Extreme People-Watching

I get the bet from my VRchat buddy, username "sexybeast": go down on the pavement, real-lifelike, and do a stroll down to the corner, where there's the mosaic on the pavement called "Our Community". Downtown East Side Vancouver in the raw.

"No transmat and no VR, babygirl," she says. "Real-person contact all the way down the street."

"What do I get out of it?" I say.

"Wisdom," she says. "And a taste of real life."

Boring. "Doesn't sound like much."

"And you'll finally meet me." This perks me up, because I've been asking to meet in realtime for months and she's always put me off.

"Any parkour?" I say, hoping for a few non-living obstacles, even if I have to climb over, crawl up or go around them. "Or are we talking extreme people-watching all down the street?" Been a while since I've had any real-person contact, with my parents commuting from the Moon all the time now. I've never even seen sexybeast in the flesh, though her VR profile's no secret. I met her in a 3-D chat room about aboriginal art after I bought a silver Haida ring and went looking for info on it. She knows all about Native culture in Western Canada. I'm wildly curious to meet her. She seems to know all but won't tell all.

She's out for blood tonight. "Nope. All people all down the line. You can leave out any animals. Fifteen minutes or to the bus stop on the other corner of Hastings and Main. Whichever comes first."

"Jib-jab, let's go." I transmat myself downtown, right after dark. Three streets east of the West Side dome. Real people, real weather, real filth. It just stopped raining and the air is full of steam, making the red neon sign of the Ovaltine Diner on the north side of Hastings glow with nostalgia. I'd forgotten it was summer in Vancouver.

On the corner of Hastings and Dunlevy, sexybeast starts the clock through the cyberjack in my ear.

"'Alacrity' is the keyword today," she singsongs. The word blinks across my infrared at the top of my sight. I click it back to normal vision with my tongue. Don't need that kind of distraction down here. You can still see people shooting up, lighting up or pouring it down their throats in broad daylight, and street people at night sleeping on the steps of the churches, like the old days when all classes of society walked the streets.

"Real world not VR, remember?" I say.

"Don't tell me about 'real life', babygirl," she replies. I can almost see her VR avatar, a tall blonde like Greta Garbo, waving her hand in dismissal. "And don't shut off your infrared on me. You show some respect. I'm an elder. I was younger than you when I came out here from Saskatchewan, right off the bus. And I landed here. You're on my old stomping grounds, now."

Yeah, yeah. And here's the historic Hooker Stroll down East Hastings Street past the Ovaltine--meat sluts not AI dreamgirls--junkies all, probably. I thought they'd cleaned this area up years ago, but then if they did, I guess they'd never have turned it into a red light district in the first place. Who knows why a guy would prefer rancid real meat to VR?

You'd think these women wouldn't be out here on a Wednesday night. But a girl's gotta eat, and more importantly, shoot up. Not everybody has razor-bright VR to play around in. Tant pis for them. You gotta expect to consummate the deal with some scumbolus every night to pay the rent in a rattrap on Powell, let alone for sweet oblivion. Gimme a 3-D cruise on the PlanNet any day.

My being a girl and a rich one, they don't care about me. I tromp through them, my darklight-blinking clothes head to toe and tiger face mask warning the johns I'm a stranger passing through, not part of the sex trade. I wave at the hookers as I pass and try to make a little conversation. They're not interested. Keeping to sexybeast's rules could be tough. I can tell when I'm not wanted.

"Just keep at it," sexybeast tells me when I complain to her. "You're in their territory now. You have to sweet-talk them."

They turn away, sucking on their cigarettes, clothes too tight in some places and too loose in others to be really sexy, their skin translucent, showing the bones like the old-time runway models before curves came back into fashion. Some of them stagger, all twisted round on whatever drug they took to make the worknight pass faster. Very Halloween. That's what the old kind of VR does to you.

I finally get a "good evening" back from one girl who's young enough to be my baby sister. Well, except for the black leather skirt hiked up to her panties and the low-cut red blouse from Sally Ann that has seen better days and gives everybody a view of what she's selling in the mammary folder. Can't help feeling sorry for her, even though she's filthy, thin and strung out.

"Hey, you got a cigarette?" the meat slut says, catching my eye.

In my ear, sexybeast says, "There you go. You got a bite."

"I don't, sorry." No need for that kind of old-fashioned "teen rebellion". I drive my parents crazy enough with my monthly VR bill. VR makes my spare hours free, free, free with no health side effects to keep me from dying this side of a c-note. "Don't you have some?"

