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The hungriest and most ambitious producers station dittowares right next to the escalators, offering free samples.
“Try me now and take home a special memory …” croons a pale form in a diaphanous gown, her figure enhanced in ways that real tissue couldn’t possibly support. “Then let us home-deliver. Your rig could enjoy me in person tomorrow!”
Tomorrow, she will be sludge in a tank. But I don’t say it. Ma
“Had a rough day?” another one chants, this one exaggeratedly male, rippling in places where no natural man ever rippled — that is, outside the pages of a comic book. “Maybe your rig will inload you anyway, if you bribe him with something unique to remember. Try me and find out how good it gets!”
Or how weird it gets. No way to tell, of course, what kind of flesh this creature’s soul-imprint came from, whether a courtesan or a gigolo. The most aggressive or compliant of each kind tend to be crossovers, overcompensating for their upbringings, with relish.
This time I manage to pass without comment, riding the escalator to better precincts.
Some of the second-story firms offer specialized golem blanks. Put your mind into a toothy reptile, or a dolphinlike form to go deep-diving. Or go partying in a body with made-to-order parts. Some have hands like Swiss Army knives. I sometimes buy accessories from a discreet technical boutique, choosing enhancements for dittos sent on dangerous assignments. Pal shops here too, experimenting with ever more outré golems. He’d prefer that all his memories come that way, and none from his ravaged fragment of a natural body.
The next tout to approach isn’t selling sex. A gray like me, she’s dressed in conservative linen paper, fashioned like a TV doctor’s costume, all the way down to the endoscope hanging from her trim neck.
“Pardon the intrusion, sir. May I ask if you’ve been practicing prudent imprinting?”
I have to blink; it sounds familiar. “Oh, right. You mean protecting my real self from diseases that a ditto—”
“—might bring home and transmit through inloading. Yes, sir. Have you given any thought to how dangerous it can be to reclaim a golem that’s been who-knows-where in the course of a day? Exposed to everything from viruses to memic toxins?”
She offers a slim pamphlet and suddenly I remember a story in the news recently, played up mostly for humor, about people who evidently think we’re living in the bad old plague days of the Fizzle War.
“I try to stay clean. If there’s any question, I inload without touching my rig.”
“Memic toxins don’t require physical contact,” the imitation doctor insists. “They can spread via inloaded memories.”
I shake my head. “We’d be told if any such thing were—”
“There have been outbreaks in more than a dozen cities, around the globe.” Her professional demeanor slips, pushing the pamphlet. “They’re hiding the truth!”
They? A conspiracy fan, then. Talk about memic toxins! Could all of the agencies responsible for public safety — and all of their employees — collude to prevent the public from learning of a new plague? Even that wouldn’t suffice today, with so many clever amateurs around. Then there are the Henchman prizes, made alluring to draw confessions out of the most trusted lieutenant.
“An interesting hypothesis,” I murmur, backing away. “But then why haven’t the free-nets—”
“The toxin designers are clever. Varying symptoms from town to town! The free-nets correlate incidents, rumors, anecdotes. Nevertheless—”
Continuing to back up, I gratefully let the up escalator catch my heel, yanking me aboard the moving steps while feigning an apologetic-polite smile. The “doctor” stares after me for a moment, then swivels to approach another passerby.
Maybe later I’ll ask Nell to do a sift search on the topic of “memic plagues.” Till then, call it another aberrant entertainment served up by Studio Neo.
Now I’m passing the really classy establishments. “Scenarios Unlimited” will send you an expert interviewer — an ebony, zinglemindedly dedicated to create a script to match your budget and favorite fantasy. Then he’ll return with props and a complete cast of characters to play out any scene, from high literature to your darker dreams.
“Proxy Adventures” will take your imprinted-but-unbaked copy to some far corner of the world where they’ll kiln-activate it, put it through a day of frenetic escapades, then return the flash-frozen cranium in perfect condition, so you recall everything. A twenty-four-hour adventure, ready to serve.
Then there are specialists offering services no one imagined before golemtech. Almost anything that’s illegal to do to another human in flesh can be done to a ditto — though often with with fees and a perversion tax.
No wonder Inspector Blane hates this place. It’s one thing to contract out your duplicates for honest labor. Unions fought it and lost, and now millions earn a living in several places at once, doing whatever they happen to be good at, from janitorial service to nuclear reactor maintenance. A fair market offers top expertise to all, at affordable prices.
But expertise in entertainment? Brought down from the silver screen, liberated from the boob tube, leaping off the pages of pulpy romance novels, made tactile and personal … They say that when the Web started, the heaviest single use was for porn. Same here. Only now it walks and talks back to you. It can do whatever you want.
Wait a sec.
It’s the phone. I pick up in time to hear Nell pass the call to my real self.
Pal’s half-paralyzed face fills the little display, surrounded by wish sensors to command his magic wheelchair. He wants me to come over.
My rig sounds grumpy and tired. He won’t do another imprint.
“I’ve got three dits ru
Three? The green won’t be up to handling Pal. And gray number one has to see Ritu Maharal about her murdered dad. There’s a chance he may even meet and question the real Vic Kaolin — something worth telling Clara about, when she gets back from her war.
So it’s up to me. If Wammaker lets me escape early, I’ll go listen to Pal’s latest wild-eyed theory or scheme. Crum. I can already feel my short “life” getting used up.
Top floor, where rooftop heliports give quick access to rich clients. Where illustrious producers serve fine coffee and fancy hors d’oeuvres, even to visiting grays! Here, elegant shops let you hire first-rate actors to play convincing roles in bodies molded to resemble anyone across time. There’s a penalty when a ditto doesn’t resemble its rig, but it’s small when no fraud is involved. Not that producers refuse a little fraud, now and then.
Wealthy clients also come here to arrange extravaganzas. Once, someone hired Clara’s reserve infantry platoon, off-duty, to be extras in a bloody rendition of Caligula’s final orgy-slaughter. She snuck me in to watch the performance from behind a purple curtain. The reenactment was vivid, lurid, and maybe even educational in its attention to historical detail. The swordfights were superb. Clara’s golem died especially well.
Still, I didn’t care for the show.
“I’m glad you feel that way,” she agreed. In fact, not one member of her outfit inloaded memories from that evening’s brutal carnage. It kind of makes you proud of our boys and girls in khaki.
I’m still more than twenty meters from the elegant portico of Wammaker’s when a cowled figure catches my eye, gesturing from the shadows.
“Mr. Morris. Good of you to come.”