Mindplayers

by Pat Cadigan

Genres: Science Fiction; Cyberpunk; Dystopian; Fantasy; Epic Fantasy; Historical Fantasy

Synopsis

Mindplayers are tomorrow's psychoanalysts, linked directly to their patients using sophisticated machinery attached to the optic nerve. In one-to-one Mindplay contact, you can be inside someone else's head, wandering the landscapes of their consciousness. Allie is a sensation-seeking young woman, obtaining illicit thrills from her shady friend Jerry Wirerammer. But Allie goes badly astray when Jerry supplies her with a "madcap" - a device that lets you temporarily and harmlessly experience psychosis. There's something wrong with Jerry's madcap, and the psychosis doesn't go away when it's disconnected. Allie ends up undergoing treatment at a "dry-cleaner", and she is faced with a stark choice - jail, for her illegal use of the madcap; or training to become a Mindplayer herself. During training Allie becomes familiar with the Pool - a cohesive, though shifting mental landscape jointly constructed by a number of minds; and more disturbingly encounters McFlor, who has been mind-wiped, so that his adult body is inhabited by a mind only two hours old. And as a fully-fledged Mindplayer Allie has to choose between the many specialist options open to her - Reality Affixing or Pathosfinding; Thrillseeking or Dreamfeeding.

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 296

Sample

I did it on a dare. The type of thing where you know it’s a mistake but you do it anyway because it seems to be Mistake Time.

Of course, any time I did something with Jerry Wirerammer was Mistake Time. That seemed to be Jerry Wirerammer’s purpose in life. He was a cheery-looking type, very fair, all good teeth and clean hair and new clothes. He was also very crazy. His angle was skewed with respect to the rest of reality; one of those localized anomalies in human skin who always wants to make things interesting.

He came to me with the madcap, I didn’t go looking for him, which proves that when it’s Mistake Time, it won’t do you any good to hide out in your efficiency, wondering how overdrawn you can get with the kitchen before the meal dial locks up.

Even so, I suppose I should have known better than to let him in, but I figured, what the hell – he’d gone to all the trouble of fooling the entrance security program, I might as well see what he was up to now.

The madcap was surprising. Jerry’s trade ran mainly to bootlegged pharmaceuticals – hypnotics, limbos, meditative facilitators, hallucinogens. Hardware was usually beyond him unless he stole it, and he didn’t like to steal. Stealing was too physical, he’d told me once.

‘But this is just borrowed,’ he said, handing the madcap to me. I held it up and examined it as he made himself at home on my futon. It seemed to be a professional make, not jerry-rigged (or Jerry-rigged) – cushioned helmet, wraparound eye-shield, built-in reservoirs for premeasured doses of anesthetic, sedative, and madness. ‘Go ahead, Allie. I brought it over for you. Put it on. Dare yourself.’

Psychosis is an acquired taste and I wasn’t sure I’d acquired it. But I was game. After all, game was the name of the game. I slipped it on. The inner cushion molded itself to my head with a snugness so comfortable I forgot I was standing up and almost toppled over.

‘Whoops. Careful,’ Jerry giggled, lowering me to a sitting position on the futon. ‘You’ll be okay in a minute.’

Less than a minute. Behind the eye-shield, I was already getting a local anesthetic. Then the connections snaked under my eyelids and around my eyeballs to the optic nerve. Big splashy color explosions when they made contact. Where had Jerry gotten something this good? I was aware that my eyes were partly out of their sockets but the shield held them so securely I couldn’t really feel them. Then the psychosis kicked in.

Very slick – the transition from sanity to insanity was smooth. All the neurons involved were hit at once, so there was no bad-splice sensation. The right things were inhibited just as other things were stimulated, producing a change in brain chemistry that felt as natural as changing your mind. Not a bit of dizziness or pain. I got crazy.

The actual psychosis itself was quite conventional, paranoid delusions that built up quickly, one drawing on another for substance. Jerry had been wearing a white shirt, so that meant if I heard anyone, including myself, cough within the next few minutes (I did), I could be sure that there was a machine on the roof beaming thoughts at me. Exactly whose thoughts wasn’t clear, but I had to receive them: I was the One Chosen, and only moments after I realized that, I heard a voice in my ear confirm it.

You are the One Chosen, said a pleasant male voice. Don’t let on to Jerry, though. You know what a mistake that would be.

I sure did. I let the thoughts flow into me and watched a few mildly interesting hallucinations for a while and then the alarm signaled the end. The madcap separated the chemistry it had added from my own, cleaned it out, sedated me and disconnected, replacing my eyes in one smooth stroke.

Jerry struggled the cap off my head for me. ‘Good, huh?’

