Chameleon: The Virtual Reality Virus

Cougar WebWorks

Salt Spring Island, BC

Copyright © 2020 by Nowick Gray

All rights reserved.

Published by Cougar WebWorks

www. CougarWebWorks.com

mail@cougarwebworks.com

This is a work of fiction. Liberties have been taken to render the city of Vancouver and all other locales into imaginary scenarios. No resemblance to any actual persons is intended.

Cover design by JohnBellArt – SelpPubBookCovers.com

Subjects include: slipstream, magic realism, cyberpunk, virtual reality, artificial intelligence (AI), mind control, conspiracy, astral projection, hackers, cybernetics, cybervirus, psychological suspense, and timelines.

Gray, Nowick, 1950-, author 

Chameleon  / Nowick Gray.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 9781777135973 (pbk.).—ISBN 9781777135966 (ebk.)

Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.

—Carl Jung

––––––––

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

—Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr

The Dream Car

> > >

I stumble against the broken asphalt, skid on the scattered gravel of the parking lot. Overhead the wires moan under a dirty-sheet sky murky and full of damp October air as sour as old beer. Along the deserted street overseen by restless, bored security cameras, garish poster ads hang from peeling, soot-grey walls:

Tired of feeling tired? Drink Jolt. Wherein two bored teens perk up.

Reverse Aging: Biotrain Boutique. Wrinkles melt into premium bliss.

Live the Adventure—Enlist Now! A blood-red maple leaf flag planted in desert sand.

Myrtle awaits me, her sleek lines of moulded steel a lovely polished green. But what’s this? A square of white notepaper flaps from the driver’s side mirror. Approaching it I spot, propped against the door, two pieces of a disassembled scope rifle, and on the asphalt, a compact leather carrying case. I glance around: no one else observing. I pick up both stock and barrel, greasy to the touch, and glean from the blue-metal sheen that the gun is new. From the opened case on the ground, specially packaged in shrink-wrap, one silvery bullet winks up at me.

A bullet—for whom?

Though I’m a stranger to guns, this question pops clear into my dreaming head, even as I dutifully return the two halves of the rifle to their slotted beds in the case’s yellow velvet.

Maybe the note... A blustery wind kicks up and snatches the flimsy paper away, teasing, and as I give chase it gusts over the warehouse and gone, a virtual 2-D gull.

I stand at first exasperated, then relieved. That’s all right; now I can hold onto my ignorance. But the question of a target, with its implication of a required mission, raps with bony knuckles on the back of my brain—from the inside. In a slow funk I slide into the car, putting the gun case on the back seat; casual yet deliberate, as if it were a small hydraulic jack or evening newspaper. Without identifying source or destination, I’m mesmerized by that vague sense of purpose. There is only the next action ahead, what I know to do. Pulling the key out of my pocket, I insert it into the ignition, and give it a twist...

< < <

In my waking sweat I thought I might have chosen a way out: an alternate future, enticing as a carrot to my donkey mind. A matter of a step or two, to cross a vital channel and follow a different timeline. But no; my incidental choice, however far back on this progression, had already been recorded, logged, tagged to my profile. I’d already committed, somehow, to this strange fork in the road, and it was too late to go back.

Like saying to Moira, I’m sorry, after sleeping with Sheila (even if I wasn’t sorry). Or telling my boss Gerald, I told you so, after our company had been dissolved in the great merger. Or at any point along the way, finding that the heaven I’d been promised (or promised myself) turned out to be another version of hell.

In Moira’s circular bed, with the covers off, I could see my moderately hairy middle-aged body shivering in my shorts. I grabbed the covers back from Moira. She lay breathing heavily beside me, her pink nightgown rising and falling with the rhythm of sleep. I’d nearly surfaced to the comforting familiarity of Moira’s bed; the dream persisted. I had the distinct feeling I was stuck in that green dream-car for the duration of the ride. My eyes drifted shut again.

> > >

Dead oak leaves swirl in the rearview along Tourney Crescent. I lean back in my driver’s seat, satisfied with the automatic motions of steering, my two-forefinger method. Everything in the drab outside world of East Vancouver seems normal. Light traffic in this part of town, mostly residential. I pass a light blue garbage truck, am passed in turn by a Hardacre cab, growling from a faulty muffler. I crank the window down for a breath of the dank breeze. The vanished note ripples against my conscience, unread, a duty shirked. But for now, I’m content to watch the rows of grey wartime houses and shabby duplexes file past.

