Raphael Carter - The Fortunate Fall

I took a deep breath. Face it, Maya. You want these a lot.

I took the box into the bathroom, where sunlight filtered dimly through the paper wadded up between the double windows. Got to take that insulation out, as soon as this series ends, I thought. Maybe take a week off and do all that stuff. Yeah, right. I set the box on end on the counter, where it promptly extended a pedestal and rotated itself. Typical. The girls in Nairobi had more industrial capacity than common sense. I’d be lucky if I could leave the room without it hopping out after me.

I put shrink-seals over my sockets to protect them—my sockets are guaranteed waterproof, of course, but a guarantee can’t restore a scorched forebrain—and showered, hastily because I was getting close to my Strongly Suggested Sustainable Water Usage for the month.

When I had dried my hair and gotten dressed, I opened the box and started to slot in the chameleons. They matched my skin color even better than before, but once I had a couple of them in, my head started to take on a sort of chemotherapy look: patches of sparse hair interrupted by tracts of bare skin. I tried brushing a lock of hair over one of the chips, and they got the idea and mimicked it, but their hologram engines could only produce so much depth. The look would make more sense if I shaved my hair off, which would be fashionable enough, but I wasn’t ready for that yet. So I switched to the colored set, slotted them in, and chose a dark blue from the palette the chips superimposed on my field of vision.

Then another problem stopped me. There was one chip I could not take out without risking a number of complications, starting with moderate to severe brain damage and getting worse from there. I’d have to leave it in, but I didn’t want Keishi to know I was wearing it. I needed to cover it up somehow.

I went to the bedroom and dug a strip of gray and yellow fabric out of my chest of drawers. It was supposed to be the scarf for my Truth Awards suit, but since I’d worn the same outfit to the last five years’ ceremonies, I was probably due for a new one anyway. Or I could just not go, though it was always kind of fun to sit around with all the other Swiss-cheese types and hate the smooth-heads who were walking away with everything. I took the scarf back into the bathroom, folded it down, and tied it around my head so that the frontal socket was covered. Then I menued the chips’ color to a gray that matched the fabric. I stepped back and checked the effect in the mirror.

The transformation was amazing. Ten minutes ago, I’d looked like a typically encrusted old-time Netcaster. Now I looked like a dangerous lunatic with no fashion sense. Stop me before I accessorize again.

All right, News One, I thought, taking off the scarf, you may not be a megascops, but you’re a reasonably intelligent person. You can figure out what to do about that damned suppressor.

Apparently I’d thought the magic words. My face faded from the mirror, to be replaced by a map of Africa on which the god Osiris was stretched out, as on a crucifix. I recognized the Diaspora motion logo—the one the Africans had on their banners when they took Egypt from the Guardians. This was the full-length version, beginning all the way back with the slave trade. I tried saying “escape” and “cancel,” but it wouldn’t, so I leaned back against the towel rack to wait it out. The continent was stabbed by ships, and hemorrhaged men; the fertile soil dried up and cracked into countries. At the same time Osiris was torn into parts, which were scattered.

Then the flow reversed: men came back to Africa in planes and ships, the borders healed, and Osiris began to gather himself together. His-Majesty-in-Chains appeared in person to sew Egypt back on—with thread, not missiles as you might expect—whereupon Osiris was at last restored. Behind His Majesty, the two other Known Kings of Africa were briefly visible: a shining tower to represent Its-Ethereal-Highness, and for Only-A-Man, a face that changed from male to female, adult to child. At last Osiris opened his eyes; the deserts exploded with green trees and waving wheat; and the Wall of Souls was raised around the continent, like armor. It’s a hell of a mogo. Myself, I wouldn’t have gone to war for it, but that’s me.

The map of Africa didn’t disappear, only faded, until it was as subtle as a watermark on paper. I was expecting something else to show up in the mirror, so I watched and waited. Then suddenly someone was standing beside me: an Egyptian god—Horus, the one with the hawk’s head—pressing so close that his beak was only inches from my eye. I was startled, then entranced. He was breathtaking. In the little painted portrait on the chip, he’d looked smooth and cartoonish. But the virtual image overwhelmed me with its bloody realism: feathers accurate in every fibre, some split and notched as if by battle; beak the color of bone, sharp as glass; a yellow raptor’s eye without a trace of mercy, in whose lids the throbbing veins were clearly visible. So this is why people become pagans, I thought; this cold, this inhuman regard. The same reason we listen for messages from the stars.

The alien god fixed me with a yellow stare and said—in an absurdly inappropriate Moscow accent—“All Series 6000 moistware is equipped with automatic neural dampeners for the changeout or removal of suppressor chips without the use of chemical anesthetics. Since you have already inserted at least one Series 6000 moistware package, you may safely remove your suppressor chip from its socket. If you do not replace it with the corresponding Series 6000 moistware within thirty seconds, a timed phaseout of the dampening function will automatically initiate. Series 6000 moist-ware is guaranteed to prevent any and all neural damage from suppressor chips, including those that have been implanted as a punitive measure by the agents of fraudulent and tyrannical First World warlords, and this guarantee is backed by the full force of the treasury and army of His-Majesty-In-Chains. We conclude this communication in the confidence that Series 6000 moistware will provide full satisfaction and exceed all reasonable expectations.”

And he vanished. For a moment of stunned silence I could only think that if I had known an Egyptian god was going to manifest himself in my bathroom I would at least have scrubbed out the toilet bowl. Then I was clawing the 6000s out of my head and saying aloud, “All right, Maya, don’t panic, it’s just a standard message, they all come with it, it doesn’t mean anything—” but I was not convinced. And I took the chip that looked like an encyclopedia, stuck it in my occipital socket, and asked the Net what it was.

The Net’s answer was immediate. Keishi had indeed perfectly duplicated what was in my head. And one of the chips in my head had the cover of a DejaVu Instant Encyclopedia chip, holding something it was never meant to hold. In exchange for that thorn in my pride, Keishi had given me a chip that bore the DejaVu logo in faint white outline, but contained the very moistware that had sat disguised in my frontal lobe so long that the pins must have rusted solid to the socket. It was a chip of the model which Post-Soft Limited had named, apparently without a trace of intentional humor, the Nun 500. It was a device that blocked all memories from ten years of my life, and eradicated even the most minute sexual impulse. And the Nun 500 did not come with any set, nor could she have bought it off the shelf—not in this package. She must have had it custom made, or possibly configured it herself, bending over it for fevered hours in some tiny rented workspace, with scales of sweat sloughing off her brow, her eyes rolled back into her head, and both her wrists and both her temples tied by cables to a robot arm with vision more acute and touch more delicate than any flesh.