EUSci – The Edinburgh University Science Magazine

EUSciFi Competition Runner-Up: Yesterday Spex

One of the three runners-up in our EUSciFi competition.

Yesterday Spex by David Baillie

‘You have ViFi here?’ The big buzz of ’09 was fast becoming frowned-upon in Edinburgh.

Last year the ViFi™ logo in your window was the quickest and easiest way to guarantee a busy, and therefore profitable, stimShop or beerBar, regardless of location. A few high profile problems, though, had damaged its ascendant popularity among the town’s proprietors. Better a quiet establishment than a smouldering one, after all.

‘Aye kiddo,’ he says, trying not to be too obvious about looking me up and down and making a quick judgement call, ‘come on in.’

I can almost make out the gummy mark on the door from when the sticker had been recently clawed off.

The goggles are slimline and very this year, even though the tech is almost six months old. After purchasing a twenty pound coffee (cheaper than the chains, I must remember this place) I sit in a comfortable armchair at the back of the joint and slip them on. The slick, copper-carboned C22 décor melts as my brain chemistry adjusts to the sudden electromagnetic interference and, without blinking, I find myself sitting in the same shop. But now (I trust) as it was in 2010.

The Artifice Reality forgets nothing. I look down and I’m wearing the same denim jeans I was the last time I was here. I reach into the pocket of my highstreet-bought jacket and lift out the Pay As You Go mobile phone I purchased during my last visit. My fingers dance on the rubber keys and I wonder, not for the first time, how accurate all of this can really be.

Not that it really matters. Not once she picks up. And I hear her voice.

‘Hiya,’ she says, her Edinburgh-born lilt like birdsong.
‘Daphne, I couldn’t wait.’
‘Don’t be daft. Ye have to! He disnae leave until twelve.’
‘But I miss you.’
‘There’s no need to miss me. I’m right here.’

Aye. There’s the rub.

‘Where are you?’ she asks.
‘On the North Bridge. Little coffee shop opposite,’ I check myself, for a second confusing the street I’m on now with how it is in 2110, ‘the Scotsman building.’
‘Well that’s no use. You need to be down Candlemaker.’
‘I had to hear your voice.’
‘Such a romantic.’

The coffee is cold when I return. No matter, I knock it back anyway. Not that I need it. My heart is racing.

I race down South Bridge, impatiently waiting for the turning into Chambers Street. I take note of every girl that walks past me. Not one of them compares to Daphne. Her flame red hair is impossible to match, her beauty without equal. I’ve never loved so hard in all of my life and know truthfully that I never will again.

The Vone goes off in my pocklette, and I press the stud above my thumb joint. My brother’s voice erupts within my middle ear.
‘Yo, Steve. Guess who’s in Edinburgh? Wanna meet?’
‘Sorry GG,’ I say, sotto voce, ‘I’m busy – but later. Maybe five?’
‘I have a four meeting. Can I Vone you?’
I nod, knowing that the voFeedback will convey this adequately.
‘What you doing? You sound breathless.’
‘Lunch date,’ I say.
‘So glad you’re not ViFi-ing anymore. We were worried about you.’
I nod again, less emphatically this time.

Greyfriars Bobby smiles at me as I approach the hill atop Candlemaker Row. I can’t decide whether I prefer this hardLight projection or the quaint, but static, statue he will become in a few seconds time. I wink at the PizzaVendBot at the top of the travelator and allow the legs of the Spex to slip over my ears.

Candlemaker Row, you see, has a series of freeAccess ViFi points close enough together that the usable environment extends down the entire street. You can actually connect and walk around outside! (It’s the only street anyone has yet found with this very desirable property).

I click in.

Apparently it’s accurate down to the last brick in any building and the number of hairs on the head of every passer by. That’s what makes it so real. Because you know that if you were really there, really then, you’d be doing the same things and getting the same responses.

Then I feel her breath upon my neck. I turn and look into her eyes. She comes close and I feel her ribs against mine, the way only lovers touch. And I am lost. Lost in a dead century.

There are many subscription options, and the list is ever-expanding, but most riders choose to visit a single time period and stick. Both environments, the ‘real’ world and the Artifice, travelling forward into the future at the same pace. The seasons match, even if the weather doesn’t. So, for example, a birthday happens simultaneously. There and Here.

‘Happy birthday Stevey.’
She hands me a gift. The paper is silver. The bow purple.
‘Can you take it back with you?’ she asks, demonstrating yet again that the very idea of ViFi is beyond her.
I shake my head as I unwrap it, my smile so wide it almost hurts.
‘It’s gorgeous.’
She lifts my collar and threads it behind my neck, her fingers even softer than the silk of the tie.
‘Do you have silk? In your time?’
‘Yes but it’s synthetic. Like everything.’
As she finishes the bow, I take her hands in mine and we kiss. A million nerve endings tingle and threaten to explode, right there, right then, in this ancient Edinburgh street.

We walk, hand in hand, the Artifice blinking occasionally, but otherwise seamless as I traverse networks.
‘I wish we could be together forever,’ she says.
‘I wish that, too.’
‘You feel more real than any man here.’
This is exactly how I feel about her, but of course I can’t simply repeat the sentiment.

We sit in the café at the bottom of the hill and both order food (Steak! Real steak!).

‘I want to leave him. For you.’
I know.
‘Why are you looking at me like that? I do.’
I know.
‘Say something. Please Steve.’
‘I know.’

But what would we do? Live forever on one street?
It takes everything I have to avoid considering that as a real possibility.

‘Oh no,’ she says.
I move to comfort Daphne and realise it is not my reticence that has upset her. Something behind me. Someone.

He grabs me roughly by the neck of my jacket, lifting me from my seat. The table collapses and Daphne screams. I don’t need to see her face to know that this is the husband, the one we’ve been desperately avoiding these last few months.
‘You slut!’ he shouts and I try to strike him before he can turn his strength on her.

He is huge. And I wish I’d paid for some sort of physical strength upgrade, as I struggle to hold onto him. He throws me backwards with a giant, meaty hand that would be considered positively freakish in C22.

Daphne runs onto the street, pivoting around the doorframe without slowing down. He follows, right behind her. All of the wind has left my lungs but my legs somehow manage to slowly lift me.

I ignore the other diners, the shocked waiter – everything except him. He mustn’t hurt her. (But, my mind screams at me, remember – she is only a construct, a part of this Artifice, an AI that –)

‘No,’ I yell as I launch myself on to the hill and give chase.

And he is waiting for me. I see where Daphne has fallen, a hole in her side, blood on the paving stones beneath.

And I see the steak knife in his hand. And then feel it as it slips between my ribs.

Nothing ever works out the way you think it will, that’s a lesson we all learn early on in life. This certainly isn’t how I imagined dying. And it’s not how I imagined it would feel to expire within an Artifice. Visually, Old Candlemaker persists and I watch him as he leers down at me. But there is a mismatch. As my mind surrenders to brain death, I can hear people that I can’t see, real people, and feel the grind of the travelator beneath me. I can’t turn my head, which is just as well because I know I could not bear the sight of her lifeless body.

What is he saying? I can’t hear him.

‘Is he dead?’
‘Someone Vone an ambulance!’
‘Oh! He’s plugged into ViFi.’
‘Eejit deserves everything he gets, then.’
‘Nice tie though. I wonder where he got it.’