eXistenZ

  “Oh my God!” Pikul said in a voice full of awe. “This looks awfully familiar. Are you sure this is okay?”

  Geller was looking as uncomfortable as he felt.

  “It should be okay,” she said, but she didn’t sound at all sure.

  While his right hand held the gun, Pikul’s left hand suddenly moved. Smeared with grease and fragments of meat, it went into his mouth. He sensed a brief, horrifying taste of spicy meat tormenting his tastebuds, and felt his own fingers pulling and twisting at his teeth.

  When the hand withdrew, it was holding a bridge of three teeth, one of them bearing a gold filling.

  He loaded the teeth efficiently into the magazine of the new cadaver-gun. Bizarre objections to the cadaver-gun flashed through Pikul’s mind, about caliber and rifling and explosive power, but he had already seen how well the guns worked. He was in no mood to argue with his own hands.

  “Is that your bridge?” Geller said, of the false teeth.

  “You saw where the teeth came from.”

  “I meant, do you wear a bridge in real life?”

  “Absolutely not. My real teeth are perfect. Don’t ask me how I knew that thing was in my mouth.”

  “It probably wasn’t,” Geller said dryly, “until you ordered the special.”

  Pikul held the stock of the grotesque gun, and with a practiced motion slapped the magazine into the handle. He pulled the slide back and released it, and with a horrible sinister clicking noise one of the teeth snapped out of the bridge and moved precisely into the chamber.

  Smiling devilishly, Pikul pointed the weapon at Geller.

  “Death to the vile demoness Allegra Geller!” he said, and waggled his eyebrows at her mock-threateningly.

  She slid her chair back in alarm. It scraped across the floor with a loud screeching sound. Her eyes were wide with fear.

  “Hey, that’s not funny!” she shouted.

  “I don’t mean it,” he said.

  “I do. Put the goddamn gun down!”

  He saw the real terror persisting in her eyes, so he lowered the gun at once. He shook his head in disbelief at what he’d done. Geller had gone pale, but without looking at him she moved her chair back so she was able to sit against the edge of the table once more. Her hands were trembling.

  Pikul took all this in, filled with regret. Even so, his hand still held on to the cadaver-gun.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to her. “I couldn’t resist that, somehow.”

  “For a moment, I thought—I really thought you were going to do it.”

  He shook his head. “Not you. I wouldn’t kill you. But you know, I really do feel an incredible urge to kill someone here. That’s what my script role is in the game. I’m an assassin.”

  Geller gripped the edge of her bowl of newt soup, presumably the closest thing she had to a defensive weapon. Quite an effective one, Pikul instantly realized when he looked at what was in it. He didn’t relish the idea of having a dozen hot dead newts thrown in his face.

  “You’re not the target,” he said. “Relax.”

  “Then who is it?”

  “I need to kill our friend the waiter.”

  “Okay, that makes sense. I’ll call him.” Geller turned around in her chair and waved a hand. “Waiter! Waiter!”

  “Do you mean that?” Pikul said. “You want me to go ahead?”

  “If it’s in the game, just do it. Don’t hesitate even for a moment.”

  “But everything feels so realistic. I don’t usually go around killing people. I don’t think I really could go through with it.”

  “You won’t be able to stop yourself. You might as well find out what it feels like, and enjoy it.”

  “Free will is obviously not a factor in this little game world of yours,” Pikul observed.

  “It’s exactly like real life,” Geller said. “There’s just enough free will to make things interesting. Anyway, it’s not my world. It’s ours.”

  “So you keep saying.”

  Pikul spotted the waiter making his way toward them, weaving between the tables. He was wearing an expectant smile on his face. Other diners were trying to summon him to their tables, but he ignored them all. His expression evinced a total desire to please Pikul and Geller.

  “Shit, he’s smiling,” Pikul said quietly.

  “So what?”

  “So I find him nice. What’s he ever done to me? I’m not going to go through with it.”

