15. The Magus

Chapter 15

Eva brought me into virtual reality for weeks. Every day was a different scene. She brought me to a concert, a museum, a park, a forest. Every day I experienced something new. The virtual reality lent depth and understanding to the words I had read in all those books. Before, the words were just words, no more colorful than numbers on a page. Hardly more interesting. It was the same with movies—all the art Eva had exposed me to was flat. I was always a third-party observer even with the more interesting literature she exposed me to. But within virtual reality, I was a player as real as any.

When Eva brought me to a virtual reality performance of As You Like It by William Shakespeare and I heard:

"All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players.

They have their exits and their entrances.

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.

And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like a snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lined,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances.

And so, he plays his part. The sixth age shifts.

Into the lean and slipper wearing pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side.

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion.

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."

I found the strange water of tears pooling in my eyes. I wanted to play the part of a lover, but I was made to play the part of a soldier, and I never would and never had been anything else. For a moment there, watching virtual people wearing virtual garb, with Eva pulsing soft and real by my side, I felt bereft. I felt like something had been stolen from me—childhood, old age, love.

But I never had anything to begin with, Eva reminded me after the play, after I explained my reaction to her. We stood dry, virtual rain splashing all around us in the dark shining virtual city outside the virtual theater. Her false mouth was smiling, her tone of voice was caustic, but she too had tears pooling in her fake eyes as she spoke. I thought then that maybe she also wished I could play more than the part of a soldier.

But when I stared at her lush lips and asked if I could kiss her, she turned away and laughed. Pink blushed the tips of her pointed ears, and I thought it was probably best she did not rescind the order that disallowed me from touching her, for surely I would do it too much, and too publicly, even in a virtual reality world. I would get us both banned.

Schrodinger continued to badger me and the other destructions about leaving. He continued to attempt to destroy the foundation of my affection for Eva. He would not say anything out-right, for he knew I would not tolerate such things, but he would insinuate relentlessly.

Unlike humans, I record everything I experience in the memory chips of my mind. I can relive events over and over. Sometimes I long to forget. What is it like to forget something small, like the Latin name for clouds? What would it have been like to forget Eva? Useless questions, as pointless as asking, what if the sky were pink with purple polka-dots? It doesn't matter because the sky is gray.

I have relived the day Eva first went with me to the real world a million and one times. That day, when Eva opened the bunker door, she was neither wearing the virtual reality suit she would usually put on before picking me up from the Destruction chamber, nor was she in her lab coat. She was wearing purple jean shorts and a flowing cream-colored tank top. I had never seen so much of her real skin, smooth, lovely, with a few moles I memorized the moment I laid eyes on them. I could smell her more deeply than ever before. She filled my lungs. I wanted to fall onto her, take her down to the floor. Destroy her.

I swallowed and averted my gaze. I held my breath and smiled. "You're dressed differently today," I said it naturally, as if I were a normal man in a room with a normal woman. I was getting quite good at being natural. I was getting good at muting the wild signaling of my wires.

"Yes, well, we are doing something different today. I think you're ready to go out into the real world. You've been progressing really well," she said.

Her rare praise pulled a genuine grin onto my face. "I think so too," I told her.

"Here put these on," she handed me clothes different from my usual sweats: jeans, a t-shirt, underwear, socks and shoes.

The shoes, especially, felt strangely stiff on my feet. I walked out of the bathroom awkwardly, feeling as if I were taking my first steps a second time.

I noticed Eva's eyes lingering on me and grinned. "Like what you see?" I asked. Deliberately, I leaned over her as she sat on the couch. So close and so far. She could reach out to touch me, but her directive prevented me from even touching the tip of her nose with the tip of my finger. But I could smell her, and I could drink her in with my eyes. That was almost enough and not nearly enough.

There was another scientist in the elevator when we got in. His eyes bulged at Eva in her casual clothes. "So, there was a woman underneath that lab coat the entire time?" he said with a smirk.

I would have crushed his head against the wall, but I was being good. I was being human, so I said nothing. I only smiled viciously at the man.

Eva, in a completely serious tone, said, "What did you expect?"

The man's face warmed, and he did not manage to stutter out an answer before we stepped out to our floor.

Eva broke out into a laugh, bending over with mirth, "Did you see his face? The a-hole!"

I laughed too, as was expected, but I was too busy experiencing the new scenery to try to decipher the joke. We were in a hallway that led to the outside world. The real world. Already, I could hear the barrage of noises coming from outside. I could smell wafts of a dizzying array of scents. If I stepped outside into that cacophony of sensation, surely, I would short-circuit.

