Diamond Age or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

apocalyptic sky torn by hundreds of comets. A tongue of clammy, algae-colored light shone beneath the water, resolving itself into a long narrow thrust stage as it rose toward the surface, like Atlantis resurgent. The audience noticed it and bounced their spotlights off the surface, catching a few dark motes in the crossfire: the heads of a dozen or so performers, slowly rising out of the water. They began to speak in something like unison, and Hackworth realized that they were the chorus of lunatics he had seen earlier.

'Set me up, Nick,' said a woman's voice behind him.

'Tucked 'em in, did you?' said the barkeep.

'Ninnies.'

Hackworth turned and saw that it was the young woman in the devil costume who had acted as tour guide for the Heartlanders. She was very petite, dressed in a long black skirt slit all the way to the hipbone, and she had nice hair, very thick and black and glossy. She carried a glass of wheat beer over to the counter, primly swept her devil's tail out of the way in a gesture that Hackworth found hopelessly fetching, and took a seat. Then she let out an explosive sigh and put her head down on her arms for a few moments, her blinking red horns reflecting in the curved window like the taillights of a full-laner. Hackworth laced his fingers together around his pint and smelled her perfume. Down below, the chorus had gotten out of hand and was trying to pull off a rather ambitious Busby Berkeley dance number. They showed an uncanny ability to act in unison– something to do with the 'sites that had burrowed into their brains– but their bodies were stiff, weak, and badly coordinated. What they did, they did with absolute conviction, which made it good anyway.

'Did they buy it?' Hackworth said.

'Pardon me?' said the woman, looking up alertly like a bird, as if she hadn't known Hackworth was here.

'Do those Heartlanders really believe that story about the drunken pilot?'

'Oh. Who cares?' the woman said.

Hackworth laughed, pleased that a member of Dramatis Personae was affording him this confidence.

'It's off the point, isn't it,' the woman said in a lower voice, getting a bit philosophical now. She squeezed a wedge of lemon into her wheat beer and took a sip. 'Belief isn't a binary state, not here at least. Does anyone believe anything one hundred percent? Do you believe everything you see through those goggles?'

'No,' Hackworth said, 'the only thing I believe at the moment is that my legs are wet, this stout is good, and I like your perfume.'

She looked a bit surprised, not unpleasantly so, but she wasn't nearly that easy. 'So why are you here? Which show did you come to see?'

'What do you mean? I suppose I came to see this one.'

'But there is no this one. It's a whole family of shows. Interlaced.' She parked her beer and executed Phase 1 of the here-is– the-church maneuver. 'Which show you see depends on which feed you're viewing.'

'I don't seem to have any control over what I see.'

'Ah, then you're a performer.'

'So far I have felt like a very inept slapstick performer.'

'Inept slapstick? Isn't that a bit redundant?'

It wasn't that funny, but she said it wittily, and Hackworth chuckled politely.

'It sounds as though you've been singled out to be a performer.'

'You don't say.'

'Now, I don't normally reveal our trade secrets,' the woman continued in a lower voice, 'but usually when someone is singled out as a performer, it's because they have come here for some purpose other than pure, passive entertainment.'

Hackworth stuttered and fumbled for words a bit. 'Does that– is that done?'

'Oh, yes!' the woman said. She rose from her stool and moved to the one right next to Hackworth. 'Theatre's not just a few people clowning about on a stage, being watched by this herd of oxen. I mean, sometimes it's that. But it can be ever so much more-really it can be any sort of interaction between people and people, or people and information.' The woman had become quite passionate now, forgotten herself completely. Hackworth got boundless pleasure just from watching her. When she'd first entered the bar, he'd thought she had a sort of nondescript face, but as she let her guard down and spoke without any self-consciousness, she seemed to become prettier and prettier. 'We are tied in to everything here– plugged into the whole universe of information. Really, it's a virtual theatre. Instead of being hard-wired, the stage, sets, cast, and script are all soft-they can be reconfigured simply by shifting bits about.'

'Oh. So the show-or interlaced set of shows-can be different each night?'

'No, you're still not getting it,' she said, becoming very excited. She reached out and gripped his forearm just below the elbow and leaned toward him, desperate to make sure he got this.

'It's not that we do a set show, reconfigure, and a different one next night. The changes are dynamic and take place in real time. The show reconfigures itself dynamically depending upon what happens moment to moment-and mind you, not just what happens here, but what is happening in the world at large. It is a smart play–an intelligent organism.'

'So, if, for example, a battle between the Fists of Righteous Harmony and the Coastal Republic were taking place in the interior of China at this moment, then shifts in the battle might in some way-'

'Might change the color of a spotlight or a line of dialogue– not necessarily in any simple and deterministic fashion, mind you-'

'I think I understand,' Hackworth said. 'The internal variables of the play depend on the total universe of information outside-'

The woman nodded vigorously, quite pleased with him, her huge black eyes shining.

Hackworth continued, 'As, for example, a person's state of mind at any given moment might depend on the relative concentrations of innumerable chemical compounds circulating through his bloodstream.'

'Yes,' the woman said, 'like if you're in a pub being chatted up by a fetching young gentleman, the words coming out of your mouth are affected by the amount of alcohol you've put into your system, and, of course, by concentrations of natural hormones– again, not in a simple deterministic way-these things are all inputs.'

'I think I'm beginning to get your meaning,' Hackworth said.

'Substitute tonight's show for the brain, and the information flowing across the net for molecules flowing through the bloodstream, and you have it,' the woman said.

Hackworth was a bit disappointed that she had chosen to pull back from the pub metaphor, which he had found more immediately interesting.

The woman continued, 'That lack of determinism causes some to dismiss the whole process as wanking. But in fact it's an incredibly powerful tool. Some people understand that.'

'I believe I do,' Hackworth said, desperately wanting her to believe that he did.

'And so some people come here because they are on a quest of some sort-trying to find a lost lover, let's say, or to understand why something terrible happened in their lives, or why there is cruelty in the world, or why they aren't satisfied with their career. Society has never been good at answering these questions-the sorts of questions you can't just look up in a reference database.'

'But the dynamic theatre allows one to interface with the universe of data in a more intuitive way,' Hackworth said.

'That is precisely it,' the woman said. 'I'm so pleased that you get this.'

'When I was working with information, it frequently occurred to me, in a vague and general way, that such a thing might be desirable,' Hackworth said. 'But this is beyond my imagination.'

'Where did you hear of us?'

'I was referred here by a friend who has been associated with you in the past, in some vague way.'

'Oh? May I ask who? Perhaps we have a mutual friend,' the woman said, as if that would be a fine thing. Hackworth felt himself reddening and let out a deep breath.

'All right,' he said, 'I lied. It wasn't really a friend of mine. It was someone I was led to.'

'Ah, now we're getting into it,' the woman said. 'I knew there was something mysterious going on with you.'

Hackworth was abashed and did not know what to say. He looked into his beer. The woman was staring at him, and he could feel her eqes on his face like the warmth of a follow spot.

'So you did come here in search of something. Didn't you? Something you couldn't find by looking it up in a