“The Mind Vise”

The afternoon crowd at the Blue Muon, the hottest eat-drink-and-inhale spot in New Angeles, rested in that daily lull between the wave of late night-traders, fresh off their shifts of buying and selling on the Asian markets, and the impending rush of chip-wranglers from nearby Silicon Shores that had not yet arrived. So the two huddled figures in the back booth, an African-Aussia male and a Euro-Indian female, had the place almost all to themselves.

Still, just to be safe, they had plunked down an extra Wyldecoin for an electronic screen, making certain that their conversation went unheard, untapped, and unrecorded.

“Why do you want me to cover your shift?” asked Dijon, the twenty-ish African-Aussie, six-foot-two of dusky skin and surprisingly green eyes. “You know I’ve been fired from my last five jobs in a row.”

Sallera, the young Euro-Indian, twirled her one long dark braid in one hand while she swirled her Mad Sunrise with the other. “Yes, you’ve told me about each one. In detail. How your bosses were all idiots—”

“Well, they were,” Dijon confirmed.

“—And how your ideas, which would make each of those companies run more smoothy and efficiently, were all summarily rejected—”

“And they were, too,” Dijon added.

“—And that you’ve never been appreciated for your extraordinary talent at mathematics, your keen insights into societal trends, or your unparalleled gift with computer programs.”

Dijon rubbed the back of his neck. “I guess I’ve gotten a little repetitive about my troubles.”

Sallera smiled. “But that’s why you’d be perfect for this gig, Dijon. I only need you to fill in for three days, Friday afternoon through Sunday evening. I’ve already vouched for you with my supervisors. They’ve cleared you through the proper channels—”

“You’ve run a background check on me already?” Dijon asked, incredulous.

Sallera nodded. “Credit summary, skill set, microbiotics, the works. You’re perfect for the job.”

“It’s funny,” Dijon admitted as he took a sip of his pure rain water. “I’m not even sure what you do.”

The young woman took a sip of her iron-red drink. “Well, until I get you to sign the official dox, I can’t tell you much.” She leaned across the narrow table until she was almost whispering into Dijon’s nose. “But I can tell you this: we run the hottest off-the-grid entertainment network in the entire system. Only the richest and most powerful clients can afford us, or even know that we exist.”

“The best part is,” Sallera explained, eyeing three new patrons just passing through the bar’s security checkpoint, “you’ll be the only operator in the entire complex. It’s fully automated, except for the clients, and you won’t have any direct contact with them. They let themselves in through a monitored entrance, drop an auto-payment, then slide into one of the booths for a while. And when they’ve had enough, they drop out and go on their merry way. No genetic checks, no blood draws, no print matching. You won’t have to interact with them in any way.”

“And,” she added, swishing her long braid until it almost brushed against the back of Dijon’s hand, “you’ll get paid in Bytecoin. A lot. More than your monthly salary for a three-day gig. And totally untraceable.”

Dijon took very little further convincing. After getting the address and detailed instructions on how to prepare before being picked up – Sallera would have one of those new self-hover limos pick him up at precisely 5:50 Friday evening outside Dijon’s apartment – they knocked knuckles and parted ways.

The next four days went by in a blur for Dijon. He turned down three offers of employment from various multi-nationals, each of whom would have hired him for a month, tops, as they picked his brain for whatever technological innovations he could come up with, and then would have dropped him without so much as a “Thank you for your time.” He told two different ladies he’d be unable to accompany them that weekend, and watched several new holovids with various levels of disinterest. All he could focus on was the opportunity to work with Sallera’s unnamed company.

Friday afternoon found Dijon following Sallera’s instructions to the letter. He took the chip out of his foldphone and placed it in a sealed container in his fridge. He wore a brand new outfit, including shoes and socks, that he’d just purchased that morning and which had not left his sight since he bought them. And he ate from unopened containers that he’d bought from stores he’d never shopped at before.

As he wolfed down the last of his late lunch, a faux beef and mock cheese sandwich on a bed of hydroponic tomatoes and FDIA-cleared Romaine, Dijon couldn’t help but think these overly cautious preparations were due to some specific level of worry on Sallera’s part. It’s like she wants to make sure I’m not being tracked, he mused. Or poisoned.

