Alexander Besher - Rim

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RIM

A Novel of Virtual Reality

Alexander Besher

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint material

copyrighted or controlled by them:

Regents of the University of California, University of California Press.

HarperCollins West and the author, in association with the Rainforest Action Network, will

facilitate the planting of two trees for every one tree used in the manufacturing of this book.

Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in

any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations

embodied in critical articles and re-views. For information, address HarperCollins

Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.

FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Besher, Alexander.

Rim : a novel of virtual reality / Alexander Besher. — 1st ed.

ISBN 0-06-258527-4 : $13.

Imaginary wars and battles—Fiction. 2. Virtual reality— Fiction. I. Title. PS3552.E7942R

For Nicholas who inspired the story

For Francoise who kept it going

and

For the Family Everywhere

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Geoff Leach in Japan, who was the first to discover Rim and who

brought it to the attention of MacPower magazine in Tokyo, which seri-alized an early draft

of the manuscript in Japanese. Geoff also introduced me to my Japanese literary agent,

Kiyoshi Asano, who found a first home for my as yet unwritten first novel at the Oest-sha

publish-ing company in Tokyo. I would like to thank Makoto Satoh, the editor-in-chief of

Crest-sha for his patience and faith in the project.

Thanks to Kyoto Journal, which published the first English excerpt of Rim in Japan.

I am also grateful to Bill Gladstone, my American literary agent, and to Joann Moschella, my

editor at HarperCollins West. To the many others, among them Joe Holzer, Christophe

Marcant, Choni Yangzom, Renee Wildman, David Bunnell, Paul Saffo, Tom Peters, Bernie

Krisher, and Leonard Koren, who offered support and encouragement along the way, domo

arigato.

Alexander Besher

March 7, 1994

San Francisco

RIM

The Keiretsu Wars were bloody even in the virtual worlds. Some time before the Mega-

Quake of ‘26 erased Neo-Tokyo from the Matrix, the first unsuspecting CEO was sitting in

his New Nippon garden enjoying his ’trades when he was down-loaded by the enemy.

His Honorable Consciousness was captured in a bio-ROM and spirited away in a brocade

box to be presented to the Lord of the Rim. The others fell just as rapidly. This was not

widely known to the world. In the West, a few more years would have to pass before the

scientific establishment accepted the fact that energy can be manipulated by consciousness.

Then there were only two keiretsu groups left—one that belonged to the Lord of the Rim

and another inhabited by the Lord of the Dream. One drew the sword; one visualized the

sheath over the sword. Which one was greater?

In this history, you must decide. But before you do, you must know that the world is not as

it seems. Not any more.

For one thing, when Neo-Tokyo ceased to exist, something greater came into being. A new

Matrix was born. Which one was more real, which one was more imagined? To travel

from one realm to the other became the new form of commuting. To dwell equally in both

Matrixes was highly prized. Eventually, as both worlds interfaced, all such distinctions fell

away.

But before that occurred, before the ceremony of conscious-ness became a highly refined

art form and before dreams became the most sought after commodity in the marketplace,

there was a troubled time when the Keiretsu Wars appeared endless and when hope was

feared as much as love was endured.

This is part of that story, a small part that I know well. This account is dedicated to my

father, who is now a ronin in the realm of unknowing.

Trevor Gobi

from “The Keiretsu Monogatari”

[“Annals of the Mega-Corporate Wars”)

Vector 16, Matrix Two

Taihei 43 (2O67 A.E)

Prologue

A Japanese tea garden, Neo-Tokyo, Autumn, 2025

The elderly Japanese man stepped with a purposeful stride toward the entrance to the inner

garden. It was an exclusive residential district of Neo-Tokyo where members of the Imperial

family and top corporate clansmen lived. The cuckoos were call-ing out in the pine grove

that bordered Prince S.‘s villa. Some-where in the garden, wind chimes tinkled in the dusk.

It was a lonely sound.

“Wait outside,” the man commanded his entourage in a gruff voice. The four men in dark

suits bowed and stood motionless as his grey kimono-clad figure paused for a moment, then

swept through the 500-year-old thatched gate.

Two of them were the old man’s bodyguards and they took up a watchful position at the

threshold to the roji, their senses alert, but their bodies relaxed. The other two were his

personal aides. One carried a briefcase containing the old man’s backup consciousness,

which he laid down between his feet wearily. His colleague lit a ginko cigarette and admired

the tranquility of the grounds. It was difficult to believe that such peace was only min-utes

away from the frantic hubbub of the city center.

On the other side of the bamboo fence, the old man paused to admire a clump of yellow and

white chrysanthemums. Such sim-ple, breathtaking beauty. Despite the pain of the cancer

that ate remorselessly at his insides, he breathed in the fresh, cleansing scent of the pines

and felt momentarily invigorated.

The cancer was incurable, but that was a minor inconveni-ence compared to the struggles he

had faced during the 83 years of his active life. And it would not stop him now.

Irregularly shaped stepping-stones zigzagged toward the small teahouse that lay at the end

of the winding path. The moss was so green and so thick. For a moment, the color reminded

him of the Mekong River that flowed through Indochina. Those were happier days; not more

carefree perhaps, but exhilarating as he captured market after market in Southeast Asia.

