JOHNNY GONE DOWN (24 page)

‘Your eloquence is impressive, but how is this different from lying about yourself in a chat room?’ Philip asked. ‘The internet is full of places where old men are posing as young men to lure nubile girls. How is this any different?’

‘You said it yourself. They are
lying.
The people they are chatting with don’t know that they are posing as someone other than themselves, but they do care if they find out. In Another Life, no one will care because it doesn’t matter. You choose to live an alternate life. You choose who you are going to be and people choose to talk to you - or not - based on who you are in
this
environment. All other dimensions of space and time cease to exist. You are living in a parallel world as real as the physical world.’

‘What is your business model?’ he asked.

‘The same business model that exists in the physical world! I told you, Another Life is an alternate, more pleasing reality; everything else is the same. We charge money for people to enter the website just as they pay taxes to live in the physical world. People earn money when they work in offices in Another Life; they spend it on the goods and services we offer in Another Life. The manufacturers of the goods and services, in turn, employ people whom they pay a salary. In a simplistic scenario, our young hunk would earn his wages in a virtual BMW manufacturing factory and spend it on a virtual BMW, while we make money on sales tax. It’s self-sustaining. Money comes in, money goes out; and we get a margin on the operation.’

‘It’s an interesting idea, but it isn’t tangible; it’s all make-believe. How can you live an alternate life in a virtual world, when you know it isn’t real?’

‘But what is real, sir? How do you define real? Isn’t everything around us fundamentally incomprehensible? Where do you and I, the mountains and rivers, the stars and planets which you consider “real” come from? You will say it is evolution, but what was point zero? What was the origin? Hindus think of the world as a maya jaal, an illusion. If that real world is an illusion, then so is this; and if that is real, so is this - only better. In Another Life, you can be a lawyer if you want to
be a lawyer, instead of becoming a paralegal bulled by a lawyer just because of destiny or your own limited abilities.’

‘Bravo,’ he said. ‘Your software is robust, your business model is strong, but it’s your passion for the project that is most inspiring. It seems that you feel a compelling need to own your destiny?’

‘I’ve lost so much that I am tired of losing,’ I said mechanically. ‘Every time I build something, it crashes. Then I build again and it crashes, and so it goes. Here, I will preserve what I build forever. If this were Brazil…’

I suddenly noticed Philip listening intently to me, and snapped out of it.

‘Did I do okay?’ I asked.

‘You will be a legend,’ he said warmly. ‘I haven’t heard anything quite like this before. They’ll whip out their passbooks faster than Jenna Jameson reaches an orgasm.’

‘Jenna who?’

‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Why did you stop? What happened in Brazil?’

‘Not relevant,’ I said shortly.

He eyed me curiously.

‘Should I line up venture capitalist meetings then?’ I asked.

‘I’m your assistant now. I will do that.’

I began to protest.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘Don’t embarrass me further. For
twenty years, I’ve been chasing mirages and blaming my failure on fate. Today, you made me realize that it was my ability that was at fault, not my destiny -and I find it oddly liberating.’

‘But…’ I began.

He cut me off. ‘You don’t understand, but this helps me. I’m no longer a victim. I’m no longer envious of the success of others. I am a second-hander who is meant to follow, not lead.’ He paused. ‘One week from now should be okay, right?’

I nodded. ‘I can build enough of an online community on a beta site to get initial feedback.’

‘I still can’t believe you haven’t even been to school,’ he said wondrously.

‘Err… Philip, another thing, and please take this the right way,’ I said. ‘Would you mind if I worked outside the office for the next couple of weeks? I will be able to concentrate better, I think.’

Certainly I would be more efficient if I wasn’t constantly worrying about my past being uncovered.

‘I totally understand,’ he said.

I hope not, I thought.

‘I can set you up in a hotel close by,’ he continued. ‘I have a little money in my retirement account from when I was a research assistant at MIT.’

‘Oh, no need for that,’ I replied. ‘I have a place in mind.’

He looked confused. How could I possibly
know the city when I had never ventured out of the office?

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I will call you once a day to give you an update.’

I meant to call him - and probably would have, had it not been for the events that transpired the first night in the shelter.

‘Welcome to Another Life,’ I typed, awaiting my first set of unsuspecting visitors while I fiddled around with the graphics of the virtual environment. A greener tree, a bluer tinge to the sky, a deeper sea, a brighter star, shinier cars, more elaborate buildings - a replica of the real world, only richer. In direct contrast to the plush surroundings of the Another Life environment, I sat in a chair without a backrest in a small, infrequently visited storage room in the homeless shelter. The room was dark, save the flicker of light from my computer screen, but darkness was an old friend now and I was most at peace when I was in it. No one probed into my chequered past here, though from time to time, someone would come in, smelling of sweat and vomit, quietly take a hit from a crack pipe, and leave without saying a word.

Soon, the first few online visitors dropped in.

They asked questions, they raised objections, they fought the rule of purging your physical identity
when you entered, they got angry at the make-believe nature of the game - but they stayed.

