SEVENTEEN

Johnny’s head was hurting. Words and pics danced from his touchscreen as he worked.

He paused to rub his eyes.

He was starting to really hate Jesus. Researching the guy was proving to be a royal pain in the ass.

His main source, the bible, was long out of print. You couldn’t even download it. A couple of second hand stores over on Cathedral seemed to stock it, but Johnny had neither desire nor inclination to leaf through a hard copy.

Even the Net lacked interest in Jesus, and you could get all kinds of shit there. Sure, there was some data available, mostly from nut jobs still proselytising the real Jesus, but it varied widely concerning key facts and proved ultimately useless. Extremists were imaginative if nothing else.

Johnny tried to remember what he was taught in school. During the war, Jesus was the veritable linchpin of The West; a principled and confident leader; a model patriot. This Jesus had men and women signing up for battle in their droves. But there was little substance to be found here either: the HW Jesus was merely a symbol or flag; the soldier’s muse.

Bored, Johnny leaned back from the screen and stretched his arms. One hand connected with his coffee cup and, before he could steady it, the damn thing toppled and spilled across the desk, burning him in the process.

‘Shit!’

Johnny shifted in his chair, sucking on a scalded finger.

He glanced round, noticing Garçon make a beeline across the room.

He pulled his finger out of his mouth, tried to look professional.

‘So how’s my favourite code guy?’ Garçon announced.

Several office heads turned to glare at Johnny before returning quickly to their screens.

Johnny straightened, cleared his throat, said, ‘Just researching, sir.’

Garçon smiled, his eyes falling upon the spilled coffee.

‘Good man,’ he said. ‘Let’s make our Jesus authentic! The Real Deal!’ And then, with a playful pat of Johnny’s back, the company man was gone.

Johnny’s eyes remained on the coffee, continuing its journey away from the toppled cup. He was suddenly fascinated by it. How it flowed, how it gathered at the edge of the desk before dripping down onto the floor, where it gathered again, each drip helping to spread the little pool further across the floor.

He had found since Becky’s death that simple things, mundane things, became significant. Sacred. Profound, even.

He reached for a tissue and started to mop.

He paused, put the tissues down and looked at the e-mail APP on his touchscreen. There it was; the tiny envelope in the corner with the number 4 beside it. One of those e-mails had been sent by Becky and it remained unopened.

Johnny stared at the little icon. What if Becky’s e-mail didn’t contain something nice? What if the words it held were condescending or accusatory or spiteful? What if Becky had made some declaration, some sort of statement in this e-mail which would change everything between them? Or, worse still, what if it was just a mundane message saying nothing at all about anything: a permanent reminder of how stale their lives had become towards the end.

Johnny picked out another tissue and started cleaning again. He sighed, scrunching the used paper into a ball and lobbing it into the bin.

He leaned back in his chair suddenly feeling very deflated.

‘What’s happening?’

It was Sarah. Her face was flushed. She chewed on her bottom lip sheepishly, like she knew she was bothering him. Johnny wished she would just go away. He knew it was unfair, but in that brief moment Sarah Lee suddenly represented everything that was wrong to him. The spilt coffee. Garçon’s ridiculous brief. The e-mail from Becky still unopened.

‘Nothing’s happening,’ he told her

‘How’s the “Big Secret Project” going?’ Sarah made air-quotes with her fingers.

‘It’s slow.’

‘What’s it about?’

‘Jesus.’

The word sounded ridiculous to Johnny. Comical.

‘Jesus?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘Jesus Fucking Christ.’

She laughed, snorting a little.

Johnny smiled, despite himself.

‘How am I meant to write a Jesus program?’ he said, opening up to her. ‘I mean, no one can agree on who or what he was supposed to be! Every commentator has defined him differently for –’ he threw his hands into the air, exasperated, ‘For centuries! And I’m meant to write his AI in a week?!’

Sarah had stopped laughing. Her face was serious.

‘What now?’ Johnny asked.

‘Nothing!’ But her face had a guilty shine about it, like she was holding something back.

