Avalon

By Rusty Coats

Avalon was supposed to be the new City of Light: a clean, beautiful place to live, work and play - virtually. There was a cost, however, to this utopia. Programmers Disease. As the epidemic swept through the nation, society rushed in to shut it down. But, cyberspace, like nature, abhors a vacuum and every vice imaginable rushed in to fill the the elaborate Art Deco void. Avalon, a once shining city of virtual opportunity became the nightmare of sex, violence and gambling, and despite the Great Prohibition, everyone flocked there for a fix.
Avalon.
It is what you think.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inknbeans Press
• Release date: Jan 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370817061

Rusty Coats

Rusty Coats started his career as a reporter for his hometown newspaper, The Evening News in Jeffersonville, Indiana, and has worked in media ever since. He’s worked for newspapers in Maine, Miami and Modesto, CA, as an investigative reporter and columnist, before becoming a technology reporter in 1993, covering the birth of interactive media. Since then, as an interactive media executive, he has driven audience and revenue for such news companies as McClatchy, Media General and E.W. Scripps. Rusty holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and English from Indiana University and has attended the Iowa Writer’s Festival – which is where “Out of Touch” began as a character sketch. He and his wife, Janet – a journalist and former executive editor and multi-year Pulitzer judge – run Coats2Coats, a consultancy that focuses on a media future that is participatory, profitable and mobile. They live in Sarasota, Florida and, in true “Brady Bunch” style, have five children.

Book preview

AVALON I: Denys al Coda

The doorboy's metal-flake eyes scowled at my ROM, then pinched the disc between white-gloved fingers and slotted it, tapping code on her touchpad. I inhaled mist from the Cyn, which wasn't doing much to kill my hangover or pep up my synapses. Not the way to meet a Digerati boss like Jenner Van Meter, but there you are.

When the scanner bleated, the doorboy glanced at the tiny screen: DENYS, JACK; ACCESS CLEAR. She handed back my ROM, disappointed.

Welcome to the Scopes Building, Mr. Denys. Her voice was as monotonous as her uniform. They all were. A Sons of David church camp stamped out androgynous doorboys with identical blond hair and identical red monkeysuits and identical lessons in smashing your trachea. Everyone needs a calling.

The elevators are immediately to your right, but you are not permitted to enter without an escort from Mr. Van Meter's office. You should wait in the lobby until such escort arrives. While there, you may want --

Say, I said, cutting her off. I dropped the ROM into the stainless-steel palmtop, watched it spin behind the sapphire-glass portal. You're a doorboy, right?

Yes, Mr. Denys. What else --

You like your job?

Her hands folded on the console as if in prayer. Of course. We all do. Why?

Because I'd like to see you do it.

Her scowl became hot enough to melt the steel flecks in her eyes. She waved at the biometric panel and the door slid open. Clean air drifted into the foyer like a salve.

Maybe when I come back, I said, I'll tell you what it's like inside.

She glared as I passed, then triggered the console and closed the door on my heel. It bumped me twice, then slammed shut when I was clear.

Outside in the foyer, the doorboy allowed herself a small smile.

Van Meter's guard met me by the nootropic stand in the lobby, where the clerk sold me a pack of Cyns and threw in an extra catalyst because he could tell I needed some charity. The catalyst lit the pill and I inhaled cinnamon mist peppered with vitamins, piracetam and a little speed, chasing some of the bitterness out of my brain.

Mr. Denys, said a tall Apollo with almond eyes. My name is Thurgood. I'll escort you upstairs. But first I'm instructed to search you. I'm sure you understand.

I studied him, holding my mist. He wore a double-breasted suit that fit him like molded metal and a small headset to keep him wired to the boss. From the bulge I could tell he packed the stun on his right, which meant he was a Southpaw, which meant Van Meter took no chances. Southpaws were corporate muscle, full of piss and silicon. They took six years to train, and when they said they wanted to frisk you, you said yes.