As the night progressed, Another Life acquired a hunky firefighter, a female astronaut, a few actors and models, a policeman, an engineer and a doctor. Almost all of them chose to create lean, tanned and fit avatars, though some adorned theirs with glasses and briefcases. Most identified themselves as single but some came with spouses who were as colourfully employed as they were. They interacted with each other as folks in the physical world would, only, they typed instead of speaking. No one seemed to feel the absence of speech, though. Words typed in the text boxes that I designed to look like speech bubbles were enough for the models to hit on the firefighter, the doctor to dispense advice on a myriad ailments, the astronaut to describe how the moon looked from close, and the engineers to discuss the insides of the virtual black Jaguar parked outside the virtual building. Maybe they were models and astronauts in real life, maybe they weren’t, but this was what they were in Another Life, and they were treated as such. In a matter of hours, the community had grown to thirty people and no one seemed to be in a hurry to leave. A universe had begun to form.

In the darkness of the room, I didn’t even realize when it was morning. Soon, people began to sign
out with passionate promises to return in the evening. When I probed them for feedback, they wrote that they had enjoyed the break from their mundane jobs, nagging spouses and ordinary, in different lives; it felt as though they had reclaimed their entire lives in the few hours they had spent on the site. Well worth another sleepless night, I thought, as I rubbed my weary eyes. I began to get out of my chair to inform Philip about our initial success when something caught my eye.

‘Lara,’ I typed, stunned.

A spitting image of Lara, wearing the black cocktail dress that she had worn when we met for our first date, stared at me from my computer screen. She was walking on blades of grass (as she often liked to do), and had stopped in front of an office building. She turned her head to look at the building and my heart skipped a beat.

Had she noticed the sign?

A lifetime ago, when Lara and I had made love for the first time, I had told her about the statue of the smiling Buddha in the monastery, which had haunted me for years. Initially, the half-knowing, half-condescending smile had angered me; later, it had become a symbol of the transience and impermanence of life. Nothing mattered, the Buddha seemed to say, everything you craved was ultimately an illusion. Now that I was rebuilding my life, I had embedded the icon in every structure
I created in Another Life, blending it into the background so no one would notice. Everything could crash once again, it reminded me. It had happened before, it could happen again, but ultimately, even loss was transient.

She continued to look at the sign. Could it really be her? But that would be too easy, and the one thing my life could never be was easy. But how else would she know about the sign? Why had her icon stopped in front of it? Why was she wearing the same cocktail dress that haunted my mind every time I shut my eyes? My heart skipped a beat - maybe
this
was the mosaic, the reason why I came to Minnesota and ended up in Philip’s office. Maybe she had been online warding off loneliness - just like me - and chanced upon the website, and realized immediately that I was the creator. But no, it couldn’t be, that was just too fanciful.

‘Lara,’ my fingers typed of their own volition. ‘It’s me.’

I navigated the mouse to move my icon closer to hers. If it was her, she would recognize me in an instant. I had no desire to be younger, taller or better looking, and my icon mirrored my person, including a missing arm.

She looked away from the building and stared at me.

‘And who is me?’ she typed.

My heart fell. I had wished so fervently for it
to be her that I’d almost believed it. Of course it couldn’t be her. Such a coincidence wasn’t logical. Maybe there was still a chance though, I thought desperately. Marco might have told her why I left Brazil. Maybe she was worried that the Godmother was following her actions in this universe as well; maybe she wanted to be certain before she revealed herself.

‘It really is me. Nikhil. I created this - for us.’

She didn’t respond. Anyone could pose as me and say those words, I thought. That she didn’t respond was itself a sign of her typical calm and repose. I would have to be more specific to convince her that it really was me. My icon was almost touching hers now, as I manipulated it closer using the keyboard. I pointed to the building and the car and the trees.

‘Don’t you see the signs, Lara? Who else could have made this? Everything is in the past now - La Madrina, prison, the drug trade, Rio - nothing can touch us here. You and me, here and now, that’s all that matters.’

Again she didn’t speak, but she didn’t walk away.

‘I missed you, Lara. I can’t even begin to tell you how much I missed you. I am sorry for everything. I am so…’

She cut off my message as I was typing.

‘I missed you too, Nikhil,’ she typed back.

I felt a crushing wave of joy envelop me. Was this really her? How had this happened? Why had she
come here? Was this just a coincidence or had she known? But how would she have known? No one knew that I had created this website, except Philip. But why was the icon wearing the same black dress that Lara knew I loved? I bombarded her with messages. Her response was stoically simple.

‘Remember what you said? You and me, here and now; that’s all there is. I don’t want to talk about the past.’

I was puzzled. We had shared the most beautiful moments of our lives together. Did she really want to forget them? But I had also hurt her deeply. I could understand why she wanted to start afresh.

‘Did you name our baby?’ I asked. ‘Our baby,’ I repeated, liking the way the words appeared on screen.

She kept quiet.

‘What happened?’ I asked, terrified.

‘Let’s not go there,’ she said.

What had happened to our son? I was petrified, but what right did I have to ask? I had deserted them in their greatest need. Something must have transpired in my absence, perhaps she didn’t want me to be crippled by guilt.

‘I’m sorry, honey,’ I said. ‘I am so terribly sorry for everything.’