Idlewild by Nick Sagan

Author:Nick Sagan [Sagan, Nick]
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science fiction, General, Fiction, Fiction - Science Fiction, Science Fiction - General, Virtual Reality, Amnesiacs
ISBN: 9780451461988
Publisher: Roc
Published: 2010-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

“Maestro’s here.” Pandora pointed — blurry, yes, but there he stood. Arms folded across his chest. Red shimmer coming off him like heat. Not a happy camper, my friend Maestro, not at all. I hit the jammer again.

Click.

Nothing happened.

The jig was up.

Together we watched the system self-correct, glitches retreating to nothingness, blur resolving into focus once again. I palmed the jammer and rose to my feet.

Maestro’s anger was tangible, electric, a living thing. He looked capable of anything. Champagne immediately ratted me out. “This one,” she spat, jabbing a finger at me as if I were some nameless, virulent pest. “And that one.” She pointed out Mercutio, who immediately blew her a kiss.

“They’ve been hacking,” she reported. Very satisfied with her self, I’m sure. At no point did she implicate Tyler — true love — but then again, Merc and I had pioneered the code for secret exits and jammers; Ty really hadn’t done that much. Had he? I couldn’t remember.

“There are going to be changes,” promised Maestro.

The words sounded ominous enough that if we really were in a horror movie, they’d have been followed by a clap of thunder.

“Yodel-oh-hui-dee!”

Merc was yodeling at Maestro. Actually yodeling, the ridiculous fuck. And brandishing something curious in his hand. Not a jammer. It was a sleek, gold instrument I’d never seen before.

“Hodl-oh-ooh-dee, hodl-ay-ee-dee,” he yodeled and my little dog Pumpkin howled along. God help me, I found it funny. Maestro didn’t.

“There are going to be changes,” our IVR teacher raged. “Changes I should have implemented a long time ago.”

“Hey, Mae$tro,” Merc yelled, “change this!”

He pulled the trigger and the IVR shattered.

By shattered, I mean everything lurched violently out of sync. My friends moved at incongruous speeds, too slow, too fast. They spoke and the pitch came out wrong — staccato or vibrato. Poor dubbing, a bad chop-sockey film.

People and places popped in and out like streaks of lightning. I was translocating, everywhere and nowhere at once. Beyond my back yard with the tiki lights, I sat under an apple tree with Sir Isaac Newton; simultaneously, I rode an Arabian charger across the Sahara; I stood under the fluorescent lights of the science lab where I’d dissected my first butterfly; I floated across the Chinvat Bridge. The system was going berserk. It called up multiple programs, a plethora of IVR lessons and personal routines, but everything at once with no rhyme or reason. I was rafting the Mississippi with Huck Finn; nightgaunts bore me up into the sky; I shot Lazarus; Maestro taught me the difference between right and isosceles triangles; ducks took bread from my hand; Jasmine kissed me on the lips; I stretched out in a booth at Twain’s.

All at the same time.

The checkout bagger with the steely-gray skin called out to me, a black-and-white figure in a world of color, crying out as if to warn me of something monstrous, but his words were lost in a cyclone of noise. And he was from my dream.

Shattered.

Oh, I felt sick. It was a blow for revolution, or one hell of a stupid prank.

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