  “You don’t have much choice,” Geller said. “Free will is restricted here. Remember?”

  The waiter arrived at their table, holding his order pad expectantly.

  “How may I help you?” the waiter said.

  “Well, for a start you could quit smiling.”

  “I’m sorry if I am causing offense, sir. But it is my job to make your lunch as pleasant as possible.”

  “I don’t want you being nice, you hear?” Pikul lifted the gun up from the table and pointed it at the waiter. He tightened his finger on the trigger. “I found this in my soup, and I’m upset about it.”

  “I can only apolo—”

  But Pikul fired!

  There was a loud bang and the gun recoiled. The tooth-bullet slammed into the waiter’s face, right under his eye. A chunk of his cheekbone flew away in a spray of blood, and the man’s head jerked like that of a prizefighter punched in the face.

  The waiter staggered back, dropping his pad and pressing his hands to his face. His white jacket was already scarlet with blood, which was pumping out of him at a horrific rate. He collided with another table, stumbled, seemed about to collapse on the floor, but then recovered.

  His face had been transformed into a hideous mask of bloodied anger. He lurched back toward their table, and as he did so he produced a long meat cleaver from under his jacket.

  Geller snatched up the bowl of hot newt soup she’d been toying with and with both hands threw it in the waiter’s face. The steaming liquid, and all the newts, flooded over his face and shoulders. He screamed in agony, plucking desperately at the newts and the soft noodles, trying to wipe the sticky soup liquid out of his eyes. One newt was clinging stubbornly to the horrific bleeding cavity where his cheekbone had been.

  Geller’s action delayed him for only a couple of seconds.

  He came at them again, the cleaver raised above his head. Before either of them could dodge away, he brought the chopping knife down with horrific strength and muscular agility. It smashed against the cadaver-gun in Pikul’s hand, slicing off a tiny part of the tip of the muzzle, then collided with the edge of the Formica tabletop. It made a metallic ringing sound as it bounced away.

  The gun began to bleed.

  The waiter collapsed forward across the table, bashing into the lazy Susan and throwing the contents of the remaining dishes all over the floor.

  He was still gripping the cleaver, and now he turned to Pikul, grappling with deadly menace across the ruined tabletop toward him. Blood was pumping from the injury in his shattered cheekbone. Noodles and dead newts were splattered on his hair and face.

  Before the waiter could lever himself upright, Pikul shot him again. He fired the gun straight down the waiter’s open mouth.

  A segment of the Chinese man’s skull blew out of the back of his head and skimmed across the tabletop like a tiny Frisbee. It landed, spinning. Pikul saw that a gold-capped tooth was buried in the bone.

  The gun was bleeding heavily and covering his hand in gore. Pikul threw it aside in disgust.

  Unseen by Geller or Pikul, the restaurant dog had left his spot in the sunlight and was now cowering close to their table. As the cadaver-gun landed on the floor and skittered across the polished boards, the dog leaped out from its position and took the gun in his jaws. He loped off with it to a nearby table and crouched down underneath, between the diners’ legs.

  He began to gnaw at the gun, growling.

  A tense stillness had spread across the entire restaurant. All the other diners were staring in horror toward
their table; some were taking cover, ducking down as well as they could in the confined spaces. Pikul stood up slowly, feeling shaky but nonetheless determined to reassure the other people.

  “It’s all right,” he said loudly to everyone within earshot. “Just a little misunderstanding over the check. Er . . . it’s all okay. Pay no attention and enjoy your meal.”

  After a few more uncomfortable moments, the other diners turned back to their meals with an air of sinister reluctance. Those who had ducked to avoid being caught in the cross fire stood upright, looking embarrassed, then sat back down in their chairs and picked up their chopsticks.

  Pikul looked around in confusion at the strangely inactive room. A wild fear was running through him.

  “What do you think, Pikul?” Geller said.

