A Virtual Soul - Softcover

Teixeira, Kevin

 
9780345426758: A Virtual Soul
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0345426754 ISBN 13: 9780345426758
Verlag: Ballantine Books Inc., 1999

Inhaltsangabe

Employed as a corporate drone to imprint rudimentary personalities and cognitive abilities into an expendable, genetically engineered workforce, Josh Nunes becomes terrified as his own identity begins to slip away and flees, only to become the target of a deadly manhunt and a pawn in a sinister conspiracy. Original.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kevin Teixeira works for Intel as a virtual reality programmer.  This is his first novel.

Aus dem Klappentext

ture society, genetically engineered slaves known as tubies are an expendable workforce. Em-printers implant the empty minds of tubies with rudimentary personalities and cognitive abilities, yet they are missing the one thing that would make them human. Josh Nunes, a corporately owned em-printer, is one of the best--but he feels his own personality slipping away, his own identity changing.<br><br>So he runs. A wanted criminal hunted by his owners, Josh soon discovers his contract has been sold to a shadowy corporation willing to do anything to manipulate his skills. But another power player offers Josh his freedom if only he completes one small task--deliver a pleasure doll to Japan.<br><br>Tangled in a web of intrigue, in which nothing--and no one--can be trusted, Josh discovers that the doll is not what she seems, and secret forces have been launched to alter the very existence of the tubies, to elevate them to the same level as their creators . . . to give them a soul. And Josh is takin

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Just before dawn, Josh Nunes slipped out a basement door of the Palace Apartments and into a blaze of light. The building shimmered in its coat of living video; laughing faces, swirling colors, and singing cartoons danced across its walls. He stood at the bottom of a stairwell and tried to calm the urge to run.

Run where? he asked himself. This isn't some jungle I can hide in.

The early-morning air felt cool and sharp against his skin. He opened his shirt collar to let more of it in, to let it ground him. He closed his eyes to the shimmering city, the chaos of commercials and images that flashed across every wall.

Josh wondered about the young man he had just abandoned back in his apartment. The session was supposed to be an easy trick, for fun and kicks--no deep work, nothing too danger-

ous, just the addictive pleasure of becoming something new and different.

Dave was just the bait to catch me, Josh thought. But who ... bounty hunters? Why am I suddenly worth so much effort after all this time?

He opened his eyes, took a deep breath, and straightened his clothes. Hesitantly, he walked up the stairs to the street, and then more quickly down the alley to the front of the building. Stepping out as casually as possible, the shaken man joined the early-morning crowd moving down the radiant street, walls of light reaching to the sky. He wanted to blend in, to disappear into the light.

A beautiful trumpet fanfare filled the air. Josh turned to glance behind him. It came from a holographic angel floating above the front door of a church, a long, thin trumpet pressed to its lips, a sword of flames in its free hand. Josh saw two cars pull up in front of the Palace. Four men got out of the first car and ran inside. Three more men got out of the second car; one was a t-breed--short, lean, and deathly pale. The t-breed's face was familiar. Josh slowed his pace. He knew the look, the nervous energy radiating from the quick, jerky movements--the tubie was one of his own.

The test-tube man leapt up on top of the car with the grace of a big cat and began scanning the street with his bright red eyes--no white, just large polished rubies like an albino rabbit's. He turned and looked toward Josh, their eyes met, and in that moment of recognition, a sensual rush surprised Josh--like golden stars shooting through his body. He stopped; after so long, it felt so good--the thrill of union. He suddenly wanted to hold the tubie, plug into it, and lose himself.

Josh Nunes was an em-printer, an emotional programmer adept at creating the most basic thoughts and feelings of test-tube people. Grown from a patented blend of human and cow embryos, gestated in synthetic wombs, and born in factories, t-breeds were based on the same hormones and chromosomes as real people. In the process of production, their accelerated growth rates shortened their size, their life spans, and their intelligence. Sterile and simpleminded, they were like small children trapped inside adult bodies, and they were useless until an em-printer programmed their personality.