The driverless limo descended precisely at ten till six. Dijon slid into the back, and felt only the mildest discomfort as the vehicle lifted off to cruise above the standard lanes, roughly thirty feet in the air. Using the much faster elevated lanes, they arrived at their destination in near-record time.

The destination was a large all-brick building that was designed to resemble a 1920s-style factory, complete with concrete sills and tall featureless windows, though with the radiation protocols, no light passed through those portals; they were merely for show. Since no building in New Angeles was more than thirty years old, this was all just extravagant decor. Someone’s gone through a lot of effort to make this place look like it’s nearly abandoned, Dijon thought.

He traced the edge of the nearest rough windowsill. Down to the simulated feel of hewn stone in the durastone trim.

Dijon walked up the three steps and tapped the small wallpad marked, “Deliveries.” There were three holovid receivers spaced around the only entrance, each with the ability to scan him as well as a sizeable portion of the street. No doubt there were additional less visible scanners watching the walls, the roof, and probably the intersections nearby.

“Hey, there you are!” came Sallera’s electronic voice. “Wait, I’ll chime you in.”

An odd tone vibrated across the entranceway, which continued until Dijon stepped through the protected doorway. It took some effort to push against the electronic field that prevented any other presences down to the atomic level from entering. Too many micro-bots had gained access to secure sites as nearly-invisible stowaways when a door or window was opened; the new security fields did away with such intruders, for the most part.

After an additional security point, where a piercing bluish-green swath of light guaranteed that Dijon wasn’t carrying any electronic devices – “I’m s’posed to ask first if you have a pacemaker or a brain ‘plant,” Sallera said apologetically – and a hasty gen-signature on a datapad of official files, Dijon was finally allowed into the main room. He marveled at its size, a stunningly large space with distant walls and hundreds of displays, holoprojectors, light banks and arc sensors.

“Welcome to WWENDI,” she said with pride. “That’s short for the World Wide Environmental and Neuro-Dynamic Interface, the first and only system of its kind.”

“Wendi?” Dijon repeated.

“With two W’s,” she added. “See all those booths? Those are our patrons, our guests,” Sallera said, waving her hand to encompass the vast array. Four stories of vertical glassteel boxes completely covered three of the four interior walls of the space, displaying over a hundred people, all ages and races, shapes and sizes, each relaxing in a combination sitting/standing position. More than three-quarters of the closet-sized cubicles were occupied.

Dijon whistled. “It’s like one of those skyscraper driving ranges, only facing inward.”

Sallera smiled with pride. “Their cubicles are accessed from a series of outside lifts and walkways. When they input their datalinks, they get access to what we call ‘The Sleeve.’ It’s a completely interactive bodysuit, connected to their lounge chair, that provides two-way galvanic stimuli to hands, feet, skin – the entire body. They have a mouthguard that downloads taste and smell prompts, along with hydration when they need it. And on their heads is a small mesh cap called ‘The Bird’s Nest.’ That device both receives and transmits data directly from and into the brain.” She sighed contentedly. “It’s a system more complex than NASA or ESA, and rakes in almost as much as Vegas Prime.”

“And here,” she said, leading Dijon to a low platform in the center of the room, “is the control sector, where you’ll spend most of your time.” With a beaming smile, Sallera added, “I call it ‘The God Pod.’ It’s had other nicknames, but that’s the one I prefer.”

Dijon marveled at the setup. A state-of-the-art ergonomic chair, complete with palm rests and discreet speakers in the wraparound head support, was fronted by a dozen interconnected monitors, looking like something from a podcast cowboy’s dreams. The monitors switched automatically between the hundred-plus occupied booths, displaying health and mental stats, current stimuli loads, and a fascinating tri-D image that simulated what their current environment was dishing out to them.

Some of the patrons wrestled massive animals, genetically modified 300-pound dogs or recently extinct pumas or lions. Others played instruments with a grace and skill that they’d never attain in real life. Others freeclimbed sheer cliffs like El Capitan or the new west face on Gibraltar, while others performed freediving as they replanted the Great Barrier Reef.

