* * * *
I KNOW, THINGS TASTE BETTER fresh, not packaged. Hamburger clots your arteries and hurts the rain forest. We should eat like our stone age ancestors, who dug roots, got lots of exercise, and always stayed a little hungry. So they say.
Still, I balked when my wife served me termites.
“Come on, sweetheart. Try one. They’re delicious.”
Gaia already had the hive uncrated and set up by the time I came home. Putting down my briefcase, I stared at hundreds of the pasty-colored critters scrabbling under a plastic cover, tending their fat queen, devouring kitchen trimmings, making themselves right at home in my home.
Gaia offered me a probe made of fine-grained pseudowood. “See? You use this stick to fish after nice plump ones, like chimpanzees do in the wild!”
I gaped at the insect habitat, filling the last free space between our veggiehydrator and the meat-sublimate racks. “But . . . we agreed. Our apartment’s too small . . . “
“Oh, sweety, I know you’ll just love them. Anyway, don’t I need protein and vitamins for the baby?”
Putting my hand over her swelling belly normally softened any objections I might have. Only this time my own stomach was in rebellion. “I thought you already got all that stuff from the Yeast-Beast machine.” I pointed to the vat occupying half of our guest bathroom, venting nutritious vapors from racks of tissue-grown cutlets.
“That stuff’s not natural,” Gaia complained with a moue. “Come on, try the real thing. It’s just like they show on the NatuLife Channel!”
“I . . . don’t think . . . “
“Watch, I’ll show you!”
Gaia passed the stick-probe through a sealed hatch to delve after six-legged prey, her tongue popping out as she concentrated, quivering with excitement from her red ponytail down to her rounded belly. “Got one!” she cried, drawing a twitching insect out the hatch and to her lips.
“You’re not seriously . . . “ My throat stopped as the termite vanished, head first.
Bliss crossed Gaia’s face. “M-m-m, crunchy!” She smacked, revealing a still-twitching tail.
I found enough manly dignity to raggedly chastise her.
“Don’t . . . talk with your mouth full.”
Turning away, I added — “If you need me, I’ll be in my workout room.”
Gaia had rearranged our sleep quarters again. Now the cramped chamber merged seamlessly with a tropical paradise, including raucous bird calls and mist from a roaring waterfall. The impressive effects made it hard navigating past the bed, so I ordered the hologram blanked. Silence fell as the vid-wall turned gray, leaving just the real-life portion of her pocket jungle to contend with — a tangle of potted plants warrantied to give off purer oxygen than a pregnant woman could sniff from bottles.
Wading through creepers and mutant ficuses, I finally found the moss-lined laundry hamper and threw in my work clothes. The fragrant Clean-U-Lichen had already sani-scavenged and folded my exercise togs, which felt warm and skin-supple when I drew them on. The organo-electric garment rippled across my skin as if alive, seeming just as eager for a workout as I was.
I’d been through hell at the office. Traffic on the commuter-tube was miserable and the smog index had been red-lining for a week. Termites had only been the last straw.
“Let’s go,” I muttered. “I haven’t killed anything all day.”
Long Stick spotted a big old buck gazelle.
“It limps,” my hunting partner said, rising from his haunches to point across a hundred yards of dry savannah. “Earlier, it met a lion.”
I rose from my stretching exercises to peer past a screen of sheltering boulders, following Long Stick’s gnarly arm. One animal stood apart from the herd. Sniffing an unsteady breeze, the buck turned to show livid claw marks along one flank. Clearly, this prey was a pushover compared to last Sunday’s pissed-off rhino. The virtual reality machine must have sensed I’d had a rough day.
My hands stroked the spear, tracing its familiar nicks and knots. An illusion of raw, archetypal power.
“The beaters are ready, Chief,” my hunting partner said. I nodded.
“Let’s get on with it.”
Long Stick pursed his lips and mimicked the call of a bee-catcher bird. Moments later, the animals snorted as a shift in the heavy air brought insinuations of human scent. Another hundred yards beyond the herd, where the sparse pampas faded into a hazy stand of acacia trees, I glimpsed the rest of our hunting party, creeping forward.
My hunters. My tribe.
I was tempted to reach up and adjust the virtu-reality helmet, which fed this artificial world to my eyes and ears . . . to zoom in on those distant human images. Alas, except for Long Stick, I had never met any of the other hunters up close. Good persona programs aren’t cheap, and with a baby coming, there were other things for Gaia and me to spend money on.
Yeah, like a cramroy termite hive! Resentment fed on surging adrenaline. Never trust a gatherer. That was the hunters’ creed. Love ‘era, protect ‘era, die for them, but always remember, their priorities are different.
The beaters stood as one, shouting. The gazelles reared, wheeling the other way — toward us. Long Stick hissed. “Here they come!”
The Accu-Terrain floor thrummed beneath my feet to the charge of a hundred hooves. Sensu-Surround earphones brought the stampede roar of panicky beasts thundering toward us, wild-eyed with ardor to survive.
Clutching my spear in sweaty palms, I crouched as graceful animals vaulted overhead, ribcages heaving.