She shakes her head. "I could use five bucks, though, if you got some to spare."

Normally, I wouldn't. Spend it on cigarettes? Not likely. It would go right into her arm. "If there's a store around here, I could buy you some. Don't try to zap me, though."

She looks insulted. It's tough to take it seriously with so much old-style black eye makeup on her lids. She looks like a pharaoh. "Too dark ages," I subvocalize to sexybeast. "You'd think she'd at least go for the glow-in-the-dark camo look what with everything else she's got on display."

"Not everyone can afford high fashion, babygirl," sexybeast replies.

As if she were on our frequency, the hooker says, "I wouldn't try to rob you. I got morals, too, you know." Yeah, right.

She peers at me, trying to see past the facemask. That's rude, though I'll let it pass for the sake of the game. Even showing my eyes down here is too much. Call that class prejudice. The poor should not be allowed unauthorized access, even visual access, to the rich, or so says my father--he's very conservative. But I agree with him. I'm just being honest here. I only said I'd talk and buy, not strip and sell. What kind of a girl does she think I am?

"All right. Let's do that," I say. "My name's Gina," since "babygirl" is my VR name and this is not VR. It's not my real name, either, but who cares? She'll never see me again.

"Lori," she says. She holds out her hand and I shake it. She leaves street grime on my ultraviolet gloves, but that's part of sexybeast's deal.

"There's a store down this way," she says, pointing down toward the bus stop, next to the Ovaltine sign. Good. I won't have to backtrack, then, now that I've found my Virgil guide through Inferno. That's something I read in English class once. Some Italian guy from way back.

The peepers are down on the corner diagonal to the bus stop, the seers, the sibyls. They can pick the thoughts right out of your brain, or so my cousin Brandi says. I glance up the street toward the transmat I just left on the corner of Dunlevy and East Hastings. Shadows of travelers flash in and out of the space over the glowing circle on the pavement, with its plexiglass barrier to protect people from bumping through each other in transit. They look like ghosts, as translucent as hooker skin. Local legend says that two blocks down the street from that corner, Dunlevy and Powell near funky Oppenheimer Park, over fifty hookers disappeared near the end of the last century. Some of them turned up dead on a pig farm. Some of them didn't turn up at all.

"They're all just passing through, aren’t they?" Lori says about the transmat, "on their way to somewhere else, anywhere but here." I don't answer because she's right and because for a second, I think she means the dead hookers not the travelers. "I wish I had the money to transmat out of here," she adds, "anywhere but here."

"Hey, baby, you gettin' some lesbo action with a rich girl?" an older, rancid-looking meat slut calls after Lori. Lori ignores her. We start down toward the peepers. It's like dropping into an abyss. Every step, the uneven sidewalk feels colder, even though I shouldn't be able to feel it through my antistatic shoes. I hear music from somewhere. At first, I think it's one of the peepers. Some of them can read you and some of them can write you, though few can do both. Then I realize it's the real thing, blasting out of a bar back up the street. I'm so used to music only from my VR jack, I didn't recognize it at first. And the smell--urine and vomit and alcohol and all dirty, bad, spoiled things--comes right off the pavement in a hot wave post-rain. I could shut it off at my nose filter, but that would be cheating.

The peepers start up as soon as we get to them. Lori hunches her shoulders, pulling her blouse closed against the psychic chill. You'd think she didn't care how exposed she got by now, but nobody likes getting their mind lockpicked wide open, not even a hooker. Maybe especially a hooker.

"Let's just walk fast through here, okay?" she says.

"Peepers, too?" I subvocalize to sexybeast.

"They're people, too, aren't they?" sexybeast shoots back, cool as you please. "My grandmother, you know, she was Cree, and she could read anybody, whether they meant good or bad."

I try to reassure Lori. "We shouldn't give them the satisfaction," I say. "Don't show them you're afraid." Yeah, that sounds good.

She scowls, parental-unit-like, as if I'm the child, the baby sister. Before she can answer, a peeper approaches us. The old cow is dressed in—great Cthulhu, is that a black velvet dress?

"My name is Cassandra and I can read your thoughts for ten dollars," says the SCA reject. Therapy should be so cheap. "Your deepest longings, your innermost urges."

Lori pins her with a look. "Keep it to yourself, bitch."

The peeper answers with a low bow. I guess she's used to the insults. She glances at me with a wink and I wonder if she'll rat me out. "Are you two friends?"

I decide to play along. "Sure."

"Yeah, sure," Lori says, too fast, and I wonder about that.

"Would you like to know what she's thinking?" the woman asks me.

