eXistenZ

“That proves you have become trustworthy Realists,” Nourish said warmly. “We love you for that. Welcome aboard.” He raised his hand in farewell. “Now I must leave you, but I’ll be back. We’ll be in touch. Have a nice day.”

  He turned around and with one more friendly wave began walking back toward the restaurant.

  Pikul and Geller resumed their stroll. Pikul felt the glow of pride starting to recede from him.

  “What did he mean just now, about enemies?” he said. “Enemies of what? Reality?”

  “That’s what it sounded like to me.”

  Pikul silently agreed. He realized he was being drawn into something yet again.

  “Or did he really mean, enemies of eXistenZ?” he said. “I’m trying to work this out. Who are the Realists? Assuming they have a game role, are they the game-world equivalent of the Anti-eXistenZialists, the people in the real world who were trying to kill you—”

  “I wouldn’t take it too seriously,” Geller said.

  “—who presumably still are trying desperately to kill you?” Pikul went on.

  “Well, I don’t know.”

  “Of course, you never seem to take this kind of thing seriously. But maybe you should.” Pikul stared around at the placid woods with the sun streaming down through the leaves and branches, then looked at the turbulent, churning waters of the Trout Farm where the thousands of mutant reptiles scrambled to escape their horrific fate. It was a scene of sylvan peace and calm, yet also one of unimaginable horrors. “Why does the name Cortical Systematics seem so familiar?”

  “You feel that too? I’ve been trying to remember.”

  “We saw it somewhere.”

  Geller touched a long finger to her forehead as she stared thoughtfully at the ground. A lizard skittered away across the path.

  “At the game store!” she said. “We saw it everywhere in D’Arcy Nader’s game store. Do you remember?”

  “Yes,” Pikul said. “So that would make it . . . what? The game-world equivalent of our own company? Cortical Systematics would therefore be the virtual-reality version of Antenna Research.”

  “ ‘Only from Cortical Systematics,’ ” Geller intoned ironically. “I wonder what their company theme sounds like?”

  Pikul frowned. “So what’s next?” he said. “Do we go meekly back to work in the assembly building and say nothing?”

  “I guess so.”

  “It sounds as though Nourish and his Realists are preparing to sabotage the Trout Farm. Before you know it they’ll be planning to assassinate game designers.”

  They were still walking along the riverbank, leaving the turmoil of the Trout Farm well behind them. Here it was genuinely peaceful again in the sunlit forest, with just the sounds of the river and the occasional calls of songbirds high in the branches above them.

  “I don’t feel threatened by the thought of those fanatics, you know,” Geller said. “Maybe I should, but—”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s okay. We’re just game characters in here. It’s wrong to mix up our real-life loyalties with the game or you’ll lose for sure.”

  “Lose?”

  “The game,” she said. “It’s what we’re still doing. Playing a game.”

  “All right,” he said. “So what do we do next?”

  [ 20 ]

  Reality dissolved, reality firmed up again. Trees faded away, walls blocked themselves in. The sunlit sky went dark, a grimy ceiling plastered with ancient posters of Darth Vader and Indiana Jones obtruded itself. The sounds of the river died down, replaced by a jangling electronic racket, mixed with pop music, which flooded the room.

  Pikul found himself leaning forward, looking closely at a Cortical Systematics corporate logo. It was printed on a game-pak.

  Geller was beside him. He nudged her to point out that the name had appeared again, but she was looking away, across the room. Pikul followed her stare. They had reappeared in D’Arcy Nader’s Game Emporium, haunt of Geller’s youth, and were squeezed into an aisle between the racks of games, surrounded by many other customers.

  Geller looked back at him. “Do you recognize where we are?” she asked.

  “Yes, of course. Do you see Nader anywhere?”

  “Not yet.”

  She pushed her way along the aisle toward the raised counter where the cash register was situated. Pikul followed.

  The cashier was the same sallow young man they’d seen before. He was sitting at the counter, writing on a pad of paper in front of him. His sour expression hadn’t improved.