Meanwhile, a faint, subsonic mantra recited. I am part of nature . . . one with nature . . .
The young, and breeding females, we let flash by without harm. But then, trailing and already foaming with fatigue, came the old buck, its leap leaden, unsteady, and I knew the program really was taking it easy on me today.
Long Stick howled. I sprinted from cover, swiftly taking the lead. The auto-treadmill’s bumps and gullies matched whatever terrain the goggles showed me, so my feet knew how to land and thrust off again. The body suit brushed my skin with synthetic wind. Flared nostrils inhaled sweat, exhilaration, and for a time I forgot I was in a tiny room on the eightieth floor of a suburban Chitown con-apt, surrounded by fifty million neighbors.
I was deep in the past of my forebears, back in a time when men were few, and therefore precious, magical.
Back when nature thrived . . . and included us.
Easy workout or no, I got up a good sweat before the beast was cornered against a stand of jagged saw grass. The panting gazelle’s black eye met mine with more than resignation. In it I saw tales of past battles and matings. Of countless struggles won, and finally lost. I couldn’t have felt more sympathy if he’d been real.
My throwing arm cranked and I thought — Long ago, I’d have done this to feed my wife and child.
That was then. As for here and now?
Well . . . this sure beats the hell out of racquetball.
Mass-produced con-apt housing lets twelve billion Earthlings live in minim decency, at the cost of dwelling all our lives in boxes piled halfway to the sky. Lotteries award scarce chances to visit mountains, the seashore. Meanwhile, Virtuality keeps us sane within our hi-rise caves.
On my way to shower after working out, I saw that Gaia’s private VR room was in use. Impulsively, I tiptoed into the closet next door, feeling for the crack between stacked room units, and pressed my eye close to the narrow chink of light. Gaia squatted on her treadmill floor, shaped to mimic a patch of uneven ground. Her body suit fit her pregnant form like a second skin, while helmet and goggles made her resemble some kind of bug, or star alien. But I knew her scenario, like mine, lay in the distant past. She made digging motions with a phantom tool, invisible to me, held in her cupped hands. Then she reached down to pluck another ghost item, her gloves simulating touch to match whatever root or tuber it was that she saw through the goggles. Gala pantomimed brushing dirt away from her find, then dropping it into a bag at her side.
Sometimes, eavesdropping like this, I’d feel a chill wondering how odd I must look during workouts, leaping about, brandishing invisible spears and shouting at my “hunters.” No wonder most people keep VR so private.
Gaia tilted her head as if listening to somebody, then laughed aloud. “I know! Didn’t the two of them look funny? Coming home all proud with that skinny little squirrel on a stick? Such great hunters! That didn’t stop them from gobbling half our carrots!”
Naturally, I couldn’t see or hear Gaia’s companions —presumably other women gatherers in the same simulated tribe she had been visiting since years before we met. She stopped again, listening, then turned around. “It’s your baby, Flower. That’s okay, I’ll take care of him.” She laughed. “I need the practice.”
I watched her gently pick up an invisible child. Her body suit tugged and contracted, mimicking a wriggly weight in her arms. Awkwardly, Gala cooed at an infant who dwelled only in a world of software, and her mind. I crept away to take a shower, at once ashamed of spying and glad that I had.
Toweling my wet hair, I entered the bedroom to find the wall screen tuned to Mother Earth Channel Fifty-Three — a green-robed priestess reciting a sermon.
“ . . . returning to more natural ways does not mean having to sacrifice nil modern . . . .”
Gaia emerged from her closet wearing a bright cotton shift over her blossoming figure, sorting through a cloth bag slung over one shoulder. “Where are you going?” I tried asking, but the life-sized matron on the wall was doubly loud.
“ . . . we should eat like our ancestors, who caught meat but twice a week or so. All other food was gathered by skilled women . . . . “
I tugged Gaia’s elbow, repeating my question. She startled, then smiled at me. “NatuBirth class, Sweetheart. Lots to learn before I’m ready. Just two months left, you know.”
“But I thought . . . “
“ . . . Fats and sweets were rare back then, hence our cravings. Now self-discipline must take the place of scarcity — “
I shouted. “Computer! Shut off that noise!”
The priestess’s mouth moved silently. Gaia looked reproving.
“I don’t like being left out,” I complained.
Gaia stroked my face. “Oh Toms, don’t be off-baud. We’re just covering nest and birthing methods, tonight. A man would be bored.”
Hm. Maybe. Femismo says there are some things men can’t understand. Quite a shift from the way old-fashioned feminism preached sharing all life’s duties. My dad used to proudly tell of cutting the cord, the day I was born. I kind of liked that idea, but now they call it unnatural. Birth has always been a female ritual. That’s what they say.
“You just stay home, be good, and . . . “ Gaia pressed against me, affectionately, her eyes lighting. “You had a good hunt, didn’t you? I can tell. It always leaves you frisky.”
I pulled away. “Mph. Go to class, then. I’ll be okay.”