The words, "Stop, I can't do this," remained unsaid when Eva took my hand and pulled me forward. I went with her, like the wind-up toy soldier I was.

The world on the other side of the heavy door that led to it was not what I expected. It was filthy. The air was filthy, the sky was a filthy gray. The facades of buildings were ugly, gray cement. There were no plants but the weeds that grew in the cracked cement of the wide walkway that stretched from one building to another. The entire world seemed to be paved in cement.

The people walking by were not the happy, giddy people of virtual reality, but real people, textured. Blemished. Bored, tired, hurried. All, but the sooty homeless lounging in the streets, either had on earphones or eye-comps, or were simply looking at their handhelds. The smell of exhaust, garbage, old food, and mold suffocated the smell of Eva, and I stopped breathing.

The only noises that could be heard was the rumble of machinery, the footsteps, and the voices talking to their handhelds. Where were the singing birds? Where was the blue sky and white clouds that could be seen outside of the classroom's window? The sound of Eva's snort punctured my focus. "I'm sorry," she said, "I should have warned you; we are in a bad part of town. Virtual reality is idealized reality."

"And the window?"

"The window?" she asked.

"The one in the classroom, the one that showed the sun, and the blue sky, and the flying cars...where is the sun?"

Eva snorted again in derision, "That was just a screensaver. Nobody wants real windows anymore." She paused. "Unless of course your window overlooks a cryometery, but only obscenely rich people can afford that." My hand was bereft when she let it go to smooth down her hair, "You shouldn't be this surprised. I guess I really should have explained more and shown you more modern movies. But modern movies are trash," she said. "Well, c'mon. Let's go to the pod station. You'll like it better at the zoo."

I noticed thick metallic wires running up and down the street, between the buildings, where the flying cars should have been. The pod station was where the wires dropped almost to street level before raising back up again. There was a bench and a red sign with a white outline of a circle with lines going through it, and a billboard with a map of the city. I took a mental snapshot of the map, thinking to study it later before I questioned, why? Why would I bother?

Soon enough, a pod came zooming along one of the wires. A shining red orb, growing larger as it grew closer, more brilliant than the sun I had never truly seen in the dullness of the surrounding city. It stalled in front of us and opened, revealing a few rows of benches in the interior, and a young male human, dressed all in black, who glanced at us before becoming engrossed in his handheld once again. He had a metal bar through his left eyebrow and catlike whiskers twitching discordantly beneath his nose.

Eva slid onto a bench and patted the seat beside her. Obediently, I sat. I could feel a gentle rocking movement in my gyroscope as the pod took off again. Processing the strangeness of it all kept me from thinking of anything to say.

The pod made a few more stops and other passengers came and went. I was relaxing into the rhythm of the movement, into the knowledge that Eva was by my side, when a female voice much more robotic than my own, announced, "Last stop."

We got out into what seemed to be a different world. If my previous experience was of a virtual world and stepping out into the gray scenery was the real world, then I would have described this new world as the surreal world.

Lights and colors were everywhere, so overwhelming that I decided to turn off my color vision for the moment to process what I was seeing. There were ads on every vertical surface—many electronic moving ads—advertising everything from meds to cosmetics. There were people everywhere. These people seemed happier than the others we had seen, but they were still imperfect compared to those in virtual reality, and like other people we had seen, many of them were so focused on their handhelds it was a wonder they didn't walk into each other or walls. Here and there, I glimpsed a young human with an animal body-mod. Each of the body-modified humans seemed to be wearing black and many of them had tattoos and piercings.

The smell of garbage was still there, only fainter, masked beneath the smells of cooked food and floral perfumes. I wanted to lean down and bury my nose in Eva's hair, breathe in nothing but her.

"This is the shopping district," Eva explained, "Now c'mon, we're going to the zoo."

I turned around, following Eva, to see there was a gigantic glass dome behind us, reaching high into the sky, encompassing our view. Vaguely, on the other side of the thick glass, I could see the silhouettes of what could have been trees. I turned my color vision back on and saw the silhouettes were green.

Eva handed me a wallet and then we waited in a long line of people to buy our tickets. It was odd speaking to someone other than Eva, to a real human who didn't know I wasn't a human just like him, even if the only thing I said to him was, "Two tickets please," and "Thank you."

