Prologue

West and south was the Bay of Bengal, east was Myanmar. Bangladesh ended here. The narrow dirt road petered out in a landlocked sea of rice paddies.

When the young rice was planted out, the paddies would shimmer with green. On that day, before planting, the shallow water spread from horizon to horizon. Low earthen dikes sliced the water into ten thousand squares, triangles, and trapezoids. The tropical sunshine shattered on the surface into hot sparks, and the blue sky held the heat in like a lid.

The huts huddled on the tiniest possible spit of dry land, so that no arable ground was wasted. Three wood and straw shacks leaned precariously against each other where a gigantic bo tree stood guard by the road. A gimcrack statue of elephant-headed Ganesha smiled from a shrine between the massive multiple trunks. With fewer than a dozen people, the settlement was too small to have a name.

His arrival was the event of the year. The children found him dozing by the tree at sunset, nearly naked and dusty with travel. They ran shrieking for Grandfather, who came to inspect him. “Who are you?”

The stranger smiled but didn’t speak. “Is he a demon?” Grandmother watched for demons in every leaf and breeze.

“Can you talk?” There was no reply.

“An idiot,” Swapan said in disgust. “Bōkā. We have nothing to spare, beggar. We’re poor people. Go away.”

“Go away, bōkā, go away!” the children shrieked, and the dog joined in, barking and snarling.

But the idiot didn’t understand even that. With her twig broom Aadit shooed him over to the furthest verge of the settlement, right into the dust of the road. He halted there, dumb as the plow ox when the driver steps away. “Treat him like the stray dogs,” Grandfather said. “Don’t feed him, don’t pat him, and he’ll go.” So the family ate their rice and went to bed.

In the morning the idiot still sat under the sheltering tree boughs. Annoyed, Aadit said, “Where did he come from, Burma maybe? Why doesn’t he go back?”

“Someone fed him once,” Grandfather reasoned. “Maybe they died. Or pushed him out, to get him away from the organ-dealers.”

This gave Swapan an idea. “We could sell him ourselves. The dealers pay much money for a healthy person.”

Everyone stared at the bōkā. He was taller than anyone here. His dark hair and beard were strangely curly. He wore tattered blue shorts hitched up with string.

Grandmother limped spryly over to where he sat dumb under the bo tree. She pinched the tanned skin over his ribs to feel the fat. The bōkā laughed, a happy sound, and brushed her bony fingers away. She cackled too, and tickled him again before returning. “Good food went into that meat,” she pronounced.

Aadit wondered, “How much we could get for him?”

No one knew. And how to find an organ-dealer? Perhaps in the nearest town. But Ukhia was two days’ walk. The paddies had to be trodden firm for the young rice plants first. Planting the rice was more real than a vague possible profit from selling the idiot’s organs. “He’ll stay if we feed him,” Grandfather decided. “Just the scraps and bones.”

“And suppose we take him with us to the fields?” Swapan said. “We could get some work out of him until we sell him.”

“A thought from the gods, my son!”

The next morning the children seized the bōkā by the hands. They pushed and dragged him out to the fields, demonstrating over and over how to tread the paddies firm. Gradually he got the idea. He seemed content to slave at the hardest work and share the dog’s scraps. Clearly, he was stricken in the head.

One

That EDWIN AMADEUS BARBAROSSA be subjected to VIVISECTION, in an attempt to replicate his BIOLOGICAL IMMORTALITY.

Date – 06-10-2059
Preferendum number – 2159-24601
Level – White
Number of voters – 100
Yes – 2%
No – 19%
On the Screen – 13%
Off the Screen – 66%
Decision – On the Screen

Marty cycled the cue spot on his temple.

Aspasia turned on the pivot of her elbow, met his glance, and smiled. Impossibly abundant hair was tied with golden bands into a large bunch at the crown of her head. The serpentine chestnut curls cascaded past white slender shoulders. “And you, Heraclitus,” she said. “Do you agree with Pericles’ reasoning?”

Marty said the first words that came into his head. “Heraclitus? You changed it. What a vomitacious name!”

The scene wavered hotly, like delirium. He cycled again. Aspasia gave him a dazzling smile. “And you, Heraclitus – do you agree with Pericles’ reasoning?”

This time Marty noticed the cushions under his belly and elbow. Strange but scrumptious odors tingled in his nostrils, garlicky and rich, beckoning him down the gourmand branch of the plot tree. Verres was always clever with the sensory input.