When he finished. we walked toward the elevators and I took in the scenery. It was a rare treat for me to make it downtown, down where the Tube trains ran on time and the Depression was a rumor. The Scopes lobby scoffed at the Depression with high ceilings of fluted steel and walls of neon-lit glass block. Streamlined telepresence booths banked the walls; they reminded me of the old WPA immersion beakers.

No facade was too ornate for the power kept inside the offices of the Scopes Building. Only the real players had digs here. The pretenders ran speakeasies hidden behind medical supply stores, porno shops and church rectories, all of them talking about the Scopes the way triple-A baseball players once talked about The Show.

Thurgood led me to Van Meter's private lift, where a Peruvian elevator boy guarded the castle gates. Thurgood's left hand flashed and the boy nodded, then grinned a set of ruined teeth at me. Just to be a pain, I stepped past the wall-mounted spittoon and flashed the same signal -- a hand-code ordering the kid to gas me if the scanners found a sub-dermal virus -- and the boy's black bangs ruffled on his scarred forehead. Some people collect antiques; I collect code. It's a bad excuse for a hobby.

The boy pulled the doors shut and we shot up the clear shaft like a dart until the surface features disappeared under a sea of polluted air. The boy consulted his aquamarine screen and flashed Thurgood the sign for clean. Thurgood blinked, hands clasped behind his back. The boy spat a husked seed into the spittoon and I stared across the bruised atmosphere as if looking for Christ, thinking.

The last time I worked for Van Meter was before Prohibition, before we declared civil war over the shared hallucination called Avalon, before the United Nations dismantled the most ambitious Project of the century. That was when I was traveling the net, hawking privacy potions like a rainmaker two days ahead of the law. Van Meter was an ambitious code writer who broke out of the WPA trenches to build his own virtual corporation and didn't want snoops peeking through his high-resolution walls, positioning himself for the inevitable land-rush, and that meant plugging into some ruthless encryption. That's why he came to me. It was a challenge. It was also illegal. But so was just about everything that made sense in Avalon.

Now it was almost ten years later and I'd served seven years in Jasper for the mistake of believing everyone needed a little privacy in the promised land. Now it was eight months into my probation and six years into Prohibition. Now the online offices, universities and amusement parks had been converted to brothels and bloodsport arenas, catering to the outlaw elite. Now people like Van Meter -- the code writers who called themselves the Digerati -- were organized into the kind of family that inevitably springs from Prohibition, and they were harvesting Avalon's true crop.

When the elevator stopped, the boy opened the brass doors and flashed a hangman's sign. I fished a Cyn from the pocket of my Tremayne jacket and stepped into Van Meter's court, feeling like a germ that had dodged an army of antibodies.

Which was, after all, why Van Meter wanted to see me.

At forty-seven, Jenner Van Meter still cut a mean cloth, the kind of guy who caught your eye, cleaned it and then baited his hook to catch another. He kept his red hair slicked back in a perfect V, a facial consonant echoed by his beard. With small shoulders and the delicate fingers of a close-up magician, Van Meter looked polished and brittle, but lethal. Somehow very lethal.

Still smoking those things, Jack?

Still the only way to get a decent breath in this town.

He reached out to shake my hand. Nice to see you again. It's been a long time.

Longer for some, I said. Thurgood shut the carbon-steel doors and helped me out of my trenchcoat and I ran out of excuses for not shaking Van Meter's hand.

I see you're doing well for yourself.

Not as well as others, he said. But I get by.

I released his hand and scanned the office. It took up the entire top floor, crowned only by a heli-port and God. Black acrylic walls, marble floors, mercury-silver fixtures, black leather furniture. A telepresence screen on the south wall was his only decoration. His desk was the latest Mensa, all smoked Lucite and chrome, with more computing power than anything in the artillery rooms of the United Nations, which was one of the reasons why no one in the world could stop people like Van Meter.

Sitting on top of the world is better than getting by.

You'd be surprised, he said. I'm not the biggest Sysop on the block and never will be. I've got my own little territory and that makes me happy.

I chuckled, because Van Meter would never be big enough to be magnanimous. You find religion while I was away? You join the Neuromantics?

God, no. Merely satisfied with my good fortune.

I'm sure you are.