‘Not bad at all. How’d you get it?’

He shrugged cheerfully. ‘Told you. Borrowed it.’

‘Yah, but who do you know that would loan it to you?’

He shrugged again. ‘I didn’t ask.’

‘Probably the same people who put the machine on the roof.’

‘What?’ said Jerry, still cheerful.

‘The machine on the roof. The one that –’

I told you not to say anything, said that male voice, now coming from a point slightly above me and to the right. I looked up in its direction. Jerry caught it and his cheerfulness faded a bit.

‘Uh-oh,’ he said.

‘What do you mean, “uh-oh”?’

‘Nothing.’

‘No, you meant something by it and I want to know what.’

‘Nothing, Allie, I swear. It’s just an expression.’

‘Right.’

‘It is. Honest. It’s just something I say once in a while. Uh-oh. See?’

I tried to look knowing. ‘Okay, Jerry. Have it your way. But I’m in on it.’

‘You are?’

‘You bet. And there’s nothing anyone can do about it.’

Well, I was wrong on that count. Jerry just waited until the sedative kicked in a little more and then left me off at a dry-cleaner emergency room where, after I was sane again, the Brain Police took me into custody.

Of course, they traced the psychosis to Jerry and his borrowed madcap and got him, too. Jerry was hardly a licensed psychosis peddler, and the madcap turned out to be an experimental model he’d lifted out of someone’s back room.

I didn’t find out for a long time what they did with Jerry. But what they did with me was pretty interesting.

You lose consciousness when you’re dry-cleaned; afterward, you dream or you drift. When the fog cleared, I was lying naked on a slab in a boxy gray room while the Brain Police photographed everything inside and out. I could see the mug-holo taking shape in the tank on the ceiling. Unbelievable. My first offense and they were taking a mug-holo as though I were a hardcore mind criminal, and for what was basically a victimless crime at that. Was this someone’s election year? I wondered. Or maybe I was still at the dry-cleaner’s waiting for treatment and this was a psychotic dream.

‘Haas, Alexandra Victoria,’ said a female voice. Not a paranoid delusion but real, belonging to the Brain Police officer looking through the thick observation window at me.

‘Yes?’ I said, trying to sound casual and matter-of-fact all at once.

‘You can dress now,’ she said.

I sat up. A set of prison jumpjohns was lying over the foot of the slab. I put them on a leg at a time, trying to get my thoughts together.

I didn’t know much about the Brain Police – not many people do unless they get into trouble with them, and those people don’t talk much about it later – but at that moment, I’d rather have been facing the IRS. At least the IRS couldn’t audit your thoughts. The woman on the other side of the window didn’t look like gestapo; she was plain to the point of dowdy with her straight sandy hair and bare face. The uniform was more the kind of thing you’d put on if you were going to paint something yourself. She was gazing expressionlessly in my direction without looking directly at me. When I finished dressing, a door opposite the slab whispered open and I stepped through into another boxy room.

‘Have a seat,’ the officer said, pointing at a table and two chairs in the center of the room. She remained at the window and the desk beneath it. I could see a smaller duplicate of my mug-holo revolving in one of the two monitors set between the array of system controls.

I sat. ‘Now what happens?’

Another door across the room opened and a round man in a beige sacsuit came in. The officer turned away and made herself busy at the desk. The man looked harmless enough; he wasn’t any taller than I but a good deal heavier. He barely nodded to me as he went over to her. They whispered to each other for a few minutes. I stared at my hands on the tabletop, trying to catch a few words, but I couldn’t hear a thing.

Abruptly, the woman crossed the room and left. I watched her go and then looked questioningly at the man, but he was busy studying the monitors. I waited a while and then cleared my throat.

‘Could you at least tell me if there’s anything good on tonight?’

He peered at me over his left shoulder. He said his name was Paolo Segretti and he’d been assigned to my case. ‘I see you still have your own eyes,’ he said, after a pause. His eyes were carnelian biogems. ‘Unusual for someone in your position.’

‘What position is that?’

‘Mind criminal.’

‘Oh, for – I put on a madcap for maybe two minutes. Two minutes. I didn’t go out and urge children under twelve to do likewise and I didn’t threaten anyone with bodily harm. The madcap was stolen but I didn’t steal it. This is my first offense!’

‘This is the first time you’ve been caught,’ the man corrected me. ‘But that’s better.’

‘What’s better?’

‘That wailing note in your voice. Now you sound more like what you are, which is a woman only a few years over the age of consent – an age I personally think is too low, but I’m sure that doesn’t interest you – who took a wrong turn.’ He smiled. ‘You’re very lucky. I mean it.’

