Idolon (3 page)

Music swelled the chest of Giles Atherton, filling him to the point of bursting. He felt himself rising up with the rest of the Right to Light congregation, all of them straining as one to be with God.

They were all drawn to that center, like iron to a magnet. The force was there, always pulling. There was no escaping it. The only release was to give oneself over to it.

And yet Atherton remained trapped within his body. God wasn't ready for him to cast off his flesh. Not yet. He had work to do. The lightness he felt was a promise of the joy that awaited him after he carried out his earthly duties.

For the service, he had chosen a patrician suit and philmed himself in a pseudoself based on Martin Luther and John Brown, in order that the spirit of those men, long dead, might enter him. By casting himself in their image he became something other, greater, than himself. He not only resurrected them in mind, but in body. In that way he was born fully into the body of Christ. Perhaps the same was true for all men of faith. They embodied those who had gone before, an extension not only of their faith but of their lives. That way their work on earth continued, unbroken, as if they had never died. The torch passed from one hand to the next, from one generation to the next, down through the ages.

Atherton combed precise fingers through his cloud-white hair, a delicate puff that contrasted sharply with the graphite-hard eyes and charcoal- gray suit. He turned to his wife, seated next to him. Lisbeth's face was uplifted, turned to the light from the chrome-and-glass ceiling, her eyes folded shut in prayer. The sharp-edged lines of her Tamara de Lempicka-inspired philm fractured the light around him as her lips moved in prayer, silently reciting the words she was thoughtcasting to the Church's datician. Like a lot of people, she needed to subvocalize a mental command for it to be clearly annunciated and accurately translated by the nanoelectrodes in her brain-computer interface.

It was the same petition she had offered up every week for the last three months, since the disappearance of their daughter. Atherton looked for the words on the d-splay screens mounted on the three steel-frame crucifixes, lined up in a row from tallest to shortest, that supported the tentlike canopy of the church. The d-splays flickered with vidIO images taken from classic Billy Graham revivals,
700 Club
episodes, and Promise Keeper rallies.

Sometimes it seemed as if the images of luminous rapture from those programs pierced his flesh to take up residence in his soul. The upraised hands, the tears of joy, and the bowed heads, respectful, reverent, and at peace. They lived in him, like flames feeding on wood, consuming him. Some nights the intensity of their burning left him feverish, his mouth dry, his thoughts addled by a parched, throbbing ache.

Fuel for the fire, he thought. In the end that was what everyone was. Burn with the holy spirit or burn in hell. Those were the options.

Atherton refused to believe that Apphia had run away of her own free will. She had been tempted, misguided.

He had seen it coming. He hadn't been blind. He had done what he could, his only regret was that it hadn't been enough. He should have been stronger.

_______

"What's wrong with F8?" Apphia fumed.

"You tell me." Atherton wanted her to think for herself. He wanted her to see the truth on her own, without having it pointed out to her all the time.

"Nothing!" Apphia stamped her foot. "Everything is a sin to you. Just because I ware something doesn't mean I'm going to act in a certain way or be exactly like whoever I'm waring."

"We had an agreement." By allowing her to get 'skinned, he had hoped she would choose images that would bring her closer to God.

"Other parents let their kids screen stuff. It doesn't
mean
anything. It doesn't turn them into bad people."

He had caught her philmed in one of the proscribed downloads she had agreed not to ware in exchange for his permission, "Moment of F8." A passage from Romans condensed on the surface of his thoughts. " 'For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature and not the Creator.'"

Apphia fisted her hands at her sides. "She's no different than the people you philm yourself in."

"She's a false idol," he said. "A graven image."

“And the people you ware aren't? Do you actually think they're going to make you a better person? Most of them were assholes."

His face flushed. He sensed Lisbeth eavesdropping on the conversation from the living room, and her presence tempered his response. "The subject is closed," he stated.

Apphia spat out a laugh. "It was never open."

"That's enough, young lady." He pointed up the stairs to her room. "We'll discuss this when you've had a chance to calm down." In the meantime he'd activate the parental controls in the 'skin to prevent any further downloads.