For a colossal failure, Avalon's been very good to a lot of people.

And very bad to a lot of others.

True. Yourself included.

I walked to the window and stared at the burnt horizon. Outside, the sun went into the ocean, the first real sunset I'd seen since Avalon's groundbreaking days, when I'd stay up with my parents in our WPA high-rise, watching through homemade goggles while they built the first crude aisles of the Library. Sunsets were brilliant then.

It only sent me to jail, I said. I got off easy.

You're too bitter.

Keep patronizing me and find out how bitter.

Thurgood wouldn't like that.

He'd get over it.

Maybe. But you wouldn't.

Van Meter stroked his hair with the soft part of his palm. When the hammer fell on Avalon, a lot of talented people had a difficult choice to make. You either cut your losses while a worm called Wrecking Ball tore through the virtual city or you crossed over. Van Meter didn't start out Digerati, but that's what an act of International Congress made him. He tried to live up to his press, but the suit fit him a little loose in the inseam.

He offered a seat. I hung my fedora on my shoe while he sloshed Ephedria into a glass. What have you been doing lately, Jack?

Repaying my debt to society. I have a place near the old Campus, with a Murphy bed and Mensa, where I keep some ciphers from the good old days.

The Mission District? I thought that place was for junkies, orphans and sentimental fools. Which are you, Jack?

You should stop by and figure it out for yourself.

Some other time. He handed me a glass of amber liquor. According to your parole officer, you're coding genealogical records for the Smithsonian. But I know you too well to believe you're looking backward at history. Indulge me.

I stared at the filament wires in my hat, at the places where they disappeared into a fraying sweatband, and said, I'm still selling protection, if that's what you're asking.

Then here’s to the last private eye, he said, lifting his glass.

Not the last. I slugged back the Ephedria and swished it around my mouth. Not bad, if you like the taste of brass. But it's definitely not a growth market.

It'll come back around. We're dealing with frontier mentality. Everything's fluid. We have to establish order before we loosen up.

I sipped Ephedria and said nothing. When people enjoy the sound of their own voice, it's best to let them hear it.

He traced the sweat on his glass. I still hear good things about your keys, Jack. Eight years out of circulation and you've still got the touch.

So they say.

Who's 'They' these days?

Private enterprise.

On which side?

I never paid much attention.

He laughed. Isn't that violating your parole?

Everything violates my parole.

And that doesn't bother you?

Breaking the law?

Yes.

Sure, Jenny. I’m losing sleep. You?

We're not talking about me. We're talking about you.

I didn't know my life was so interesting.

It's not. His face was as hard and pale as bone. I just want to know why you're lying. You haven't been to Avalon since they sent you to Jasper and you haven't sold a code since you sent Icarus out on the networks eight years ago. So stop yanking my chain and tell me why you haven't returned to the only city where you belong.

My foot stopped bouncing the fedora. I wouldn't want to bore you, Jenny.

He leaned forward, red hair glistening. Now, Jack.

I finished the Ephedria and wiped my lips. It’s lost its magic.

Don't tell me you've fallen for the propaganda. You’re afraid of the programmer’s disease? His voice squeaked like a nail pulling from green wood. Now I’ve heard it all.

I stood up and turned to leave. Thanks for the drink, Jenny, but I've got a long elevator ride. Tell Thurgood he was great company.

Van Meter sank lower in his chair. Sit down, Jack. I didn't drag you out of retirement to fish for family secrets. You've been out of jail eight months and I haven't heard a peep, so I thought I'd check your loyalties. If you're into the Neuromantics or the Sons of David, I need to know before I offer you a job.

I stopped. Somehow I knew I'd stop.

What kind of job?

Spook job, he said. I've got a ghost haunting my house and he's become an expensive pest. Up your alley. Or used to be.

I let the sarcasm slide. I'm still listening.

And I'm still waiting to hear your loyalties.

I stared evenly. My IQ is too short for the Neuromantics and my past has too many microprocessors for the Sons of David. Besides, you'd know if I had any loyalties, the same way you know I haven't run code since Uncle Sam cuffed me for treason.