In his own person Marty was short, only about 1.75 meters. In this ep he was nearly two meters in height and muscular, mostly around the chest and shoulders. He wore the most precarious garment imaginable: eight meters of white woolen cloth rolled loosely around his body. He felt like a badly-wrapped spring roll.

To his annoyance Marty noticed Aspasia admiring the shoulders too. God, was this what Verres was at? To test it, Marty leaned a little nearer on the double dining couch. Aspasia’s sooty lashes drooped over her brilliant blue eyes, and she sipped coyly from her wide shallow winecup.

“Shit.” Marty cycled. Aspasia smiled into his eyes. Before she could speak her line, Marty looked down. And by god, there were her boobs, big as grapefruit and pale as milk, plain to see inside the thin linen himaton. He could even make out her pink nipples, big as a clenched knuckle and crashingly cliched – Doreena Fatim’s unmistakable hooters spliced onto a Caren Contoria body and face. There was a porn branch in the story tree!

With one sweep of his bare arm, he knocked the kylix out of Aspasia’s hand. Pale wine splattered across the low garlanded dining table. “Verres, you crass puddle of pond scum!”

The entire scene wavered again like a fever dream. Verres’s dark face materialized before him, suffused with frustration. “Damn it, Marty, will you just play along, please? Give it a chance for another ten minutes!”

“Why should I?” The virtual control cap vanished as Marty sat up. “You added a porn branch, you money-sucking whore!”

Verres’s black eyes blazed. “I don’t have to take that from you, Marty.”

“Cliches!” Marty shouted. His eyeballs felt like they were popping out of his skull. “I didn’t write this, this hack comedy, this sexcapade!”

“If you would just ride along until we get to the political crisis – all your material is in here, Marty, I swear. Just not in the first scene, okay? After Heraclitus screws her, they come right back to the political crisis. This is a satire, remember? A commentary on the degeneracy of the contemporary arts scene –”

“Sugar-coated with tits and orgies? You can shove it up, Verres! My name is not appearing on this pornographic travesty –”

Verres cut him off. “You signed a contract, Marty. Don’t make me call in Legal.”

“Call in whoever you like. Use my material, and I’ll – I’ll start a Preferendum!”

Americans seemed to spend all their time voting these days. But this statement was so fatuous, so breathtakingly idiotic, that Marty had to escape, before Verres could burst into guffaws. He stormed out of the studio, through the reception room thronged with AIPs, the Artificial Intelligence Production hopefuls, and down the stairs into downtown Phoenix.

His short legs pumping, Marty strode rapidly up the sidewalk. June sunshine blasted the concrete. When Marty finally halted panting at a crosswalk, sweat made darker blots on his blue cotton shirt. A mania for Japanese farmer garb had swept the nation a decade ago, shapeless trousers that tied at the waist and square floppy shirts. Marty had never moved on from it. He had no physique worth flattering, and it saved on decision-making every morning.

Dispassionately now Marty reviewed the mistakes he’d made in the past fifteen minutes. Screaming at Verres didn’t count. In Marty’s considered opinion, Verres had got off easy. Turning Pericles at the Crisis into pedestrian porno AIP!

But storming out in a fury through the crowded reception room hadn’t been smart. Marty was recognizable, perpetually in indigo blue, short, stocky, unfashionably long colorless hair straggling down past his collar. The AIP universe was small but lively. Gossip spread in an eye-blink. For sure the word was already out, that temperamental scripter Marty Duiker had had another volcanic quarrel with his latest AIP producer. Verres Productions stock was probably already dropping, as nervous backers sold their shares.

It had been perhaps a serious error to sever relations with Verres. He was the last AIP producer Marty was on speaking terms with. Why were all AIPs so impossible? But Marty was intelligent enough to realize that when you got a 100% consistent result you could no longer blame chance. The entire industry was plotting against him, in league to thwart his career …

For a couple minutes he indulged the paranoia, wallowing in hazy conspiracy theories. Then common sense asserted itself. The AIP industry couldn’t conspire to order carryout udon, never mind trash a career. It was he, himself, who somehow could never complete a project without coruscating, scarring disagreements. Marty’s work was universally admired, his eps hailed as the vanguard of the movement that would transform AI drama from crass low-end sleaze into a respected art form. But nobody he worked for would ever touch him again.

By now Marty’s breathing had slowed, and his temples no longer beat with anger. The light changed, and he crossed the avenue, staring clearly into his own future. It was a future with no work in it. He was good at it, the best. But even the best scripter in the industry had to be hired by a production firm. Marty was utterly dependent on people who hated his guts. “What a hellish business this is,” he exclaimed bitterly.

