Diamond Age

"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 fu

"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 i

"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 begi

"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 database."

"I'm seeking a fellow called the Alchemist," Hackworth said. Suddenly, things got bright. The side of the woman's face that was toward the window was brilliantly illuminated, like a probe in space lit on one side by the directional light of the sun. Hackworth sensed, somehow, that this was not a new development. Looking out over the audience, he saw that nearly all of them were aiming their spotlights into the bar, and that everyone in the place had been watching and listening to his entire conversation with the woman. The spectacles had deceived him by adjusting the apparent light levels. The woman looked different too; her face had reverted to the way it looked when she came in, and Hackworth now understood that her image in his spectacles had been gradually evolving during their conversation, getting feedback from whatever part of his brain buzzed when he saw a beautiful woman.

The curtain parted to reveal a large electric sign descending from the fly space: JOHN HACKWORTH in QUEST FOR THE ALCHEMIST starring JOHN HACKWORTH as HIMSELF.

The Chorus sang:

He's such a stiff John Hackworth is

Can't show emotion to save his life

With nasty repercussions, viz

He lost his job and lost his wife

So now he's on a goshdarn Quest

Wandering all o'er the world

Hunting down that Alchemist

'Cept when he stops to pick up girls.

Maybe he'll clean up his act

And do the job tonight

A fabulous adventure packed

With marvelous sounds and sights

Let's get it on, oh Hacker John

Let's get it on, on, on.

Something jerked violently at Hackworth's neck. The woman had tossed a noose around him while he'd been staring out the window, and now she was hauling him out the door of the bar like a recalcitrant dog. As soon as she cleared the doorway, her cape inflated like a time-lapse explosion, and she shot twelve feet into the air, propelled on jets of air built into her clothing somehow-she payed out the leash so that Hackworth wasn't hanged in the process. Flying above the audience like the cone of fire from a rocket engine, she led the stumbling Hackworth down the sloping floor and to the edge of the water. The thrust stage was linked to the water's edge by a couple of narrow bridges, and Hackworth negotiated one of these, feeling hundreds of lights on his shoulders, seemingly hot enough to ignite his clothing. She led him straight back through the center of the Chorus, beneath the electric sign, through the backstage area, and through a doorway, which clanged shut behind him. Then she vanished.

Hackworth was surrounded on three sides by softly glowing blue walls. He reached out to touch one and received a mild shock for his troubles. Stepping forward, he tripped over something that skittered across the floor: a dry bone, big and heavy, larger than a human femur.

He stepped forward through the only gap available to him and found more walls. He had been deposited into the heart of a labyrinth.

It took him an hour or so to realize that escape through normal means was hopeless. He didn't even try to figure out the labyrinth's floor plan; instead, realizing that it couldn't possibly be larger than the ship, he followed the foolproof expedient of turning right at every corner, which as all clever boys knew must always lead to an exit. But it didn't, and he did not understand why until once, in the corner of his eye, he saw a wall segment shift sideways, closing up an old gap and creating a new one. It was a dynamic labyrinth.

He found a rusty bolt on the floor, picked it up, and threw it at a wall. It did not bounce off but passed through and clattered onto the floor beyond. So the walls did not exist except as figments in his spectacles. The labyrinth was constructed of information. In order to escape, he would have to hack it.