He patted his Mensa and said: Fair enough.

My hand closed around the palmtop in my pocket to keep my fingers from fidgeting. And the ghost?

A genuine spook, Jack. My boys can't sniff him out.

Your boys are clumsy.

Maybe. But this guy isn't. He comes, he goes. Not a crumb, not a footprint. Invisible. And smooth. Very smooth.

I reached for the snifter. Tell me about him.

Van Meter gritted his teeth. First of all, I don't know it's a he. Second of all, I don't know anything. All I've got for proof is sixteen clicks of this spook at Delilah's, sharing the stage with some of my talent. Magdi. He gave me a menacing grin. Can't say that I blame him. This gal is a firecracker. Off-line, she's a nurse at a work-camp in Bakersfield. Online, she smokes like an oil field in Jordan. You'd like her.

I doubt it, I said. So this guy's a shifter?

No. I see right through shape-shifters. Their encryption is top-heavy, never fools the scanners. This guy's invisible.

Impossible. Everything in Avalon is data --

And all data leaves a trail. He shook his head. Not this guy, Jack.

I stared at Van Meter, measuring his delivery. Shifters were routine in Avalon, a hazard in a city where you could change identity as simply as secretaries once changed fonts; in Avalon, men were women, women were men, gender was laughably antique. The Digerati didn't mind when people wore other genders as costumes. It was part of the attraction, the mystique. Spooks were different. They ran silent under bulletproof encryption, terrorized the digital pleasure domes and bilked the Digerati out of millions. And unlike the people who flew on Icarus -- a program that became obsolete while I was playing prison Solitaire in the eastern Sierra -- modern spooks did not exist. They were myths, urban legends that grew around Prohibition's fence. No one on record had run silent in Avalon since the Digerati took control. So Van Meter's sales pitch didn't wash.

Then how'd you see him at Delilah's?

Because he rubbed my nose in it, he said. The guy wants to take me down.

You're too big for that, I said offhandedly. What about Merlin?

No records in Merlin or any of the lower operating systems. No point of entry, no departure. He comes from nowhere, says what he wants to say and disappears.

Say? You've talked to him?

Van Meter keyed the Mensa. A thick hum resonated from its dark walls. Patch in. I'll play you a tape.

I shook my head. Not a chance.

What?

I told you. I don't do immersion.

He smiled and pulled a small ROM from his breast pocket. It's a postcard, not a swim. Scout's honor.

He was no scout, but he had me curious enough to see a ghost worth bringing me downtown, so I folded down the fedora's visor. I stared at Van Meter, his body warped by a tear in the visor, as he placed a pair of platinum-tipped Bono specs over his eyes, adjusted the earfoil and tapped the Mensa pad. My visor squelched, hissed static and came alive, filling my optic nerves with the panoramic view of Delilah's.

It was as close to Avalon as I'd been in almost ten years.

Delilah's was a sex-show lounge built on the grounds of the Avalon Opera House, a legacy still visible in the corners of the stage, where holographic portraits from Peri's Dafne peeked out above Van Meter’s oiled nudes. The orchestra pit -- which, like the seats and lighting, had been cosmetic additions to lend a sense of reality -- had been filled during the redesign. The walls were glossed with action shots from previous shows and the clientele given coaster tables to hide their laps. The tear in my visor cut a jag across the stage, where a raven-haired woman was bent over a milk stool and screaming like a locomotive, red lips choo-chooing to her adoring audience while a farm boy in high-res overalls pistoned up her back door. The angle of the postcard brought us close enough to see the veins in the farm boy's equipment and the muscle tone of Magdi's back.

Love what you've done with the place, Jenny.

Some rewriting, he said. I should show you the archives sometime. I copied this directly from a fifty-year-old porn movie. The table candles flicker and a cigarette girl comes out at intermission to drop handkerchiefs.

Charming.

The view pulled back, and in the right corner I saw the audience -- a crowd of carbon-black mannequins with glowing eyes, squared haircuts and erections. Voyeurs. They couldn't afford to be the farm boy, so they paid to applaud his work.

