A Coney Island of the Mind

(Published Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Feb. 1993. Copyright 1993.) (With immense debt to Lawrence Ferlinghetti.) Reality Parlor.

He pays his money and goes back to the cubicle with the treadmill and pulls on the waldos, puts on the heavy eyeless, earless helmet. He grabs for the handlebars suspended before him, blind in the helmet that smells intimately of someone elses hair.

Now he can see. Not the handlebars hung from the ceiling on a tape-wrapped cable, not the treadmill. He is the cat with future feet. He sees a schematic of a room; all the lines of the room are in pink neon on velvet black, and in his ears instead of the seasound of the helmet he hears the sound of open space. A room sounds different than a helmet even when there’s nothing to hear.

A keyboard appears, or rather a line drawing of a keyboard with all the letters on the keys glowing neon blue. Over it in neon blue letters is the message, “Please type in your user ID.”

“Cobalt,” he types, letting go of the handlebars. The waldos give him the sensation of hitting keys, give him feedback. His password is “Nagasaki.”

A neon pink door draws itself on the velvet wall in front of him.

The keyboard disappears and the handlebars appear in pink neon schematic until he grabs them. Then they disappear from sight but he can still feel them, safe in his gloved hands. He starts forward [the treadmill lurches a bit under his blind feet but it always does that at first so he is accustomed to it, doesn’t really think about it, just kind of expects it and forgets about it] through the door which opens up ahead of him, pulling apart like elevator doors into the party.

The party isn’t a schematic, the party looks real. The party is a big space full of people dressed all ways—boys with big hair and girls with latex skulls and NPC in evening gowns and tuxes—as he comes out of the elevator he looks to the right, to the mirrors and sees himself, sees Cobalt, sees a Tom Sawyer in the twenty-first century, a flagboy in a blue silk jacket and thigh high boots with a knotwork of burgundy cords at the hips. All angles in the face, smooth face like a razor, a face he had custom configured in hours of bought-time at the reality parlor, not playing the reality streets, not even looking, just working on his own look. Cobalt eyes like lasers, and blue-steel braids for hair.

Edgelook, whatta-look, hot damn.

Not what he looks like at all in the mundane world of Cincinnati, Ohio, but he isn’t in Cincinnati, ho, flagboy, he’s not in Kansas anymore, he is at the PARTY. Here he is, a serious dog, a democratic dog, but he doesn’t think he’ll spend a lot of time at the party today. Looking around he doesn’t see anyone he knows. Not that that means they aren’t there, because anyone can look like anything, but if they don’t have a handle he recognizes and they don’t go calling out for Cobalt, then they don’t want to be people he knows, right? And anyway, this afternoon the partyroom is full of off-the-racks, look-like-your-favorite- movie-star or

take-a-basic-template-what-color-are-your-eyes—

your-hair-look-like-a-mannequin which he can’t abide because he’s looking for people with style so he angles over towards the far wall [his real feet, his mundane feet in their grass-stained sneakers that he wears when he mows the lawn just keep heading straight ahead on the treadmill, if he angles he’ll step off the treadmill, but he turns the handlebars to the left and he’s done it so long that he doesn’t get confused by his feet saying one direction and the handlebars telling him another] to the far wall, full of blank doorways and he stops and reads the menu.

It’s better now that he’s turned eighteen, more choices. Games and Adventures, Simulations, Tanks and Airplanes and Spaceships—but he’s not really interested in a lot of that because he’s on a treadmill, not sitting down, so back to Games and Adventures, Places to Go and Things to Do, which is where he is likely to find some people he knows, someone to hang out with:

<TD

Quixote and Bushman and Taipei.

“Any messages?” he asks out loud.

Soft chime that can be heard over the whole room of the party (except no one else does.) No messages. Nobody in the swim?

Then he’ll look for a place where maybe he’ll meet serious dogs.

He almost selects Chinatown but changes his mind and [left hand lets go of the handlebars and reaches out] pushes the button for Coney Island.

[Feedback through the waldo, it feels like pushing something.]

A line of electricity forms at the top of the door, a forcefield, and edge of static that rolls down like a window shade only to draw down an opening on a place.

Black night on the boardwalk with the ferris wheel and the parachute drop all decked out in colored lights off in the distance. Cobalt steps through the door and his feet thump the hollow wood of the boardwalk. The booths spill bright white and yellow light onto the boards. He can hear the ocean. A guy is selling hotdogs. Coney fucking Island.

So he walks down the boardwalk, checking out the crowd, checking out how much is just program—the sailor and his girl at the Toss the Ring who are always at the Toss the Ring every time he comes—and how much is real people. It’s a quiet night on the boardwalk.

Maybe he should go back to the party, check out Chinatown.

Hey, he;s here, maybe he’ll just dogtrot on down the boardwalk, out towards the rides, see if there’s someone. Then he’ll go back to Chinatown.

Moving along the boardwalk, past the cotton candy, past the tattoo parlor, past the place where the counter is a two-tone Cadillac, dog gone, dog going, into a dog eat dog world.

And the queens (who are mostly black and tall and female and camp, that being the current fashion in queens) are calling “Hey sweetcakes,” “Hey, be my blueboy,” “Are you hotwired, babyface? Are you wired for sound?” which he’s not because he rents time in a fucking public reality parlor (no pun intended) where they aren’t going to supply equipment to wire your crotch.

But it’s all just noise, white noise, background hiss, the sound of Coney Island and not what he’s looking for anyway although who’s to say what he’s be looking for if he had the option? But he doesn’t, so he isn’t, he’s looking for his mates, his team, his dogpack. He’s checking under the boardwalk behind the Chinese food palace, and watching the Mustangs crawl up the street because Quixote likes simulations, likes to drive fast cars in crazy places. Watching for spies because Taipei likes adventure games where he fights off attackers, watches for gang members because they all like to play Warriors and Coney Island is where it starts, where they catch the subway to the cemetery in the Bronx.

But the streets are all full of programming, or nonplayer characters, and kids without style, which is to say that this night Coney Island is empty.

So he’s thinking that he’ll check one more place, maybe take in a movie or call up an airlock and go on to Chinatown and he stops where he can see the ocean and looks for a moment, the stone dark ocean rolling and making that sound, hypnotizing him and he likes it because there isn’t much ocean in Cincinnati, hell, there isn’t even much sin in Cincinnati.

Next.

The Beast is a strange story about springtime, about adolescence

and about making sense of the world.

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