The Feelies

IT WAS THE THIRD TIME THAT JOHN Wilson Heffer had taken a feelie. The previous times, he had only been able to afford a twelve-hour quickie, but since his promotion and the raise that had gone with it, he had found himself in the position, subject to a certain adjustment in his spending habits, to splurge on the whole weekend package. He had been living out the life of Billy the Kid for the past twenty-eight hours and still had another twenty to go, culminating in the famous gunfight with Pat Garrett. Of course, history had been somewhat rearranged for the purpose of the feelie. In this version Billy survived and Garrett was ceremoniously carted off to Boot Hill by weeping whores and the mariachi band from the cantina. The idea of a feelie in which the subject died was unthinkable to Heffer. Only the most perverse entertained the desire to go through the experience of simulated death, and although there were rumors that it did circulate on the underground market, snuff software was extremely illegal.

Even with his raise and his scrimping, Heffer might not have been able to come up with the money for forty-eight hours in the Billy the Kid experience if it hadn't been on the weekend discount list. In the last couple of years, western adventures had fallen from favor, and very few new ones were being made at all. Public taste had changed, and the majority now went for psychedelic space fantasy, the incredibly violent Supersoldier series, and, of course, the fifty-seven hundred varieties of sex scenario that were in the catalog in a section all to themselves. John Wilson Heffer was a traditionalist. He prided himself that he had no time for trends and fads. He still liked the hot sun and the cool dark saloons and the wide-open spaces of the Old West. That wasn't to say that the western fantasies weren't without their share of both sex and violence. In the past twenty-eight hours, he had killed six men, made love to four women, two of them at the same time, drunk three bottles of whiskey, and won four hundred dollars in gold from three pistoleers and a dude in a fancy vest who had just come in off the stage. Unfortunately, he'd had to shoot two of the pistoleers in order to walk away with his winnings. Of course, there was considerable telescoping in feelie fantasy. He was under no illusion that the real Billy the Kid had ever accomplished so much in a single day. Heffer had no objection to that. He wasn't offended that a certain plausibility was sacrificed to cost effectiveness and customer satisfaction. All in all, he was fairly satisfied with the subjective sensation that he was the baddest desperado in all of Lincoln County.

He was also aware, however, that hardly anything was perfect. In this case, it was the software. There was a serious imbalance in the sensory inputs. The audio was normal enough; but the olfactory and the tactile were way up, while the visual was right down, indistinct and muddy. The daytime on the streets was all glare and shimmer, while the nights in the saloons were dark, out of focus Rembrandts where he had to rely on impression rather than actual sight.

No matter how deeply he went into the fantasy, a small, objective part of his mind always remained apart from the adopted identity. It simply watched and observed. It was that part of him that was determined that he should say something once the experience was over. The feelie really wasn't good enough. Sure, he was enjoying himself, but that was hardly the point. It was a matter of principle. Once they'd laid you out in the plastic cabinet that was just a little too much like a coffin, connected the electrodes, and put you under, it was too late. You couldn't come out of the indream to complain about the software quality. All that should have been checked out up front. The discount notwithstanding, he had paid a small fortune for this weekend, and he wasn't about to tolerate a poor visual and overpowering smells. He was going to demand a refund.

It had been the smells that had hit him first. His own smell was less than pleasant: a mixture of acrid sweat, old leather, gun oil, and hot metal. The catalog had neglected to mention that Billy the Kid appeared to bathe on something like an annual basis and only shaved maybe once a week. That posed a bit of a problem for the normally fastidious Heffer. He had experienced nothing like this when he had spent twelve hours as Bat Masterson. Masterson had been extremely clean and had changed his shirt no less than three times in the course of the fantasy. Walking into the cantina had been the worst. As he had come through the batwing doors, the wave of stale beer, rank cigar smoke, and the sweat of men as filthy as himself had all but knocked him off his feet. He had been quite unable to enjoy the way the place had fallen silent and the piano player had stopped playing. The unwashed smell of the mexicali whores, which they couldn't disguise even with liberal amounts of cheap perfume, had all but made him gag.