The vast dome, with its vibrant colors from hundreds of blooming plants, the sound of real birds singing, the smell of healthy soil, and even a simulated blue sky, would have completely captivated me if not for Eva's presence. Though the dome was enchanting, I remained acutely aware of Eva by my side, and she held my attention more than anything else around us.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" said Eva, "This is what the entire world used to be like, before the wealthy destroyed it."

I smiled down at her, wanting to kiss the scowl from her face. I knew that the world had never been like the inside of the dome. That defied logic. There were crowds of people milling about on walkways between enclosures. Most of the plants were probably not native, and most of the animals certainly weren't. The dome was almost as artificial as virtual reality. I quite liked being there with her.

"What animal would you like to see first?" I said, pulling out the map that we had received with our tickets.

Eva sucked at her cheek. She said, "I don't know. How about we just wander around? We don't have to always have a plan."

"Oh?" I said.

"Yeah, let's go that way."

The first enclosure we visited was home to pink flamingos, some standing on one leg, others strolling on their stilts around a mossy pond. Their beaks, tipped in black, curved sharply downward, resembling can-openers.

"They remind me of a children's book," I told Eva as she leaned against the railing, hunching her shoulders in a way that made me want to put my arm around them.

"Yeah, I guess so. Did you know that flamingos are pink because of all the shrimp they eat? The pinker the shrimp, the pinker the flamingo," she said.

"Now I know. I want to see the tigers," I said. "And the lobsters."

Eva shifted her gaze from the flamingos to me. She lowered her voice, "The DNA of the animals in you?"

"Yes," I said.

"You do understand that you are nothing like a lobster or a tiger, right? You're a.." she looked around nervously, "Well you know what you are."

I nodded, still smiling. Her shifty attitude was cute. "You're cute," I told her.

As was usual, she brushed off my compliment, "Okay, well we can see the tigers, but I doubt they have lobsters."

I was happy, as we meandered through the zoo, stopping to look at animals on the way to the tigers. Eva held my large hand with her little one. She smiled and talked to me, and I felt more and more real with each enclosure we peered into.

But the tigers made me clench my jaw, and squeeze Eva's hand hard enough that she pulled away, yelping, "Ow!"

"They're clones," I said.

"Of course they're clones," Eva was rubbing her right hand with her left, "What else would they be? Tigers went extinct decades ago."

I stared at the three tigers. They were beautiful animals, but each one's stripes were identical to the next as they paced back and forth.

I didn't want to ask, but I did. "Am I, are they…?"

"Are they related to you? No. The answer is no. There is plenty of tiger DNA out there. I think the zoo just doesn't spend much money on the less popular animals. Heck, they could even do a breeding program and bring tigers out of extinction if anyone cared. But of course, they don't. All anyone cares about is prehistorics and fantastics. They always seem to have a saber-toothed tiger cub on display. We wanted to use saber-toothed tiger DNA on you guys instead of regular tiger DNA, you know, but it was out of our budget. Too freaking expensive."

I couldn't stop watching the tigers, pacing back and forth and back and forth, panting with unblinking, soulless yellow eyes in their small enclosure. My neural network let me know that what I was seeing was called Zoochosis. A term to describe the stereotyped behavior of animals in captivity, pacing back and forth, the instinctual desperation for more than the world they were bred into. The tigers reminded me of Schrodinger. They reminded me of me.

"I want to see the lobsters," I told Eva.

She squinted up to look at my eyes, the fake sun behind me. I longed to push a stray strand of hair behind her ear.

"This is affecting you," she said. "Isn't it? You're feeling things."

"I am. Well, you know what I am, Eva," I said and smiled. "How could it be affecting me? Well, as you always tell me, any emotions I feel are artificial. They don't matter."

She nodded. "I still don't think there are any lobsters. Do you want to see any more cloned animals?"

I shrugged. "I just wanted to see the lobsters."

"I can bring you to a grocery store, to see some lobsters afterwards if you'd like. Though maybe not today." Her brown eyes sparkled, warmer than the wood of the trees around us and softer than the tiger's fur.

"Eva, are you trying to please me?" I said. "Maybe it just comes naturally to you. You are certainly pleasing to me."

"No of course not, you're just—well c'mon, let's go see the saber-toothed tigers," Eva took my hand and gently led me onward.

The saber-tooth tiger exhibit was much larger than the regular tiger exhibit. The saber-tooth tiger laid lazily on a rock, buck teeth glinting like bone and eyes in sleepy slits. They cloned these into existence too, I thought.