‘Tell me, Sarah.’

‘Well, it’s just . . .’

She pulled closer to him and he could smell her perfume. It was a familiar scent, floral yet not overbearing. He remembered Becky wearing something similar.

‘This is my fault, Johnny. I convinced Garçon you could do this and now I’ve put more stress on you. That’s the last thing I wanted to do and I’m –’

‘Worried,’ he finished for her. ‘Well, you needn’t be, Sarah. This will be good for me. You said so yourself when you came round to see me. This will keep me busy. Not to mention pay the bills.’

He thought of those yahoos and the stolen card. How empty his bank account looked.

‘Just be careful, Johnny. Garçon’s acting strange. You’re acting strange too, I guess. I don’t like it.’

‘I’m acting strange?!’

‘I’m serious,’ Sarah said, and her eyes confirmed it. ‘There’s something about VR that I’ve never liked. I think it changes people, users who spend too long in their virtual worlds and not enough time in the real world. Don’t let it do that to you, Johnny. I know you’re looking for escapism right now, but too much VR could be a very dangerous thing.’

‘Don’t let Garçon hear you say that,’ Johnny ribbed. ‘Or it could be you he’s firing, not me!’

Sarah rolled her eyes. She went to walk away, then paused. Thought for a moment, then turned to him again. .

‘It’s like water,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Water,’ she repeated. ‘It changes according to how you use it.’

But Johnny was still confused.

‘The Jesus AI. Think about it from an energy perspective,’ she continued. ‘In the solar pyramids, we boil water and it becomes steam. And in the winter, it becomes ice or hail or snow.’ Sarah moved back over to Johnny’s desk, lifted his coffee cup and shook it, little drops of brown moisture showering the floor. ‘And if we add coffee granules to it when it’s hot, it becomes coffee. So, water can be anything you want it to be, Johnny. It changes according to how we use it.’

Johnny thought for a moment, digested what she was saying. Then he stood up, snapped his fingers.

He remembered reading somewhere on the Net how Jesus was referred to as the Water of Life. It was one of those weird titles they gave him, something that meant nothing.

Until now, that was.

Johnny grabbed Sarah, planted his lips on her forehead, beaming.

‘You’re a genius.’

 

He wired his cell, linking to a file named MAGIC MOMENTS. Johnny was the type of guy to have various projects on the go at once. Some were little more than random thoughts, vaguely realised before being shelved. Others were closer to being finished. MAGIC MOMENTS was somewhere in between; designed to provide the user with a treasured experience from their own memory, something they could relive over and over.

But it went beyond just a simple replay.

In today’s VR obsessed world, criminal techs would employ viral code to infiltrate the files and data of users. In extreme cases, the very minds of users came under attack, on occasion leaving the user mind-wiped, or comatose. Such events put many off the VR experience. Others, perhaps less cautious or more desperate for the world that had become so central to their existence, carried on regardless, perhaps signing up for one of the many security packages that flooded the market in the wake of these threats.

Johnny’s code was always straight. He never dabbled in viral code.

In fact, in many ways the code he used for MAGIC MOMENTS was anti-viral. Instead of infiltrating the mind of the user, the VR was shaped by it, a sponge to every whim, creating an experience even better than the real thing. As the user interacted with MAGIC MOMENTS, the code responded to their desires like commands, even allowing the event to become different, more elaborate or valuable than what it had been in the user’s actual reality.

Johnny lifted the wiretap and applied it to his face. His vision gave way, sparking up the program’s simulation.

The VR kicked into gear, displaying a blank, underdeveloped screen. A menu appeared right in front of Johnny’s virtual eyes, the audio encouraging him to choose BEGIN when he was ready.

It was Sarah who reminded Johnny of this code. Its basic engine had evolved into the VR Counsellor program, one of several bombs Garçon had dropped on an apathetic market over the years. But Johnny wondered if in its root form, he could adapt this engine to give Garçon his Jesus.

Hell, it would save a lot of time.