Time-beaten love songs filter down from upstairs apartment windows. Men in charcoal sweatshirts and red-and-white windbreakers, women in babushkas and plastic boots, generic dogs pissing on mutant trees. A normal day in East Van, driving home from work.

It’s all a kind of echo, déjà vu. A private sector of my brain rebels. My instincts call me back to waking light—but an eerie mechanical voice intrudes, crackling like a drive-in movie speaker: Wanna see a new film, chum? Come on in. Just step through the revolving door.

What? There’s no window speaker at this drive-in. No revolving door. No one in the back seat, with the gun. There was a voice, though. With an indefinable accent resonating of Brooklyn, Chicago, LA.

My eyes focus ahead, seeing nothing different but this grey-glassy city with its green-grey backdrop of mountains and clouds. I want no part of any invisible hitchhiker’s scenario. My foot remains on the accelerator; my fingers continue steering; the dream persists. I begin to realize that I’m accepting this smarmy voice’s invitation, still without knowing what’s in it for me.

Underneath my anxiety I sense a kind of grace, the kind that accompanies what is inevitable. A peace which settles in beyond the moment of choice; though in this case, I can’t see where

there was a choice to be made. Unless... well, I did pick up the gun.

I glance behind to double-check that it’s still there. Mute black leather case—funny, I imagine it purring—at rest on the vinyl upholstery cover.

How did this happen, I wonder; my fault? I didn’t deliver this artifact to my car in the first place. Finding it staring me in the face, I took the next logical step.

When the drink is mixed by another’s hand, it can go down oh, so smooth.

The voice chimes back in: By the way, did I tell you? It’s a horror movie. Depending on your point of view. In any case, a thrillah. Don’t fret: you’ll have a leading role. Hmm—what’s the mattah? You prefer romantic comedies? Ah, too bad! There are, sad to say, no refunds. No exit doors in this here show. Then, hollow, metallic laughter.

By rights I should panic. Instead, I drive on, an automaton in my own flesh, at one with my ’78 Olds, lulled by the hum of her motion. Opening the power window, I notice the autumn air has changed in the course of a tour around the block from tasting like stale beer, to a cocktail hinting of latent snow, with notes of soot.

The voice consoles: Cheer up, chum! There’s a perfect place for you, right over the horizon. In fact, my friend, that’s where we’re headed right now.

Friend? My skin puckers like used aluminum foil. Why me? I want to protest. I didn’t ask for any damned horror movie or romantic fantasy. I want to get on with my life. I’m happy right where I am.

I imagine the voice scoffing at this relative lie.

How to answer truthfully? If it were a human passenger I could confide in, an actual and sympathetic hitchhiker, say, I would confess the more objective truth of my safe, mundane niche in the universe: It’s a circular bed, y’see, which takes getting used to. You sometimes wonder where you are, half-asleep in the middle of the night. Moira’s a large woman and she tends to lie smack in the middle, sprawled with her heavy arms out. She likes the fact that she bought this bed, that she owns it. Anyway half the time I’m not there—on furlough, we call it, over at my man-cave—so we figure it doesn’t pay to sink a lot of cash into a bigger bed, even a conventional king. One of these days, we might get serious, and I can move in with her on a more permanent basis, instead of this kind of semi-commitment we have going at the moment. Make that the past four years. But hey, Moira still insists on paying the rent...

My present listener, no human I can discern, indulges my inner chatter only so far, then interrupts, this time adopting a more, shall we say, managerial register:

We’re selecting a few of the most deserving... call them souls if you wish. Introducing them, one by one, to an old friend we call Uncle River: the river of time. We like your potential, your flexibility, your openness to new ideas. You do have choices, and we mean to help you arrive at the right one, each one in its turn. To board this boat requires your free ticket. No deposit, no return—

Yeah, I get it, I spit back, my voice audible this time. No purchase necessary.

To hell with his would-be chumminess. I’m determined to offer nothing gracious of myself to this faceless, schmoozing huckster.

The voice keeps on talking, takes on a resentful edge with the flavour of transistor static: Look. Every experience, even on your blessed Earth, is a doomed adventure if you only care for your own desires. Time’s cutlass marks every face. Have you no social conscience, no will to serve the greater good?

I clam back up instead of sparring with this nobody, but the questions multiply. Greater good? That’s all fine, but under whose definition? What does he mean, on your Earth? And who is this we? Myrtle—trusty Olds Cutlass in your own right—what have they done to you, and where is this dream-pirate taking us?

Shivering, I grip the wheel and force the green beast right, merging with traffic on Kingsway. The voice has gone silent again. I breathe easier.

