
hell,” said Gattis. “Pardon the pun.”

Yates traced his finger over the backing of
a pew; it came away coated in black dust.

“What you see is not always the truth,” he
said. “Underneath, she is still a church. She will shine again.”

“No offense, but the average Umbrat doesn’t
care much for churches. That’s why Saint Barbara’s went under in the first
place. I hope you’ve got some serious bankroll because donations will be hard
to come by.”

Yates found a shelf along the left wall near
a bank of melted candles. He placed the cylinder upon the warped wood and
stepped back.

“I do,” he said, “thanks to a generous donation
from a friend. It will be enough to sustain the church for several years. By
the time the money runs out, I will have shown this city the value of my way
and they will support me.”

“Your way?” asked Gattis. “Which way is
that?”

Yates smiled and walked to the center aisle
where Gattis stood. He put his hands behind his back.

“Do you yearn for a new way, my son?”

“That depends on what the new way entails.
Are you reviving a church or starting a cult?”

“What’s the difference?” asked Yates. “I
just want to quiet the agitated mind and help people hear the music and smell
the flowers and see the things no one else sees.”

Gattis crossed his arms.

“You can see what no one else sees? Are they
supposed to take you as the new messiah?”