She tiptoed to kiss my chin. “Look by the console for a present . . . something to show I haven’t forgotten you.” Gala blew another kiss from the front door, and was gone.
I wandered over to the master house controller and picked up a brightly colored program plaq, still tacky where Gaia must have peeled off a discount sticker from the NatuLife Store. Something for the Hunter, the title read, and I snorted. Right. Something to keep the man of the house distracted beating drums with a bunch of make-believe comrades, while a wife’s attention turns to serious matters — nesting and the continuity of life. The blyware gift might have been meant as a loving gesture, but right then it made me feel superfluous, more left out than ever.
Sliding the plaq into the console, I accidentally brushed the volume knob and the booming voice of the priestess returned.
“ . . . must face the fact that Earth’s billions won’t accept returning to nature by scratching mud and sleeping on dirt floors. We must learn new ways, both more natural and smarter . . . . “
I snickered at that. Funny how each generation thinks it knows what “smarter” means.
LONG STICK greeted me with a sweeping bow, at once both sardonic and respectful. “Welcome back, oh Great Chief.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered at my simulated sidekick. “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s different, this time?”
Everything seemed less real here in the living room, with my virtuality helmet and body suit left hanging in the closet. The familiar, primeval forest of my private world now cut off sharply where the vial-wall met the couch. Yet, I could have sworn my ersatz companion seemed subtler, warmer, somehow.
“The flint-smiths are ready to show their wares, chief.”
“The who . . . ?” I began. But Long Stick simply turned to begin striding down a nearby path. The living room had no treadmill-floor, so I stood still, watching Long Stick’s buckskin-draped form plow past trees and boulders and down a series of switchbacks. A rhythmic sound grew steadily louder—a tinny clatter of brittle objects colliding and breaking. Finally, we reached a sandy streambed where several figures could be seen sitting on logs, hammering stones together.
Oh, yes. Flint-smiths. NatuLife stocked countless “You-Are-There” programs in all the ancient arts, from bronze casting to automobile design. With our shared interest in the Neolithic, Gala had cleverly bought a stone age simulation the computer could fit right into my private world, to help me pass an evening while she trained for motherhood.
Okay, I sighed. Let’s get on with it.
A youngster with a wispy beard noticed us, stopped hammering, and nudged the others — a weathered old man and a sturdy-looking fellow with one leg much shorter than the other. The smiths rose and bowed respectfully. Naturally, these wouldn’t be full scale sim-personas, like Long Stick, but animated actors in a limited scenario.
“We have worked those chert cores you traded from Seacliff Tribe, oh Chief,” the oldest one said, lisping through gaps in his teeth. “Would you like tO see?”
I shrugged. “Why not?”
He spread a fur and began laying out an assortment of neolithic cutlery, glinting under ersatz sunshine. There were spearheads, axes, burins and scrapers — plus other tools I couldn’t identify offhand — each item the product of at least a hundred strokes, skillfully cleaving native rock into shapes useful for daily life. A prehistoric kitchen, armory and machine shop, all in one. The smiths offered to let me feel an edge. It was disturbing to watch the computer manifest an image of my own hand, holding an object I couldn’t feel. I resolved to try again later, replaying the scenario with body gloves on.
“Well, it’s been interesting,” I said after a while, feeling fatigued. “But I think that’s enough for n —”
A high shout broke in. Everyone looked past my shoulder, but the scene remained obstinately riveted until a new figure entered view from the left. Shorter, slimmer than the others, this one strode with a springy, elfin gait, clothed in the tunic and leggings of a hunter. The newcomer carried a bundle of slender wooden saplings the right size for fashioning spears. Only when these were dumped with a clatter did I note with surprise that this hunter was female.
“Ho, Chief,” she greeted me, acknowledging Long Stick with a nod.
My companion leaned over and muttered, “This is Ankle-of-a-Giraffe, daughter of Antler and Pear Blossom. She is one of the beaters in the hunt.”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” the young stone-ager said, planting fists on her hips. She was lithe and a trifle lean for my tastes — as well as being smudged from head to toe— but she made eye contact in a bold, provocative way. “I’m sick of just beating, Great Chief. I want to be in on the kill. I want to learn from you two.”
The stone-smiths hissed surprise. Long Stick rambled. “Ankle! You forget yourself!”
The girl bowed submissively, yet her eyes held fierce determination. She seemed ready to speak again when I shouted.
“Freeze frame!”
All action halted, leaving the “tribesmen” locked in time. A blue jay hovered in suspended flight across the gully while I wrestled with confusion. It wasn’t the idea of a female hunter . . . plenty of tribes allowed it, according to tradition. But why complicate matters with such a player right now, just as the simulation seemed about to end? What did it have to do with prehistoric tool-making?
“Computer. This isn’t just a packaged you-are-there, is it?”
“No it is not. These are fully autonomous persona programs, operating stochastically in your private sire world.”
So, Gaia had been generous after all! Long Stick was no longer my only, full-scale companion. But how could she afford . . .
“In addition, core memory has been enhanced to allow up to five flexible personae at any one time.”
“Oh, I get it.”
...
allforjesus2001