The overloaded tactile inputs, on the other hand, were something else again. They gave everything a strange edge that, although uncomfortable at times, could also be extremely exhilarating. During the gunfights, when the Colt Peacemaker-an accurate replica of the Kid's own custom-made weapon, the one with the unusual curved, eagle-beak handle-bucked in his hand, the sensation made him feel close to godlike. And the women. In that area, he had no complaints about the tactile overload. Heffer's therapist had told him on a number of occasions that he was too much of a prude to truly enjoy himself, but in this instance, he had broken out and gone mindlessly wild. When he climbed the stairs with a saloon girl on each arm, he was moved to a previously unattainable level of physical delight. They were like a pair of bright-eyed, golden-skinned animals, sinuous and sensual, with swirling manes of jet-black hair. They giggled and they did things to him, and he, as Billy the Kid, accepted it as his due tribute. Their mouths, their hands, the smooth heat of their inner thighs working on him in turns and together, had taken him to places that he had never been before. He even managed to lose himself so completely that he had forgotten about their lack of personal hygiene and his own fear of disease. What the hell, he had told himself. You can't catch a retrovirus from an electronically induced illusion no matter how bad she might smell.

Billy the Kid/Heffer drank and whored through the long afternoon. In a feelie, the fictional principal never slept, and there were no bad aftereffects. The recipient, on the other hand, technically slept all the time; although his or her brain was racing, the body was under the impression that it was enjoying deep, untroubled REM sleep. Garrett was coming at sunset, and the whole town knew it. A hot, lazy tension was building. Little kids played in the street, antagonizing scorpions with burning twigs. Tongue-lolling dogs stretched out flat in patches of shade under the wooden sidewalk. Someone somewhere was playing a guitar, a mournful Spanish dirge in a minor key, all about love, betrayal, and murder. "The Flowers of Evil." Heffer found that he could understand the lyrics even though he normally couldn't speak a word of Spanish. Inside the cantina, the men of the town sat with their tequila and their slices of lime and watched him. He was the marked one. He was the one who might be dead before the darkness gathered. They watched him for any slip, a word or a look, a shake of the hand, anything that might be a sign of weakness or fear. Billy the Kid/Heffer laughed at them. He had the wild confidence of the young, reckless, and drunk. Pat Garrett, badge or no badge, wasn't going to be a problem.

Finally, he was out on the street. The sun was dipping to the horizon against a blood-red sky. He positioned himself with his back to the blaze of the sunset. His shadow stretched out black in front of him, almost twenty feet long, straight down the center of the street. Garrett would be coming in from the east with the sun in his eyes. Billy/Heffer had the edge. His hands curled and uncurled, eager to grab the pistol in his belt, squeeze the trigger, and feel it kick in his hand. When Garrett was dead, he was going back to the cantina. Very soon, his time in the feelie would be up, and he wanted one more bottle and one more woman before he returned to the real workaday, Monday morning world of John Wilson Heffer. It would be a long time before he could afford another weekend contract.

Garrett was coming-the setting sun glinted on the pearl-handled six shooters in the crossdraw rig and the Winchester rifle he was holding at his side. Billy/Heffer laughingly called out a greeting.

"So how you doing, Pat? It's been a while since you were down in these parts."

"I've come to take you back to Santa Fe for trial, Billy."

"I really don't be planning to go anywhere, Pat. I kind of like it here."

"I don't want to be having to kill you, Billy."

"Hell, Pat, you been acting plain damn mean since you started working for the Santa Fe Ring. I thought you and me were supposed to be friends."

"The country's changing, Billy, and friendships have gotta change along with it."

"So I guess there's no way out of this thing."

Garrett shook his head. "Not unless you want to surrender peaceable and come back with me."

"You know I can't do that."

"Then I don't see no way out. We better get to it." Without another word, Billy/Heffer's hand flashed to the Colt, but to his horrified surprise he wasn't fast enough. The rifle was in Garrett's hand before his own pistol was even clear of its holster. There was a bang, a puff of smoke, and, immediately afterward, a searing, burning pain in his chest that was made doubly bad by the overloaded tactile input. He was thrown back onto the hot, red dirt of the street. This wasn't supposed to be happening. He was supposed to kill Garrett and then go back to the cantina for a final fling. He wasn't supposed to die. Feelies didn't do things like this. He was suddenly on his feet again.