Verres had installed Marty in a luxurious little residence hotel in the picturesque part of town. The desk clerk gave him the fisheye. Now that he was off of Pericles Marty realized he’d probably have to move. Probably he should go home to Maine. There was nothing left for him here. How loathsome Arizona was! He rode morosely up the elevator to his room. He recognized it now as nothing but an upholstered prison. I’m in a box. I built it myself.

Marty sat down at the desk. Discerning his presence, the screen angled into the desktop lit up. He stared fixedly at the oval in the center, the All Seeing Eye of cyber life in the 22^nd century. The system identified his retinal pattern immediately. The words slid down the screen in time with the vocal: Today is May 31, 2159. Welcome, Citizen, to your Digital Democracy. The calm voice was AI, low, metallic but mellifluous, definitely female. Dexter Ko had wanted DiDem to sound like the Statue of Liberty talking.

The usual mandatory five dipshit Preferendums of the day scrolled onto the screen. He zipped down, scarcely reading them, marking every single one “off the screen.” Some vital question, that he really cared passionately about, might now fail to make the grade, but Marty didn’t care. In his current mood, all of them were off the screen: unimportant to American society.

Then, his democratic obligations fulfilled, Marty could access his usual universes. Like a torrent of turbid storm runoff, the gush of chatter poured out. The first search was always for any mention of his own name in the AIP universes. Already there were 142 hits. He’d only stormed out of Verres Studios an hour ago.

“ – such a spoiled brat –” With a finger flick he skipped. “Another Duiker tantrum –” He skipped. “…don’t understand why you’re surprised, Lorra. Marty’s always had a fuse about 1 mm long –”

Marty looked at that one. “Vilmer Borden? Who is Vilmer Borden, and why does he hate me?” But when the picture came up Marty recognized the face instantly: the murder victim who had been splattered on the steps of a state capitol building in Falling Aluminum Leaves.

“That shitty bit player,” Marty snarled. “Nothing but a redshirt.” He’d never even met this loser! Just pasted the actor’s face onto the AI-animated body of the victim.

But the hot tingle of rage fizzled out. Unutterably depressed, Marty lay down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. Like everything else in modern society, the AIP industry was so fragmented that a person could piss off a few powerful people without much comeback. But if you alienated not one, or a few, but a battalion of influencers in the business, a critical mass began to build. This last incident could be the final straw. Marty was brilliant and he knew it. But a time came when brilliance wasn’t enough.

In fact, he might even be passing beyond the point of mere professional suicide. He shouldn’t have blown off all those Preferendums that had scrolled by. One of them might well have been: “Proposed: That Marty Duiker, scripter of AIP eps, be ostracized.” If that passed, he’d be a non-person – disenfranchised, unemployable, discarded from American society.

He fell asleep to these gloomy musings, and woke with a start when the screen chimed. Would the hotel management actually have the brass to ask him when he planned to vacate this suite? He lunged to wave it to life, shouting, “Well?”

“Marty, you haven’t changed. Not an atom.”

For a moment he was at a loss, but then Marty recognized the rasping humorous voice. “Professor Amundalat?”

“Call me Palana now, dear! You’re not my student anymore. I hear you’re at a loose end now, is that correct?”

“I have some options open,” Marty said warily. Dr. Palana Amundalat had been his professor of drama history. Her sedate scholarly work had nothing to do with the garish and sleazy world of AIP. Marty had enjoyed studying ancient and modern theater with her ten years ago, but his career had gone in very different directions. “Are you still at Cornell?”

“No, I’m running the theater program at the University of Virginia’s Leesburg campus.”

“Where the hell is Leesburg?”

“Oh Marty. It’s one of the outer suburbs of Washington, DC.”

“And you’re working on something new.”

Her laugh sputtered and hacked like a badly tuned engine. “Not at all, dear. It’s quite an antique idea! But there might be something in it for you. Are you coming east any time soon?”

“I was thinking of heading back to Maine,” Marty said. “Tell me more about the project.”

“It might be just the sort of challenge you’d like, dear,” she said with gleeful and maddening coyness. “So old it’s new again. We’re having a major meeting about it next week. So I could squeeze in a chat with you beforehand, if you happen to be passing through.”

Marty muttered a curse as she flicked away. But sleep had fled. He saw exactly what Palana was doing, the old tease: blending flattery with exciting hints to lure him east. It nettled him to realize he was indeed curious. What kind of job could a college professor have for an AIP?

But it wasn’t as if he had anything else on his schedule. He was heading east, home to Maine, anyway. As long as there was any possible avenue out at all, Marty could kid himself he wasn’t really trapped in the box.