Transcendence (11 page)

“
Enough of that,” he grumbled, taking his eyes off those in the mirror, and set to work creating Captain Pehr Jackson, hero of EarthCo’s wildly popular headfeed serial,
Lone Ship Bounty
.

Only moments after regaining her gravity-legs, Janus scrambled out of the exercise chamber to the bridge and began manually accessing the ship’s sensors from her seat.

A controlled smile creased her face. She remembered the ads that had drawn her to this line of work: “Get paid to travel the solar system,” the EConaut had said, cloaked in a gleaming white spacesuit with stars like beacons silhouetting him. His clear helmet reflected the blues and browns of Earth. This EConaut recruiter had once been a great star of space-action subscriptions, a man she respected. The ad flipped setting to planet after planet, moon after moon, asteroid after asteroid, the EConaut narrating as he dashed along. Not long after, she had contacted EConautics and registered to test for the position.

The company had leaped at the chance to hire such a beautiful woman who also happened to be an astronomer, and who was so capable during combat simulation tests. So, a year later, she began service aboard various Earth-Moon vessels, leaving Miguel behind with a broken heart and Rachel to help him mend it. Years later, after Rachel and Miguel had married and Janus could look him in the eyes without guilt in her heart, she found herself aboard the
Bounty
, racing fast and far away.

“
Here’s to adventure!” Jack shouted, and then a crash of glass.

“
I like you a lot better between shows,” she responded, too quietly for him to hear. Jack was the only real friend she had had in years. But Captain Jackson was just another man. Men she could do without. She’d had enough of men in her life, starting with the first, her preacher father. Religionists are the worst, she thought, and the worst of those are Literalists. I can handle an overgrown boy.

Her long yet ragged fingernails tapped a quick rhythm on the keys of a control panel that had been designed primarily as ornament. During the long trip out from Earth, she had rewired it to be more functional. If she hadn’t, they would all have been sucking vacuum when the auto systems temporarily failed in the midst of the Phobos battle.

The LCDs flashed to life, spewing long rows of numbers and codes. She flicked to her customized 3VRD landscape of the internal systems. All seemed to be functioning well. She nodded and stood up straight, stretching.

“
Eyes, get your ass in position,” she called to the third crew member, still in his cabin. At first, the strange man had terrified her, but she had overcome her fear by assuming a position of authority over him. In a society of 21 billion people, control was very important—especially to Janus. Especially to someone who was once considered another’s property. Only in scientific pursuits had she found real comfort: order from chaos, power in knowledge, control through technology.

Janus began to disrobe, as per feedback procedure, pulling off the baggy oversuit. Beneath it, her pale, muscle-corded body was clothed in the theatric garb of battle bra and hip-hugger—both of the all-time best-selling Nero design—and tall, black Makk boots of a style every young woman in the Americas now wore. She clenched her jaw and shivered in the warm air of the bridge, rubbing her palms up and down her abdomen. This kind of exposure made her furious, dredging up memories best left buried. It seemed silly, anyway: Who could take seriously soldiers who dressed like this? Why not serious-looking uniforms?

She ignored her discomfort and flipped through a tiny rectangular display in one corner of her field of vision, searching the ship’s bandwidth for a pov that would show her appearance. Finding it, she spliced it in and saw herself in a mirror image from a camera-angle just to her left. She turned slightly.

Her type was still all the rage back on Earth among female subscribers: curvy but narrow-hipped figure; sharp-featured face made up with Embrace’s vivid shades of purple; long black hair tinged with white.

She smiled briefly. Then she frowned and strapped around her waist the looping cables of a Ticco mass-accel pistol that the costume designers at Feedcontrol had thought best suited to her character, checking its position in the splice image.

“
Hey, Jan,” Jack said, resting a big hand on her left shoulder. He had snuck up from a blind spot. She cut off the feed and turned to look at him.

He, too, was attired in stage garb, naked to the waist except for an open vest. His shortsuit was black, a flexible yet steeltough Pagos that covered him hips to calves and fit as closely as liquid poured across his heavy thigh muscles. In one hand he held a glass containing heady-smelling liquid.

Jack’s looks were all the rage among male subscribers: wide shoulders above a full chest supported by narrow waist and hips, thick legs and arms; flat-featured face cut from sharp angles, made up with Beltrope eyeliner and Sakk liptouch; hair brown with white swirls at the temples. Despite the absurd get-up, Janus felt warm with him near and smiled at him.

“
Hi, Jack. Haven’t seen you in a few days.”

“
I’ve been thinking,” he said. His eyes lost their sparkle for a moment. “We’ll be turning around after this performance, right?” he asked.

“
Right,” she answered, re-aligning her thoughts to the character of Janus the Pilot. Hard to tell what would make the cut for their show; some people watched only for the soap-opera element of personal interaction in this confined space. “We’ll continue to decelerate until we’re moving slowly enough to swing around Neptune, to scoop up fuel, and then we accelerate back toward Earth. No more scripted engagements, just a few onboard dramas. Boring lovey stuff.”

“
I’ve decided this will be my last series,” he stated. “All told, I’ve earned enough to retire and start a business.”

Janus gaped. “You’re drunk,” she said. “You’d die. You can’t stand being dirtside.”

Jack shook his head, a smile spreading across flush cheeks. “No, no. Tours in space or something. I’ve thought about this for a long time. My character’s famous, right? So EarthCo buys me a ship that we use to blast through the whole system. You’ll pilot—it’ll be fitted with the best astronomical instruments, and we use them to show povs that tourists can’t get anywhere else . . . of course, that’s when you’re not doing real research. You know: ‘Travel the solar system without leaving home’ and such bunk.”