The VR was stark, at first, until the code began to work its magic, interacting with Johnny’s mind via the wiretap to create his own magic moment. And of course, his magic moment involved Becky.

The background filled in, slowly, creating its own vector wireframes before adding the shading and colour.

Johnny found himself in a restaurant.

In front of him, a waiter without a face was speaking, graphics evolving as he welcomed Johnny to the restaurant.

He asked to take Johnny’s coat. Johnny went to remove it, helped by the waiter. It was a smart woollen coat, one he would only wear on a night out.

Underneath, Johnny wore a flecked jacket and strides, a high-collared shirt with a thin PVC tie. Grey slip-ons on his feet. It was a brand new outfit, throwback style. He’d bought the whole shebang in Cathedral that very day, knowing how much Becky liked it when he made the effort.

The waiter returned from the cloakroom, more of his face now visible. His lips were moving now. Soon, his eyes held colour. They were kind eyes. He seemed genuinely pleased to see Johnny, and Johnny wondered whether that was how the waiter had actually been, or whether it was how Johnny wanted to remember him. This was the beauty of the code.

‘I’ll show you to your seat, sir. Madam has already arrived.’

Johnny’s heart jumped, a cold sweat breaking across his skin. His real skin. In the VR, only his hands were sweating, one clenched around a small plastic box, hidden in his strides pocket.

It was her hair he saw first. She’d had it cut later on, in the real world, but now, as Johnny approached from behind, it hung over the back of her chair. It reminded him of waterfalls. He felt his heartbeat racing and wondered if it had been quite as fast on that actual evening.

She turned and he saw her for the first time since the hospital bed. His chest tightened, like something had become stuck: a huge knot or lump of food. Johnny paused and the VR paused with him, the stupid, idiotic audio interrupting, asking if he wanted to continue.

Wanted to? He needed to, for God’s sake. How could they ask him that?!

He shouted this at the audio voice, the VR kicking in again, as per command.

Johnny realised how stupid he was being: there was nothing real to be angry at here, nothing tangible. He looked around the restaurant. The decor, the other people, the smells of food, the waiter, the table.

Becky.

All of this was code.

But still he wanted it.

The waiter pulled out a chair for him with vector hands. But Johnny didn’t notice, didn’t care.

It was all about Becky now. She was perfect. A flawless imitation. No flickering graphics or uneven colour tone. Perfect.

Johnny’s hands were now wringing wet, seeping through to the skin of his leg. He remembered this exact moment from the actual night; how he worried she might notice.

But for now Becky wasn’t bothered.

She glanced up at the waiter briefly before dipping her head back into her menu.

She ignored Johnny.

He remembered being late that night, how she’d been angry with him.

So they sat in awkward silence for a while, Becky huffing. Johnny couldn’t remember if that was how it played out at the time, or if he’d tried to talk her out of it, like he usually did. But the VR, the doll, didn’t care about any of that. Perfect though it looked, the doll had no concept of reality.

It was just code, after all.

Of course, right now to Johnny, it was a lot more than code. This could have been Becky sitting opposite him. Even her perfume was right, that same floral scent he remembered Sarah wearing.

No, not Sarah, he thought. Get her out of your mind.

The VR held fast; Becky’s face undisturbed. If anything, the doll became even more like Becky. Her eyes widened a little, subtly flipping between various shades, finding their natural colour.

‘Wanna pour yourself a glass of wine?’ she said, ‘been working my way through the bottle. It’s half gone.’ She looked up at Johnny. ‘You’ll be late to your own funeral,’ she added, and her face lifted in that way it would when she was ready to come out of a huff and forgive him.

He realised he had forgotten that about her. Johnny had forgotten a lot and it scared him.

‘Sorry,’ he heard himself say and couldn’t be sure if it was his own voice or the code’s. God knows, in the heat of VR it was pretty damn hard to tell the difference. ‘Work was a killer. Garçon –’

‘Garçon, Garçon, Garçon.’ She reached across the table, took his hand. ‘Did you tell Garçon that your beautiful girlfriend was waiting for you in Titanic’s finest restaurant?’