"So I guess there's no way out of this thing."

"Not unless you want to surrender peaceable and come back with me."

"You know I can't do that."

"Then I don't see no way out. We'd better get to it." Without another word, Billy/Heffer's hand flashed to the Colt, but he wasn't fast enough. The rifle was in Garrett's hand before his own pistol was even clear of its holster. There was a bang, a puff of smoke, and, immediately afterward, a searing, burning pain in his chest. He was thrown back onto the hot, red dirt of the street. This wasn't supposed to be happening. The software was crashing. It was stuck in some kind of loop. Someone had to be monitoring this. They had to notice that something was wrong and get him out. He couldn't just be left like this.

"So I guess there's no way out of this thing."

"Not unless you want to surrender peaceable and come back with me."

"You know I can't do that."

"Then I don't see no way out. We'd better get to it."

Without another word, Billy/Heffer's hand flashed to the Colt, but he wasn't fast enough. The rifle was in Garrett's hand before his own pistol was even clear of its holster. There was a bang, a puff of smoke, and, immediately afterward, a searing, burning pain in his chest. He was thrown back into the hot, red dirt of the street. This wasn't supposed to be happening. This wasn't just a glitch-this was a major malfunction. The software was seriously screwing up, and he was trapped inside it, going around and around and having an agonizingly painful bullet smash into his chest each time the cycle was completed. The worst part was that he was totally helpless. His guts were wrenching, already anticipating the next bullet from the Winchester. The detached part of his mind, the piece of his consciousness that would have no part of the Billy the Kid personality was well on the way to screaming panic. Someone had to be monitoring this. They had to get him out. He couldn't take being shot one more time.

"So I guess there's no way out of this thing."

"Not unless you want to surrender peaceable and come back with me."

His detached mind was screaming: For God's sake! Anybody! Somebody! Get me out of here!

IT WAS AN AVERAGE DAY IN 5066 SECTION of the vault. The stiffs lay in neat rows in their plastic cases. The red-power lights glowed unwinkingly on the control pacs at the foot of each case. A continuous high-pitched hum, on the very limits of normal hearing, was about the only sound. Sam sat on the concrete floor with his back resting against a row of cases. He was turning over a tamperproof twenty flatpack of Serenax in his pudgy fingers. He'd had three already and he felt a little woozy, but he knew that, sooner or later, he would crack open the new pack. Five years earlier, Serenax had been available by prescription only. Now it was sold over the counter. There were even vending machines on the subway. Serenax: "Dangerous to Exceed the Recommended Dose." Sam exceeded the recommended dose on a daily basis. Sam was a squat, overweight figure in drab tan overalls. In truth, he only appeared squat. If he straightened up, he was well over six feet tall. The trouble was that Sam rarely straightened up. He was perpetually stooped and sagging.

Ralph was at the far end of the same row, going through the motions of sweeping. There was really nothing to sweep. The vault was virtually dust free. It was that point in the day when he couldn't stand being near the other two. Ralph was the complete opposite of Sam. Where Sam was gross and slothful, Ralph was thin and frenetic. He was a good three inches shorter than Sam. He had the features of a nervous but cunning rodent. His eyes constantly darted from spot to spot, as though expecting some sort of threat. A nerve twitched just below his left cheekbone. It only stopped when he was drunk.

Artie had vanished somewhere, probably on some devious errand of his own. Artie was always vanishing. It was his way. He made up the final third of the maintenance and monitor crew of 5066 section. Artie was lucky that they had lax management and a good union.

Sam reluctantly put the still unopened flatpack in the pocket of his overalls and looked around. "Hey, Ralph."

Ralph pretended not to hear. He went on with his sweeping.

"Hey, Ralph."

Ralph realized that if he ignored Sam any longer, the dummy would probably get up and come lurching over. He stopped sweeping. The muscles in his shoulders and neck felt bunched and tense. "What's the matter, Sam?"

"Where do you think Artie's got to?"

"How should I know where Artie's got to?"

"He's been gone a long time."

"Who knows where Artie goes to?"

"Do you think-"

Ralph cut Sam off. "Sam."

"Yes, Ralph?"

Ralph felt a bad need for a drink. "Sam."

"Yes, Ralph."