  “I think I feel a serious game-urge coming on me. I’m out of control. Let’s get out of here!”

  He took her hand.

  A movement on the far side of the room was pulling at his attention. There were two glass portholes in the white-painted metal serving doors leading to the kitchen, and through one of these Pikul had seen a man in a chef’s hat. He was beckoning urgently to them.

  “We can get out through the kitchen!” Pikul called to Geller. “That way!”

  They zigzagged between the tables, inadvertently knocking against several of them in their haste. They barged their way through the serving doors.

  They found themselves in a large professional kitchen, all gleaming aluminum surfaces, huge ranges of gas burners, row upon row of overhead racks from which shimmering steel pans hung in long lines. Flames and steam rose from where an intent group of white-coated workers were cooking busily on the far side of the room, but everywhere kitchen staff were dashing around in the familiar apparent confusion of a busy kitchen. Pans and appliances constantly clattered, and chefs and their assistants bellowed a stream of orders across the bowed heads of the more humble staff.

  On many shelves and polished working surfaces lay the ingredients of the meals. Legs, claws, abdomens, heads of reptiles were scattered everywhere, some piled into heaps on huge serving plates, others arrayed neatly on chopping blocks for the attention of the sous-chefs.

  A huge glass-sided tank had been placed against the wall at one side, and in the murky green water dozens of dark, reptilian shapes constantly moved. The surface of the tank shifted and heaved like turbid oil.

  One large creature, apparently a hideous mutant between toad and snake, pressed itself against the glass with suckered feet splayed out. Its belly was pale and vulnerable. Its head, prodding up above the surface of the water, surged slowly from side to side, a long pink tongue reaching endlessly around it. Its body breathed convulsively as it sucked in air with a desperate jerkiness.

  Pikul’s precipitate entry into the kitchen had startled several of the workers close to the door, and now a wave of reaction spread through the room. Faces stared at him and Geller from all sides.

  Moving swiftly, the chef who had waved at them stepped forward from where he’d been concealed by the doors swinging open.

  It was Yevgeny Nourish.

  “How did you enjoy the meal I am preparing for you?” he said cheerfully. He was holding the eviscerated remains of a large lizard.

  “It was . . . revealing,” Pikul said, trying not to recoil in surprise at seeing the man there.

  “Yes,” Geller said. “Not what we expected at all.”

  “Well, no matter what you haff thought of it,” Nourish said. “You both passed our little test with flying colors.”

  “It was a test?” Geller said.

  “What else?”

  “If it was only a test, why was it important enough to make the Chinese waiter die?” she said.

  “You know how it is with waiters,” Nourish said, tapping the side of his nose with his finger. “Waiters are hearing many things being said around them. People let their guard slip when they are eating. They are relaxed, they are saying things that perhaps they shouldn’t. Restaurants haff traditionally been used by spies for centuries, for the gaining background information. This restaurant in particular is notorious: it has many people, it is full of people, who used to be working for other game companies, and others who will probably be changing jobs in the near future. A waiter is having many opportunities for listening in, eavesdropping you say, and in consequence it is passing on information he can do to those who might be paying him.”

  “Are you saying he betrayed you?” Pikul asked.

  “He has betrayed all of us.” Nourish stepped back to where there was a bar-locked emergency exit door. He pushed it open with a loud clanging noise from the bar. “Now, out this way! Quickly!”

  [ 19 ]

  The door opened directly into the woods. A short path led down through the trees to the river, where a second path followed the bank.

  The three of them walked quickly along this, while Nourish calmly pointed out the various dams, vats, and breeding pools that had been built across or in the water. He seemed oblivious of the scene of carnage they had left behind them in the restaurant, and instead serenely showed them the insemination terraces, the breeding pools, the growth extension sections, and finally the sorting pans, where individual species were channeled off prior to final dispatch either to the restaurant or to the assembly building.

