Daniel Price - Slick

Everyone in the background cheered. That was a lot of noise for five people. Where the hell were the bodyguards? Probably partying with them. Jesus. That was reckless. There were still a number of journalists skulking around, posing as guests. If even one of them got wind, or worse, got footage of this shindig, it would come back to hurt Harmony. She wouldn’t be bulletproof after her guilty confession. A shot like that could kill her.

My first instinct was to warn her, to tell her to at least turn down the music, but the last thing I wanted to do was rain on her parade. I was on thin enough ice, despite her assurances.

“Was there anything else, Scott?”

“What? No. I’ll let you go. Have a good time.”

“Don’t worry,” she replied with a touch of frost, “I won’t say nothing about you.”

Five minutes later, I was cursing in the shower. Goddamn it, I was losing her. I was losing her, all because I could think of everything. I’m sorry, Harmony. It’s just the way I am. I don’t know how to err except deep on the side of caution. I don’t know how to exist besides very, very carefully.

________________

On Saturday afternoon I channeled all my energy into a personal productivity blitz. I drove off in a dented black Saturn and came back five hours later in a rented white Buick, filled to the top with overdue purchases. By six o’clock, my chore list was a thing of the past, a period piece. For the first time in what felt like ages, I got a taste of my old, comfortable existence before Hunta and Harmony, Jean and Madison, Annabelle, Maxina, Miranda (the adulterous version), Keoki Atoll, all the crazy things that February had thrown my way. It was as if my life had been plotted out for sweeps. Everything was louder, more pronounced. More intense. There was even more nudity.

That was why I appreciated Ira.

If ever there was a stable presence in my world, it was him. I hadn’t heard a peep out of him since last Sunday, but even his absence was stable. It was just the way he operated. Sometimes he’d disappear from my life for weeks on end. Other times he’d bug me so often I considered cutting my phone line. It all depended on whether or not he had an interesting project to work on.

He must have had something good, because he never called to give me grief about Harmony. I decided to pay him a visit before I did something crazy, like miss him.

At 7:30, I boarded the Ishtar and was immediately hit by an eerie sense of sameness. All of Ira’s clutter, his clothes, his empty take-out boxes, seemed molecularly unchanged from my last visit. Even Ira was the same. He was still wrapped up in his ratty blue robe, conjuring up some sort of virtual house on his PC.

“Hey,” he said, affording me only a moment’s glance. “I thought I heard footsteps.”

I kept looking around. “Jesus, Ira.”

“What?”

“This is exactly how I left you last week.”

“What’d you expect me to become? A butterfly?”

“No, but I expected you to move a little bit. You’re even working on the same 3-D house thing.”

He glanced at his monitor, then laughed. “Oh, that. Yeah. You seem to have caught me in construction mode again.”

“What, you’re developing something else now?”

“This isn’t mine. I’m just beta-testing it.”

“Yeah, but what is it? Some kind of game?”

He finally spun toward me, his face filled with rapturous awe. “Holy crap, Scott. This is more than a game. This is the future. And I don’t just mean the future of gaming. I mean this is the future of being .”

Despite my protests, Ira spent the next twenty minutes guiding me through his new passion. The yet-to-be-titled program was just one entry in an emerging form of nerd entertainment known as the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. In short, it was a new type of diversion: a 3-D networked environment in which users from all over the world could interact with one another as anything or anyone they wanted to be. Tall or short. Young or old. Human or otherwise. They could reinvent themselves in ways that reality had proved most inflexible. Ira showed me his own rendered incarnation: a trim and WASPy fellow who was nice-looking in every sense of the term. He reminded me of ER ’s Noah Wyle. He certainly didn’t remind me of Ira.

Whereas most of these games were mired deep in the fantasy and sci-fi realms, this one was based in the here and now. It was designed to be a spin-off nation, a utopian refuge for today’s jaded pilgrims. By signing on as a beta tester, Ira was toiling among the country’s first settlers. By Monday, he had his own business selling custom texture maps for walls and floors. By Wednesday, he had enough virtual money to start his own township. By Thursday, he had thirty loyal Netizens, and by Friday he was married to two of them. And I thought I had a busy week.

Ever since he started, he’d dedicated an average of sixteen hours a day to his digital life. He swore that was the norm among his friends and spouses.

“It’s definitely a commitment,” he said. “I mean this isn’t just a glorified chat room. We’re building a whole new society here. An alternate America.”

I fought to keep my eyes from rolling. Ira was a sci-fi nut. He couldn’t get enough of those silly parallel Earth stories.

“That’s pretty cool,” I sighed.

“Yeah, right.”

“What?”

“I can already feel the intervention coming.”

“I’m not intervening. I’m just quietly hoping that this won’t impact our progress with Move My Cheese.”

“It won’t. Jesus. When did you get so maternal?”

“I didn’t come over here to nag you,” I insisted. “This was a purely social visit. In fact, I was hoping I could pull you off this boat for an evening. I say we do something fun in the real world. After you shower.”

He resumed work on his computer. “Can’t.”

“Can’t shower?”

“Can’t go out. I’ve got a meeting in fifteen minutes.”

“What? Here?”

He pointed to the virtual house he was renovating. “There.”

“You’re talking about the game. You’ve got a meeting in the game.”

“Yes, but I’m meeting with real people. It’s very important. I’d like to finish the roof before they get here.”

Now I could feel an intervention coming, but I wasn’t in the mood for heavy discussion. The engine was off today. I was coasting on sail power.

I stood up. “Okay. Fine. It’s your choice. I guess next time I’ll call ahead.”

“Yeah. Definitely. I’ll clear a night.”

“Hope things continue to prosper in Iraville.”

He laughed. “It’s not called Iraville. I’m not even called Ira.”

“Well, whatever your name is, stay healthy, all right?”

He didn’t acknowledge me until I was halfway out the door.

“Oh, wait. Scott.”

I turned around at the door. He swiveled in his chair.

“If someone e-mails you a JPEG of Anna Kournikova, don’t open it. It’s a virus.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. Ira and I were never two peas in a pod, but now we weren’t even sharing the same planet. No wonder he never called to bug me about Harmony. The news of her had yet to reach the shores of Altamerica. It seemed a little bizarre and pathetic to me, but then who was I to judge? Ira had a whole new nation to explore on his Saturday nights. My social options were down to virtually one person.

[mrvl_girl] You think we have a problem?

[pr_demon] What, you mean like a 12-step problem?

[mrvl_girl] I don’t know.

I didn’t know either. I’d returned home at a quarter to nine with the express intention of not opening my laptop. Not opening up EyeTalk. Not checking to see if Jean was online and, if she was, not ringing her up for another marathon chat. It did seem a tad unsound, especially after coming from Ira’s place. But I took some comfort in the fact that she and I came as we were. At least we were playing ourselves.