"You're the one having the stroke," she said, "not me."

_______

Finally, he saw Lisbeth's plea appear near the apex of the cross on a panel reserved for individual entreaties.

Apphia. Fifteen years old. Missing for three months. Please pray for her safety and return home. Soon!

The prayer rose and dissipated. A few moments later another prayer, entered by someone else in the congregation, replaced it.

Atherton found Lisbeth's hand, bundled her fingers in his, and squeezed. "Are you okay?"

She nodded, then swallowed, her throat muscles working. The tendons in her neck stood out, as taut as steel wires.

"Everything will be fine," he said.

"I know." She sighed, but remained tense. Her trust in God wasn't absolute. Not like his.

It helped that he had a plan. God helped those who helped themselves.

"You want to tell me what's going on?" Pelayo said.

Uri glanced up from the immersion tank he was calibrating, a look of irritation on his face. "The usual."

In other words, don't ask, don't tell. Pelayo had signed a comprehensive liability waiver and nondisclosure agreement that was as binding as a straightjacket.

"Any restrictions I need to know about?" Pelayo said. "Philms I should avoid, any contraindicated ware?"

"Only one," Uri said. The skintech grinned, revealing rows of shark teeth. As far as Pelayo could tell, the implants were real. Pelayo imagined the asswipe polishing them every day. "You have to abstain."

"From what?"

The grin sharpened. "What do you think?"

Pelayo frowned in disbelief. "You're kidding."

Uri's smile slackened, going limp. "We don't want you dirty-dicking yourself."

"You serious? No intimate contact?"

Uri shrugged. "If you don't like it, no problem. I can always find someone else to take your place. Plenty of test subjects out there wanting to screen the latest philm."

Pelayo sniffed. "How long are we talkin'?"

"Six weeks, maybe longer. Depends on the results we get."

Pelayo shook his head. Unfuckingbelievable.

Uri spread his hands. "Those are the terms and conditions. Your choice. Take it or leave it."

_______

The test philm required new e-skin, not simply an upgrade to his existing ware. The old 'skin needed to be stripped off.

"Nothing you haven't gone through before," Uri said with calculated indifference.

Knowing what to expect didn't make the process any easier to face.

Pelayo floated in the tank, splayed on a bed of surgical gel. Despite anesthetics, the viral aspic burned. Uri was taking his time. The air in the tank reeked of honeysuckle mixed with formaldehyde.

"Can we get on with this?"

"Patience," Uri cooed. He blinked, parsing a new internal readout. "We don't want any mistakes."

Pelayo shivered as the burn grew cold. Son of a bitch...

"Okay." Uri straightened.

At the same time, Pelayo felt himself sink. Gel oozed up around his mouth, nose, and eyes— swallowing him whole. Like amber encasing an insect, it cut off his breath, sealing it in the moist coffin of his body...

_______

He came awake suddenly, flat on his back on the sponge pad at the bottom of the tank. The surgical
gel was draining away like bathtub water, taking with it flakes of peeled yellow dopant and the crimson threads of severed synthapse connections. Leaving behind the cellophane-smooth gray of virgin e-skin. Under the translucent membrane he could see his own naked skin, pallid and puckered, bleached of all color to provide as plain a background as possible for the philm images that would eventually pixilate and texture the 'skin.

He gagged in air. Choked on raw oxygen, then jackknifed into a sitting position, veils of gel clinging to his arms and legs like tattered cloth. An acid bead of saliva dribbled down his chin as cinegraphic images appeared on the membrane, blurry at first, then slowly sharpening.

"... fuck outta here," he said, the words sputtering out, frothy and bilious.

"Take it easy," Uri said, bending over the tank, his gaze drilling down like the lenses of a microscope. "Everything's fine. All we got to do now is download the philm and you'll be good to go."

The grin was back, mocking, carnivorous.

_______

The 'skin came with a soot-gray suit, the creases in the pant legs origami-sharp, a white silk shirt, and red silk tie. While he slipped on graphene-covered dress shoes, Uri brought him the jacket and overcoat.