  Geller said to him, “Were looking for D’Arcy Nader. Is he here?”

  The cashier made no response. He continued to write. The lenses of his spectacles were grimy and covered in white flecks, Pikul noticed, and he was wearing a name tag.

  “Try using his name,” he prompted Geller.

  “I was about to,” she said. “Hugo Carlaw, is D’Arcy Nader here?”

  The young man cashier looked down at them, then scanned the store and locked the cash register.

  “Yes,” he said. “Mr. Nader is most certainly here.”

  “May we see him?” Geller asked.

  “He won’t talk to you.”

  “He did the last time we were here.”

  “Things have changed since then. You surely know why.”

  “No,” Pikul said. “We don’t. We would still like to see him.”

  “Suit yourself,” Hugo Carlaw said. He stood up and came down from the raised counter. “Come with me. I think he’s in the stockroom out back.”

  Carlaw moved into the main body of the store. Customers still thronged the aisles, taking no notice of him. They passed down one of the wider aisles toward the door at the back of the store, and as Pikul and Geller followed the taller Carlaw, Pikul had the impression that everyone was looking intently at them. It was only an impression, though: whenever he turned toward anyone and looked directly at them, they averted their gaze.

  They followed Carlaw to the grimy door they knew led to the stockroom. Carlaw pushed it open. It was dark inside and there was a sweet, sickly smell in the air.

  Carlaw closed the door, and the darkness was complete.

  “You recognize that smell?” he asked.

  “What are you doing?” Geller said. “Turn on the light.”

  “Sure, I’ll turn on the light. When I do, you’ll see for yourself what makes that smell. I just thought you’d like the information broken to you gently.”

  Pikul said, “What information—”

  But then Carlaw turned on the light.

  They were in the familiar, crowded stockroom, and the two crates they’d sat on earlier were still in place. But between them—

  “You want to see Nader,” Carlaw said. “There he is.”

  Nader was lying on the floor in a terrible, contorted shape. His legs were twisted unnaturally beneath his body, and his head was thrown back at a horrible angle. They could see his face: his eyes were bulging open sightlessly, and his skin was a deep, unnatural purple.

  The hideous color was eerily matched by the veiny purple streaks in the UmbyCord wrapped tightly around his neck.

  “My God!” Pikul said, shocked.

  “What happened?” Geller said hoarsely.

  Carlaw looked at them with a sardonic expression, as if implying that they should already know. Then he turned away and began rummaging around on one of the shelves behind him. When he had found what he was looking for, he turned back.

  He was pointing a cadaver-gun at them.

  It was instantly, horribly familiar to Pikul. It was the one he’d constructed in the Chinese restaurant, the one he’d used on the waiter. The end of the barrel was neatly sliced off, and there were signs of teeth marks around the rest of the gun.

  Dog teeth.

  Carlaw hefted the cadaver-gun in his hand. “You, Mr. Pikul, should not have killed the Chinese waiter.”

  “Why not?” Pikul said defensively. “It was in the game script, I felt it w
as a game role.”

  “He was your contact at the Trout Farm,” Carlaw said, looking at him as if he was stupid. “He was a damn good man. One of the best.” He stared thoughtfully at the weapon, and again weighed it in his hand. “His dog brought me this.”

  “But we had another contact there,” Pikul said, defending his actions, which he felt were under attack by this unpleasant young man.

  “Who was that?”

  “Yevgeny Nourish,” Pikul replied. “He seemed to know exactly who we were.”

  “He did. That’s because D’Arcy Nader tipped him off you were coming. Nader had it all worked out because he was a mole for Cortical Systematics.”

  “I’m not getting this,” Pikul said, genuinely confused. “Who was he working for?”

  “Who? Nader or Nourish?”

  “Both of them. Who matters more?”

  “To you, the only one who mattered was the waiter. He was your contact, not Nourish.”

  “Then who was Yevgeny Nourish?” Pikul said, by now completely lost.

