Virtual Virgin

Page 6

  “I don’t need to view the film to know that the robot exterior is just an especially elaborate costume, and that the actress who wore it was an independent being. ”

  “But it was shaped from her body cast. ”

  “Still a shell. She has to be the sum of her parts, a CinSim raised inside one of her costumes for the movie, like a deep-sea diver brought to the surface. ”

  “Interesting point. Perhaps you should try to call the character of Maria in her human form off the screen. ”

  “No. ” Ric stood and backed away from the lounging figure before he knew his impulses had willed him to move. “I’m not going to be responsible for multiple incarnations of that poor actress. ”

  “If not you, perhaps someone far worse than you. ”

  “You? I suppose now that you own the film you could order any image on it revived as a CinSim. Why would you even need me?”

  “I want this incarnation. ”

  “Why did El Demonio Torbellino say there was a demon inside her that only he knew how to raise, Christophe?”

  “Perhaps because it’s true? For God’s sake, toss out your anti-unhuman prejudices and call me Snow. Even Delilah does, and she hates my lily-white guts. ”

  “Why?”

  “I’m sure she can enumerate my sins better than I can or want to. Ask her. Unlike Brigitte, she talks, fluently and frequently. ”

  Ric was done discussing his girlfriend with Christophe. “Why would the Metropolis robot be so powerful to a demon drug lord? Wasn’t the robot destroyed in the film, burned at the stake?”

  “By then the character was both monster and martyr. The monster part was wrapped around the heroic Maria in that robot’s pseudo-metal skin. Perhaps your role is to draw out benign parts of her being: the role of Maria, the idealistic enslaved workers’ advocate, or Brigitte, the nubile young film star. You seem to have a gift for bringing out unsuspected depths in naive young women. ”

  Ric paused with the rim of the tall Bloody Mary glass at his lips. “You just want to use me and the Silver Zombie against your Vegas Strip rivals and Torbellino . . . and the Immortality Mob, I’m thinking. ”

  “Of course. But they’ll all want to enslave you for even more distasteful ends