I be saved?
He opened the front door and stood on the porch in his shorts, gazing across the driveway to the dark banks of observers beyond. He heard the gulls cry again – craaak-craaak-craaak – and he realised that he had been listening to that cry all night. The house was locked in the scant seconds of the recording whereas his time flowed on. He felt the duration of it as an ongoing loss. He called out into the shadows for Patricia, asked for her by name twice, three times. The dark banks shifted, and for a time did not answer. And then a man’s voice told him to go back to bed, and so he padded through the lounge, aware that in his wake silhouettes continued to fill the house with the replicas of lost things.
5
THE SENSESUIT
The next morning, he found an old sensesuit folded over a chair in the bedroom. At first glance, the suit was similar to the one he had worn while climbing Mons Huygens. But this visor was opaque, the grimy and worn surface of the suit made out of hundreds of tiny pressurised patches. His grandmother had an implant so that she could be immersed into data environments. She had suffered accordingly. The sensesuit was safer and it confined the input to the six senses. There was no memory insertion, no cognitive overlay, no direct emotional stimulus. He could wear the sensesuit and remain himself, for what that was worth.
He went to the bathroom, took care of his body, went to the breakfast bar, was gratified to find that a bowl of cereal and a bottle of polar milk had been provided for him. Fauna and flora could be raised in the polar campus under that zone’s solar exposure. Life needs the light. He turned the spoon around between his fingers. Why did the school of emergence have a chamber this deep under the surface, away from the light? Why go to the trouble of digging down when there was so much unclaimed real estate on the surface? For shielding from radiation? For protection from meteorites? Or for secrecy? And if so, what were the school hiding in an underground chamber on the farside of the moon and from whom?
Once he was ready, the engineers helped him into the sensesuit. They opened the back up and connected tubes and antennae for air and data intake, slid on the boots, clipped on the helmet and fired him up. He stumbled to his feet. To the engineers, he must look like a mummified puppet on cut strings, stumbling around their replica of the house. He gazed down at his own body. From inside the simulation, the suit appeared white and clean, as it had been back in the days before the Seizure. Everything he sensed in this environment had been quantified; therefore this suit must have belonged to the family. They would have used it to wander around simulated environments themselves, perhaps used it for enhanced telepresence or for sexual recreation. He turned around: the tubes and spiny wires attached to the back of the suit were invisible; they had not been quantified and so were not part of the sensory simulation. He felt their weight at his back but could not see or touch them.
He moved closer to the mother and child at the doorway. Their faces remained blurred and unrecognisable. Thanks to the suit’s olfactory interface, he could smell beeswax floor polish. He leant over, took a sheaf of the mother’s hair in his glove, and smelt it too: freshly washed, chemical products with a tang to simulate something organic. He didn’t know what. The artificial flavourings and odours of the era were lost associations and evocations: to this woman, her hair may have smelt of aloe vera or strawberries or the pine-strewn floor of the forest, but these associations had been constructed by contemporary advertising; without exposure to that cultural engineering, the chemicals evoked only a memory of his grandmother’s hand cream, which had also been impregnated with an essence that remained enigmatic yet magical.
He knelt before the mother and with both hands felt her thighs and calves, her
He opened the front door and stood on the porch in his shorts, gazing across the driveway to the dark banks of observers beyond. He heard the gulls cry again – craaak-craaak-craaak – and he realised that he had been listening to that cry all night. The house was locked in the scant seconds of the recording whereas his time flowed on. He felt the duration of it as an ongoing loss. He called out into the shadows for Patricia, asked for her by name twice, three times. The dark banks shifted, and for a time did not answer. And then a man’s voice told him to go back to bed, and so he padded through the lounge, aware that in his wake silhouettes continued to fill the house with the replicas of lost things.
5
THE SENSESUIT
The next morning, he found an old sensesuit folded over a chair in the bedroom. At first glance, the suit was similar to the one he had worn while climbing Mons Huygens. But this visor was opaque, the grimy and worn surface of the suit made out of hundreds of tiny pressurised patches. His grandmother had an implant so that she could be immersed into data environments. She had suffered accordingly. The sensesuit was safer and it confined the input to the six senses. There was no memory insertion, no cognitive overlay, no direct emotional stimulus. He could wear the sensesuit and remain himself, for what that was worth.
He went to the bathroom, took care of his body, went to the breakfast bar, was gratified to find that a bowl of cereal and a bottle of polar milk had been provided for him. Fauna and flora could be raised in the polar campus under that zone’s solar exposure. Life needs the light. He turned the spoon around between his fingers. Why did the school of emergence have a chamber this deep under the surface, away from the light? Why go to the trouble of digging down when there was so much unclaimed real estate on the surface? For shielding from radiation? For protection from meteorites? Or for secrecy? And if so, what were the school hiding in an underground chamber on the farside of the moon and from whom?
Once he was ready, the engineers helped him into the sensesuit. They opened the back up and connected tubes and antennae for air and data intake, slid on the boots, clipped on the helmet and fired him up. He stumbled to his feet. To the engineers, he must look like a mummified puppet on cut strings, stumbling around their replica of the house. He gazed down at his own body. From inside the simulation, the suit appeared white and clean, as it had been back in the days before the Seizure. Everything he sensed in this environment had been quantified; therefore this suit must have belonged to the family. They would have used it to wander around simulated environments themselves, perhaps used it for enhanced telepresence or for sexual recreation. He turned around: the tubes and spiny wires attached to the back of the suit were invisible; they had not been quantified and so were not part of the sensory simulation. He felt their weight at his back but could not see or touch them.
He moved closer to the mother and child at the doorway. Their faces remained blurred and unrecognisable. Thanks to the suit’s olfactory interface, he could smell beeswax floor polish. He leant over, took a sheaf of the mother’s hair in his glove, and smelt it too: freshly washed, chemical products with a tang to simulate something organic. He didn’t know what. The artificial flavourings and odours of the era were lost associations and evocations: to this woman, her hair may have smelt of aloe vera or strawberries or the pine-strewn floor of the forest, but these associations had been constructed by contemporary advertising; without exposure to that cultural engineering, the chemicals evoked only a memory of his grandmother’s hand cream, which had also been impregnated with an essence that remained enigmatic yet magical.
He knelt before the mother and with both hands felt her thighs and calves, her
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