I take the patch to Tran, in his battered Redfern terrace full of posters of deservedly obscure Belgian chainsaw bands. He says, "Recursive Visions Introscape 3000. Retails at 35 K."
"I know. I checked."
"Alex! I'm hurt." He smiles, showing acid-etched teeth. Too much throwing up; someone should tell him he's already thin enough.
"So what can you get me?"
"Maybe 18 or 20. But it could take months to find a buyer. If you want it off your hands right now, I'll give you 12."
"I'll wait."
"Suit yourself." I reach out to take it back, but he pulls away. "Don't be so impatient!" He plugs a fiber jack into a tiny socket in the rim, then starts typing on the laptop at the heart of his jury-rigged test bench.
"If you break it, I'll fucking kill you."
He groans. "Yeah, my big clumsy photons might smash some delicate little watch-spring in there."
"You know what I mean. You can still lock it up."
"If you're going to have it for six months, don't you want to know what software it's running?"
I almost choke. "You think I'm going to use it? It's probably running some executive stress monitor. Blue Monday: 'Learn to match the color of the mood display panel with the reference hue beside it, for optimal productivity and total well-being.'"
"Don't knock biofeedback till you've tried it. This might even be the premature ejaculation cure you've been searching for."
I thump his scrawny neck, then look over his shoulder at the laptop screen, a blur of scrolling hexadecimal gibberish. "What exactly are you doing?"
"Every manufacturer reserves a block of codes with the ISO, so remotes can't accidentally trigger the wrong devices. But they use the same ones for cabled stuff, too. So we only have to try the codes Recursive Visions--"
An elegant, marbled-gray interface window appears on the screen. The heading says Pandemonium. The only option is a button labeled Reset.
Tran turns to me, mouse in hand. "Never heard of Pandemonium. Sounds like some kind of psychedelic shit. But if it's read his head, and the evidence is in there..." He shrugs. "I'll have to do it before I sell it, so I might as well do it now."
"Okay."
He fires the button, and a query appears: Delete stored map, and prepare for a new wearer? Tran clicks Yes.
He says, "Wear and enjoy. No charge."
"You're a saint." I take the patch. "But I'm not going to wear it if I don't know what it does."
He calls up another database, and types PAN*. "Ah. No catalog entry. So--it's black market ... unapproved!" He grins at me, like a schoolkid daring another to eat a worm. "But what's the worst it can do?"
"I don't know. Brainwash me?"
"I doubt it. Patches can't show naturalistic images. Nothing strongly representational--and no text. They ran trials with music videos, stock prices, language lessons ... but the users kept bumping into things. All they can display now is abstract graphics. How do you brainwash someone with that?"
I raise the thing to my left eye experimentally--but I know it won't even light up until it sticks firmly in place.
Tran says, "Whatever it does ... if you think of it information-theoretically, it can't show you anything that isn't there in your skull already."
"Yeah? That much boredom could kill me."
Still, it does seem crazy to waste the opportunity. Anyone with a machine as expensive as this probably paid a small fortune for the software, too--and if it's weird enough to be illegal, it might actually be a buzz.
Tran's losing interest. "It's your decision."
"Exactly."
I hold the patch in place over my eye, and let the rim fuse gently with my skin.
)
