Theres a place where its always light, the woman said. Bright, everywhere. No place dark. Bright like a mist, like something falling, always, every second. All the colors of it. Towers you cant see the top of, and the light falling. Down below, they pile up bars. Bars and strip clubs and discos. Stacked up like shoe boxes, one on top of the other. And no matter how far you worm your way in, no matter how many stairs you climb, how many elevators you ride, no matter how small a room you finally get to, the light still finds you. Its a light that blows in under the door, like powder. Fine, so fine. Blows in under your eyelids, if you find a way to get to sleep. But you dont wantto sleep there. Not in Shinjuku. Do you?
Chia was suddenly aware of the sheer physical mass of the plane, of the terrible unlikeliness of its passage through space, of its airframe vibrating through frozen night somewhere above the sea, off the coast of Alaska nowimpossible but true. No, Chia heard herself say, as Skull Wars, noting her inattention, dumped her back a level.
No, the woman agreed, you dont. I know. But they make you. They make you. At the center of the world. And then she put her head back, closed her eyes, and began to snore.
Chia exited Skull Wars and tucked the touchpad into the seat-back pocket. She felt like screaming. What had thatbeen about?
The attendant came by, scooped up the corral of celery sticks in a napkin, took the womans glass, wiped the tray, and snapped it up into position in the seatback.
My bag? Chia said. In the bin? She pointed.
He opened the hatch above her, pulled out her bag, and lowered it into her lap.
How do you undo these? She touched the loops of tough red jelly that held the Zip-tabs together.
He took a small black tool from a black holster on his belt. It looked like something shed seen a vet use to trim a dogs nails. He held his other hand cupped, to catch the little balls the loops became when he snipped them with the tool.
Okay to run this? She pulled a zip and showed him her Sandbenders, stuffed in between four pairs of rolled-up tights.
You cant port back here; only in business or first, he said. But you can access what youve got. Cable to the seatback display, if you want.
Thanks, she said. Got gogs. He moved on.
The blonds snore faltered in mid-buzz as they jolted over a pocket of turbulence. Chia dug her glasses and tip-sets from their nests of clean underwear, putting them beside her, between her hip and the armrest. She pulled the Sandbenders out, zipped the bag shut, and used her free hand and both feet to wedge the bag under the seat in front of her. She wanted out of here so bad.
With the Sandbenders across her thighs, she thumbed a battery check. Eight hours on miser mode, if she was lucky. But right now she didnt care. She uncoiled the lead from around the bridge of her glasses and jacked it. The tip-sets were tangled, like they always were. Take your time, she told herself. A torn sensor-band and shed be here all night with an Ashleigh Modine Carter clone. Little silver thimbles, flexy framework fingers; easy did it Plug for each one. Jack and jack
The blond said something in her sleep. If sleep was what you called it.
Chia picked up her glasses, slid them on, and hit big red.
My ass outof here.
And it was.
There on the edge of her bed, looking at the Lo Rez Skyline poster. Until Lo noticed. He stroked his half-grown mustache and grinned at her.
Hey, Chia.
Hey. Experience kept it subvocal, for privacys sake.
Whats up, girl?
Im on an airplane. Im on my way to Japan.
Japan? Kicky. You do our Budokan disk?
I dont feel like talking, Lo. Not to a software agent, anyway, sweet as he might be.
Easy. He shot her that catlike grin, his eyes wrinkling at the corners, and became a still image. Chia looked around, feeling disappointed. Things werent quite the right size, somehow, or maybe she shouldve used those fractal packets that messed it all up a little, put dust in the corners and smudges around the light switch. Zona Rosa swore by them. When she was home, Chia liked it that the construct was cleaner than her room ever was. Now it made her homesick; made her miss the real thing.
She gestured for the living room, phasing past what wouldve been the door to her mothers bedroom. Shed barely wireframed it, here, and there was no there there, no interiority. The living room had its sketchy angles as well, and furniture shed imported from a Playmobil system that predated her Sandbenders. Wonkily bitmapped fish swam monotonously around in a glass coffee table shed built when she was nine. The trees through the front window were older stilclass="underline" perfectly cylindrical Crayola-brown trunks, each supporting an acid-green cotton ball of undifferentiated foliage. If she looked at these long enough, the Mumphalumphagus would appear outside, wanting to play, so she didnt.
She positioned herself on the Playmobil couch and looked at the programs scattered across the top of the coffee table. The Sandbenders system software looked like an old-fashioned canvas water bag, a sort of canteen (shed had to consult What Things Are, her icon dictionary, to figure that out). It was worn and spectacularly organic, with tiny beads of water bulging through the tight weave of fabric. If you got in super close you saw things reflected in the individual droplets: circuitry that was like beadwork or the skin on a lizards throat, a long empty beach under a gray sky, mountains in the rain, creek water over different-colored stones. She loved Sandbenders; they were the best. THE SANDBENDERS, OREGON, was screened faintly across the sweating canvas, as though it had almost faded away under a desert sun. SYSTEM 5.9. (She had all the upgrades, to 6.3. People said 6.4 was buggy.)
Beside the water bag lay her schoolwork, represented by a three-ring binder suffering the indignities of artificial bit-rot, its wire-frame cover festered with digital mung. Shed have to reformat that before she started her new school, she reminded herself. Too juvenile.
Her Lo/Rez collection, albums, compilations and bootlegs, were displayed as the original cased disks. These were stacked up, as casually as possible, beside the archival material shed managed to assemble since being accepted into the Seattle chapter. This looked, thanks to a fortuitous file-swap with a member in Sweden, like a lithographed tin lunch box, Rez and Lo peering stunned and fuzzy-eyed from its flat, rectangular lid. The Swedish fan had scanned the artwork from the five printed surfaces of the original, then mapped it over wireframe. The original was probably Nepalese, definitely unlicensed, and Chia appreciated the reverse cachet. Zona Rosa coveted a copy, but so far all shed offered were a set of cheesy tv spots for the fifth Mexico Dome concert. They werent nearly cheesy enough, and Chia wasnt prepared to swap. There was a shadowy Brazilian tour documentary supposed to have been made by a public-access subsidiary of Globo. Chia wanted that, and Mexico was the same direction as Brazil.
She ran a finger down the stacked disks, her hand wireframed, the finger tipped with quivering mercury, and thought about the Rumor. There had been rumors before, there were rumors now, there would always be rumors. There had been the rumor about Lo and that Danish model, that they were going to get married, and that had probably been true, even though they never did. And there were always rumors about Rez and different people. But that was people. The Danish model was people, as much as Chia thought she was a snotbag. The Rumor was something else.
What, exactly, she was on her way to Tokyo to find out.
She selected Lo Rez Skyline.
The virtual Venice her father had sent for her thirteenth birthday looked like an old dusty book with leather covers, the smooth brown leather scuffed in places into a fine suede, the digital equivalent of washing denim in a machine full of golf balls. It lay beside the featureless, textureless gray file that was her copy of the divorce decree and the custody agreement.