This is my Earth, my ancient Earth, I console myself. Good old Vancouver, in fact. This is without a doubt my own and only green vintage Oldsmobile, with full-sized retractable and reclining seats, chrome trim, power to burn. I know I walked up to it as I do every weekday afternoon, in the parking lot outside the computer consulting office where I work, in the same tacky part of town: bits of newspaper blowing around, stray mutts roaming, homeless beggars huddled against the walls of abandoned warehouses...

Christ, I’ve circled the block. We’re back at the parking lot ringed with scraggly young oaks wrapped in anti-dog cages. I pull over and stop by the curb, taking stock. The voice remaining silent, my head rattles in its cage.

How and why have I ended up back here? Have I forgotten something at the office, something I was supposed to bring home? Did I neglect to turn off my computer before I left? Strange, I can’t remember...

There’s a light on up there—in Gerald’s office. He’s working overtime again. The grey blocks of warehouse stone surround him.

<Warehouse, whorehouse.>

Who said that?

This time I settle the mystery as nothing but my own conscience; see myself prostituting for... for what? Gazing up at the virtual prison wall before me, I overlay an image of the Bastille, from A Tale of Two Cities—painted in numerous scenes by Dickens and burned into my brain by dogged study for my master’s thesis in English lit at UBC. Which degree got me precisely nowhere, except a reality-shunt over to BCIT. 

And now, twice as old and half as smart?

I do my job, and then punch out.

Is that why I’m not farther ahead in this once-promising career?

Is that what this other voice <Enlist!>, this circuitous route home, is telling me, to get back to work? Nudging me to get on board with the great merger that’s supposed to save our insignificant silicon ass?

I’m forty-eight. So yeah, it’s crunch time, as they say. Now or never. Maybe it is time to pay the extra dues.

Thing is, about this car, and this gun, out of nowhere—I’m supposed to do something, to someone?

No. I’m going home.

Home... now where the hell is that?

< < <

I felt the cold sweat again, bringing me to wakefulness in Moira’s bed. Only much later, farther downstream in that dusky river, did I come to discover that you can go home only for a while. You think you are waking up with a chilly memory, that your body and the body beside you are rousing from an actual sleep, at worst disturbed. Meanwhile the jealous other, the nightmare, let’s say, this certain other affair, tugs at your soul in the unending dark, telling you that you can’t cancel your return reservations, not anymore. You’ve already chosen, or been chosen; it comes to the same thing in the end.

Again the choice will beckon. Only tonight, the next night and the next, it’s not really the same time or place, not the same size or shape of choice, because you’re farther along, deeper in.

You tell them, you tell yourself, you’re just doing a job. Forget, for now, whether it’s your job or their job. The problem is, the supposed target always eludes the roving window of your scope, their scope. The silver bullet never gets fired, not quite yet. Because you’re looking for the sure way in, the way back home.

You go to visit, for instance, the other, the next secret object of your desire, her green eyes vibrant and alive. Then you see in those eyes also windows to a farther shore, twin discs headed out in a one-way night speckled with stars. To enter her, those eyes, is to enter the spiralling path, with no backspacing, no escaping the hungry parasite in the computer mind.

<Chameleon.>

Only later could I give it this name: the name it was given. When I first came awake—which is to say, more or less but not yet truly awake—I heard the echo of its voice as warning:

<Coming soon, to an interface near you.>

Yeah, right, I said to myself, shaking off a poor night’s sleep. Then rubbed my fingers together, and they felt like vinyl. Took a whiff, and smelt gun grease.

The Wrong Side of Bed

What is it, Nort? What’s wrong?

I must have slipped back in. When I surfaced again I had grabbed onto her pink satin nightgown in a childish panic.

I started to form the words to tell her about it. Then I thought, maybe she’s not supposed to know.

Just some kind of weird dream. It’s going away now.

Inside, I knew better. I inhaled the stale smell of lavender from Moira’s neck and used it to mask the memory. Like wishing away the smell of death with mothballs.

The stippled ceiling above Moira’s bed loomed lower than I remembered it. Daylight ebbed into the room past mauve curtains, washing the taupe walls a shade brighter. Moira, her imperious Irish-Roman nose hovering, her small eyes boring at me, pressed: What do you mean, nothing? Look at you. You’re covered in sweat, and you’ve soaked my sheets. Are you sick?

I guess I had a nightmare. I reached for the still-silent alarm on the bed-table and shut it off.

You guess you had a nightmare. She sat up abruptly, lit a cigarette, and blew the smoke out in a blue huff. Hon, when I have a nightmare I know it.