"Oh, this should be good," sexybeast says in my ear.

Lori's face twists all uglylike and I wonder some more. "Hey, keep it to yourself, you bitch!"

The peeper moves her arms like a sea wave. "Very well. I'll tell your thoughts instead, since--'Lori', your name is, yes? But you called yourself something else before the street--your friend, Lori, doesn't want me to read her."

I don't like this, but if I stop it now, I'll lose the bet and I won't get to meet sexybeast. "You're playing a game," the peeper says. "You think you are a winner, but you have no idea what is happening around you. You are so preoccupied with ghosts and nicknames that you do not see what is going on before your very eyes." She takes a step back. "For example, you think that all that is necessary to win your bet is to get to the end of this street having spoken to people along the way, just as your friend wants."

"Hey, there's more to it than that!" sexybeast whines. I subvocalize to her to shut up.

Cassandra's on a bboard rant. "Yet, you don't think it's strange that someone has befriended you on your brief walk. You're so busy fulfilling your bet that you can't see real life."

"Shut up, you bitch," Lori says in a warning tone. Now, when I look at her, I see how red and scabbed her arms are and I can smell her through my nose filter, like old dandruff. I start to wonder if maybe she wouldn't stop at saying 'please' for a cigarette. I take a step back, like Cassandra.

The peeper won't stop. "With my name, I'm used to being ignored, babygirl." Even though I know she's a peeper, that's a little shock, her knowing my username. "But hear me when I say that this girl is hoping to rob you at the end of this street instead of engaging in sexual relations with a strange man, and she will consider it a night well spent. Or is that part of your bet?"

Lori yanks out a bright flash like a slash of VR. "I warned you..." She jumps forward, arm sweeping down--hellfire, is that a knife? The peeper is way ahead of her. Cassandra takes three big steps back and flames down the street, black velvet hiked up to her knees, one mean and angry meat slut plasma hot on her vapor trail.

"Hey! Pretty cool!" sexybeast snarks in my ear, almost forgotten. Before I can answer, a blast of static drowns her out and I'm a slave to the rhythm of the street noises.

"You better get while the gettin's good, babygirl," a new voice says behind me, from up the street. I turn and see a hooker lounging against the wall, all black leather kneelength coat and thigh-high dominatrix stiletto boots that go pretty well with her carved Native features and long black hair. I thought that look went out sixty years ago.

"Yeah?" I say. "That your free advice?"

"Sure." Her voice sounds familiar in a weird way, like an echo from VR. "But you been gettin' plenty of that tonight, eh?" She straightens up. She takes a long drag off her cigarette and I'd swear the rain is misting right through her, even though she looks solid.

"And who are you, exactly?" I say, unsettled. Real life isn't anything like VR. Damned if I know why people still stick to it. I subvocalize to sexybeast. She doesn't answer. Either the static's still up or she's bailed on me.

The meat slut smiles and walks up to me. She blows smoke in my face and I can't smell it, even with my filter still wide open. "I told you if you made it to the end of the street, you'd get to meet me. Or did you forget about me already?"

A chill goes through me that the summer night can't heat. The rain is definitely blowing through her and I could swear she came from up on Dunlevy, up from where all those hookers disappeared decades ago. "You're sexybeast."

She nods. "My name was Queenie, once." She smiles sadly. "That ring you bought used to belong to me. My uncle made it for me. I pawned it for a bottle of wine a few days before I...went away with a trick."

"You mean 'died'?" I say. 'You mean he killed you?" My voice goes up on the last two words. VR doesn't have ghosts.

She takes a drag on her cigarette. "At least I lived a little before I went. You live in VR. What kind of life is that?" She shrugs.

I step back, but it doesn't help. Near or far, she might as well be right back in my earjack. "You're a ghost? How the hell can you be a ghost?"

She smiles sadly. "I told you I was an elder, didn't I? We elders, we're supposed to watch over you babies, so you get a chance grow up. Go home, babygirl. You know the way. Take it from someone who's still lookin'."

Possessing a quixotic fondness for difficult careers, Paula Stiles has driven ambulances, taught fish farming for the Peace Corps in West Africa and earned a Scottish PhD in medieval history, studying Templars and non-Christians in Spain. She has also sold fiction to Strange Horizons, Writers of the Future, Jim Baen's Universe, Futures, The Living Dead II, Shine, OutShine and other markets. She is Editor in Chief of the Lovecraft/Mythos 'zine Innsmouth Free Press. You can find her on Twitter (@thesnowleopard) or her website.