What am I supposed to be looking at?

Van Meter keyed the Mensa and the image zoomed in on Magdi's face. She was a fine piece of work. No sharp angles, no flat or shiny colors, just supple and shady, even while a farm boy did his do-si-do. Whoever wrote Magdi's skin was worth more than Magdi.

Van Meter was starting to say something when I saw it.

Less than six inches from Magdi's face was a blob of clear pixel that reflected a snapshot from her nose to the dark tip of her right nipple. It looked like a smear, as if someone had streaked the air.

Stop the stream and zoom down.

The pixels came into focus, square mirrors overlapping. Magdi was unaware. Ditto the farm boy and the crowd. The show continued while something not even Merlin could see stood tauntingly close, almost as if the ghost were leaning in to kiss her.

If the disc wasn't doctored, it was the best encryption I'd ever seen.

We ran this ROM through a dozen Mensas and then shredded it with my best meat grinders, Van Meter said in a tone that sounded like respect. Merlin called it an error in continuity. My Mensa did the same.

Maybe it is. But I knew it wasn't. I kept staring, my eyes burning an envious green behind the visor, because it was so good I wished I'd written it.

I would have said the same thing. Then I got this.

Suddenly Delilah's was gone, wiped away by a wave of Van Meter's hand. Magdi's moaning died off, as if her ecstasy had been dragged down a long corridor. The Mensa spun the disc to a second track and landed us inside another postcard: Van Meter's office in Avalon.

He'd remodeled his office several times, expanding with his empire, rounding his corners and squaring his curves. Right now, Van Meter's helm was a twelve thousand square-foot penthouse with a clear-glass floor, sixty stories above the streets of Avalon, where the foot traffic carried junkies to their dreams. His desk was a throne of birdseye maple -- the only thing that hadn't changed -- and his furniture consisted of low-slung sofas with blue-leather skins. For conversation, he'd added a bird cage with an African parakeet that was learning to cuss. A telepresence screen hung on the wall.

You OK? he asked. I turned sideways so I could see his body in my peripheral vision; the difference in depth gave my stomach a slight heave. Same as always. Shading and dimension were near perfect online, but only if you stayed online. When you tried looking at both realities at once, your brain reached for the airsick bag.

Yeah, I said. Shoot.

The parakeet jumped against the cage and hollered, Oh, damn. Oh, damn. Then the face of a Viking appeared on the TP screen. He had long blond hair and carried a heavy mallet. His facial features were dusky, not like the cheap cartoons most people wore, and when his lips opened to speak, I knew Van Meter was dealing with a serious player. Most visitors to Avalon couldn't afford lips.

You are a plague in a house of viruses, Van Meter. You sentence people to die from their own weakness while you profit.

Van Meter chuckled. The Viking continued: But your days are numbered, Van Meter. For months I have been stealing inside your brothels and bloodsport arenas, unseen and unheard. Your strongest hawks can't find me and your most powerful traps can't catch me. I've done this simply to prove a point: You are vulnerable.

The parakeet said nothing.

Today I offer you a choice. Dismantle your online interests. Expel your staff of whores. Let your victims go free. Do this and you will never hear from me again.

The Viking leaned in, his smile as cold as a Norse wind. If you do not comply --

The view abruptly changed from Thor to the interior of Van Meter's Arabian Knights brothel. Nude women undulated beside small boys with erections the size of riding crops, swaying to sitar music behind veils of silk. Beneath the women were the specters of men, online bodies in the throes of their most expensive orgy fantasies.

Without warning, the brothel's image shuddered, moving in staccato blasts, frame by frame, until it froze. Then came a flamethrower, searing through the pornscape like a projection bulb burning through sepia film, until there was nothing but burnt edges.

Thor returned. In seven days, your empire will burn. You may fiddle, if you wish, but fiddle a funeral dirge. Unless we can make a deal.

The visor went blank.

I rubbed my eyes as the purple after-images faded. Van Meter poured two more drinks, tossed his VR cheaters into a drawer and said, Melodramatic little bastard.

I sipped the drink. Sounds like a kid.