"They part of the ware?" he asked.

Uri nodded. "No different from the 'skin. You got menu options for fabric type, color, and pattern. Same for the shirt, shoes, and tie."

"Simage capability?" Pelayo asked. In addition to philm, most new 'skin—even street jobs
—
included a tightly woven mesh of nanotrodes that mapped the topology and kinetic movement of the 'skin to generate a simulated image for use online.

"Fully integrated," Uri said. "You can even pick and choose which 'skin options you want to cast. That it?"

"All I can think of, for now."

"There may be a couple of updates," Uri said, "last-minute wrinkles we're in the process of ironing out. If that happens, you need to come in as soon as you get the call. Same day. Is that clear?"

Pelayo gave a pro forma nod. "I hear ya." Same old Uri, keeping him on a tight leash so he could yank his chain.

_______

On the surface, the philm was conservative, an uninspired adaptation of 1940s or 1950s film noir. A bleak grayscale pseudoself sporting a knife-edged mustache and black, slicked-back hair. The face of an analog wristwatch was stenciled on his left wrist, mechanically resolute gears grinding out seconds, minutes, hours.

Inside was different. He couldn't put his finger on it, the feeling. Some odd acid-etched pattern of raw tics and urges. Too new yet to make their wishes known. That would come in time, a sense of direction, of place, in the world... the main reason people wore philm in the first place. Belonging. It made them part of a cast, a global cinematic tribe with shared interests and values.

It was always a little disconcerting at first. The jagged uncertainty and wrenched dislocation that ranie with new philm and undebugged 'skin.

Pelayo stepped from IBT's front lobby onto the sidewalk and accessed the public datalib with a quick mental command. Half a second later the spectral voice of a datician tickled his earfeed. "How may I assist you?"

"What can you tell me about the source material for the philm I'm currently waring?" he said. In the past, source images had been a good indicator of the market IBT was aiming for and what he could expect from the philm.

"One moment, please." A nearby mask, an Italianate muse, drifted down to look at him. "It's a composite," the datician said. "The persona doesn't appear to be drawn from one single film, but several."

"Such as?"

"Spencer Tracy in
Fury.
Orson Welles in
The Lady from Shanghai.
Burt Lancaster in
Elmer Gantry.
There may be others."

Pelayo had never heard of any of them. He squinted at the downloaded images projected on his retinas. "I don't get it."

"Explain, please?"

"The purpose of the philm. Why come out with an obscure composite?" Normally, philms had a distinct, readily identifiable character or brand name, like Scandalicious, F8, or Marilyn Monroe.

"Most composite images try to integrate a number of thematically or symbolically related tropes," the datician said.

"Maybe," Pelayo allowed. Something was going on. Whatever it was, it didn't fit into the normal prerelease pattern. Who would download the philm if there was no recognizable lifestyle, pseudoself, or ideology people could identify with and plug into?

Lagrante, Pelayo thought. He might have some ideas. If not, he'd know someone who did or could find out.

A face in front of him morphed into the newest downloadable image of F8. At the same time, the philm manifested on half a dozen other faces in the surrounding crowd as the autoupdate kicked in, instantiating in every cast member who'd preordered the latest release.

"Slavation is near."

Pelayo's head snapped around. The TV stood a few meters away, under the pink awning of a flower kiosk philmed in yellow polka dots and blue daisies.

"Great," he muttered. Just what he needed. He loosened the razor wire on the inside of his belt in case things got nasty. It wouldn't be the first time a philmhead had come after him, hoping to rip a copy of whatever new ware he was testing.

Pelayo started across the street, saw that the cluster of TVs hadn't moved, and veered onto Pacific Avenue, hoping to lose himself in the crowd.

He walked quickly, passing art galleries, clothing stores,
cafés,
and gift shops philmed in cheerful wa-tercolors. Two blocks later, reflected in the oblique window of a fajizza bar and grill, he spotted the TV doggedly trailing after him, a featureless shadow only partly dissolved by the sunlight.