III
Dallas awoke with a start.
‘You shouldn’t have let me sleep,’ he told Dixy.
‘If you sleep, it’s because you’re tired,’ she said. ‘And since sleep is a restorative process in which some vital substance seems to be resynthesized in the human nervous system — although I’m not exactly sure how — I judged it to be the lesser of two evils.’
‘It’s these damned nano-tech chairs,’ complained Dallas. ‘They’re so comfortable.’
‘I believe some people use a sheet of plywood,’ said Dixy. ‘To inhibit the molecular transformation and thus make the experience of sitting in their office chairs a little more rigorous and therefore conducive to work.’
‘I’ll have to try that.’ Dallas rubbed his eyes clear of sleep, stretched, and then glanced at his watch. ‘Is that the time? I’m supposed to be going for a drink with someone.’
‘With Tanaka. In ten minutes. I was about to awaken you. But you woke yourself. I’m always impressed by that capacity in humans. It’s your internal clock. Of course, it’s just an echo from a time, billions of years ago, when human beings were simple bacteria and responded to light, so you could gear up your metabolisms.’
Sometimes even the perfect woman could seem like a pedant.
‘My own metabolism could use a drink,’ he said.
‘Then be sure to take a Talisman first,’ advised Dixy.
‘Make sure the morning after feels as good as the night before,’ said Dallas, repeating the advertising slogan. He opened his desk drawer, took out a small packet, and then swallowed a tiny capsule.[43]
‘You know how alcohol affects you.’
‘You sound like my mother,’ laughed Dallas. ‘Besides, I like the way alcohol affects me. At least while I’m consuming it.’ He reached for his jacket and then his briefcase. Walking to the door, he nodded at Dixy and wished her good night.
‘Be careful,’ she said, quietly.
‘We’ll just have the one bottle.’
‘I was referring to Rimmer.’
‘Oh him. He’s not invited.’
‘Don’t joke about this, Dallas. Please. I think you’re underestimating him. Just as you’re overestimating the ethical standards of this company.’
Dallas wiped the smile from his face and, affecting a look of great gravitas, faced his nonexistent assistant.
‘Okay,’ he said solemnly. ‘I’ll be careful.’
‘And you’ll think about what I said?’
‘Yes. I’ll think about it very carefully.’
‘Promise?’
‘Promise.’
Dallas went to find Tanaka. ‘Computers,’ he muttered quietly. ‘Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.’
IV
The Huxley Hotel was a favorite watering hole for all the Terotechnology designers. With its well-spaced windows, it might have been some Florentine palazzo of the High Renaissance. But a romance, even an architectural one, can be as easily dampened as inspired by climate, and inside the Huxley, a cortile that might have remained open to the warmer fifteenth-century sky was protected from the freezing cold of the twenty-first by a modern glass roof.[44]
Dallas and Tanaka left their thick fur coats in the cloakroom and mounted a wide stairway. The soaring and hugely expensive Neo-Modernist[45] interior revealed a building as though in the later stages of decommissioning: Plaster had been scraped from interior walls exposing patches of bare brickwork; semidismantled machinery lay rusting on the unpolished wooden floor of the enormous lobby; and an intricate system of stairs, ducts, pipes, and chains ornamented the open-plan structure like metal cobwebs.
The bar was on the first floor, a room of more pleasing solidity that ran the length of the building and hoarded an almost priceless store of real wines, as opposed to the molecular drink machines that were to be found in cheaper bars — the kind of machines that rearrange human urine into Dom Perignon, Benedictine, or just plain beer.
Dallas approached the bar and ordered a five-thousand-dollar bottle of authenticated Chateau Mouton Rothschild ’05 and a couple of genuine Cohiba Esplendidos. For a while he and Tanaka talked the big talk of connoisseurship before the conversation drew back to the multifaceted world of Rational Environment design, Terotechnology, and their respective Motion Parallax assistants.
‘I’ve got two of them now,’ admitted Tanaka.
‘So I heard,’ said Dallas.
‘You did?’ Tanaka looked concerned by this information.
‘Dixy told me.’
‘She say anything more about it?’
‘No. Just that you had two assistants.’
Tanaka nodded and looked a little more reassured. ‘It’s not that I need two, of course,’ he said. ‘But they keep each other company.’
‘I don’t think mine would like me to get another assistant,’ said Dallas. ‘She’s the jealous type.’ Seeing Tanaka smile, he shrugged, and added, ‘So I fixed it for her to have a little dog instead. In case she got lonely.’
‘Of course, when I say they keep each other company, I mean they really keep each other company. You know what I’m saying. Intimate company.’ Tanaka’s laugh held an obscene edge. ‘Drop by my office sometime and take a look for yourself. It’s a real floor show. I mean there’s nothing they won’t do to each other. I swear, they’re like a couple of animals.’
‘Mine’s in love with me.’
‘Well, of course she is. That’s all part of the program. It’s what was on your digital thought recording, right? She always loves you, always wants to fuck you, always does what she’s told.’
‘No, there’s something else.’ Dallas shrugged. ‘It’s a little hard to explain. But sometimes I get the feeling that the hardware’s made the leap. You know? An evolving silicon-based organism. Digital DNA becomes artificial life.’
‘Come on, Dallas, you don’t really believe that life in silico bullshit, do you?’
Dallas thought for a moment and then laughed. ‘No, I guess not. But sometimes I get this weird sensation that there’s more to them than we know.’
Tanaka puffed the cigar into life and shook his head. ‘People have been talking about crap like this for years. And it’s not ever going to happen. They’re intelligent, sure. Smarter than us, some of them. But not alive. That’s just a cosmic-metaphysical joke dreamed up by some writer.’
‘Sometimes I think that’s the way future ideas get started,’ said Dallas. ‘With a writer and a metaphysical joke. There are some historians who believe man wouldn’t have invented the atomic bomb unless H. G. Wells had thought of it first. Rutherford was adamant that it couldn’t be done. Some joke.’
‘You want to see something really funny, then you come by my office. My new assistant? The Motion Parallax is based on the director’s wife. The ex-model trophy bride. Jasmine.’
‘Are you crazy? Suppose he finds out?’
‘Why should he find out? You’re the only one I’ve told.’
‘Dixy knew about it.’
‘Yeah. But she didn’t know that it’s Jasmine we’re talking about.’
‘She didn’t say. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t know.’
Tanaka shook his head. ‘What the hell. She’s a fabulous-looking woman, Dallas. A real beauty. Genetically engineered perfection.’
‘I know. I was at the wedding.’
‘Oh, me too. That’s when I made the recording.’
‘If King knew you’d created a Motion Parallax based on a digital thought recording of his wife, he’d fire you immediately.’
43
44
45