vN The First Machine Dynasty(63)

Amy wove around people staring at storefronts advertising varying kinds of plastic boxes (rectangular black ones with dusty covers and illustrations; little clear ones with different kinds of pictures; thin ones the size of dinner plates) and giant old cars whose hood ornaments she didn't recognize. She found herself walking along the illusion of an angle. Her feet felt no difference, but her eyes said she was sloping down toward glittering water. It was a bit disconcerting. From a distance, though, she spotted a large bronze pig under a red neon sign reading "PUBLIC MARKET". A bunch of people crowded around the pig. Little kids sat on it and squealed. Amy headed straight for it, but a tug on her shoulder stopped her.



Javier wore a completely white suit with long tails, an openbuttoned shirt, and gleaming shoes. His hair was slicked back into a single wave. Sudden laughter overtook her. He looked like a giant candle, complete with a glossy wick at the top – an increasingly annoyed giant candle.



"What is it?" Javier asked. Amy only kept laughing. It was the first time she had laughed in at least a week. Now, she couldn't stop.



Javier stared. "Seriously, what's so funny?"



Amy pulled off the goggles and handed them over to Javier. He hooked them over his eyes, cursed, and ripped them off. "Can people actually see that?"



Still smiling, Amy nodded.



"I can't believe people pay money for this." Javier put the goggles back on. He examined the shoes, then the sleeves. Then he paused, one foot in the air, and cocked his head at her. "1986 called. Wants those mirrorshades back."



"Give me those." Amy reached over and grabbed the goggles from him. "What are you doing here, anyway?"



Javier jammed his hands in his pockets. "What the boys were saying, before–"



"It's not my business, Javier." Amy crossed her arms. "You're right. I don't need to know the details. You like humans. I get it."



"No, I don't think you get it at all." Javier licked his lips and cast his gaze on the tourists surrounding them. His eyes followed the progress of a tall, fine-featured Somalian woman as she investigated a figment of the museum invisible to their unaugmented eyes. She paused to shake out her braids, and Javier's throat worked. "You don't know what it's like. From the moment it starts, you know how it's going to end, but you start anyway. The failsafe, it makes you…" He trailed off. His gaze remained on the human woman, and only changed focus as she turned a corner out of sight.



"Don't feel bad about it, Javier." Amy turned to the water and started walking. "I'm the one who's defective."



A moment later, she heard Javier's footsteps behind her. Together they wove their way west. The crowd was thicker, here. In the buds she heard other languages, offers for slices of pear or cheese, rambling songs played on spoons and accordions. A meta-title appeared to tell her the exact date they were looking at: it was the pig's installation, as a fundraising measure for the market. The pig was a piggy bank. And now every time the pig was accessed in this layer, another penny was donated through a match-funds program to the museum foundation. It was old-fashioned, but if the steadily climbing number in the bottom right side of Amy's goggles was any indication, it worked.



Amy removed her goggles to get a real look at the pig. Surprisingly, it still existed for the naked eye – but as a pig-shaped lump of feedstock, not the gleaming bronze sculpture visible in 1986. Gone were the fruit stalls and the bakery windows full of donuts and pork buns, the flower vendors, the tiny strawberries clustered in boxes folded from green paper. Gone were all the families with children. There was something about how casually you could flip between the times that Amy didn't like. It was like turning history on or off. Now there was a bustling city plaza. Now there was a decaying ruin. On. Off. Alive. Dead. She handed the goggles to Javier.



"Wow." He made a slow circle in place. "Look at all the food. It's so fresh. I wish our food came in those colours." He faced her, but kept the goggles on. "All of this used to exist. Right here. I can't even see any vN. We've all been edited out. Have you ever seen anything like it?"



"Not really. I've been to a lot of museums with my parents, but…" Now it was Amy's turn to trail off. This was the first museum she'd visited without them. It used to be one of their favourite weekend activities. Sometimes, they even went during the week just to beat the crowds at special exhibits. She remembered being small enough to fit on her dad's shoulders, small enough that her mother could lose her in a crowd. Once they took too long discussing a painting and Amy wandered off, and she wound up in a conversation with some students researching an essay on the museum's design. It was fun, talking with big kids who had big vocabularies. They warned her about some of the more gruesome pieces – the mortification of saints, the sacking of cities. They had a big map and they pointed out the galleries she shouldn't enter. They were nice. But even so, she had never seen her dad so angry as when he strode up to their little bench in the centre of the gallery and marched her away. Not because she'd disobeyed, he said later, but because it would break his heart if she wandered too far off and something happened to her. And now, that very thing had happened.