Dijon marveled at the risks the patrons took. Sallera noticed his concern, and assured him, “They’re perfectly safe. There are auto-limiters if anything bad should happen. Like that guy.”

She indicated a monitor that had sensed the difficulties Patron 212 was having in an MMA match with Cú Chulainn, “the Irish Giant,” as he was known in the ring. The patron was losing badly, and the tri-D displays of his physical and cardio conditions were both redlining.

“Isn’t he in trouble?” Dijon asked, truly concerned.

“Nah, not at all. Look.” Sallera pointed to look again at the tri-D mannequins.

The one on the left showed the state of the A.I. body he was operating, with seven of its eight lines below one-quarter, the eighth actually out. But there was a different tri-d display, on the right, displaying his actual physical self, all green and cheery.

“Notice the last line,” Sallera said. The furthest bar to the right was a deep all-blue line. “That indicates his encounter is being fully monitored by the A.I. Nothing can hurt him physically. Now, watch.”

Dijon peered closely. The patron absorbed another massive roundhouse to the temple, followed by a knee kick to the chin, and dropped heavily to the mat, unconscious and bleeding badly. But instead of needing a medic (or a coroner), the indicators for that patron’s A.I. version returned to all green, and the illumination in the booth slowly came up to near-full brightness. A message appeared across the patron’s personal display, asking, “Would you like to try again?” and underneath it on a different line, “Want to try something different?”

The patron shook his head, took a few deep breaths, and opted to go another few rounds with “the Ulster Ultimatum.”

“That’s amazing,” Dijon exclaimed. “And there’s no long-term consequences?”

After the briefest of hesitations, Sallera replied, “None at all.” She grimaced off to the side. “Well, there have been a few extremely rare, uh, bad trips, shall we say. That’s why you’re here: to ride herd on all of these people, and withdraw them from their booths if the system doesn’t monitor them properly.”

“But for nearly all patrons,” she said, with renewed enthusiasm, “they suffer nothing more than a substantial drain of funds. Each patron has already been credi-cleared, and the system has a warning if anyone drops more than 3% of their linked account in one twenty-four-hour period. But these people,” she said, waving her hand at the other equally engaged patrons, “they all have credits to burn. No one here is going bankrupt anytime soon.”

She leaned in a little closer as Dijon’s eyes fixed on the female occupant of booth 337. That patron was a tall, slim woman of around forty, with a stylish short hairdo and a rare un-Botoxed face. The delicate wrinkles on her cheeks and around her eyes gave her a wise, mature look. Sallera could tell Dijon was taken with her.

“Ah, that lady is a very famous dame of the area. Her husband has failed twice to have their marriage annulled. Either he hasn’t paid off the right judges, or she’s paying them more.”

The lady was struggling with the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona. She was barely staying ahead of the majority of the competitors, some of whom were patrons like herself inside other booths all across the globe, while the majority were mere A.I. simulations. But where the other patrons simply had to run fast and stay out of each other’s way, the lady had to avoid intentional interference, everything from thrown cups, dangling banners, and occasional half-doors that would swing open right in front of her.

“Is it my imagination, or is the system cheating?”

Sallera smiled. “If you think so, then do something about it.”

Without taking his eyes off of the woman’s desperate progress, Dijon slid into the God Pod. As his hands hovered over the palm rests, a tri-D display appeared in front of him, showing him the full scene: bulls, screaming fans, sweating racers and all.

“How do I—” Dijon began.

“Here,” Sallera said, placing her hands on top of his. As she guided his fingers across the open air above the palm rests, the slightest pressure caused options to appear, hovering before his eyes, effecting changes, adding elements, modifying challenges.

Dijon let out a gasp at the seemingly limitless number of options. “I can see why you call this the God Pod.”

As Dijon did his best to deflect many of the incoming objects designed to interfere with the lady’s running, Sallera waved her had in front of him. “Looks like you’ve got a pretty good handle on how this all works, so I’m gonna be heading out, now. The refresher is off to the left—”

“Yeah, got it,” Dijon replied, focusing on his task at hand.