"Will you do something for me?"

"Sure, Ralph."

"Will you shut the fuck up?"

"I was only-"

"Shut up, Sam."

Ralph could feel an edge creeping into his voice. He was starting to loose control. Sam recognized the change in tone, and his hand moved defensively toward the Serenax in his pocket.

"Sure, Ralph."

Sam seemed to slump a little.

Ralph picked up his broom and moved down two more rows of cabinets. He needed to get farther away from Sam. He also had a bottle stashed along there. He put down his broom and reached between two of the plastic cases. Resting on a pipe was a bottle of cheap Japanese Scotch. Ralph held it up. It was just short of half full. Ralph grinned to himself. He must be in a fairly optimistic mood, otherwise he'd be looking at the bottle as more than half empty.

Ralph glanced into the nearest case. The occupant was an overweight, self-satisfied, middle-aged male. Plastic tubes went up each nostril, and a tangle of thin, multicolored wires were attached to shaved parts of his head. Ralph knew from experience that other tubes and wires were hooked into the stiff's torso, but these were hidden by the green plastic body bag that covered everything but its head.

The stiff's name was stenciled on the body bag. Morton Jonas Berkowitz. It was followed by a serial number. Ralph shrugged. It was as good as any other. He hunkered down on the floor and rested his back against the cabinet. He took a long pull on the bottle. The sudden explosion of warmth in his gut was intensely satisfying, so satisfying that it killed the feeling of self-disgust that usually followed him around. Ralph was aware that booze was well on its way to being all that he lived for.

It was obvious that the place was getting to him. He looked around at 5066 section of the vaults. Not that it was different from any other section. It was gray. The same deathly gray quiet was broken only by the continuous electric hum. There were the same flat gray concrete walls, gray roof, and solid gray supporting pillars. The vault was lit by cold neon lights, spaced so far apart that it was a place of almost sinister, antiseptic gloom. The shadows went on as far as the eye could see. If you worked in the vault you could start to think it went on forever.

Ralph took another drink. The disgust was starting to come back. Even the goddamn job was a farce. There was no need for human operators in the vaults. The whole place was run automatically off the computer bank.

"Operators!"

Even the word was a joke. They weren't operators. They were just fucking unemployables, stuck in the vault, sitting around, drinking, taking drugs, and maybe doing a spot of sweeping. They were only kept there by the union agreements.

"Motherfuckers."

Ralph slammed his fist into the control pac of the nearest cabinet. The red light didn't even blink. The red lights were the only warm color in the entire place. The Krupp DR.40 control pacs were just about indestructible. Ralph knew that he didn't have a dog's chance of ever getting on a feelie. You had to have a B+ or more even to hook in for a weekend. Ralph's credit card had an unmistakable D on it. The lifers, the ones he had to watch all day, were solid As. They were the fat bastards who had cashed in all their assets and retired to a world of total fantasy for the rest of their lives. The only chance that Ralph had to go that route was to win one of the big prizes on the TV quiz shows, and everyone knew the quiz shows were fixed.

Ralph felt a helpless, impotent anger welling up inside him. He felt like hurling the bottle across the vault. He restrained himself. There was still about three inches of Scotch in the bottle.

He climbed unsteadily to his feet and lurched down the row of cabinets. He had to make an effort to focus his eyes. A red light had gone out and the plastic cover on the case was misted over on the inside. It was coated with a kind of dirty, off-white condensation.

"Jesus Christ!"

Ralph tried to pull himself together. The booze made it difficult. "Sam?"

Sam didn't move. The fat figure was apparently asleep.

Ralph yelled louder. "Sam!"

Sam lifted his head. "Huh?"

"Get on your feet, will you? We've got a malfunction over here."

Sam's small eyes blinked rapidly. "A malfunction?"

Sam was obviously too tranquil to be able to take much in.

"Just get on your feet, will you?"

"Huh?"

"Christ, Sam! Just get up, you cretin."

While Sam struggled to get to his feet, Ralph opened the inspection cover on the control pac. He located the emergency release button and pressed it. The cabinet seals popped and the cover swung slowly open. Ralph almost gagged at the stench that emerged from inside. He grabbed the cover and slammed it shut.

"Sam! Will you get the hell over here?"

