Thomas World (38 page)

I merge onto another freeway, exit, and then follow the signs toward the University of California at Berkeley. I drive past it, vaguely remembering the directions provided by Google, not really doubting my decisions, and eventually I wind up on Buena Vista Parkway. It's a narrow, windy, tree-lined street that is basically cut into the side of a mountain.

I'm nervous. Like palms-sweating nervous. Like mouth-dry nervous, like brain-blank nervous. Once or twice, as I follow the street around its sharp turns, it seems as if the world disappears for a moment, replaced by a flat, tan checkerboard street and gridlike sky. But when I close my eyes and reopen them, the real world appears again. Sophia's house sits far above the street, a huge brown structure with an attached deck and a steep driveway. Trees stand above the house, proud and beautiful.

The reason I'm so nervous is not because I will meet Sophia in person for the first time, or because she has been lying about who she is, but because my entire life has come to this time and this place. This is it. Something is going to happen. I can feel it. You can feel it. The music in my head is spooky and creepy and building suspense in ominous layers.

I'm not sure I have the nerve to approach the door. I push the button to kill the ignition and sit there as my heart thunders in my chest.

The sky has taken on a pinkish tint as the sun finally descends. The pink mixes with blue in abrupt, striated layers that don't look at all natural. It looks rather digital, to be honest. Maybe it's the smog but I doubt it.

Not even an hour has passed since I spoke to Sophia. I haven't had time to prepare. She's going to ask me so many questions, and I'm not sure what I should say. I don't want to curse her with the truth, but I have to tell her something.

Finally I summon my nerve and get out of the car. It's cool and humid and little bit windy. I trudge up her driveway. It bends around a concrete retaining wall, and then, when I finally make it to the corner, the front door visible for the first time, I see a blonde woman standing on her front walk. From here she appears to be no more than twenty-five years old, maybe younger.

In a way she reminds me of Gloria…more specifically, what Gloria looked like in college, especially those electric blue eyes. But Gloria didn't have curves like this. Sophia's hair is long and her skin is deeply tan. She's wearing a light blue T-shirt and a white skirt and white flip flops.

This is nothing like the woman who has pretended to be a homely looking actress struggling to find work in Los Angeles.

“Hi, Thomas,” she says.

She extends her arms, and I can't help myself. I walk forward, hugging her. I am so very tired. We hold each other for five seconds, even ten. Her body is warm beneath the sweatshirt. Her breasts are enormous. She is exactly the opposite of what you would expect of someone who had lied about themselves online.

And yet isn't she too perfect? Her curvy figure and her striking face and her willingness to take me in so readily?

“Thomas,” Sophia says, backing away a little but still holding my arms. “I am so happy to finally meet you. But why did you tell me you were in Arizona if you were much closer than that?”

“The truth is complicated. As you well know.”

“I'm sorry I lied to you. It was nothing personal. About a year ago I decided to see what it felt like to be less attractive, like how much less attention would I get if I didn't look like this? I know it seems horrible and shallow, but I was going to write a book about the effect of beauty in our culture. Then I met you. I had no reason to think anything would come of our friendship. When we became close I didn't know how to tell you the truth.”

I'm telling you: She reminds me of Gloria when she was younger. Except for Sophia's exaggerated curves, they could be twins.

“Would you like to come inside?”

“Of course.”

The interior of the house is alternately dark and bright. Deep, rich wood trim is offset by a lot of windows and light, although the back of the house is noticeably dimmer, since the mountain is in that direction.

Sophia offers me coffee and a chocolate chip muffin. We sit down at a square wooden table in her dining room.

“Now tell me,” she says. “What's going on with you?”

The enormity of the situation pushes me down, the mass of it. Like before, it feels as though the weight of the entire world is upon me. Maybe I shouldn't tell her what is going on, try to protect her from it all, but isn't it too late for that?

“Well,” I say. “I think I'm being followed.”

“By who?”

“Everyone.”

FORTY-THREE

I
tell her the entire story the best way I know how, which is to relate it in the same way you've experienced it, although in abridged form. To Sophia's credit her face betrays little or no emotion the whole time I'm speaking.

When I'm finished she says, “So you're saying I'm also a character.”

“In a way I guess we all are.”

“I don't feel like a character. I feel like a real human being.”

But while her eyes are looking in my direction, she's not really seeing me. I could ask her questions, like what her mother's name is, where she went to high school, what she ate for lunch yesterday, but I suspect she's already asking those things of herself.

We sit there for a long time, our knees touching, not saying anything. She reaches out and puts her hands over mine.

“Obviously they're watching you somehow. If the people in the coffeehouse knew who you were, someone must have either followed you there or called ahead. They couldn't have known you would stop at that particular store. They must be watching.”

“You're supposed to tell me I'm crazy.”

“I don't know, Thomas. I don't know what to think. But if it's all scripted, what's going to happen next?”

“I kind of expected to find Philip K. Dick here. Since he lived most of his life in Berkeley. I thought maybe
you
were going to be him.”

“It is strange, isn't it?” she says. “I lied to you about my identity, and the place I turned out to live is the home of the science fiction author.”

“Yes.”

“The father of artificial reality.”

Her eyes still have that look, like she's seeing something far away. I feel terrible for bringing this to her, but in a way I feel like it was always going to happen.

“I guess it's true what that guy said, the one you met at the bar. The only way to know the truth is to talk to the writer. The Creator. Find out what it all means.”

“Gnosis?”

“I guess.”

