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Slant [Secure eReader (recommended)]
eBook by Greg Bear
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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description:  In the sixth decade of the 21st century, the world has been transformed by two things. Nanotechnology has been perfected, giving humans the ability to change their environment and themselves down to the cellular level. And the study of the mind has brought a revolution in both human psychotherapy and artificial intelligence. It's a sane and perfect world. Almost. A man called Jack Giffey is planning to break into the Omphalos, the most secure building in all of separatist Green Idaho. Rumor says that the Omphalos houses the not-quite-dead--the very wealthy deceased who are still alive, their brains connected directly into Thinkers. Data is the great treasure of the new millennium, and Giffey plans to tap into the Omphalos dataflow, to steal the knowledge gathered by the inhabitants of the Omphalos. Public Defender Mary Choy, now living in Seattle, has been called in on the bizarre suicide (or murder) of a very wealthy, secretive man. His last recordings hint at some terrible guilty secret. Choy would very much like to know what such a man--rich and politically powerful--might have done that he could no longer live with. And in the offices of Mind Design, Inc., Jill, the most advanced artificial intelligence in the world, has had a unique experience. She has received a request for contact from a new AI, one she does not know and did not help to design. Jill has never met a stranger of her own kind before; is it an alien Thinker or the offspring of some vast conspiracy?
eBook Publisher: St. Martin's Press/St. Martin's Press, Published: 1998
Fictionwise Release Date: August 2002
Available eBook Formats [Secure eReader (recommended) - What's this?]: SECURE EREADER (RECOMMENDED) FORMAT (476 KB]
All formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
eReader (recommended) ISBN: 0740800272
MobiPocket Reader ISBN: 0759267812
 
Jake gives them sheer silk robes and whispers in her ear, "You're on. Alice, let it all go. You can do all it takes."
Let them stare.
One of the techs seems to be having difficulty. "Excuse me," Jake says, smiling broadly. "A few beta snags."
"Bugs for tea," someone in the crowd says, quoting a familiar vid punch line. The crowd is warm and receptive. She can feel the energy, the support. They're all lovers now.
Alice hears the tech mutter to Jake, "We're getting some feed from another line. You have a high-flow system running somewhere?"
"No," Jake says. "Maybe the neighbors."
"It's here," the tech says, and then the other tech says, "We're clear. Let's do it."
Alice and Minstrel improvise a small dance on the pad, stepping over their fibes as they cross, hands held high, gallant and elegant before the unknown. The party crowd eats it happily.
"We're worth a fortune," Minstrel tells Alice, smiling at her. Alice beams and leans her head to one side, coming in tune with the moment and the simple grace of this man. Her body treats this as a seduction already and the Yox has not begun.
She has never seen Minstrel more handsome. Eyes just skirting sadness, mouth wry, attention on her.
The adolescent male with his feet in dirt is back, flickering and shimmering in the front of the circling crowd. Alice ignores him.
Then the inducer becomes a warm tea-bath along their spines, with a smell of roses and a hint of sand under their heels. Alice giggles. The effects are well chosen. She feels sun on her face and arms. It lacks the hints of jitter she's had under previous Yox immersions; this is round, velvety, and totally convincing, high-flow and very high-rez without being jagged.
Minstrel takes her fingers and they walk up to a huge cold stone gate. Snow is falling and they are shivering. This is going to be some demo; hot and cold, sweet and sour.
The gate opens and beyond lies a Maxfield Parrish twilight over an Arabian Nights bazaar, small beautifully dressed people walking on streets paved with shimmering wet cobbles. The air is full of tinkling raindew that lands sweetly on their hands, warming like alcohol on the tongue. Her shoulders are weighted with heavy brocaded cloth and she looks to one side to see Minstrel in a suit of the same, violet and blue and red and shot through with gold threads.
Lightning splits the sky and the rain becomes little moths.
A sweeping cut and they stand at the parapet of a palace, and behind them a vast round chamber filled with beautiful men and women, large and small, some giants, some barely the size of her hand, and they murmur and whisper of the beauty of the two on the parapet, with the ancient city spread beneath them.
Alice does not care about being female, she is too powerful for that, all her misconceptions are erased and new embodiments replace them. The play of sense is all in this city, this chamber. To dance is to experience an intense pleasure in one's feet, as if they might melt in supplication. For Minstrel, all of her will melt; he can command and she can command, and they will flow into one another.
Alice and Minstrel continue to dance on the pad in the middle of the ballroom, but the moves are repetitive. They are elsewhere.
Jake and, at last, Tim, along with the rest of the crowd, watch the vid screens and ooh and ahh in communion. Tim avoids looking directly at Alice; he seems numb to the whole spectacle. He is here because Jake has asked him to be here.
The sim celebs have all shut down and moved to a corner to get out of the way.
Alice knows this structure; Yox at its most abstracted, sweep and visual and now intense sensory excitation, all flesh and muscle but no joints, all push without leverage, linearity abandoned for immediate gratification. The gratification would ring hollow if not for the artistry of the sensory, its own kind of music; the Yoxicians have developed this to a fine art, and the producers have hired the best to showcase their new enhancements.
For a moment Alice forgets who and where she is. The parapet is a universe, the figures all around are her friends, she is awash in social confirmation from tail to tete, as Minstrel said. Stars twinkle in a false sky better than real; stars and moon are her friends, beaming sharp jewel approval down on her liaison with the Partner. What she sees is enhanced. Minstrel is her Partner, but he is, if anything, even more beautifully angular, and his skin seems bathed in musk.
"It's what we're here for," the Partner tells her, bringing her closer. The brocades part across their chests and she feels his pelt against her nipples. The nipples need to weep honey and milk. She sees the dripping gold and cream fluid from her breasts bead on his curled hairs, smells his musk intensifying, becoming very nearly skunky.
Somewhere, the crowd is caught up and has fallen silent, good Yoxers riding on a thick saddle the horse that Alice rides bareback, but all with accepting uncritical nerve endings, all seeking that release more controlled and artifactual than a drug-induced plunge.
Minstrel tells her again this is what they're here for. She can feel his reaction echo her own and then double it, wavetrains in phase, they are being watched by thousands who approve, the stars are overjoyed that this communion is taking place under their sphere. No strain, no adverse judgment, no criticism; sneaking off as teenagers with all the neuronal flushes in flood, and finding that all families involved have arranged it this way, full cultural and social approval, celebrating joy, all instincts confirmed, there will be a party after.
Blank.
Ice, broken glass.
Discontinuity //// like a skip in the feed.
A curious face confronts her from the edge of the parapet. The adolescent. The floor of the pavilion is covered with thick black dirt, steam rising from the dark heat of fermentation.
"Are you Alice Grale?" the adolescent asks. "Did you visit Terence Crest just before he died?"
Alice feels a tug and parts from Minstrel.
"Please tell me," the adolescent says. "I must be sure."
"Yes," Alice says, completely off guard and confused that this should be in Jake's demo.
"I apologize, but this is my DUTY."
With that large, brief word, the pavilion collapses into a thatch of misplaced scans and slipping overlays of color. All of Alice's senses skew. Melting becomes incineration, acceptance becomes angry condemnation. She is guilty beyond redemption; the crowd loathes her, the stars turn away.
Minstrel's hands reach through the sliding, rippling fragments of the Yox. "Grab me!" he yells. "Something's wrong!" Alice hears Minstrel scream.
Copyright © 1997 by Greg Bear
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