"I'm coming, Ralph, I'm coming."

The shock had cleared Ralph's head a little. He went to the nearest pillar with a phone point on it. He picked up the white wall phone and waited. After a minute or so, a bored voice came down the line.

"Yeah?"

"This is 5066, we've got a malfunction down here."

"Shit." The voice sounded annoyed. "Is the stiff dead?"

"It sure smelled dead."

"You cracked open the cabinet?"

"Right."

"Okay, wait a minute." There was a pause while the voice seemed to be talking to someone else. "Listen, 5066 is a lifer section, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah, okay."

There was another pause. Finally the voice came back. "Okay, 5066, stay where you are and we'll get someone down there to deal with it."

The voice sounded bored again. Ralph hung up. Sam was staring glumly at the misted-over cover of the cabinet.

"We don't get many of these."

"For Christ's sake, don't touch anything. It stinks to high heaven under that cover.''

The two of them stood by the cabinet. Ralph hitched his thumbs in the back pockets of his overalls.

"Ain't nothing we can do but wait, I guess."

Sam grunted. "Ain't nothing else we ever do but wait."

Ralph sniffed. "That's a fact."

Sam absently scratched his armpit. "Sometimes I wonder what we're waiting for."

It was a good fifteen minutes before they saw the white golf cart coming almost silently down the avenue between the cabinets. It halted with a metallic click. Two men climbed out. They were uniformly clean shaven, healthy, fresh-faced, and scrubbed. They both had the same neat blond crewcuts. Their starched white intern suits contrasted sharply with Ralph's and Sam's stained tan overalls.

They got out of the cart with an air of assured efficiency.

"Okay, what we got here? A malfunctioning stiff, right?"

Ralph stuffed his hands deep in his pockets. "Right."

"Dead?"

"Seems that way."

The clean-cut young men moved toward the cabinet.

"We'll take care of this now."

One of them flipped open the cover of the control pac. Ralph walked in a small circle, hands still in his pockets.

"I wouldn't-"

He was stopped briskly. "It's okay. I told you we're taking care of things now."

"Suit yourself."

The other pressed the emergency release. Both the fresh-faced young men doubled up as the stench hit them. Ralph already had a rag pressed to his face. Sam didn't appear to notice.

Ralph walked over to the cabinet and banged down the lid. "I warned you."

The scrubbed young men gradually regained their composure.

"How the hell long has that stiff been dead?"

Ralph shrugged. "How the hell should I know?"

"You work in this section."

"So?"

"You should have seen the light had gone out."

"I sent for you, didn't I?"

"That was all of half an hour ago."

Ralph pulled his hands out of his pockets. "What exactly are you trying to say?"

"Jesus Christ, man, that stiff's been dead for a week. How come you didn't notice until half an hour ago?"

Ralph shrugged again.

"You haven't even walked down this row for a week."

"Sure I've walked down this row. I stash my goddamn-" Ralph realized he had gone too far. The clean-cut young men's eyebrows shot up. "Nothing."

One of the crewcut young men started in again. "We're going to report this whole thing, make no mistake about that."

The other one grabbed him by the arm. "Come on, Craig. We don't have time to argue about all this."

Ralph grinned. "He's right… Craig. How come your monitor system didn't pick up the fact that this stiff was dead?"

Craig scowled. "Okay, okay, we don't have time to argue about it."

"Let's get down to it."

The scrubbed young men took two gas masks out of a compartment in the golf cart. Craig waved in the direction of Ralph and Sam.

"You guys better get back out of the way."

"Yeah, sure."

Ralph wandered off. Sam followed him. The two crew-cut young men put on their gas masks and took a heavy-duty body bag out of another compartment in the golf cart. They went to work on the corpse. Their last move was to drag out an industrial aerosol and start spraying the whole area. Ralph and Sam came walking back as the scrubbed young men were removing their gas masks.

"You taken care of it, then?"

"Yeah. Everything's taken care of."

"I guess you'll be putting a new stiff in there soon?"

"Yeah, pretty soon."

Ralph pointed at the body bag. "You'll have to break the bad news to that one's next of kin, I expect."

The crewcut young men dumped the body bag in the back of the golf cart. They quickly climbed inside.

