William Gibson - Virtual Light

“Freddie” Warbaby said, “are you all that anxious to be looking for work?”

“Nossir, Mr. Warbaby.”

“I can be hard, Freddie. You know that.”

“Yessir.” Freddie sounded worried now.

“A man died in this room. Someone bent over him on this bed” he gestured at the bed that wasn’t there, “cut him a new smile, and pulled his tongue out through it. That isn’t a casual homicide. You don’t learn those kinds of tricks with anatomy from watching television, Freddie.” He held out his hand to Rydell. Rydell gave him the glasses. Their lenses were black again.

Freddie swallowed. “Yessir, Mr. Warbaby. Sorry.”

“How’d you do that?” Rydell asked.

Warbaby wiped the glasses again and put them back on. They were clear now. “There are drivers in the frames and lenses. They affect the nerves directly.”

“It’s a virtual light display” Freddie said, eager to change the subject. “Anything can be digitized, you can see it there.”

“Telepresence” Rydell said.

“Naw” Freddie said, “that’s light. That’s photons coming out and hitting on your eye. This doesn’t work like that. Mr. Warbaby walks around and looks at stuff, he can see the data-feed at the same time. You put those glasses on a man doesn’t have eyes, optic nerve’s okay, he can see the input. That’s why they built the first ones. For blind people.”

Rydell went to the drapes, pulled them apart, looked down into some night street in this other city. People walking there, a few.

“Freddie” Warbaby said, “flip me that Washington girl off the decrypted IntenSecure feed. The one works for Allied Messenger Service.”

Freddie nodded, did something with his computer.

“Yes” Warbaby said, gazing at something only he could see, “it’s possible. Entirely possible. Rydell” and he removed the glasses, “you have a look.” Rydell let the drapes fall back, went to Warbaby, took the glasses, put them on. Somehow he felt it would be a mistake to hesitate, even if it meant having to look at the dead guy again.

Black into color into full face and profile of this girl. Fingerprints. Image of her right retina blown up to the size of her head. Stats. WASHINGTON, CHEVETTE-MARIE… Big gray eyes, long straight nose, a little grin for the camera. Dark hair cut short and spikey, except for this crazy ponytail stuck up from the crown of her head.

“Well” Warbaby asked, “what do you think?”

Rydell couldn’t figure what he was being asked. Finally he just said “Cute.”

He heard Freddie snort, like that was a dumb thing to say.

But Warbaby said “Good. That way you remember.”

Sammy Sal lost her, where Bryant stuttered out in that jackstraw tumble of concrete tank-traps. Big as he was, he had no equal when it came to riding tight; he could take turns that just weren’t possible; he could bongo and pull a three-sixty if he had to, and Chevette had seen him do it on a bet. But she had a good idea where she’d find him.

She looked up, just as she whipped between the first of the slabs, and the bridge seemed to look down at her, its eyes all torches and neon. She’d seen pictures of what it had looked like, before, when they drove cars back and forth on it all day, but she’d never quite believed them. The bridge was what it was, and somehow always had been. Refuge, weirdness, where she slept, home to however many and all their dreams.

She skidded past a fish-wagon, losing traction in shaved ice, in gray guts the gulls would fight over in the morning. The fish man yelled something after her, but she didn’t catch it.

She rode on, between stalls and stands and the evening’s commerce, looking for Sammy Sal.

Found him where she thought she would, leaning on his bars beside an espresso wagon, not even breathing hard. A Mongolian girl with cheekbones like honey-coated chisels was running him a cup. Chevette bopped the particle-brakes and slid in beside him.

“Thought I’d have time for a short one” he said, reaching for the tiny cup.

Her legs ached with trying to keep up with him. “You better” she said, with a glance toward the bridge, then she gestured to the girl to run her one. She watched the steaming puck of brown grounds thumped out, the fresh scoop, the quick short tamp. The girl swung the handle up and twisted the basket back into the machine.

You know” Sammy Sal said, pausing before a first shallow sip, “you shouldn’t have this kind of problem. You don’t need to. There’s only but two kinds of people. People can afford hotels like that, they’re one kind. We’re the other. Used to be, like, a middle class, people in between. But not anymore. How you and I relate to those other people, we proj their messages on. We get paid for it. We try not to drip rain on the carpet. And we get by, okay? But what happens on the interface? What happens when we touch?”

Chevette burned her mouth on espresso.

“Crime” Sammy Sal said, “sex. Maybe drugs.” He put his cup down on the wagon’s plywood counter. “About covers it.”

“You fuck them” Chevette said “You said.”

Sammy Sal shrugged. “I like to. Trouble comes down from that, I’m up for it. But you just went and did something, no reason. Reached through the membrane. Let your fingers do the walking. Bad idea.”

Chevette blew on her coffee. “I know.”

“So how you going to deal with whatever’s coming down?”

“I’m going up to Skinner’s room, get those glasses, take ’em up on the roof, and throw ’em over.”

“Then what?”

“Then I go on the way I do, ’til somebody turns up.”

“Then what?”

“Didn’t do it. Don’t know shit. Never happened.”

He nodded, slow, but he was studying her. “Uh-huh. Maybe. Maybe not. Somebody wants those glasses back, they can lean on you real hard. Anther way to go: we get ’em, ride back over to Allied, tell ’em how it happened.”

“We?”

“Uh-huh. I’ll go with you.”

“I’ll lose my job.”

“You can get you another job.”

She drank the little cup off in a gulp. Wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Job’s all I got, Sammy. You know that. You got it for me.”

“You got a place to sleep, up there. You got that crazy old motherfucker took you in—”

“I feed him, Sammy Sal—”

“You got your ass intact, honey. Some rich man decide to screw you over, ’cause you took his data-glasses, maybe that ceases to be the case.”

Chevette put her empty cup down on the counter, dug in the pockets of her jacket. Gave the girl fifteen for the two coffees and a two-dollar tip. Squared her shoulders under Skinner’s jacket, the ball-chains rattling. “No. Once that shit’s in the Bay, nobody can prove I did anything.”

Sammy Sal sighed. “You’re an innocent.”

It sounded funny, like she didn’t know you could use the word that way. “You coming, Sammy Sal?”

“What for?”

“Talk to Skinner. Get between him and his magazines. That’s where I left them. Behind his magazines. Then he won’t see me get them out. I’ll go up on the roof and off them.”

“Okay” he said, “but I say you’ll just be fucking up worse.”

“I’ll take the chance, okay?” She dismounted and started wheeling her bike toward the bridge.

“I guess you will” Sammy Sal said, but then he was off his bike, too, and pushing it, behind her.

There’d only ever been three really good, that was to say seriously magic, times in Chevette’s life. Oue was the night Sammy Sal had told her he’d try to get her on at Allied, and he had. One was the day she’d paid cash money for her bike at City Wheels, and rode right on out of there. And there’d been the night she first met Lowell at Cognitive Dissidents—if you could count that now as lucky.