To call my experience anything else risked the crazy-box. I recalled it in a flash, as a real event, or series of events; though I could not recall the final drive home to this apartment. When I ran the reality check of thinking back to yesterday, a verifiable day at the office, and retracing my steps to the car, I shifted slantwise right into the dream-scene again, complete with rifle, bullet, note, and taunting voice.

I could only say to Moira, It seemed so real.

I wanted to leave the whole thing behind. To bask in the comfort of her abode, graced with its familiar clanking of pipes from the suites below, its persistent aroma of overcooked broccoli. How could a nightmare be real?

Time to get up and sort it out for myself. I leaned over and reached for the white T-shirt on the carpeted floor beside the bed. This floor was beige; plush underfoot, except for the kitchen, throughout the suite.

<carpet of purple moss>

What?

I must have shuddered.

Moira changed her tack, laying a soft hand dreamlike on my elbow, from behind. Nortie, you’re still shaking. Why don’t you tell me about it?

I tugged the T-shirt on, nearly finding words to begin again. Moira leaned back against the curved, cushioned headboard, flicked ashes over the inverted tortoise shell on her bedside table, and, heavy eyebrows raised, waited for me to attempt the impossible.

I sensed the dream still close by, also waiting for me, in the hush of a still-indistinct day.

<Just step through the revolving door.>

I didn’t want to believe that anything else mattered except sticking with the program, going to work. That and the continuing, unspoken chore of trying to make sense of my life. Chore, duty, or choice? In my moment of weakness at the enormity of the task with this latest riddle piled on, I thought Moira might be able to help.

So I put off dressing the rest of the way, stayed in bed beside her and related the dream, in so many words. The immediate downside being, to retell is to relive.

All she could say was, Boy oh boy. So whose voice do you think it was? Her own voice sounded at once exasperated and condescending.

I shook my head. I don’t have a clue. Except the fake-sounding accent, which leads nowhere I can think of. It seems they want me to—

You mean in the dream.

Yeah, the dream. I said this to Moira, even as my recall of the dream merged with the murky memory of yesterday’s actual drive from the office parking lot. The thing is, it feels like it’s not over.

She went silent and stared at me, black-oil eyes glistening with starpoints of light. I perceived an otherworldly kind of beauty in her then, even as I felt her hardening against me. And it occurred to me how the beginning of one thing can be the end of another.

Moira turned away and lay staring up at the ceiling, her auburn hair splashed over the pillows. I brought my hand away from the clammy fabric of her nightgown and wiped it on the sheet. The latest in a long line of quarrels, did this particular difference of dream interpretation justify ditching it all? That seemed plain silly.

Hey, Moira, I’m sorry I told you about it. You’re right. Little Joey Norton had a bad dream.

She blinked, peered at me from black holes where the starlight had shone, and turned back away. I lay back down rigid beside her, not knowing what more I could say to her, nor how I could pep-talk myself into facing the day.

Moira at last threw me a lifeline of argument. I still don’t get it, she said, leaning on her fleshy arm. Let’s give you the benefit of the doubt for a sec, and call your dream ‘real.’ What does that mean? Do you really expect to see this note turn up again somewhere, with their instructions on it? What would this someone want you to do for them? Is it about your work? Or is the stress finally getting to you?

I let her go on, lacking any tangible insight to add, even a sketch of my invisible adversary. Having staked a claim to the reality of my nightmare, I shrank from the implications.

Moira warmed to the role of devil’s advocate. Let’s take a leap and imagine that you have an important task to carry out. The gun’s kinda this male thing, for effect. Gerald would have to figure in there somewhere—

Moira, give me a break, will you? I don’t know! I told you what happened, okay? I’m sorry I didn’t read their goddamned note before the wind took it. And there was no instruction manual with the gun and its pet bullet.

Glancing at the bed-table I saw the numbers on the alarm clock had marched twenty minutes past time. I couldn’t recall hearing it ring.

Shit, I better get moving.

Time for the uniform: jeans, long-sleeved pullover.

Friday, Moira’s morning off, meant I had to hustle up my own breakfast in the kitchen.

They say burnt toast is good after poison.

Munching it, however, even with runny eggs and hot sauce, didn’t chase the dream visions which Moira had reinforced, which I could not deny. Nor were they erased by my visual distractions of the moment, fruits of Moira’s artistic acumen: the taupe walls with mauve curtains, her abstract art framed on the otherwise bland surfaces. Even the dishes and tableware, all glass and steel like the table and stools, exuded a certain cold, alien sheen; not to mention the brushed aluminum fridge which hummed like it was warming up to warp speed. In short, I still entertained the notion that when I went down to the street and opened the car door, I’d find that scope rifle in the back seat—maybe assembled and ready to go, this time.

