Tower of Glass

17

I am Nick Ssu-ma Lloyd Tennyson Cadge Foster Will Mishima Jed Guilbert and maybe Manuel Krug, maybe. Maybe. A week in the shunt room. You come out, you don’t even know who you are. Manuel Mishima? Cadge Krug? Anyway you can’t be sure. Walk like Lloyd, laugh like Nick, shrug like Will. So on and so on. Everything a blur, a lovely golden haze, sunrise on the desert, like that. Their heads inside your head. Yours inside theirs. Only a week. Maybe that’s why I like it so much. To stop being only me for a while. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Open the box. Jump out. Into them.

Full of funny ideas, now.

Bouncing in the stasis net for 168 hours.Twong and they split you open and you jump out and look for a place to land, and you landblong and you’re Nick Ssu-ma, eating roast dog on Taiwan. At dawn in the fog with your aunt. Both naked. She says, touch me here, you do, she laughs, you shiver. Touch me again. Now you laugh, she shivers. Tiny breasts, like Clissa’s. This is our wedding night. With this ring I you do wed, Mrs. Ermine Tennyson, silken thighs, mole in small of back. He sleeps with an android, did you know that? Imagine Manuel doing that. He loves her, so he says. Look. Look here, he loves her, it’s right here. You find your love where you can find it. Anandroid ? Well, at least he’s not ashamed, or he wouldn’t be in here shunting with us. An android. I almost had one once, but I couldn’t. At the last moment. What does if feel like going into one? Just like anyone else. They aren’t plastic, you know. Even though there isn’t any hair on it. Sort of incest, though. How? Well, Manuel’s father makes the androids, doesn’t he, so in a way she’s his sister. Very clever. Veryvery clever. Cruel bastard. But youlike doing it? Of course I do. I’ll show you. Here. Here. Shunt and see.

And he jumps across the net and slides into the slot. Who is he? Jed Ssu-ma? Will Tennyson? We are all one. Prowling my memories with Lilith. I don’t mind. How can I want to keep secrets? My friends. My true friends.

When I was nine years old I Cadge Foster took a toad and cooked it and ate it.

When I was thirteen years old I Will Mishima pissed on the transmat floor because I was scared I wouldn’t get there.

I Lloyd Tennyson put my finger in my sister’s thing she eleven I eight.

Jed Guilbert fourteen years old pushed a gamma off a loading rack fell eighty meters died squashed I told my father he slipped.

I was ten Nick Ssu-ma saw a male beta at the back window said to mother he watched you and father in bed my father just smiled my mother had them kill him.

I Manuel Krug almost thirty years old deceive my wife Clissa with Alpha Lilith Meson whom I love whom I love whom I love of Stockholm she lives on Birger Jarlsgaten Alpha Lilith Meson with breasts and thighs and teeth and elbows with rosy skin whom I love whom I love whom I love no hair on it at all Lilith.

And we shunt and shunt and shunt we hang dangling in the stasis net looping easily from mind to mind, floating, changing skulls as often as we please even though it runs up the charges, and I taste Cadge’s toad and I wet Will’s transmat and I smell Lloyd’s sister on my finger and I kill Jed’s gamma and I lie about Nick’s beta and all of them go to bed with Lilith and they tell me afterward, yes, yes, we really ought to investigate these alpha women, you’re a lucky bastard, Manuel, a lucky lucky lucky bastard.

And I love her.

Whom I love.

And I see the little hates and dirtinesses in their souls, my friends, but I see the strengths too, the good things, for it would be awful if we shunted and saw only the cooked toads and the puddles on the transmat floor. I see secret favors and modesties and loyalties and charities. I see how good my friends really are and I worry and I wonder, what do they see in me, maybe they’ll hate me when we come out of this. We shunt some more. We see what they see in us what we see in us in them.

A week is used up so fast!

Poor Manuel, they say, I never knew it was so bad for him. With all that money and he still feels guilty because he’s got nothing to do with his life. Find a cause, Manuel. Find a cause. Find a cause. I tell them I’m trying. I’m looking.

They say what about the androids?

Should I? What would my father say? If he doesn’t approve.

Don’t worry about him. Do what you think is right. Clissa is in favor of equal rights for androids. If he blows up, let Clissa talk to him before you do. Why should he blow up? He’s made his pile out of androids, now he can afford to let them vote. I bet they’d vote for him. You know all the androids are in love with your father? Yes. Sometimes I think it must be almost like a religion with them. The religion of Krug. Well it makes a sort of sense to worship your creator. Don’t laugh. But I have to laugh. It’s crazy androids bowing down to my father. To idols of him, I bet?

You’re getting off the track, Manuel. If it worries you that you aren’t doing anything important, become a crusader. Equal rights for androids. Up the androids! You bet, up the androids! That’s unworthy of you. You’re probably right.

We hear the gongs and we know our time is up.

We drop out of the net. We slide into our own heads. I’m told they do this part very, very, very carefully, getting everybody into his own head.

As far as I know I am Manuel Krug.

They ease us out. There is a re-adaptation chamber on the far side of the net. We sit around for three, four hours, getting used to being individuals again. We look at each other strangely. Mostly we don’t look at each other at all. Someone has been laughing too much with my mouth.

In the re-adaptation chamber, they have more of those new toys, the blunt-edged cubes. Mine sends me a series of messages.

THE TIME IS NOW 0900 HOURS IN KARACHI

IS THIS THE FIRST TIME YOU’VE MET YOURSELF?

YOUR FATHER PROBABLY WOULD LIKE TO HEAR FROM YOU

ONLY THE TRUE ANSWERS ARE FALSE

THEY HAVE SETTLED THE CASE OUT OF COURT

ONCE WE WERE ALL A GREAT DEAL WISER

The machine bores and frightens me. I hurl it aside. I am almost certain that I am neither Cadge Foster nor Lloyd Tennyson, but I worry about the toad. I will go to Lilith as soon as I leave here. Perhaps I should speak to Clissa first. My father must be at his tower. How is that great erection coming along? Will he soon have messages from the stars to read on the winter nights?

“Gentlemen, we hope you’ll shortly return,” the smiling alpha tells us.

We go out. I am they. They are I. We are we.

We clasp hands solemnly. We head for the transmats. Virtuously, dutifully, I go to Clissa.