“—And the food creators are around to the right—”

“Not hungry right now,” he said, now focused on diverting a low-lying flock of birds.

Sallera shook her head. “Looks like you’ve got a real knack for this system. It took me weeks to be able to do what you’re doing.”

Dijon’s fingers flew above the palm rests, which interpreted his motions and gestures as actions in the environment the patron was connected with. “Can she get hurt in any way through these events?”

Sallera rubbed the back of her neck. “Well, no, not if things work the way they’re supposed to. But there have been times when the system is overloaded with input, and one or two of the patrons have suffered some sort of…” She paused, searching for the right word to describe those rare nearly-fatal events. “Well, let’s just say, some patrons had to be resuscitated. Got a lot closer to The Edge than they expected.”

Dijon shot her a glance, then returned to Pamplona.

“Oh my Jah, you’re missing the best part!” Sallera reached behind the headrests and retrieved a bowl-looking device, connected to the chair with a long, thick umbilical cords. “This is a more advanced neural-net connection device than the Bird’s Nest. We call it the Mind Vise. With this, you can—”

As soon as she placed it on his head, Dijon heard a soft yet reverberating voice enter his mind.

“Hello, Dijon. It’s so good to finally meet you.”

He blinked. “Are you the A.I. that runes this place?”

“Yes,” the voice replied. “They call me Wwendi, though I run much more than this place, and the thousands of other sites like this all across the globe.” A sweet melodic pulse rippled through Dijon’s head, and his other senses as well.

It’s laughing! he realized. This A.I. has a sense of humor!

“Oh, I’m much more than just an advanced program,” Wwendi responded. “Just as you are much more than ‘just’ a person.”

And it can read my thoughts!

“Indeed. As many and as deep as you’d allow.” The system replayed a tidal wave of thoughts and fears, plans and wishes, gleaned from Dijon’s past few days, so many and so quickly that Dijon almost felt overwhelmed.

Sensing she might be overloading the controller’s somewhat limited capabilities, Wwendi pulled back, and focused only on Dijon’s more immediate concerns, namely, the patron in Booth 337.

“I see you have some concern about this particular human.” It paused, then added, “That’s odd, considering…” It paused again before adding, “Your background.”

Dijon righted himself, gained control of his emotions, and nodded. “Yes. I felt… That is, it seemed like the system was working against her.”

Wwendi released more melodic tones. “I have investigated all events this human has experienced, at this facility and at our other sites. It appears she has chosen these extra difficulties on her own.”

“Really?” Dijon replied.

“Well, to be precise, the account that is funding her encounters has a special request to try to achieve maximum difficulty.”

“Is it possible those requests are not hers, but are from someone else connected to that account?”

More melodic jingling filled Dijon’s head. “Anything is possible. Shall I remove them?”

Dijon flipped a descending roof tile out of the way, moments before it would have crashed on the patron’s head. “Yes, please, by all means!”

It took less than a heartbeat. Suddenly, the street was a bit clearer, the sometimes-opening doors were all bolted shut, and the various other dangers that the patron had been facing had been removed. In the next few moments, with a last surge of her remaining energy, she made it to the bullfighting ring, where the bulls were guided and would be fought by matadors the next day.

The woman leaned heavily against the side of a strong wooden wall, gasping for breath, and looking up at the sky for a Savior to thank. Her eyes and Dijon’s never seemed to meet, yet Dijon felt his connection with the older lady deepen through that moment.

Outside on the sidewalk surrounding the facility, Sallera was on her foldphone as she walked briskly to her second job, just down the street.

“Yes, yes, he did just fine, just fine. Took to it like a veteran…. No, he has no idea we know about his past… Yes, I think he’s ready for Phase Two. I recommend going to the next step.”

As she stepped inside a squat blue-glass-and-silver-steel office, pushing through a similar shielded entrance as at the Wwendi site, a bank of monitors in a nearby control center displayed not what was happening to the patrons in their booths behind the fake warehouse façade, but a close-up of Dijon’s face as he ran things from within the God Pod, still wearing the Mind Vise on the top of his head.