And if I found Myrtle clean as a whistle, what then?

I’d be wondering when and where the bastards would turn up next.

I neglected to kiss Moira goodbye. Ah, well, not the first time for that small crime.

A whiff of sooty snow in the air, not yet visible under a cotton-wool sky. Tree cages, graffiti-laced traffic signs, faded wartime houses, all sat in their place, like soldiers awaiting orders to kill or die; in the meantime, downtime. Of course I found the side mirror free of any replacement note. The back seat, as well, empty. Smooth vinyl, innocent as unscratched glass.

During the twenty-minute drive through the morning streets of the city, I couldn’t resist stopping to inspect a few stray bits of paper I passed along the way, with the harebrained intuition that if I wanted it badly enough, the lost mission note would find me. No dice. Was I in the clear, then?

Either way, I can’t tell Gerald about this.

Scanlon & Hart

Gerald Scanlon, the company’s founder, called himself hacker-in-chief at the microcorp I worked for. We occupied a newly remodelled office suite on the second floor of a former warehouse, a block away from the bustle of Kingsway. Approaching the building, one sees the humble numeral 6 in faded black, marking an otherwise plain, grey-painted and weather-stripped door, giving access to a locked inner door and quick turn right to a flight of stairs. One admires then, if only by contrast, the polished banister of dark walnut ascending to the office portal, that second-floor door sporting new and classy gilt lettering—Scanlon & Hart—on its textured glass panel.

Gerald had kept the old company name even after Kenneth Hart’s departure. It made sense as a brand strategy, since Hart had made a name for himself while in partnership with Gerald. Wired, the company prospectus might tell you, once characterized Hart as having inventive brilliance in fields as diverse as VR and biofeedback technology. I kidded myself (and Moira) that I was taking Hart’s place—until a hotter-shot named Lance Harrison came on board soon after. His purple flip-flops patter from the hallway as we speak.

Proceeding to the inner spaces as through the directories of a new operating system, you may imagine the sexy tour guide as she presents, with the husky whisper of seduction, our new pastel-salmon reception counter, then waves with a casual hand toward a couple of redecorated back offices and a conference-cum-coffee room. Finally, alas, with heavy-lashed eyes lowered, almost bashful, she beckons to my work area—left adrift, partitioned off a corner of the main office by the renovation architects under the putative direction of Mr. Scanlon. My office, a mere space with virtual walls of bamboo and fabric too insubstantial to hang even a frame of, say, Moira’s dabblings.

A dentist used to operate here, one iteration earlier in the post-warehouse era. You can still see the circles on the original hardwood floor near my desk, where the big swivel chairs were mounted. Reflooring would have counted as a nice touch, one which alternate management might have deemed essential; in this case it wound up in the overbudget column of Giselda’s books. Giselda, the office secretary missing from the live travel brochure we have just perused, is late as usual because, she will claim, she forgot to let the dog out and had to backtrack.

Gerald, at this moment visible to the dot-com tourist eye through the open door of his office, sat talking on the phone: his short, peach-coloured hair receding halfway to baldness, his ropy forearms folded over a cream-coloured, short-sleeved silk shirt. Gerald enjoyed talking on the phone—a throwback to the days before instant messaging took over the communications division of Homo sapiens.

An uneasy feeling tapped me on the shoulder, whispered in my ear that I’d been away from the office for days. I shrugged off that anxiety with a ready strategy: check my logon file. The screen looked at me as I approached, its cartoon one-eye half-lidded in Ready mode. I sat down and the eyelid sprang open.

Don’t be alarmed. It was programmed to do this. By our old friend Ken.

The Eye smiled, to welcome me into my (into its) workspace. I settled into the comfort of what I called my pilot’s chair, large and black with swivel action and headrest, and rolling casters which caught with somewhat predictable regularity on the uneven holes from the bolts of the dentist chair that once graced these particular coordinates of time/space. Once again the day’s voyage began. I could leave behind the mingled smells of old and new varnishes, stale and fresh coffee, and sail into cool, sterile waters...

I logged on and called up my last entries. Date column: 22 October 1992—yesterday. Time logged off, 4:25 p.m. Everything shipshape, according to the purring computer, its low hum lulling me into normalcy.

Normalcy, that is, on any other day. Today, I slipped right past normal into a