screen avatar lurch forward as Justin took the car out of park. From a dozen car lengths, they followed Coyne’s taillights up Shadow Wacker Drive to the surface, then West on Madison to the old meatpacking district. There weren’t slaughterhouses here anymore – only galleries and nightclubs and condos, with the odd restaurant-supply store on Lake Street, the neighborhood’s only secondhand memory of its past life. Barwick’s town home was a few blocks north and west, in fact.
“I think I know where he’s going,” Sally said. “Stay on him just in case.”
Coyne parked the Beamer on Aberdeen, and Justin stopped short and backed up to a space more than a block behind. Coyne stepped out of his car and the lights flashed when he locked it with the remote. “Crap!” Justin said.
“What?”
“I don’t know how to parallel park.”
In her bedroom, behind her computer, real Sally chuckled. “Take your time,” she said.
“No! We’ll lose him!” Justin said. “You wait here and I’ll chase after him.”
Shadow Sally reached out and held his arm before he could unbuckle his seat belt. “You’ll never get in.”
“What do you mean? Where is he headed?”
“The Jungle,” Barwick said.
When it opened six months ago, the Jungle was celebrated with local headlines that were half mocking and half adoring: New Meat Market Opens in Old Packing District was typical of the press. In fact, Sally, making a rare contribution to the features department, had written that article for both the real and Shadow Tribune s. The nightclub took its name from Upton Sinclair’s book that exposed the once-unspeakable practices of Chicago slaughterhouses. The modern-day incarnation of the Jungle, however, was nothing but high-tech glamour. With three stories, six dance floors, more than a hundred yards of bar if you put all nine of them together and laid them end to end, the Jungle was the hottest dance spot, pickup joint, and celebrity hangout in Chicago, real or otherwise.
“I can pass for twenty-one,” Justin protested. “In the game, anyway.”
“That’s not the problem,” Sally said.
“What?”
“You look like you’re dressed for softball,” she said, fingering his avatar’s T-shirt and baggy shorts. “We discussed how Coyne must be picking up women in bars at night, and these clubs have strict dress codes. Why do you think I’ve been breaking out the tight dresses for our stakeouts this week?” It was an opening for a come-on line, and when Justin didn’t take it, Sally was reminded once again he was just a kid. “You stay here. I’ll check it out.” She stepped carefully onto the sidewalk, balancing herself on a pair of high black heels. “Keep the engine running and keep your eye out for me.”
“Wait,” Justin said. “I should go, or give it a try anyway. Like you said, it could be dangerous.”
“Not because I’m a girl, I hope.”
“Of course not. Because you’re a TTL. If something happens to me, I shrug it off and start the game over. I have nothing to lose.”
Sally smiled. “Nothing’s going to happen to me. I’m just walking into a bar. I do it all the time. Did you happen to see what his avatar was wearing?”
“It looked like a black overcoat,” Justin said. “But under that was a dark shirt with a vertical yellow stripe down the left side.”
“Good,” Sally said.
The entrance to the Jungle was up a short flight of concrete stairs. At the top of them a bouncer with a black ponytail and a square goatee protected a glass door with a purple curtain behind it. Having been judged lacking in some way, a small group of avatars stood on the sidewalk. They were mostly men, and had likely been rejected for wearing tennis shoes or committing some other fashion offense. In most cases, Sally guessed, they hadn’t left for another bar because the bouncer had nodded their girlfriends inside and the girls had gone dancing, abandoning the men in the virtual cold.
Shadow Barwick paused to glance at herself in the window of a gallery that earned its reputation setting outrageous prices for artists no one had ever heard of, hoping to make them stars right out of the box. This tactic had worked once or twice, but now it looked to Sally like the gallery was going under. It shouldn’t matter to the landlord. This neighborhood – although still a bit gritty and industrial – was red-hot. Another gallery would take its place before anyone noticed. In the window’s reflection, Sally looked good, in a tight black dress with a red scarf and a small red purse. Although now in her mid-thirties – and even with Shadow World sucking up so many hours – she still made the gym three days a week and made certain her avatar was as fit as she was in real life, right down to her current weight in ounces. Earlier in the week, Sally had downloaded the latest update of the avatar builder and the difference in appearance was stunning. The skin tones and facial expressions were lifelike. The stitching in her clothes was twice as detailed. The animation in her straightened hair was so good she could differentiate between strands. Although it was a violation of the unwritten TTL code, she took advantage of the new installation and made some minor adjustments to her face – lengthening her nose, widening her eyes, slightly adjusting the shade of her brown skin – nothing too drastic, but she was both delighted with the way the new look made her feel and ashamed of having done it. Such tinkering was counter to the True-to-Life ethic, but the new technology made it irresistible. The first night of the stakeout, Justin had commented, shyly, that she looked great, but she couldn’t tell if he was referring to the higher resolution of her avatar or to the minor surgery she’d done on her face. She promised herself she’d change it back, but was unconvinced she actually would.
Threading herself between the castaways on the sidewalk, Sally climbed the concrete steps and the bouncer opened the door with a big grin. “You look fine, honey.” She wondered if this was the same doorman she had interviewed in real life at the opening, and if he recognized her. Either possibility was a stretch.
Inside, patrons were packed into the most inconvenient places. The coat check was as difficult to get to as any of the bars. Fortunately, Sally’s avatar wasn’t thirsty and she’d left her coat in Justin’s car.
Not thirty seconds inside, a tall Asian man asked her to dance. She couldn’t even see the dance floor and the music was so loud she could barely understand the request in her headset. She turned him down and continued to push her way deeper into the Jungle.
The center of the club boasted a fifty-foot ceiling and an enormous skylight that would have revealed a brilliant display of stars if the sky were clear and the city not so lousy with light pollution, a detail Shadow World’s programmers had written into the Chicago code. When there were no clouds, you could make out a handful of the brightest planets and stars, but mostly you’d see the blinking lights of airplanes in holding patterns over O’Hare and Midway. Last month, during a meteor shower, the club – the real Jungle – had a party to celebrate. There had been little to see through the skylight but patrons partied on, soon forgetting the promotion that had brought them there in the first place.
Two more offers to dance followed in quick succession, along with a third suggestion that prompted Barwick to push away the propositioner with the heel of her palm. Disgusting. When yet another avatar asked if she wanted to join him for the next song – what were they, taking numbers? – she finally said yes. From the dance floor she could move around better and also get a decent look at all sides of the club.
Out in the middle of the room, under the big skylight, Sally loosened up. She felt self-conscious when she danced in real life, but in Shadow World she could relax. Let the music lead her. The motion of her fingers across the keyboard was a dance of its own, and the easy manner with which her avatar responded was much more satisfying than any real-life two-step. This was why she felt more alive in the game than she did in real life. This feeling of confidence and control was something she had tried to describe to her family but never could. They would just shrug and laugh and say they’d never understand this True-to-Life obsession of hers.
Tonight, though, even more than other nights she’d spent clubbing in Shadow World, Sally really had it going on. The motions of her new avatar were so fluid. So natural. Changing to third-person in the point-of-view window she could watch herself as others saw her, and what others were seeing was a sexy, sexy display. The way her hips rolled, the way her hair fell in front of her eyes, the fluid way her arms turned above her head as if she were undersea.
In the main panel of the screen, she saw her dance partner – dressed up, trying too hard, a good but not great dancer, handsome face, shaved head, broad shoulders under a ribbed turtleneck. He had a grin on his face and an empty, fixed stare that Sally recognized from thousands of hours in the game as lust.
Of course.