“
Me?” Janus asked. She flicked back to headfeed, studying her friend through alternating cameras mounted in the front bulkhead. The white skin of her back blocked part of him from view. She realized how little she knew about this man, how little anybody alive really knew about anybody else.

“
You’ve got a legal partner, don’t you?” she asked.

“
Oh, I’m not suggesting anything like that,” Jack insisted, his face growing tense. “Nothing retro, just friends, see. We work well together.”

He laughed awkwardly as he set the glass down on the armrest of his captain’s chair and strapped on a holster-belt which bore a superfluous GE laser pistol. Only once in 94 episodes had any of the crew had opportunity to use such personal weaponry: right away, in the third scene on the Moon.

“
I’ll think about it,” she said. “We’ll have plenty of time to think about things on the way home.”

She began stowing her practical overclothes in a drawer beneath her seat, in front of and to the right of Jack’s. To keep her mind from becoming too disordered by this unexpected offer, she flicked from pov to pov, shifting perspective whenever her mind began to wander beyond the basic necessity of balance.

“
You know me,” she added, watching through the split natural pov as she crumpled the oversuit into the drawer. At last, she flicked Jack to the center of her splice. The natural image of him was split in half around his whole 3VRD image.

“
I’d die for a chance to do some real astronomy,” she thought aloud. “Just doesn’t happen anymore. I’ll consider it.”

Jack laughed—the first joyous laugh she had heard from him in a long time—and began to fumble beneath his couch’s control panel. He tore electrical tape loose and pulled out another glass. He brushed it off with his fingers and handed it to her, grinning like an overgrown boy.

“
This is for you, to celebrate a maybe deal,” he said, and dumped half the liquid from his glass into hers.

Janus felt an honest smile cross her face, an uncalculated and unscripted one. The glass fit strangely in her hand, its long fluted base brushing her wrist. She flicked out of headfeed.

“
To a maybe business partnership,” she responded, looking at the man through her own eyes. He clinked his glass against hers, then took a sip. She followed his lead, feeling comfortably warm all of a sudden.

“
Why don’t the two of you just fuck and get it over with,” you say, watching from the hallway as the bitch and Cap’n Jack ogle each other.

“
I’d rather toss you out the hatch, Eyes,” Cap’n says, not looking away from Janus.

You make a noncommittal sound, then overlay another version of your shipmates. Janus’ bra vanishes, her tits bulging three sizes larger and nipples raging red. Her face relaxes into sexual desire, yet her eyes betray the fear and coldness you suspect lurk beneath her fierce exterior. Her hip-hugger shrinks and mutates into a string garter, platinum pubic hair exposed. You lick your lips, imagining the silk of her skin.

When you turn your attention to revised Cap’n Jack, you laugh. Now his absurd muscles bloat to twice natural size, but his face wears a mask of vacuity. Here stands the hollow hero, the play-acting superman filled with so much emptiness he can’t think beyond the trial of the moment. When he speaks, his mask contorts into a toothy grin.

“
Here’s to the corp,” the Cap’n says, raising a toast toward a fore-mounted recording unit which will be linked live to Feedcontrol Central’s subscribers in about a minute, plus transit time of nearly four hours. You instantly flick to that pov, carrying along the reprogrammed changes.

Janus glances back to the Cap’n, frowning at the glass in his hand. She hides hers beneath a stowage plate in the floor.

“
Put that away,” she mumbles, sounding annoyed. “You want Control to think you’re retro? They’re probably taking verification feedback already.” You tap into systems feedback.

“
Indeed they are,” you state, because now you’re transmitting raw info to Feedcontrol, who’ll rebroadcast to the masses who watch through your camera eyes, feel through your enhanced nervous system, who taste and smell and hear what you do.

“
Try to stick to script this time,” you say. You are famous only in that subscribers use you to vixperience
Lone Ship Bounty
, and some with the right headcard equipment even buy full-sensory subscriptions and feel and see and hear and so on everything you do. When these two screw up a scene, attention is taken away from you. Sometimes you even fumble the feed.

“
Fuck you, Eyes,” Janus says.

“
Honest?” you respond. Ah, unfortunately your response is only habitual.

“
You make me sick,” she adds.

“
Tell me about these feelings,” you ask. You can at least feel the pleasure of getting into her head. Cutting the overlay program, you zoom in and examine her eyes. Rich amber irises don’t quite point at you; you edit the image and she’s staring straight into your eyes. A warm tingle tickles your crotch.

“
You make me sick,” Cap’n says, taking a step toward you. A knuckled fist rises at his side. You stifle a gasp and fight back your pleasure at having elicited this reaction.

“
Don’t forget I can make or break both of you, depending on how I see you and how you behave toward me,” you say. It takes almost no effort at all to remold the Cap’n into a tin soldier, oxidized at the joints.

“
I heard your charming plan,” you clarify. “Tour guides.” Your lips slide back across smooth teeth, cheeks tightening. The tin soldier creaks toward you. You don’t respond.

“
Ignore him, Jack,” Janus says.

Cap’n Jack grunts and turns away, lifting his glass into the air. You flip to spectrographic and watch cabin lights refract rainbows through the crystal and clear wine. Above, the ceiling is off-white, punctured with innumerable ventilation and acoustic holes. Cap’n nods toward the fore recording unit, then toward brutally lovely Janus, and drinks the glass down without stopping. He wipes off his lips and grins at the pilot.

“
What the hell’s wrong with you, Eyes?” Janus bawls.