‘I know,’ I said; somewhat defensively. ‘I had no idea a madcap could leave you altered after it cleaned out the psychomimetics. I thought when it was over, it was over.’

‘The particular madcap Wirerammer “borrowed” was incomplete; it didn’t have a restore setting, which you need even with the clean-out sequence. Once you put it on, you’re crazy until you go for the cure. Is that his real name – Wirerammer?’

‘I don’t know. I never asked.’ I took a deep breath and sat up a little straighter. ‘You can probably find out easier than I could. Take a look at his specs.’

Segretti glanced down at the monitors again. ‘Can’t. He’s not my case. I can’t just go barging into anyone’s head as the whim takes me. I was just curious. “Wirerammer.”’ He pronounced it carefully. ‘Nah. Couldn’t be, it’s too good.’

I got up and went over to look at the monitors. There was some kind of program full of numerical gibberish running on one; on the other, my nude form was still revolving slowly next to a list of distinguishing characteristics – two moles on left shoulder, nose broken once, and so forth. I frowned at the display of my rather padded form, with my hair showing a little more auburn than it actually was, rippling down to my shoulders as though I were underwater.

‘What’s the matter, One Haas? Don’t like what you see?’

‘On the contrary. I didn’t think I looked that good.’

Segretti restrained himself from chuckling. ‘Have you ever heard the expression “Nobody loves a smartass”?’

‘Yes, and I don’t think it’s necessarily true.’

‘Well, it’s truer than some smartasses might care to admit. When I said a little while ago that you were lucky, I didn’t mean only that you were lucky Wirerammer had enough decency to leave you off at a dry-cleaner’s when he realized you were in trouble. I meant you were lucky they caught you.’

‘“They”? Shouldn’t that be “we”? As in ‘you’?’

He shook his round head. ‘I’m not Brain Police. I’m your attorney. And your reality affixer.’ He glanced at the watch on his shirt cuff. ‘Ah, it’s time.’

‘For what?’ I was still trying to absorb the fact that I had an attorney who was a reality affixer, or vice versa.

‘For a little trip. We’re going over to my office to get your reality affixed.’

I stepped back. ‘Wait a minute. What if I don’t want my reality affixed?’

‘Sorry. It’s mandatory after an emergency dry-cleaning for an illegal psychosis.’

Great. I wasn’t sure who to curse, Jerry Wirerammer, Segretti, or myself. ‘No, you don’t go barging into everyone’s mind as the whim takes you, not you. You’re a real respecter of privacy, you are.’

‘You’re my case,’ he said brightly. ‘I won’t take you out restrained and I’ll even treat you to dinner.’

Yippee, I thought sourly.

Restraints were hardly necessary. With my mug-holo in the active file, I couldn’t have used any credit and I couldn’t even have gotten into my own apartment building without alerting the authorities. I was no Jerry Wirerammer, I didn’t know how to hackety-hack the security program. I was beginning to see how ill-prepared I was for a life of crime, even petty crime like being crazy without a license. But then, Jerry Wirerammer had been prepared and they’d gotten him, too.

Segretti took me out a side entrance, signing me out in his custody by pressing my left hand to a screen and superimposing his own print. The big Brain Police officer on the door didn’t look like the type who knew much about anyone’s brain; he was built more like an assassin. He also had that same lack of expression that I’d seen on the woman officer.

‘Glad to be out of there,’ I said as we stepped out into the deepening late afternoon sunlight. ‘Are they always so emotional?’

Segretti looked at me as though he couldn’t decide whether he should be amused or not. ‘They get that way, dealing with mind crimes. Stuff like mindsuck, mindrape. Even the petty stuff like unlicensed psychosis. Defensive suppression of emotions, what with all the mental stuff they sort through.’ He took my elbow and guided me up the sidewalk to the corner.

The city was just starting to get its second wind for the onset of evening. Overhead, airborne traffic was accumulating as it headed for Commerce Canyon; a looped holo on the belly of a crosstown express urged anyone looking for a new lease on life to visit any of Power People’s 57 local outlets ‘and browse our selection of over 1000 franchised personas! Rates are reasonable but reservations are required!’ I shuddered slightly as the goose walked over my grave; franchised people gave me the creeps worse than the Brain Police. Segretti noticed, but he didn’t comment.

‘Ground traffic’s lightened up a lot,’ he said. ‘We’ll walk. It’s only eight blocks and walking’s good for the brain. Ever notice how after you take even just a short walk, you get a new idea? Or do all your new ideas come out of madcaps?’