"Uh, yeah. That's right. We'll be breaking the bad news."

As they rolled away, Ralph went and picked up his bottle. He grinned after them. "Yeah. Damn right you will."

AS TRUMBLE WALKED UP TO THE GLASS doors, they slid open for him. Inside the carpet was thick, the lighting soft, and the air-conditioning comfortingly cool. The office was furnished in deep orange and rich browns. Gold gleamed in low-key satisfaction. Everything seemed designed to put Trumble at his ease. Whoever had planned it all had succeeded in the seemingly impossible task of combining the ambience of a bank with that of a massage parlor.

A receptionist approached him. She was wearing an orange dress, one of that summer's exotiques. It was long at the back but swept up in a long inverted V clear up to a pair of matching panties. The slit in the skirt was echoed by the deep V in the neckline that plunged between the girl's handsome breasts to end somewhere close to her waist.

Her smile was as fashionable and as synthetic as her outfit. Her teeth were frighteningly perfect.

"Can I help you, sir?"

Trumble couldn't take his eyes off her perfect teeth. He could feel himself starting to sweat.

"Uh, yes."

The girl waited. She regarded him with an immaculate blend of coolness and expectant interest. Combined Media only employed the best.

Trumble pulled himself together. "I'd like to reserve some feelie time."

The girl was gently remonstrative. "We prefer to talk about it as Integrated Entertainment."

Trumble tried to smile. "That's quite a mouthful."

"IE for short."

"Okay then, I'd like to book some IE time."

The girl's smile went into full gear. "That's what we're here for, sir.'' She motioned to a neat row of desks that ran down the far side of the office. "If you go and talk to Wendy at desk twenty-nine, I'm sure she can take care of everything for you."

Trumble thanked her and plowed his way across the expanse of carpet. The girl at desk twenty-nine was dressed identically to the receptionist. The flawless smile came from the same mold, as did the equally flawless hair and figure. On the desk in front of her was a small sign that read "Hi-I'm Wendy."

"Hi, Wendy."

"Won't you take a seat, Mr…"

"Trumble."

"Hi, Mr. Trumble. Please take a seat."

Trumble lowered himself into the offered chair.

Wendy's smile continued to radiate helpfulness. "What can I do for you, Mr. Trumble?"

"I'd like to book some fe-uh, IE time, if I may."

The girl nodded approvingly. "I'm sure I can work out something for you. How long a hook-up were you thinking of?"

"Uh… I thought I'd have forty-eight hours, a weekend, you know."

"I'm sure it'll be a weekend you won't forget. When did you want to make the hook-up?"

"The weekend after next. That's what I was thinking of."

"One moment, Mr. Trumble."

Wendy turned to a discreetly positioned computer console and entered a series of figures. After a short pause, the answer flashed up on a tiny screen recessed in the desktop.

"I think that'll be okay. How did you intend to pay, Mr. Trumble?"

Trumble fumbled for his wallet. "By card, the usual way.''

"Could I see your card for a moment, please?"

Trumble pulled out his credit card and passed it across the desk. The girl's smile dimmed a couple of points. She turned the card over in her fingers. The impeccable fingernails clicked softly on the plastic. She looked at Trumble more in sorrow than in anger.

"I see your rating is C-, Mr. Trumble."

Trumble knew he was sweating. "Yes, that's right."

"Well, Mr. Trumble, you must realize that the kind of weekend you're talking about isn't exactly… inexpensive."

Trumble cut in hastily. "Yes, yes. I've looked at the prices. I know all about them." He hesitated. "I've been saving up, you see. This weekend means a lot to me. I've been saving for a long time."

Wendy turned up her smile. "I see. I'll have to check on that before I can make your reservation."

Trumble nodded swiftly. "Yes, yes, that's all right. I don't mind."

Wendy dropped the card into the console. After another short wait, something flashed up on the screen. Trumble couldn't read it upside down, but Wendy's smile became even more radiant.

"You have been saving, haven't you, Mr. Trumble?"

Trumble blushed. "I've been looking forward to this weekend for quite a while."

"All we have to do now is pick the particular experience you have in mind."

Trumble began to redden again. "I… er."

"Would you like to look through our listings of possible options, Mr. Trumble?"