We cross-reffed the vocabulary and came up with a median of fourteen, but that doesn't narrow the field. Most people speak with a fourth-grade vocabulary. He sucked on his drink. It's his visual acumen that impresses me.

What's he want?

What they always want. Money. Power. Territory.

How much? How big?

More than I'm willing to pay and more than I'm willing to lease. He took another slug. I don't dicker with ghosts. Or anybody else.

This isn't the first time you've been spooked.

No. And I'll be honest, Jack -- the Digerati is in transition. A few Sysops are fighting and we don't know who is going to cut the cards. He shrugged. So maybe it's the competition. Or those crazy Sons of David -- maybe they finally got their hands on something worth holding. Or someone in my own organization. Or maybe it's just a kid.

You tried traps?

In every place I own? No. I was hoping for something a little more precise.

I stared at my fedora, then out the window. The moon had snagged the last skyscraper on its ascent, an ivory C capping the stark Neuromantic needle like a crown.

I need him hung out to dry, Jack. I'm sure you understand my position. I can't report this to the police, since my occupation violates thirty-seven international laws and is blamed for a global epidemic. And I can't put my own people on it, in case it’s an inside job. He took another drink and met my eyes. Most of all, I need someone who knows his way around a cipher without getting lost in his own code. I have three days left and I am out of resources. My attorneys suggest paying him. I suggest a last resort.

Me.

Precisely.

I finished my Ephedria. You're forgetting one thing. I don't work Avalon.

I'm not asking you to. Just decrypt his costume. He's surrounded by mystery. I want you to lift the veil. He blinked at me. Look. I don't care why you don't work my town. I think it's Avalon's loss, but I'm entitled to my opinion, right?

I said nothing.

What I'm offering is a job. You can go two-D or three-D, postcard or immersion. Makes no difference to me. He straightened his Stygian jacket and folded his hands. I'm offering whatever price you think is exorbitant enough, plus a separate payment to cover the debts in your ledger. I owe you that, for what you gave me ten years ago.

My guardian angel awakes.

Maybe. But I'm offering one more thing. Freedom.

I didn't know it was yours to give.

In this case, very much so. If you get this punk off my back, your guardian angel is going to square you with your parole officer. We'll wipe your record 'til it squeaks. He waved his hand to clear his own bravado. Stan Dewey is a customer, Jack. His debt suggests that I have his attention.

He's in your pocket, then.

With the lint, I'm afraid, he said. Of course, like many things in life, there is another side to my offer. For every positive, there is a negative. Perhaps you've already surmised that, but I'd be happy to rephrase it, if that would speed your decision.

Don't bother.

Good. Now. How about it, Jack? Want to find my ghost?

They say an honest man can't be bought, and maybe they're right. But honest men stopped hiring me a long time ago, and dishonest men rarely offered work that let me keep my feet planted in this reality. Van Meter was shining me on, sure. Something bigger than a ghost was hidden behind his doublespeak. And Van Meter could pretend he had a conscience and squawk about what he owed me, but behind all that was a real pitch. He needed someone competent, someone without attachments or loyalties, and that was me. I needed freedom, and Van Meter held the key.

And if I turned him down, the lint in Jenny’s pocket would see that I had a return ticket to the Jasper Penal Colony, Cell 108.

I replaced my hat and bent the brim. And then I told him I'd take the job.

AVALON II: New Hope

Dr. Pete Cassady ran a rehab center called New Hope in the Mission, a ten-minute Tube ride from Van Meter and a six-block hike from my apartment, if that gives you a better idea of the food chain. Funded by an embarrassed government and the consciences of people who could still afford pity, Cassady opened shop in the city's biggest concentration of speakeasies and porno shops, where junkies panhandled for a set of Mylar goggles and a disposable love glove. The streets smelled like yeast and sweat and desperation, like bad puberty.

Help a brother, man, got what, bring it. Man.

The junkies mumbled staccato fragments from doorways. Most were still smart enough to get out of the rain, and somehow that made it worse. They never looked you in the eye or saw your face. They begged at the motion, like dogs barking at ghosts.