I tried to duplicate the Brain Police officers’ no-expression look. Segretti laughed, his chubby body jiggling in his sacsuit. ‘Remarkable,’ he said. ‘You could be taken for one of them. I mean it.’ I must have looked alarmed then because he laughed a little harder.

We started walking in the general direction of Commerce Canyon; through the gaps in the air traffic, I could just see the haze-covered lines of the buildings that rose up in man-made walls on either side of the central urban air and ground artery. In eight blocks, we wouldn’t get anywhere near it, which was fine with me: the filtration systems in Commerce Canyon left a lot to be desired. I didn’t care much for breathing air I could see.

‘Did anyone ever tell you your brain organization is unique?’ Segretti asked, still keeping a firm hold on my elbow as we walked. A woman in a red plastic workerall gave my prisoner jumpjohns a disdainful look but she gave Segretti an equally disdainful look.

‘Everyone’s brain organization is unique,’ I said, glancing over my shoulder at the woman as she passed us. ‘Even people who think alike think differently.’

‘Well, I was looking at your activity readings and it seems you store a lot of information in places where most people tend to store only those things they’ve experienced in real time. You lead an awfully mental life. I’m surprised no one’s ever approached you about it.’

‘“Approached” me? What do you mean, “approached” me?’

‘Talked to you about it after mindplay.’

‘I don’t mindplay.’ A pair of onionheads linked together by a three-foot chain gave us a wide berth, ignoring us as hard as they could. Onionhead marriage is about as weird as you can get without drugs. ‘Wait a minute. I thought you were supposed to be able to tell whether somebody mindplayed or not.’

‘Yah.’

‘Well? Wasn’t it in my readings?’

Segretti gave me the look I was beginning to think of as his Standard Cheerful. ‘Nope. You’ve got the brain chemistry of someone who has mindplayed regularly, entered into altered states of consciousness.’

‘That’s from the madcap.’

‘No, it isn’t. The madcap left an entirely different sort of trace. And a madcap, by the way, is technically a form of mindplay, though not the kind we both know I’m talking about.’

We passed a dreamland where a freestanding holo of some sort of silvery bird-person was beckoning with a feathery arm. A melodious recorded voice assured us that if we could imagine it, we could dream it, and with their enhanced dreaming technique, we’d never know the difference between it and a real experience. Big deal; I never knew when I was dreaming even without enhancement. Anyway, the claim wasn’t true. The human mind won’t accept a script in the rem state. I’d tried it.

‘Mindplay is a hell of a lot safer than madcaps or drugs, you know,’ Segretti said, oblivious to the dreamland come-on.

‘And a hell of a lot less private.’

‘You’d be surprised. How private is it to end up at some dry-cleaner emergency room babbling every thought that runs through your head at the top of your lungs?’

‘That’s never happened to me before. Maybe because of my unique brain organization.’

‘If it happens enough, you could lose that unique brain organization. And a lot of other stuff. Having unique brain organization doesn’t automatically make you smart.’

I shrugged. ‘Being smart doesn’t make you smart.’

‘But it does make you a smartass.’

There was a neurosis peddler on the next corner, spitting glittery little stars into the air from a pouch in his cheek as he solicited passersby. ‘Are you paranoid enough? Are you sure? Paranoia’s the wave of the future. Get alert, get paranoid!’ He spotted Segretti and made a fast getaway down the cross street without looking back.

Segretti smiled benignly at me. ‘I used to know him. Such a shame. His license was revoked a while back and what he’s selling are basically his own fears and insecurities. So sad when talent goes bad.’

‘Why was his license revoked?’

‘Because he was selling his own fears and insecurities. Bad ethics. You use the client’s own raw material, you don’t impose your mental state on someone else.’

‘How can you avoid it?’

‘There are ways. Training.’

For some reason, I thought of the Brain Police and their blank faces.

In the middle of the third block, one of Power People’s franchise outlets was having a grand opening, with a freestanding holo of a party in progress on the sidewalk in front of the store. There were hardly over 1000 personas displayed; probably just some of their bestsellers mixed in with the slower-moving types. A deliriously-in-love Nordic couple with matching gold hair and sculpted noses were discussing something with a grandfatherly man holding a bowl of pretzels. Next to him, a licensed likeness of this month’s hottest holo star was laughing with the licensed likeness of last month’s hottest holo star, while a tall, slender woman with large sad emerald eyes wandered among some of the other images. Very slick arrangement – it was cued to have them all turn and greet anyone stepping into the display field. Silently, though; there was no sound track. It wasn’t that slick.

The grandfatherly type held out the bowl of pretzels. It passed through my shoulder and I looked the other way just in time to see I was marching through a bouncy brown-haired woman with her arms wide open in welcome. Of course, I didn’t feel anything, but it still made me uncomfortable.