  “I think I know what it is,” Geller said. She’d been slowly easing herself to one side, putting distance between Pikul and herself. Pikul briefly wondered if this was preparatory for an attack on Carlaw, or was it so she might escape if Carlaw was to open fire? The cadaver-gun was trained on him, not Geller. She had a dark look, a troubled expression that, Pikul sensed, meant she was planning something. She said now, “You’re with the Realist underground. Nader was not.”

  “Right.” Carlaw seemed pleased she was starting to unravel the connections between the three men. He kept the gun leveled at Pikul, but now he was addressing her. “I was planted here to keep an eye on Nader. We suspected he was no longer to be trusted.”

  “You don’t have to threaten us, Hugo Carlaw,” Geller said.

  He stared at her calmly. He toyed with the gun’s clawlike hammer, then at last returned the weapon to its place on the shelf behind him.

  “So if Nourish wasn’t our real contact,” Pikul said, relieved now that the gun wasn’t pointing at him, “who is he?”

  “Nourish is a double agent for Cortical Systematics. He was working with Nader ostensibly to aid him, but in fact to subvert the Realist cause. He was doing it rather well.” Carlaw made a snorting sound, directing it at Pikul. “After all, he got you to assassinate the very man you were supposed to contact.”

  “It was a game urge,” Pikul repeated.

  “So you say. Well, you can at least do something to put matters right. You’re going to have to put a stop to him.”

  “We are?” Pikul said.

  “I assume you’re both fitted with spinal-port inserts? With what you call bioports?”

  “We are.”

  “Are they industry standard?”

  “Well,” Pikul said, “I’ve been wondering about that—”

  “Yes,” Geller said quickly, interrupting him. “Yes, they are standard.”

  A sudden fanatical zeal shone in Carlaw’s eyes, and he briefly raised a clenched fist and waved it in the general direction of the sky.

  “Don’t you realize what that means?” he cried.

  “Um . . . it means we can port into games?” Geller said.

  “It means that neither of you can be buried on hallowed ground! Because you carry these . . . these mutilations! Did your bioport manual warn you of that little known detail?”

  “I never read hardware manuals,” Pikul said. “I just plug and play.”

  “Are you trying to talk us into having the bioports removed?” Geller said to him in a quiet, serious tone.

  “No, no. The heresy has been committed and for you there is no going back! No forgiveness, no hallowed ground. Besides, you would be useless to us without your bioports. We Realists are of course forbidden to use them, and so on occasion we have to depend on people like you.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying, Carlaw.” Geller had a feisty look on her face. She’d been looking troublesome ever since they discovered Nader’s body. “Are you saying you want us to jack a game into our bioports?”

  “A game?” Carlaw replied, with a creepy smile. “No, not a game. A weapon. This is in deadly earnest. No one is playing at this. You are to go back to the Trout Farm right away. In a familiar place you will find a moldy old wicker basket with a threadbare canvas cover.”

  “How will we know what to do?” Pikul asked.

  “Even a child would know what to do,” Carlaw replied, and his smile widened.

  Behind him, someone knocked on the closed door of the stockroom, but Carlaw appeared to pay no attention. As the rapping intensified, Pikul gestured toward the door with his thumb.

  “Aren’t you going to get that?” he asked.

  But Carlaw was now rocking quietly back and forth on his heels, and Geller had vanished from beside him. Briefly, Pikul thought he was alone. Then the stockroom, with the ghastly remains of Nader’s body, the racks of game-pods, the sickly smell of sudden death, all were fading away.

  [ 21 ]

  The walls dissolved, then solidified again. In the midst of the transition from one reality to another, Pikul felt his senses reeling out, urging to find a base of solidity or at least familiarity. He stared at a point on one wall, a place where a bare, overhead section of wood ran into the unpainted surface of a sloping roof. He identified it quickly: an A-frame, unvarnished natural timber beams, a wooden chalet, high mountains above the snow line, ski club.

  Next to him, Geller had reappeared, sprawling with him on the bed with the UmbyCord snaking between them.