It was the first time the VR had tripped up. Her manner seemed too precise, too perfect. Becky had always been sharp but he wondered whether she was this sharp.

Goddamnit! Why couldn’t he just enjoy it?! Why couldn’t he just go with the flow, relive all he could remember about her, about them and this night?!

Johnny reached one hand into his pocket, found the small square box. Still there. He knew that was something that actually happened. He had gripped that box so tight all night that his nails left little scratches on it.

‘Have you ordered yet?’ he asked her.

‘Nope. Still looking.’

Her freckles were almost hidden, her lips bright red.

She was wearing his favourite dress, green chiffon with a silver zip.

Johnny wondered if that dress was with the others now, packed tightly into black plastic bin bags, waiting to be dumped (he absolutely couldn’t face giving them to goodwill – to think of someone else wearing her clothes, making use of her things).

He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Were she real and not a VR doll, she would have probably noticed, become aware. And as soon as Johnny thought that, she did become aware, playing with her hair, blinking then looking at him.

‘What?’ she said.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Just . . . Well, it’s just that you’re beautiful.’

‘Oh shut up.’

‘Seriously. You know I love that dress on you.’

‘Not so bad yourself, Johnny boy. That a new suit?’

He was getting into it now, relaxing. Soon, they were talking freely, going through the motions, Johnny giving himself over to the code, unable to stop himself, Becky playing the role more fluidly, more naturally.

At times, he would forget she was a doll; forget he was in VR, instead thinking himself actually there in the restaurant; worrying about the box in his pocket; about when he should take it out and place it on the table, and what she would say when he did.

Becky ordered the salmon with a sushi starter. She loved fish, would have eaten it every meal if she could. Johnny got the same because, whatever he had done at the time, in the VR he didn’t as much as glance at the menu. The waiter took their orders, a blue square flickering in his hair, vector hands holding his notepad. He brought the food and set it on the table, but Johnny didn’t touch it. And, of course, Becky only commented on this whenever he himself had clocked it. She devoured her own meal, even reaching across to dig into his. In reality, her appetite had always been good. In VR, she seemed ravenous.

They finished and the waiter took away their plates, his still untouched. When Becky asked if he wanted dessert, he could feel his guts twist. For a moment he wondered if he was going to be sick. And then he wondered if you could be sick in VR.

But you could be anything in VR.

She was still looking at him, patiently waiting for an answer, and it was then that he reached into his pocket; retrieved that little plastic box and set it on the table.

‘How about this for dessert?’ he said and she looked at the box, puzzlement in her face, and he pushed it closer to her as if she hadn’t seen it; as if in pushing it closer, there was more chance she would accept it.

Johnny watched as her lips opened, as her eyes lifted to meet his, a mixture of fear and excitement and intrigue and . . .

But he couldn’t finish.

Johnny pulled the wiretap off, switching back to his own vision.

He was back in the open-plan.

He rubbed his eyes, trying to refocus on the real world.

The office was busy now. A guy called Colin wandered by, smiling at Johnny.

But Johnny didn’t smile back.

He was still thinking about the VR. About Becky and the little plastic box.

He remembered her panicking, reaching into her handbag, retrieving her cell and syncing the bill. How the waiter had come over and they had all ignored the little box on the table together, like it wasn’t really there.

It was then that it clicked with Johnny.

Although he made it through the rest of the day, Johnny didn’t do much. He couldn’t focus, feeling sick, the fallout from the VR both heavy and light in his stomach.

At five, he left work and returned to his apartment.

He ruffled through the drawers again. He opened all those plastic bags with her stuff. He found her handbags, her purse. He opened them up, finding the picture he was looking for, the one she carried with her everywhere she went.

It was from their first holiday together.

Her hair was still long, freckles more obvious with the sun.

And she was smiling. Properly smiling, showing her teeth.

Johnny didn’t think he had any tears left. But he cried again that night.