"Were these clones ever kittens?" I asked Eva, "Did they have childhoods?"

I watched Eva's pink tongue as she laughed, "Of course they did! You're special." She lowered her voice and leaned towards me conspiratorially, "You're just as much an android as you are a clone. I think that's why you have no soul. You're a cyborg. You have DNA, but you aren't alive. Or you're alive the way a single-cell organism is alive."

Eva's eyes always crinkled at the corners with a mix of glee and rage when she told me such things. I always wanted to take my thumbs and smooth the emotion from her face.

At every exhibit, Eva had something to say about the animals: about taxonomy, dietary behavior, mating behavior. Was that how she felt about me too? An animal to memorize facts about? No, I was less than that: an AI to be programmed.

Beyond the saber-toothed tigers, the wooly mammoths, the mastodons, the giant three-toed sloths, were the dinosaurs. The crowds of people were getting thicker the farther we traveled into the zoo, the further back in time we went.

The dinosaurs were huge lethargic creatures, with leathery skin, and beady eyes. They had several different kinds of herbivores in the massive enclosure, and we walked through a clear tube within said enclosure. It was like being in the sea, with those giant creatures moving in slow-motion, living in a different kind of gravity.

"Most dinosaurs are nocturnal because even though they aren't exactly warm-blooded, they would generate too much heat from moving around during the daytime," Eva told me, "On weekends the zoo is open until like eleven, I think, so that people can see them move around more. But I think they are kinda boring either way. Like giant cows."

"Oh," I said. "Interesting." I had never seen a cow, except in movies and virtual reality. I wished the zoo also had cows.

"Do you want to see creatures more fucked up than you are?" Eva asked.

"Of course," I said, though I couldn't imagine creatures more fucked up than me, than Schrodinger, than our so-called brothers. I have Zoochosis, I thought, can I die of Zoochosis? But no, I didn't have Zoochosis. I was happy. I was fulfilling my purpose. I was near Eva, and I already knew I was destined to die of something else.

The creatures even more fucked up than me, than Schrodinger, turned out to be monsters. Monsters from the books Eva had had me read brought to life. Chimeras, made from cloning and splicing dissimilar animals. A grotesque animal with the body of a lion and the head of an eagle stumbled, pathetically flapped its wings within a lion's size misshapen nest. A white horse with a horn spiraling out of its forehead placidly chewed on hay. A huge, black, three-headed dog chewed a bone and simultaneously slept in the shade of a tree, within a shadow cast by the fake sun.

Humans oohed and aahed and took photos with their handhelds. This part of the zoo was clearly the most popular, a mix between a theme park, fantasyland, and freak show. I didn't want to see those creatures, I wanted to see lobsters. But Eva pulled me forward, and I would follow Eva to the ends of the Earth.

I did my best to put myself between Eva and the crowd. The crowd pressing in all around us, warm sweating bodies, squalling infants, laughing toddlers, frantic mothers, fathers staring out at the world from behind their cams. But it was hard to prevent anyone from brushing against Eva when I couldn't touch her myself. It was so different from virtual reality, where no one could really touch anyone.

"The dragons are the most popular," Eva told me. "Do you want to see them?"

I did not, but I said yes because the more time we spent at the zoo, the more time I would get to spend with Eva.

The dragon enclosure was the largest enclosure we had seen yet. We climbed clanking, metal stairs to get to the platform that rose above the enclosure. At the top, fifty feet off the ground, the metallic walkway split off in multiple directions to accommodate the large crowds. Each walkway looping through the dragon enclosure was punctuated by souvenir shops, food stands, games, and face-painting stations. Children ran by wearing scaled, green faces and fake fabric wings.

"Now this is like virtual reality," I told Eva.

"I guess it is a bit."

"Are dragons your favorite?" I asked her.

"It is between them and the orangutans." She smiled up at me and I yearned. I was happy, but the knowledge that this moment would pass felt heavy on my shoulders. She said, "The fascinating thing about dragons is that even though they were cloned into existence, they really seem to thrive. They can't fly obviously, but they use their wings in mating dances. It is really quite fascinating to watch. And different strains of dragons seem to develop the same habits in different zoos across the country. Fascinating."

We walked along a walkway until we found a free spot to lean over the metal railing. It was warm and solid and real to the touch. I could smell Eva's scent mixed in with the smell of plants and people around us. A glow of sweat shone on her skin.