The t-breed's face flushed; he felt a connection with Josh, too. From the top of the car he let out a howl and leapt off the roof, followed by the two men.

Josh turned and ran down the video-walled street toward the subway station. The rush of joy tugged at him to slow down, while the test-tube man raced after him, effortlessly dodging between people, leaving the other two men behind.

Josh fought against joy and despair--short of death, the tubie wouldn't stop until it had caught him. And now, a part of him wanted to be caught.

He had been one of the very best em-printers until he lost control. He created personalities by em-printing test-tube people with pieces of his own emotions--obsessions, dreams and desires, anxieties, delights, fears and phobias, the full spectrum of his memories and psyche. He did this through the neural port embedded behind his left ear. A neural port allowed users to hook up to a computer and directly stimulate the auditory, optic, and olfactory nerves, heightening or simulating experiences such as sex or sports. A few rare people could make the port work in both directions, sending and receiving visual, auditory, olfactory, and even kinesthetic nerve signals. Only these rare few--masters at using the native media of the mind--could become em-printers, composers of personality.

The neural port became the vehicle for Josh's em-printing genius, and his destruction. The more he used himself to program others, the more unstable his own mind became. His success was built on self-abuse, his reward a roller-coaster ride of anxiety and elation, and power: he got to play God.

The entrance to the subway was mobbed with people on their way to work. Josh slammed into the crowd, pushing people out of his way. There were yells and curses at him as together they all poured down the long escalator into the underground station, where the walls were bright with dancing men and women on video billboards.

Panting on the marble platform at the bottom, Josh weakly tried to push his way toward the tracks. Fear of capture flashed like a strobe light in his mind. A train was pulling into the station, but the crowd was packed so tightly that he couldn't reach it in time. Turning his head, he saw his two human pursuers coming down the escalator. One of them was Japanese. Both men were wearing blue jackets. The tubie was nowhere to be seen.

There was a disturbance in the crowd. Someone yelled, "Get off me!"

The t-breed appeared above the crowd, rocking from side to side--he had climbed up on top of a man's back. Josh turned, their eyes met, he felt the rush of golden stars shoot through his body again, and everything inside relaxed. He'd been up all night, he was exhausted, he couldn't run anymore, could barely stand. He gave up and just stood there gasping for air, and let the joy burst through him, like beams of sunlight and fresh air pouring into an old dark room. He was overcome with a desire to plug into the tubie and lose himself in the blending of their personalities. It had been too long since he had fully let go and dissolved; too long since he'd fallen into such a union. He gave up even though he knew this was the venom they'd slipped into him--an emotional virus to disable him, based on his deepest longings.

When Josh tried to stop em-printing, he discovered that the contracts he had signed didn't give him the option. His investors had befriended him, they had put money into him, and they had gotten a patent issued on what he could do. He was their IP, intellectual property, to do with as they chose, and there was great value in his psychosis.

So he had panicked and run away, gone into hiding, gave up his friends and lover, left the only job he'd ever known--the one thing that gave him deep pleasure--rather than be anyone's pawn. After failing at a variety of small jobs, he'd gone back to em-printing--but with people. He'd always used his skills during sex. Now he used a small portion of his talent to play with the upper levels of people's identity--taking them both into fully realized fantasies. It wasn't the same as em-printing t-breeds, but it was better than starving. And best of all, nobody died.

The wall on the far side of the train tracks flickered and a giant perfume bottle appeared to float up over the crowd. A man next to Josh, wearing a red bodysuit, quickly pulled his hood over his head and sealed his mask over his face.

The bottle hung above their heads, where it transformed into a flower. It showered everyone with a fine mist of sweet-smelling musk and roses.

Josh tried to hold his breath, but couldn't.

The perfume filled his nostrils and caressed his senses.

Immediately his heart rate changed, his muscles tensed, and his chest...

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Verlag
Ballantine Books Inc.
Erscheinungsdatum
1999
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0345426754
ISBN 13 
9780345426758
Einband
Taschenbuch
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