Benjamin whispered to Anne, “Quick, before they realize it’s a fake, say, ‘Delete all files.’ ”
“No, just me.”
“As far as I’m concerned, that amounts to the same thing.” He brought his handsome, smiling face close to hers. “There’s no time to argue, Annie. This time I’m coming with you. Say, ‘Delete all files.’ ”
Anne kissed him. She pressed her unfeeling lips against his and willed whatever life she possessed, whatever ember of the true Anne she contained to fly to him. Then she said, “Delete all files.”
“I concur,” he said. “Delete all files. Goodbye, my love.”
A tingly, prickly sensation began in the pit of Anne’s stomach and spread throughout her body.
Then she heard the girl cry, “Can’t you stop them?” and the boy shout, “Countermand!”
They stood stock still, as instructed, close but not touching. Benjamin whispered, “This is taking too long,” and Anne hushed him. You weren’t supposed to talk or touch during a casting; it could spoil the sims. But it did seem longer than usual.
They were posed at the street end of the living room next to the table of gaily wrapped gifts. For once in her life, Anne was unconditionally happy, and everything around her made her happier: her gown; the wedding ring on her finger; her clutch bouquet of buttercups and forget-me-nots; and Benjamin himself, close beside her in his powder blue tux and blue carnation. Anne blinked and looked again. Blue? She was happily confused — she didn’t remember him wearing blue.
Suddenly a boy poked his head through the wall and quickly surveyed the room. “You ready in here?” he called to them. “It’s opening time!” The wall seemed to ripple around his bald head like a pond around a stone.
“Surely that’s not our simographer?” Anne said.
“Wait a minute,” said Benjamin, holding his hands up and staring at them. “I’m the
“Of course you are,” Anne laughed. “What a silly thing to say!”
The bald-headed boy said, “Good enough,” and withdrew. As he did so, the entire wall burst like a soap bubble, revealing a vast open-air gallery with rows of alcoves, statues, and displays that seemed to stretch to the horizon. Hundreds of people floated about like hummingbirds in a flower garden. Anne was too amused to be frightened, even when a dozen bizarre-looking young people lined up outside their room, pointing at them and whispering to each other. Obviously someone was playing an elaborate prank.
There’d be plenty of time later for that sort of thing.
“Thanks for your comments on Sycamore Hill. I am fired by your picture of what this workshop can be, a real focus for consciousness-raising, mutual support for writers who may not be willing otherwise to take the chances that it’s necessary to take to write the stuff that may really break down the walls. Or who might not know the direction to take without sharpening their viewpoints by clashing with other honed minds. I’ll say again, as I have before, that I’m not sure exactly what this new SF will look like — I have the feeling that it won’t be just one kind of fiction — but I’m ready to listen to all theories as long as there’s some spark in them and they’re spoken by writers with talent and passion.”
Walter Jon Williams
Daddy’s World
Walter Jon Williams spins a PCP story of best intentions gone awry in VR. What presents as a chapter out of the sweetest children’s book ever soon turns into a sadistic nightmare and finally into a stark world flensed of all emotion. The attempt to avert a family tragedy leads to an even greater tragedy in this story set on the near edge of the singularity. The choice of the point of view character is key here, as Williams interrogates our notions of humanity in an era of digital immortality.
One day Jamie went with his family to a new place, a place that had not existed before. The people who lived there were called Whirlikins, who were tall thin people with pointed heads. They had long arms and made frantic gestures when they talked, and when they grew excited threw their arms out
Sometimes one of them would spin so hard that he would dig himself right into the ground, and come to a sudden stop, buried to the shoulders, with an expression of alarmed dismay.
Jamie had never seen anything so funny. He laughed and laughed.
His little sister Becky laughed, too. Once she laughed so hard that she fell over onto her stomach, and Daddy picked her up and whirled her through the air, as if he were a Whirlikin himself, and they were both laughing all the while.
Afterward, they heard the dinner bell, and Daddy said it was time to go home. After they waved goodbye to the Whirlikins, Becky and Jamie walked hand-in-hand with Momma as they walked over the grassy hills toward home, and the pumpkin-orange sky slowly turned to blue.
The way home ran past El Castillo. El Castillo looked like a fabulous place, a castle with towers and domes and minarets, all gleaming in the sun. Music floated down from El Castillo, the swift, intricate music of many guitars, and Jamie could hear the fast click of heels and the shouts and laughter of happy people.
But Jamie did not try to enter El Castillo. He had tried before, and discovered that El Castillo was guarded by La Duchesa, an angular forbidding woman all in black, with a tall comb in her hair. When Jamie asked to come inside, La Duchesa had looked down at him and said, “I do not admit anyone who does not know Spanish irregular verbs!” It was all she ever said.
Jamie had asked Daddy what a Spanish irregular verb was — he had difficulty pronouncing the words — and Daddy had said, “Someday you’ll learn, and La Duchesa will let you into her castle. But right now you’re too young to learn Spanish.”
That was all right with Jamie. There were plenty of things to do without going into El Castillo. And new places, like the country where the Whirlikins lived, appeared sometimes out of nowhere, and were quite enough to explore.
The color of the sky faded from orange to blue. Fluffy white clouds coasted in the air above the two-story frame house. Mister Jeepers, who was sitting on the ridgepole, gave a cry of delight and soared toward them through the air.
“Jamie’s home!” he sang happily. “Jamie’s home, and he’s brought his beautiful sister!”
Mister Jeepers was diamond-shaped, like a kite, with his head at the topmost corner, hands on either sides, and little bowlegged comical legs attached on the bottom. He was bright red. Like a kite, he could fly, and he swooped through in a series of aerial cartwheels as he sailed toward Jamie and his party.
Becky looked up at Mister Jeepers and laughed from pure joy. “Jamie,” she said, “you live in the best place in the world!”
At night, when Jamie lay in bed with his stuffed giraffe, Selena would ride a beam of pale light from the Moon to the Earth and sit by Jamie’s side. She was a pale woman, slightly translucent, with a silver crescent on her brow.