‘It was an inevitable outgrowth of the chain method of merchandising goods,’ Segretti said, smiling at me. ‘It lets people be the way they’d like to be with each other, and when they’d like to be different, they can change without a lot of emotional problems.’

‘Yeah, everybody wants to be somebody but nobody wants to be just anybody.’

‘Would you deny them a little pleasure just because they’re so dissatisfied with themselves they’d rather exist with an imposed persona? It’s really just another form of acting.’

‘Actors don’t rent personas so they can act.’ Segretti walked us a little faster as the afternoon began to fade. ‘No, but a lot of them are licensing themselves. Acting being what it is. What it’s always been. It’s no different than selling their faces to endorse jumpjohns, say, or flyers or drugs.’

‘If you say so. But that doesn’t mean I have to think it’s wonderful.’ I remembered when they’d finally legalized franchises. My parents had gone out and put their applications in the same day. The last time I’d seen them, I still hadn’t known who they were. ‘Listen, I don’t feel like a big sell on how wonderful it is to be alive in this age of mental marvels. Just affix my reality and let me pay my fine and I promise never to get loony without a license again.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ Segretti said flatly but no less cheerfully.

Well, he was on target there, but I didn’t say anything. The streets were becoming a little more crowded as the lights came on; apparently there were plenty of parties somewhere tonight. We went in silence the rest of the way to his office.

Segretti’s office was schizy; half of it was crowded with screens of various sizes and cassette library cases piled floor to nearly ceiling. You could hardly see out of some of the windows for the stacks of books and program boxes on the sills. He had two desks, back to back, and there was less than a square foot of clear space on both of them with all the slates and styluses and even more books he had scattered all over them.

The other side of the room was completely separate, as though a tangible, if unseen, barrier ran right through the center. That side was reserved for his system. It was fair-sized, maybe seven feet by ten, with two cushioned slabs and two holes the size of small ovens, where we’d be sticking our heads. The outside of the system didn’t show much, except for six monitor screens and the lighted control panel between the headholes.

‘Hungry?’ Segretti asked brightly.

I just looked at him.

‘I’ve got a nice lasagna dinner on the dial. Algae instead of spinach but it tastes great, I mean it. Come on.’ He led me around a corner on the cluttered side of the room and into a small, tidy alcove where an old-fashioned breakfast nook stood under a delivery box and a dial.

When the delivery box chimed and the door slid up and I smelled the lasagna, hunger hit me all at once. Segretti served us healthy portions from the dish without making much of a dent in what was left. ‘Plenty of cheese,’ he said, putting a fork in my hand. ‘You’re a bit depleted in the neurotransmitter department, so eat up. We’re going in.’

‘On this?’

‘Oh, it’s all fortified.’

‘You could have just shot me.’

‘The brain likes to take its nourishment conventionally, through the stomach. Shooting you full of concentrate is a strain in the long run, something you should be more concerned about. You don’t go cranking up the thought machine indiscriminately or someday you’ll wake up with Swiss cheese behind your eyes, I mean it. I eat.’

‘Obviously.’

He didn’t take offense. ‘If I wanted to look different, I would. Anyone can.’

The lasagna tasted wonderful, lacking the mediciney undertaste fortified food usually had. Segretti let me diminish a fair amount of it in peace, beaming at me as though he’d cooked it himself. I could feel myself starting to relax after a bit, at least physically. No tranquilizers, just the right combination of carbohydrates in the right dosage. But I didn’t want to relax.

‘I’ve never had my reality affixed,’ I said, after he’d served me another helping. ‘I don’t see why I have to.’

‘It’s the law.’ He frowned at the dish, then shrugged and helped himself to more.

‘But why? I mean, I know what reality I’m in now.’

‘Then, you’ll still be in the same reality afterwards. Nothing to worry about.’

My appetite died suddenly. I sat back against the booth and pushed my plate away.

‘Uh-uh,’ Segretti said, gesturing with his fork and the long dangle of mozzarella cheese hanging from one of the tines. ‘Keep eating.’

‘I thought you referred to mindrape as a crime.’

Now I got a reaction out of him. He put down his fork and stared at me, the carnelian eyes scanning my face. ‘I’m not going to mindrape you.’

‘You’re not? Tell my mind that. It doesn’t seem to believe you. My mind has a mind of its own. As it were.’

‘You committed the crime. I can’t believe you didn’t know you’d have to go through some kind of probe.’

‘What I didn’t know was that I’d get caught,’ I mumbled, staring at the half-finished lasagna on my plate.

‘The Brain Police put together an approximate pi. . .