Wendy offered him a thick spiral-bound booklet with a plastic cover. Trumble could feel sweat running down from his armpits. He turned over pages at random. His thumbs and fingers felt twice their normal thickness. He glanced up. Wendy was watching him with a knowing, conspiratorial smile.

"I think we already know the experience we want, don't we, Mr. Trumble?"

Trumble's tongue was threatening to choke him. "I…"

"Come now, Mr. Trumble, you don't have to be embarrassed. You won't shock me. I won't laugh at you."

"I don't…"

"I'm here to help you, Mr. Trumble."

Trumble knew it was now or never. If he didn't do it now, he would change his mind and blow his savings on some experience he didn't even want. It all came blurting out in a stammering rush.

"I-I want to be the Marquis de Sade."

Without a word or the slightest flicker of expression, Wendy started tapping out yet another set of figures. Trumble sat frozen, amazed that he had actually done it. Wendy punched up his reservation. A receipt and a slip with date and time on it were printed out of the machine. Wendy took a multicolored folder from the desk and stapled them into it. She handed it to Trumble with a cool, even look.

"I'm sure it will be a very rewarding weekend, Mr. Trumble."

WANDA-JEAN BECAME CONSCIOUS. THE first thing she realized was that it was a mistake. She had a pain in her head that stretched all the way down the back of her neck. Her mouth was full of evil-tasting, contaminated cotton waste, and she felt sick to her stomach.

It was yet another morning after a night on the circuit of boom-boom bars along 3d Street.

With almost independent life, her left hand crawled across the sheet toward the far side of the bed. There was nobody there. The bastard had gone. Her memories of getting home the night before were hazy. She could just about remember that he had short-cropped, dark hair and broad shoulders. She suspected that she had disliked him from the start.

She knew they had come back to her flat, fallen into bed, and had sex. After that she must have passed out. Some time between her passing out and the morning, he must have gotten up, dressed, and crept away. He probably had a wife or a girlfriend stashed away somewhere.

Wanda-Jean's right hand groped at the table beside the bed. She shook a cigarette out of a nearly empty pack. She rolled over on her side and stuck it in her mouth. She paused for nearly half a minute and then lit it.

Almost immediately she started to cough. Wanda-Jean wasn't quite able to handle doing two things at once. Coughing and keeping a grip on her stomach was more than she could manage. She made it to the bathroom just in time.

Afterward Wanda-Jean walked unsteadily into the kitchen area. Throwing up had helped her hangover, but the comedown from the three decks of Blind Tiger she had bought from that Korean hustler when she had been drunk had moved into its place. She found a nearly clean glass and filled it from the water cooler, but then a bad fit of the trembles hit her and she had to put the glass down quickly. She leaned on the cooler, half doubled over, praying that they would go away.

The trembles subsided after a couple of minutes, and Wanda-Jean tentatively straightened up. Generally she tried to avoid taking drugs first thing in the morning, but she was going to have to make an exception. Even if she called in sick, she would need something just to see her back to bed.

An unpleasant thought suddenly struck her. Maybe the bastard had stolen her drugs. Maybe he had even glommed her smartcard. Pain forgotten, she fled in panic to the bedroom. Her bag lay among the discarded clothes. She wrenched it open and tipped the contents onto the bed. To her relief, both her smartcard and her enamel pill box with the picture of a dragon on it were among the debris. With a sigh, she sat down on the bed. She opened the box. There was half a deck of Tiger still wrapped in its original tinfoil, two Serenax, an octagon, and a valium. Just seeing that she still had the pills made her feel better.

Wanda-Jean knew she had to put some clothes on. She certainly didn't feel like roaming around nude all day. Putting on clothes meant she had to make up her mind whether to go to work or not that day. The pills were making her feel a good deal better. Not better enough, though, to smile brightly at dumb, pussy-mouthed customers all day. She decided to skip work.

She returned to the bedroom in search of a sweatshirt and a pair of pants. A close look at the discarded clothes from the night before stopped her dead.

"Motherfucker."

She grabbed the black satin dress off the floor and held it up. It was ripped all down its length.

"Dirty bastard."