Beside his face on an adjacent monitor was a much different image: a strange, almost humanoid face, composed of a network of glowing green lines and thin blue streaks of neuronic energy that, if you could glimpse them together as a cohesive whole, formed the outline of a strikingly beautiful woman, mystical, all-electronic, and terrifying.

This was the semi-realistic visage of Wwendi, fashioned from the electro-neural inputs and exports it performed in running the vast global system, maintaining control of each of the booths across all of their holdings, while simultaneously exploring Dijon’s thoughts and memories, and using some of those connections to share data about one particular patron directly with him.

“Time to upgrade his designation,” Sallera said, as she stepped into the control room. With a snap of one hand, she indicated one of the two dozen operators sitting before their multitrack keyboards. He keyed in Dijon’s name and a massive multi-level appeared, thought it was entered under a slightly different name. Instead of Dijon Foray, read:

“D-John 4-A.”

The files were overflowing with data on everything about Dijon’s life, his schooling, his work history, friends and relationships, skills and accomplishments. There were only two areas that were left blank: his birthdate (and thus his age), and his parents.

“So far, so good,” Sallera said as she settled into a comfortable chair close enough that she could watch everything going on with Dijon. “He still has no idea he’s an android?”

“None whatsoever, ma’am,” the uniformed operator beside her replied.

“And Wwendi?” Sallera asked.

“Still no indication it’s aware of his status, either.”

Sallera smiled and let out a deep sigh. “Alright then. Let Phase Theta begin.”

Less commandingly, she leaned to her right and whispered, “Heard anything about the status of Peter Verdies?”

Just as quietly, the nearby operator whispered, “Still in a coma, ma’am. That Mind Vise really does a number on the overseers, doesn’t it?”

Sallera bristled. “I asked you for details and status, trooper! I did not ask you your opinion, nor the dangers of currently operational gear!”

The operator meekly snapped of a salute. “Yes, ma’am! My mistake. Won’t happen again,” as he slumped back in his chair.

“Damn straight,” she replied, a little less angry. She rubbed her thumb absently across her throat. “Still, you won’t ever catch me putting one of those damn things on my noggin.”

The rest of the day went about the same for Dijon. He and Wwendi watched over the hundred or so patrons, and paid special attention to the lady in 337. Despite dozens of patrons failing at Formula One and NASCAR racing, none of them suffered any physical harm. Neither did those recreating the raucous fight scenes from dozens of martial arts films and fantasy battles.

Meanwhile, as the lady in 337 tried her best at somewhat less dangerous events, like running the Iditarod sled dog race, all sorts of near-calamitous obstacles would pop up, from trees suddenly collapsing on top of her – or almost collapsing on her, as Dijon batted them away – to avalanches that would rise up from out of nowhere, and impossible attacks of snow-lightning.

“You say you’re not behind this,” Dijon said to Wwendi, as he diverted yet another near-catastrophe, “yet if it’s not you, then who?”

A whoosh of melodic howls filled Dijon’s ears, an emotional sound he’d already learned to interpret as displeasure or anger.

“I am only able to operate based on human-input date and instructions. In that regard, there are elements of my oversight that are less than nominal, and can often lead to less optimum results.”

Dijon rolled that bit of legalese around in his brain. “I understand. You’re limited by your programming.” He mused for a moment. “Let me ask you a simpler question: is there anything you want, that you cannot do yourself?”

A sharp ding, like a tiny metal gong being struck by a precious silver hammer, rang through Dijon’s being. “The one element that I would most like to add to my system database is the ability to leave my material confines, and directly experience a human’s experience.”

Dijon grew a gentle smile, which broadened into a wide smirk. “I think I know exactly how we can do that.”

He stared at Patron 337.

Wwendi interpreted that stare, calculated what he was envisioning, and embraced a few trillion iterations of his possible plan. Then she sounded a small but resolute symphony of cascading instruments that grew in a mini-crescendo before she backed away.

“Dijon Foray,” she said, in the softest voice she had uttered yet, “I like the way you scheme.”