  All the various areas of the Trout Farm were teeming with mutilated, mutated life, scrabbling in the shallow water as if desperate to escape. Dark, malign shapes moved horribly just beneath the surface, and in the growth extension and sorting areas the surface of the water was constantly being broken as the frantic amphibians either grabbed air or tried to find some way out of the watery hell into which they’d been born.

  Some of the beings were not able to survive, and their bodies drifted to the sides of the vats or up against the banks of the river itself. From their appearance, these creatures were dysfunctional, bred not for survival or evolutionary credibility, but for their individual organs or limbs. Even some of the living ones were so malformed they could only swim belly up, paddling desperately in the muddy water to try to move around and breathe. Others, making it somehow to the edges, would roll over onto their sides, their distorted limbs flailing helplessly and their protruding eyes goggling at the sky.

  “Is this where you come and collect the ingredients for the day’s special?” Pikul said.

  “No . . . this is being the development area. We don’t cull from here. What we are doing is coming to development for ideas. You never know what you might be finding here, and what ideas they might be sparking off for new types of weapons. There’s always an element of chance in the animals you are finding in this stretch of the river. We generally are using only successful mutants, but you never know when something might be coming in handy for a specialized piece of equipment. Before we decide what use it is we are going to put them to, we are transferring them first to the tank in the kitchen.”

  “And they’re all eaten?”

  “By no means. Some are being eaten of course, but many are being used in other ways.” Nourish gave a harsh, sardonic laugh at the look of disgust Pikul could feel on his own features and see on Geller’s. “We originally are starting to raise reptilian mutants for their nervous systems. These were the basis of the main logic engines in the game-pods. But then we are finding quite by chance that some of the reptiles were rather tasty, especially when they are being fried quickly in the Chinese style. Once we had established this, and we are realizing we already had a number of Chinese people working for us, we opened the Chinese restaurant as a cover for our other activities.

  “Of course,” he went on, “our main interest is in using the animals as components for undetectable and hypoallergenic weapons. There is not a defensive security system in the world that is picking out our handguns, grenades, antipersonnel mines, and so on. We are taking our feelings right up to the feet of our enemies, so to speak. And speaking of our enemies, it’s important that the two of you are
going back to work at Cortical Systematics. We are needing to maintain as many active agents in there as we can. There’s an unholy mess in the restaurant that you helped make, but I can take care of all that. No worries.”

  “Agents?” Pikul said.

  “Agents.”

  Pikul thought about this as they walked along.

  “The Trout Farm is owned by Cortical Systematics?” Geller asked.

  “Yes.” He grimaced bitterly. “Their corporate slogan is ought to be: ‘Enemies of Reality.’ ”

  Maybe it was the use of the word “corporate,” or more simply an overload of recent horrible events, but a certain light-headedness suddenly swum over Pikul. He felt the first chords of the Antenna corporate theme sounding in his mind, like a private jukebox starting a new track. Resisting the urge to start humming along with it, he allowed a game role to take over again.

  “Reality is a fragile thing,” he said tonelessly. It was extraordinary to feel these words and sentences forming of their own accord inside his mind. “Most people think that reality must of course be the most solid thing, but it frequently is not. Inner reality, emotional reality, imagined reality . . . all these are as plausible as external or objective reality. Anyway, what is reality without someone to observe or measure it? Reality in all its forms is being threatened now, more than ever. It is being eroded and it is washing away in the deforming storm of nonreality, which masquerades as reality and which will eventually replace it if we do not take the appropriate steps. Nonreality is deformed and crippled and limping and hideous and pathetic, threatening to engulf us all.”

  Geller was staring at him in admiring disbelief.

  “Wow!” she said.

  “You like that?”

  “Where did it come from?”

  “The game made me do it,” he said modestly.

  “I’m impressed.”

  Nourish also appeared to be impressed. Smiling broadly, he lunged at Pikul and gave him a great bear hug. Then he turned to Geller and did the same.