The Heart Goes Last - Страница 53

White Russians featured at the bars, and dancers in faux-fur pasties bumping to Slavic rock on several of the gambling tables. Four theatres inside: the shows now make more than the gambling, according to Rob, though they make you walk through the gambling on the off chance you’ll be seized by the devil of risk.

“This way,” says Lucinda, “I’ve been here before.” She steers him toward the theatre where their show will shortly begin.

Stan keeps an eye out for any bald guys with sunglasses, but so far, so good. They make it past the slots and the blackjack and the table dancers without mishap, then into the auditorium. He settles Lucinda into her seat; she puts on her rhinestone-studded reading glasses and peers at the souvenir program.

Stan glances around, locates the exits in case he has to run. There are at least a dozen other Elvises present in the auditorium, each with a crone under his wing. There’s also a scattering of Marilyns, in red dresses and silver-blond wigs, paired with elderly dudes. Some of them have their arms around the shoulders of their Marilyns; the Marilyns are throwing back their heads, doing the iconic open-mouthed laugh, flashing their Marilyn teeth. He has to admit it’s sexy, that laugh, even though he knows how fake it is.

“Now we’ll make some conversation,” says Lucinda Quant. “How did you get into this business?” Her voice has the neutrality and edge of a professional interviewer, which is what she claims to be.

Watch it, Stan, he tells himself. Remember those four bald guys. Too many questions means danger. “It’s a long story,” he says. “I just do this when I’m between engagements. I’m an actor, really. In musical comedy.” That’s a sure-fire yawner: everyone here is.

Luckily for him, the show begins.

Requisition

Early on the Monday morning, Jocelyn comes over to the house. Charmaine’s had a shower and is dressed for work, with a white frilly blouse and all, but she isn’t feeling up to scratch – it must be a hangover, though she’s had so few of those in her life she isn’t sure. Aurora is making scrambled eggs and coffee, even though Charmaine has said she doesn’t think she could look an egg in the face. She has a dim memory of what they discussed the night before. She wishes she could recall more of it.

“There’s an update,” says Jocelyn.

“Coffee?” says Aurora.

“Thanks,” says Jocelyn. She inspects Charmaine. “What’s happened? You look like shit, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“It’s the grief,” Aurora says, and she and Charmaine both giggle.

Jocelyn takes this in. “Okay, good story. Stick to it if he asks,” she says. “I can see the two of you got into the liquor cabinet. I’ll get rid of the evidence for you, empties are my thing. Now listen up.”

They sit at the kitchen table. Charmaine tries a sip of coffee. She’s not ready to tackle the egg yet.

“Here’s his plan. Charmaine, he’ll tell you he’s taking a business trip to Las Vegas. He’ll ask you to book some tickets for you as well. He’ll say he requires your services onsite.”

“What kind of services?” Charmaine asks nervously. “Is he going to trap me in a hotel room, and then …”

“Nothing so simple,” says Jocelyn. “As you know, he’s through with sexbots, for his personal use. He’s moving to the next frontier.”

“This is what I was telling you,” says Aurora. “Last night.”

Charmaine’s recollections of last night are a little fuzzy. No, they are very fuzzy. What was it she and Aurora were drinking? Maybe there was some sort of drug in it. There was something about Aurora’s face coming off, but that can’t be right. “Frontier?” she says. All she can think of is Western movies.

Jocelyn brings out her PosiPad, turns it on, calls up a video. “Sorry for the quality,” she says, “but you can hear quite well.” There’s a pixilated Ed standing in front of a large boardroom touchscreen that says Possibilibots in writing that scrawls across the space, explodes into fireworks, then begins again. He’s addressing a small gathering of men in suits, visible only as the backs of heads.

“I have it on good authority,” he’s saying in his most persuasive manner, “that the interface experience, even with our most advanced models, is and can only ever be an unconvincing substitute for the real thing. A resort for the desperate, perhaps” – here there’s some laughter from the backs of the heads – “but surely we can do better than that!”

Murmuring; the haircuts nod.

Ed continues: “The human body is complex, my friends – more complex than we can hope to duplicate with what is, and can only be, a mechanical contrivance. And it is driven by the human brain, which is the most sophisticated, the most intricate construct in the known universe. We’ve been killing ourselves trying to approximate that combo! But maybe we got hold of the wrong end of the stick!”