See, I got it, and it's, man. It's there. All I need is, you know. See?

I clenched Van Meter's disc as I passed the derelicts and alley pushers. They'd removed the Mission's payphones years ago, long before Avalon, because old-school hacks used the touchtones as way stations, hiding access codes inside the glass-tube ganglia. It sounds caveman now, but it was a good hack while it lasted.

The lack of dialup didn't stop the pushers. At Sebastian Street, a Chinese kid called Moon hollered from a doorway, saying he had a clean uplink to Jaxom. He waved a cluster of genital electrodes that looked like spider's legs -- a cheap, messy way to go, if you cared about that. Most junkies didn’t, which was why any kid with a palmtop, a set of electrodes and an uplink could pimp here. They chiseled a place in the market -- sometimes alone, but usually as feeders for the Digerati.

Moon said he'd give me an around-the-world for two hundred, real-time love, no canned heat! then flipped me off when I ignored him.

One 'dese days, Denees! he yelled, Pidgin English slapping the stained ceramic tiles. One 'dese days you need love!

I passed the vacant storefronts and faded marquees, tombstones for the soldiers killed by the 28th International Amendment. Before Prohibition, the Mission was the psychological shoreline, the last stretch of dry land before you plunged into the electronic waters. The players may have lived uptown, steering into the future from atop the Scopes, Clarke and Genedyne buildings, but the Mission was where we rowed the boat ashore. Code writers, designers, sociologists and digital hitchhikers gathered here, extended families living in dormitories of the WPA Campus. The days and nights crackled with the noise of frenzied construction, a shipyard at wartime.

Between shifts, we'd meet in the Campus cafes and taverns, sipping Ephedria and passing hits of Snap under the table, critiquing each other's work -- until each virtual brick of Avalon became a communal effort. When an oarman died -- of an overdose, stroke or exhaustion -- he was replaced by someone just as eager, just as idealistic. And when the hammer fell, Prohibition killed more than a few thousand jobs. It was as if the Vatican had vetoed Heaven.

Residents got two weeks severance and watched their apartments searched for immersion equipment, tools of a trade now declared illegal. They were shell-shocked, empty, broken. Some became junkies, unable to unplug, or went underground, turning trade for the Digerati. The rest disappeared into the wireless Sons of David communes or joined the Neuromantics in the fanatical Tomorrow Crusade. Some, as I was told in Jasper, flooded their systems with Snap, jacked into Avalon one last time and walked into eternity.

Now, even with the dealers and the shivered begging of junkies, the Mission seemed as silent as a stage after curtain call. The WPA dorms became subsidized flophouses for the addicts. The few stores that survived were fronts, selling discs of what Moon called canned heat -- full-body immersion into one of Avalon's seedier brothels. The only day the place came alive was government check day, when the junkies blew their month's food money on a three-day online orgy, then spent the other twenty-seven days staring at your shoes and begging for a fix. The cafes and taverns were torched. The gutters reflected torn Mylar; septic rivers carried love gloves and sex shafts through the storm grates. We were all scenery here -- junkies, dealers, even the leftovers too soft to admit it was over.

Cassady's guard frisked me at the door of the clinic while the addicts watched. The guard was a jaundiced Pole with hands like hams. When he felt the disc in my pocket, he pulled it out and grinned as the light shot prisms off the ROM.

Peddling here gets you five in Jasper, dad.

About twenty junkies looked up, Personal History forms forgotten. Two-thirds were men, the youngest a kid no older than fourteen, and the only things they had in common were thin bracelets delivering Doc Cassady's patented virtual-reality methadone. That and pale skin. Addiction turned you gray and meek. They looked like the suicide corpses pulled from the Bay after Prohibition, translucent and blue-veined. But their milky eyes came alive at the sight of Van Meter's disc.

I grabbed the ROM before he could break it and the Pole shoved the metal coils of a stun against my jugular, a trigger away from grand-mal seizure. I clenched my teeth and stared into his milky eyes.

Junkie eyes. Cassady hired his own.

I already did my time at Jasper, I said, feeling the pincers dig into my neck. "And if you