Wanda-Jean's rage spilled over, and she hurled the dress into a corner. The dress had cost her an arm and a leg. She must have gone to work for three solid days to get that dress, and the bastard ripped it pulling it off her. She'd only worn it twice. It was strictly a boom-boom room number, with the skirt cut away up to her crotch and the deep V neck that showed off her tits. Her fury increased when she noticed that the matching satin briefs were also torn.

"I'd like to castrate that son of a bitch."

She sat down on the bed, hugged her anger to herself, and cursed silently and steadily.

The pills didn't let her stay mad for very long. After a while she stood up and looked at her body in the full-length bedroom mirror.

Wanda-Jean liked her body. According to the magazines and movies, she had a good body. She always showed a high score in the kind of Know Your Attraction Count questionnaires on the sex and beauty shows. To her eyes, her legs were too long and her shoulders too broad, but none of the men she knew had ever done anything but pay her compliments.

Although it was a little confusing, Wanda-Jean was satisfied with her body. She did, however, suspect that if it was really first class, she would have gotten further in the world. The only thing that worried her about it was that one day it would start to fail. It would wrinkle, the breasts would sag, and it would no longer have the effect on men that it had right now. Wanda-Jean liked having an effect on men.

She wasn't as happy about her face. She had always wanted one of those aloof, perfectly proportioned faces like May Marsh who played the nurse in "Penal Colony" on Channel 80. Compared with May Marsh, Wanda-Jean's nose was too long and her mouth too wide. Wanda-Jean spent a lot of time and money trying to hide these defects. In moments of depression she managed to convince herself they were her main stumbling blocks. If she got really low, words like cheap and common sprang to mind.

She turned slowly around, craning her neck to look at as much of herself as she could. Then she did it again. She noted that she carried some legacies from the previous night in the form of bruises and scratches. On another level, she looked at the marks with a certain degree of satisfaction. What was the point of spending the night with a guy if you didn't have a few bruises to show for it? She would still kick the bastard in the nuts, though, if she ever met him again and recognized him.

With the bout of narcissism over, Wanda-Jean became busy and businesslike. She stuffed her party clothes into the closet and pulled out a red sweatshirt and a pair of white jeans. The sweatshirt had the badge of a well-known Brazilian university on the front. Wanda-Jean had never been near a university, or Brazil, for that matter, but she thought it gave her class. She laid the things on the bed and went to take her shower.

By the time she was dressed and dry, Wanda-Jean was humming to herself. After breakfast, over her second cup of coffee, she began to think what she would do with the day. She picked up the phone to see if any messages had been left. There was nothing except some all-subscriber commercials.

She began to feel depressed. The pills were starting to wear off. Wanda-Jean felt lonely and unloved. That was the trouble with living on the twenty-fifth floor of a faceless, downtown security block. You were always so goddamn alone. It seemed as though she only met people in order to have a bit of quick sex. Even then, they ran out in the middle of the night.

Wanda-Jean picked up her pill box again. It was too early to take the half deck. Instead she dug out a packet of chewing gum and started unwrapping it, then stopped. Maybe something had come for her in the mail.

She went to the door of the apartment and opened the mailbox. There were two circulars, a reminder on an unpaid bill, and a long white envelope. Wanda-Jean picked up the envelope. It was very expensive paper, not like the usual letters she received.

She turned it over. It was correctly addressed. In the top right-hand corner was the logo of the National Cable Corporation. Why should NCC want to write to her?

For a moment a nasty thought flashed in her mind. She'd forgotten to pay for the TV. She was going to be cut off. That couldn't be true, though. She'd taken care of the cable payment only a few days earlier. And anyway, they didn't send final demands in expensive envelopes.

Wanda-Jean tore it open. Inside was a white, engraved card. Wanda-Jean looked at the print in disbelief. Almost in a trance she walked back into the kitchen and sat down.

It didn't seem possible. They had only filled in the applications as a joke. She and her friends Shirley and June had been drunk one night. She had never imagined that it would go any further.

She read the words for the tenth time.

You are invited to audition as a contestant on the NCC game production- WILDEST DREAMS. For further details call 9000-9000 during normal office hours. This application is only valid until November 2.

November 2 was only two days away. Wanda-Jean thoughtfully put a stick of gum in her mouth and picked up the phone. Carefully she dialed 9000-9000.