“How do you mean?” asks one of the heads.

“What I mean is, why build a self-standing device when a self-standing device already exists? Why reinvent the wheel? Why not just make those wheels roll where we want them to? In a way that is beneficial to all. The greatest possible happiness of the greatest possible number – that’s what Possibilibots stands for, am I right?”

“Cut to the chase,” says one of the haircuts. “You’re not on TV, we don’t need the sermon.”

“What’s wrong with our current position? I thought we were raking it in,” says another.

“We are, we are,” says Ed. “But we can rake it in even more. Okay, short form: why not take an existing body and brain, and, by a painless intervention, cause that entity – that person – not to put too fine a point on it, that hot babe who won’t come across for you – cause her to home in on you and you alone, as if she thinks you’re the sexiest hunk she’s ever seen?”

“Is this some kind of a perfume?” says another voice. “With the pheromones, like with moths? I tried that, it’s crap. I attracted a raccoon.”

“No shit! A real raccoon? Or just a dame with …”

“If it’s a new oxytocin –Viagara pill – they don’t last. The next morning she’ll go back to thinking you’re a douche.”

“What happened with the raccoon? That would be something new!” Laughter.

“No, no,” says Ed. “Let’s settle down. It’s not a pill, and believe it or not, it isn’t science fiction. The technique they’re refining at our Las Vegas clinic is based on the work that’s been done on the erasure of painful memories, in vets, child-abuse survivors, and so forth. They discovered that not only can they pinpoint various fears and painful associations in the brain and then excise them, but they can also wipe out your previous love object and imprint you with a different one.”

The camera moves to a very pretty woman in a hospital bed. She’s asleep. Then her eyes open, move sideways. “Oh,” she says, smiling with joy. “You’re here! At last! I love you!”

“Wow, that simple,” says a haircut. “She’s not acting?”

“No, says Ed. “This is one that didn’t work out; we tried it onsite here, but it was too soon, the technique hadn’t been perfected. Our Vegas team is up to speed on it now! But it illustrates the principle.” Segue left: The woman is pressing her lips to a blue teddy bear in a passionate kiss.

“That’s Veronica!” Charmaine almost shrieks. “Oh my god! She’s fallen in love with knitwear!”

“Wait,” says Jocelyn. “There’s more.”

“I don’t know what saboteur gave her that bear,” Ed says. “Trouble is, this thing works on anything with two eyes. The guy who ordered the hit … ordered the job … ordered the operation was very annoyed when he turned up, but he was too late. She’d already imprinted. Timing is everything.”

“This is dynamite,” says one of the heads. “You could have a harem, you could have …”

“So you designate the target …”

“You requisition it …”

“Into the van, then the plane,” says Ed, “off to the Vegas clinic, a quick needle, and then – a whole new life!”

“Fan-fucking-tastic!”

Jocelyn turns off the PosiPad. “That’s it, in a nutshell,” she says.

“You mean, they’re snatching them?” says Charmaine. “Out of their own lives? The women?”

“That’s a blunt way of putting it,” says Jocelyn. “But not just women, it’s a unisex thing. Yes, that would be the idea. But the subject doesn’t mind, because their previous love attachments have been nullified.”

“So that’s why Ed wants her to go on the business trip to Vegas?” says Aurora.

“He hasn’t told me in so many words,” says Jocelyn, “but it’s a fair guess.”

“You mean, he wants to fix it so I don’t love Stan any more,” Charmaine says. She hears her own voice: it’s so sad. If that happened, Stan would become a stranger to her. Their whole past, their wedding, living in their car, everything they went through together … maybe she’d remember it, but it wouldn’t mean anything. It would be like listening to someone else, someone she doesn’t even know, someone boring.

“Yes. You wouldn’t love Stan any more. You’d love Ed instead,” says Jocelyn. “You’d dote on him.”

This is like one of those love potions in the old fairy-tale books at Grandma Win’s, thinks Charmaine. The kind where you get imprisoned by a toad prince. In those stories you always got the true love back at the end, as long as you had a magic silver dress or something; but in real life – in this real life, the one Ed’s planning for her – she’ll be under some awful toad prince spell forever. “That’s horrible!” Charmaine says. “I’ll kill myself first!”