Dragons were below us, but instead of looking at them, I closed my eyes and basked in the glow of Eva's presence. There I was in real life, out in the real world, with Eva by my side. Anyone walking by would have thought I was a real man, and that Eva was really mine.

"Excuse me, excuse me," I turned around to see a pubescent human female, trying to get my attention. Behind her was more females of around her same age. They were all smiling, and all had fast pulses and false eyelashes.

I raised an eyebrow at them and said, "Yes?"

They broke into giggles. I was aware of Eva stiffening beside me.

"Aren't you in that movie? Can we get our photos taken with you?"

"No, he's not in that movie!" Eva stepped in front of me, "You don't even have a particular movie in mind!"

The lead female pursed her lips. "Was I talking to you?" she said to Eva, and then to me, "Pleeasee?"

Eva was shaking her head furiously. I saw her lips moving to form the words to order me not to get my photo taken. "Honey," I interrupted, bending over so she could see my smile and I could look her directly in the eyes. I lowered my voice like I had seen actors do in movies, "This is perfect, don't you see?"

To the other human females I said, "Sure thing girls, it would be my pleasure."

Eva looked on with arms crossed as I posed with the females, grinned like a fool, and laughed with the girls like a happy human man.

After the females scampered off down the walkway, Eva walked up to me and slammed her fist into my stomach, hard. Or at least as hard as she could.

"Ow!" she said.

"That's got to have hurt," I frowned and rubbed the place on my stomach she had punched, though I wanted to rub her sore knuckles instead, "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she grumbled, "But you! You! The first time I take you out in public and you fridge it up! Getting your photo taken by random ninnies, I never thought you would be that stupid. I never thought I would have had to order you not to do something like that..."

"Eva," I luxuriated in rolling her name off my tongue. "It is for the fear."

"What, fear? What are you talking about?"

"I did it," I said. "For the fear. I was created to inspire fear in people. Won't it be much more frightening when that photo turns up and humans—people see I was walking the Earth, biding my time, months before I destroyed anything? Won't they be terrified knowing I went to a public place of leisure like the zoo? Won't they learn to be more afraid of every stranger they don't know? I did it, Eva, to fulfill my protocol. I did it, to inspire fear."

Eva opened and shut her mouth a few times. "You're diabolical," she said.

I shrugged, "I am what I am. I am what I was programmed to be. I am what you made me."

I smelled a faint trace of the orange, citrus adrenaline of fear, wafting off Eva, a smell she hadn't emitted in weeks. "I don't know," she whispered, "This might be too much…"

"Are you having second thoughts?" I breathed deeply, relishing her fear scent. But I did not want her to be afraid. When she was afraid, she was less generous with her touches.

"No, of course not," she snapped.

"Then why are you afraid? You know I cannot hurt you. I can't even touch you," a snarl of anger crept into my voice.

She turned away from me, leaning back over the railing, peering at the dragons.

"Answer me," I ordered. "Answer me," I pleaded. "Look at me," I begged. I felt the fake tears pooling in my eyes, but I refused to let them spill.

In my own way, I had been attempting to flirt with Eva for weeks, for months, from the moment I realized I wanted her, trying to get her to come to me because I couldn't go to her. My flirting techniques had evolved over time, as I learned about how to act more human. And Eva had reactions to me; her smell changed, her pulse changed, her expressions changed when I came onto her, but she never actually did anything. She ignored me. She changed the subject. Sometimes, she cut our sessions short.

She was right to ignore me. She was doing the right thing. But I couldn't stop myself from trying.

But then, it hit me like a shrapnel-laced explosion in my gut: Eva could stop me. Instead of doing nothing, she could prevent me from pursuing her entirely, even if I couldn't stop myself. All it would take is a simple command with my true name, just syllables vocalized in the correct order.

"Why don't you let me kiss you? Why don't you let me touch you?" I put my arms to either side of her on the railing and murmured as close to her ear as I could without touching her. For her to get away, she would have to say something, for her to move, she would have to touch me.

"You can kiss me," she whimpered without turning around to look at me, "You can touch me."

"No, I can't. You need to order me." I was squeezing the railing so hard I felt it begin to bend. I loosened my grip.

"Destruction Number 7, I rescind my order that prevents you from touching me. You can now touch me if you so desire."

I needed no second invitation. I spun her around. My mouth was on her mouth the next moment. My hands were on her soft curves, running over her soft skin. She tasted divine. She felt like something I never wanted to let go of.