I realize how tense I am, in my shoulders and arms especially, pulled tight and guarding against something, instinctively protecting myself against a threat, though in this case that threat is in my mind. My pursuers aren't here. I'm safe, or at least as safe as I can manage considering the circumstances. Sophia's hands are tender, as if she has spent the last hour rubbing lotion into them. Her smile is soft and intimate. She has been such a good friend to me over the past year. We have shared so many jokes and ideas and stories of our lives, on the phone, chatting on the computer, and I have thought on many occasions that if I weren't married, and if Sophia encouraged a little more physical desire in me, she might be the perfect—

I lean forward and kiss her. I can't help myself. An instant passes while I wait for her reaction, and finally she kisses me back. Her lips are soft and swollen against mine, the way Gloria's were when she was younger. I nibble on them lightly, first with my lips and then with my teeth. She reaches out to me with her tongue, exploring me, and I return that touch with my own. Fire rises up within me, the forgotten lust of my younger years.

And yes, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking how easy it is for me to betray my wife. But something about this…I don't know exactly what it is. It doesn't feel like cheating. It's like I've met Sophia before, known her before, that I have longed for her always. I know I've said similar things many times since Sunday, but now, in this moment, the feeling is stronger than ever, so familiar, so real.

Yes, I've known Sophia online. Not this face, not this body, but the essence of her. The laughter we shared, the film references and funny quotes and silly voices—all those things draw me to her even more than her fantasy physical experience. And yet even that is not the Sophia I've always known. There is something more, something I can't put my finger on, that draws me to her. That has always drawn me to her.

My lips drift to the corner of her mouth, along the ridge of her chin, tickling her ear, breathing into it, and then I drop lower, down to her neck. I haven't felt this combination of friendship and physical arousal since the first time I made out with Gloria. She breathes out a huge sigh, a sound that ignites me, fuels my arousal again, and my hands go to her breasts, round and young and full. She doesn't move away from me. In fact she seems to push her breasts into me, so I sneak one of my hands under her shirt and reach carefully for her, first one breast and then the other, stopping to admire the deep crevasse between them. Her hands drops to my waist, to the bulge in my pants, and that's when I stop her and pull away.

“What is it?” Sophia asks.

“Where's the bedroom?”

She smiles and points behind her. I stand up and put one hand beneath her legs, another behind her back. She throws her arms around my neck as I pick her up.

We retreat to her bedroom, and for a few moments, as desire electrifies me, I manage to forget about this artificial life, about Gloria betraying me on the phone, about everything.

A little while later our clothes are on the floor, and Sophia takes me into her hand.

“Oh my God,” she says.

“What?”

“You're huge.”

“I am?”

“Unreasonably.”

For a moment I am taken back to the church bathroom, my ears ringing, the old man glaring at me, the man with the black moustache and gray beard, the man otherwise known as Philip K. Dick, architect of simulated worlds, inspiration for my life. Desire threatens to drain out of me.

Then I realize I am about to have her, finally, intimately, and I push away those dreadful thoughts. I'm about to make love to Sophia.

She is finally mine.

FORTY-FOUR

A
little while later I wake up and Sophia is not there. I lie still for a minute, staring up at the ceiling, imagining the swirls of white paint are galaxies. A soft whirring sound hypnotizes me, and for a while I'm lost in the expanding endlessness of a ceiling universe.

Finally I realize the whirring sound is the cooling fan of a computer. I look down, away from the ceiling, and see a flat-screen monitor standing on a desk to my right.

I keep thinking Sophia is going to come back, but when she doesn't, I manage to crawl out of bed and walk over to where the computer is. The leather seat is cold against my bare ass. I open a Web browser, bring up Google, and key in:

Philip K. Dick

The first return is the author's official site, but the second is a Wikipedia entry. The first line says:

Philip Kindred Dick
 (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered states.

Farther down I read this:

Dick's stories typically focus on the fragile nature of what is “real” and the construction of personal identity. His stories often become surreal fantasies as the main characters slowly discover that their everyday world is actually an illusion constructed by powerful external entities (such as in 
Ubik
), vast political conspiracies, or simply from the vicissitudes of an unreliable narrator.

The vicissitudes of an unreliable narrator
. Where you can't necessarily know if the guy telling you the story is getting it right.

Then I read:

Dick has influenced many writers, including William Gibson, Jonathan Lethem, and Ursula K. Le Guin. Dick has also influenced filmmakers, his work being compared to films such as
The Matrix
,
Videodrome
,
eXistenZ,
and
Spider
,
Being John Malkovich
,
Adaptation
,
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
,
Dark City,
The Truman Show
,
Gattaca
,
12 Monkeys
,
A Nightmare on Elm Street
,
Mulholland Drive
,
Fight Club
,
Vanilla Sky
,
Pi
,
Donnie Darko
and
Southland Tales,
and
Memento
and
Inception
.

And below that is a section called:

Ant Farm

Philip K. Dick has also been credited by Thomas Phillips and Dick Stanton, creators of the popular and controversial “immersive reality” simulation known as
Ant Farm,
as the inspiration for their work. Phillips, an aspiring screenwriter, and Stanton, a software engineer, teamed together to create the
Ant Farm
simulation, which was originally designed to run on desktop computers. The game used a special headset to project images and sound, as well as various attachments (including sexual paraphernalia) to simulate sensory information. Stanton wrote the original code, and Phillips created a series of stories, similar to screenplays, that served as the adventures for the game.

In February 2031 their startup company, Blue Orb World Media, became a publicly traded corporation. Three years later the company introduced
Ant Farm 2.0,
a vastly upgraded simulation that employed a brain-computer interface (BCI) to run the simulation directly in the user's mind.
Ant Farm 2.0
also featured Phillips' patented “Dynamic Films,” otherwise known as “Swiss cheese” films, virtual stories with a skeleton-like structure that enabled the user's mind to plug in the holes. In this way, the user's own life could be combined with fictional adventures to create a seamless blend of fantasy and real life.