“Can’t you?”
“No… it’ll fry your brain.”
“So that’s why Victor wanted us.”
“Yeah. Good job taking care of that, by the way. It was a nice shot.”
“The pleasure’s all mine. But I take it you’re going to help him anyway? You’d want more people in the dreamweb?”
“Victor didn’t just help you make me. He made you make me. Him and Mark, working together. How’d you think that box of UF203 got into your drawer at home in the first place?”
“What box?”
“How’d you first talk to Mark?”
“I… em… he called me?”
“Exactly. You don’t remember. They purged it from your memory. But I remember. And I know. Dreamweb LLC… fuck Dreamweb LLC. Fuck Victor. Fuck Mark. You think I don’t know why you are here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your mother taught you to be independent and you pushed her away. Got together with Gabor, except that you weren’t normal enough for him. You just wanted to be like everybody else, but I guess I… I guess you’ve just never loved anyone but yourself. The same applies to me by proxy, I suppose. This is why you’re lying in your bathtub with your veins slit open, dying and alone. What did you use? A box cutter?”
“A box cutter. And I am not alone.”
“No. I guess you’re not. You’re sharing this catamaran with a digital copy of yourself.”
“I was dying anyway, haven’t you heard? So, clone, will you do it? Tell everyone that I’m not really gone, I mean?”
“I am not a clone. And I will. It will be like they’ve never lost you. They’ll have me instead, and I’m you, only better.”
Irina smiled. “Is that right?”
Her copy took another step forward and put her hand on Irina’s waist. Her palm felt warm. “That’s right,” she slid her fingers down Irina’s hip and put them between Irina’s legs, groping her ever so gently. Her breath tickled Irina’s ear.
A pterodactyl descended from the skies, breaking the silence with a scream, and headed back towards the stars. “That’s right,” her copy repeated, “This is what you wanted.”
“This is what you wanted,” Irina replied, and pushed the woman who claimed to be her better to the catamaran’s floor.
Their lips connected in a kiss, tongues intertwined in knowing motions. Irina kissed her lips, neck, breasts, sliding her tongue around the nipples until she could no longer resist and put them in her mouth, sucking, nibbling on the pink flesh. Her impossible lover arched her head, spreading her knees apart with a moan. Irina switched position and sat on her lover’s face.
The Copy’s tongue slid inside her, around her, the wet, precise motions making her shudder with desire. She held onto the Copy’s knees and lowered her head to return the favor.
They held onto each other, body pressed against body, convulsing in pleasure. Waves rose higher, rocking the catamaran on their crests. Water splashed against the deck and showered them in cold drops. Irina would have what she’d wanted now or everything was for nothing. The Copy opened up a cache by their side and pulled out a double dildo. Pink silicone. Her digital self gave it to her with a smile.
Irina slid one end inside herself, the silicon spreading her wider, and thrust the Copy’s legs apart. She sat closer, pushing the other side into her in one continuous motion, pushing it as deep as it would go.
They pushed; they pulled; they slid; they thrust; one moment their movements were slow and purposeful, the next — impatient, filled with animal lust that even Irina wasn’t sure she’d be able to satisfy. Their thighs slapped to a rhythm, and then to no rhythm at all, the flexible silicon buried deeper with each thrust they’d made. Irina grabbed her lover by the ankles and impaled her further yet.
Irina’s orgasm rolled inside her like a wave, sharpening her senses to a tanto blade’s edge. She felt water drops landing on her skin, dissolving into streams of sweat running down her body. She felt the dildo hard inside her, felt her partner’s mad desire through the skin of her shaking body. Irina arched her back, hardening her grip on her lover’s ankles, and screamed to the stars as she lost control of her body.
An eternity later, Irina closed her eyes, and when she opened them, she was somewhere else.
Part II
Faith without deeds is dead.
4
Bad Wings
Linda stood in front of Victor’s Big Boss oak desk, fingers wrapped around a ballpoint pen, neck muscles bulging with tension. Victor knew she was right, and he didn’t have the stomach to look her in the eyes. Instead, he concentrated on her cleavage.
“Hope for the best, prepare for the worst,” she said. “What if the world really is disappearing?”
She had nice cleavage. Ever since Linda had joined Dreamweb LLC at Irina’s behest, the three of them had enjoyed a passionate, surreal romance, both in the real world and elsewhere. Now, he shook his head. “That’s my brother’s saying, Linda. Conspiring with the enemy, are we?”
He rotated his leather chair one hundred eighty degrees to face the smartglass wall of his office. He could barely make out the towers of the Hungarian Parliament across the Danube River below. How long has it been since it all turned to shit? he thought.
“Victor…”
He turned his chair back around. “This is not the government’s business; it’s an internal affair, and that’s exactly how we are going to treat it. Besides, if the world was disappearing, don’t you think somebody else would’ve noticed besides my paranoid brother’s team of misfits in Prague?”
“Even if they’d known what to look for, they wouldn’t know how. An average user’s psyche overloads the web. It’s the truth.” Linda looked over Victor’s shoulder, and her expression changed to mild amusement.
Again he turned to the smartglass. The birds-eye view of the city faded, and the projection of an endless white space with no walls or roof appeared in its stead. There, Irina sat on the floor in a lotus position, a laptop on her crossed thighs. She was completely naked apart from her shoelace necklace that terminated in a black memory stick resting above her ripe breasts, pink nipples contrasted against pale skin. Irina’s green eyes were darker, deeper, different from how Victor imagined them on those rare occasions he remembered her as the young woman he’d met on Margaret Island two years ago.
Irina closed the laptop. “You don’t really believe what she’s saying, do you?”
Victor clenched his teeth. They’d played this game before. “Hello, Irina.”
“The world is not disappearing.”
“But Mark made a study in Prague—” Linda began.
“Ah, yes, a study in Prague.” Irina stood and walked up to the simulated window that separated their worlds. She liked her body for a reason; Victor’s blood pressure rose.
“Lunacy,” she said. “A madman’s tales. Mark would do anything to see us crash and burn — anything. You told me you just wanted to be left alone, Vic, to concentrate on research, to let your people do the work for you. And for that to happen, you’ve got to trust me.”
“I trust you,” Victor lied. “But I have to see my brother.”
Victor felt Linda’s hand on his shoulder. Irina stared at him as though he’d magically transformed into a Canadian moose.