  There was an unused bed against the next wall, the top coverlet unturned. Pikul had barely noticed it when they first came into this room.

  It was now occupied.

  D’Arcy Nader’s body lay there in a terrible, contorted shape, his legs twisted unnaturally beneath his body. His head was thrown back at a horrible angle.

  The knocking continued insistently. It was coming from the main door to the cabin.

  Still confused, Pikul said, “Yeah . . . ?”

  “Sorry to interrupt. Can you hear me?”

  It was Kiri Vinokur’s voice, outside the chalet door.

  “We’re here, Kiri!” Geller called, glancing at Pikul as if to reassure herself he was all right.

  Pikul hissed urgently, “Allegra . . . Nader’s on the other bed!”

  She turned her head in shock, saw the grotesque corpse lying there. Her eyes widened in terror and disgust. The door handle was turning.

  Geller yelled at the door, “Don’t come in, Kiri! Give us just one moment!”

  They both saw through the frosted window that Vinokur’s shadow moved back from the door.

  “How the hell did Nader get there?” Pikul demanded of her.

  “I don’t know! It doesn’t make sense!” She crawled against him, the UmbyCord stretching behind her. She looked in horror at Nader’s body. “He was a game character! Not a real person!”

  “You take the words out of my mouth. What in hell is he doing here, in this room?”

  “Let me think, let me think!”

  She stared at Nader with a desperate expression on her face. Outside, the shadow moved again.

  “Allegra, ist there any problem?”

  “Just getting my clothes on!” Geller called, with a semblance of a guilty laugh. Then she clutched Pikul’s wrist. “Look, Nader’s starting to fade away. I can explain it!”

  “Go on, then.”

  “It’s what we call game residue. When you have a particularly vivid image in a game, something horrific, frightening, even something supremely beautiful, then an image of it can persist for a short while into reality. It’s a common phenomenon in some games, but I didn’t know it could happen in eXistenZ. I’ll have to remember to look into that, next time I’m coding.”

  “I think I should be coming in now!” Vinokur said from outside the door.

  “That’s okay, Kiri,” Pikul called. “We’re both decent.”

  Th
e door opened at once and Vinokur stepped in. He was holding a large wooden tray laden with dishes.

  “I thought you’d better be having something to eat,” he said. “We’ve knocked on the door a few times to invite you for dinner, but we couldn’t get an answer—”

  “We’ve been kind of tied up,” Pikul said, indicating the UmbyCord.

  “When I am getting no answer, I figured you were playing eXistenZ, trying out the new pod and the bioport. Everything ist working all right, I take it? As you expect it to be?”

  Geller was blushing, Pikul suddenly noticed. At the same time he realized how awkward he too felt. Vinokur’s arrival gave him the same unmistakable feeling he’d often had as a teenager, when an early returning parent sometimes surprised him in a darkened front room with his girlfriend. There was undoubtedly something deeply intimate about porting in with another person, especially one so young and attractive as Allegra Geller.

  Vinokur had obviously picked up on the feeling as well. As he came into the room and kicked the door closed behind him with a heel, then crossed to the table, he kept his gaze averted.

  “Shall I just be leaving the tray here for you?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Pikul said. “Thanks. On the table will do.”

  “Don’t bother with the unporting,” Vinokur said. “I am only wanting to be sure our star designer ist in good shape, and safe, and rested . . . and that she has recovered her multimillion dollar game system from her repaired pod.”

  The tray rattled as he put it down on the table. They noticed that all the dishes were covered with inverted plates, to keep the food warm.

  “Thanks so much, Kiri,” Geller said. “This is very sweet of you.”

  Vinokur straightened. “So I take it she is,” he said after an awkward pause.

  “I am what?” Geller asked.

  “Is recovered. The lost eXistenZ is recovered.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure. That’s why you find us like this. Spaced out, not sure of reality.” Geller grinned and shrugged her shoulders in a play of dippy enthusiasm. “Wow. You know.”

  “Wow,” Pikul said supportively.

  “We were right into it, weren’t we?” Geller said to him.