Days of empire building.

And thinking of the Mekong, how could he not remember Mai? Sweet lovely Mai, who

performed every function of woman-hood and femininity for him, offering her body and her

soul, a young woman devoting herself to an old man. He could still smell the scent of

sandalwood on her soft brown skin …

The pine needles crackled under his step, and he noticed the thin wisp of smoke coming

from the chimney of the teahouse. Mai was now behind him, along with everything else. All

of his past lives, fallen like persimmons from a tree that no longer existed. It had been cut

down and uprooted a long time ago, seamlessly obliterated by his thoughts, which were now

racing toward the boundary where his next life awaited.

If all went according to plan, this would be the most impor-tant day of his life: the

culmination of his career and the begin-ning of a new era for the House of Kobayashi.

He stepped up to the stone water basin, lifted the bamboo ladle and filled it with cool water

that he splashed over his hands. He pulled a sheet of folded handmade paper from his

sleeve, dried his hands, then turned to face the tiny “wriggling-in” entrance to the tearoom.

This was the ritual entryway signifying humility and the transition from worldliness.

He doffed his wooden clogs on the stone, slid the diminutive screen door open, then,

bending almost in half, crawled inside the cool interior of the tiny two-and-a-half-size

tatami-mat chamber.

Through the slats of the bamboo window lattice, the late afternoon sun daubed what was left

of its soft golden rays on the brown plaster walls. The man turned to face the alcove where a

scroll of calligraphy hung. The thick black Japanese kanji ideo-grams were appropriate for

the occasion, he thought.

“Seeing all the way into the universe,

from what lies before you.“

A stick of incense was lit in the burner, a single chrysanthe-mum stalk minus its head was

placed in a bamboo vase. Wait a minute, without its head? The man froze and stared at the

stalk. Then suddenly, the yellow petals of the chrysanthemum appeared from the top of the

stalk, a marvelous work of graphics, as splendid as the flowers outside. The flowers were on-

line, of course. Mitsubishi mums.

In the fading light of the room, he heard the sound of boiling water, almost like a brook

burbling in a forest. The charcoal glowed softly in the hearth under the kettle. To the side

was the tea cabinet, with all the utensils ready for the ceremony.

He heard the host coming from the other entrance. The screen door slid open and the

master of the ceremony wriggled into the small room. He bowed to the old man, who bowed

back to him wordlessly. It was strange, the old man thought. He was so young to be such a

master. A master of nothingness.

All his life the old man had struggled to amass untold-of riches, unheard-of power and

influence, all of which was nothing compared to the power contained within the pale young

man with the pencil-thin arched eyebrows and the burning eyes.

Those eyes did not need to meet his, yet they saw and absorbed everything.

They understood that the old man’s power was at its zenith, and only one thing would bring

him the peace of mind he desired: to control the Void that awaited him, to embrace it within

his very being, and to incorporate it into the structure of his pow-erful worldwide

organization.

This nothingness would ensure that he left his imprint behind after he was gone. It would be

like the seal of his signature, which he would stamp onto everything he encountered, all his

business affairs and all of his worldly relations.

The young man did not mind that he would be the medium for the transfer of this power,

because to him, it personally meant very little. On this level, nothingness was just a game.

On other levels, it had different effects. There were many levels of nothing-ness. The old

man could not possibly appreciate that knowledge at this stage of his personal evolution.

The young man bowed and produced a small bundle wrapped in brocade. Holding it

reverently with both hands, he laid it down on the mat between them.

The old man sat, transfixed. He did not dare doubt. He had seen the beta test himself. An

entire rock, weighing four tons, from the Zen garden of the Ryoanji had been digitized from

a distance of 400 kilometers using a Kobayashi K700 downsizer. He had the image stored in

a file that he kept in an amulet around his neck.

When he first obtained this evidence, he studied it with a feel-ing of almost religious

conversion. For him the image had the full weight, the look and feel of the huge boulder

once buried in that famous Zen garden. If there was an illusion, it was that it once was a

solid rock. Yet it was still a rock. It had rock essence.

The old man held his breath as the master unfolded the bun-dle. He removed the ceremonial

glove and slipped it onto his right hand, almost casually. The understatement was powerful,

refined. Then, with another curt bow, the young man began the virtual reality ceremony:

Vacharu-no-yu. The new way of serving—and savoring—reality.

For tea traditionalists, this was an aberration, of course. They were hopelessly behind the

times. For them, nothing could replace the original Cha-no-yu tea ceremony as it had been

refined by the tea-master Sen Rikyu in the 16th century.

The fools! No wonder New Nippon was beset with strife and with intrigues just as it had

been during the civil wars in the feu-dal times. As for Rikyu, these new traditionalists even

refused to confront the master in his current holocarnation.

Why, the old man had been served by Rikyu himself in this very tearoom, courtesy of a

Kobayashi Chajin projector. Imbe-ciles! What would it take to convince them that the times

had indeed changed!? Did they want The Great Generalissimo Nobunaga himself to appear

and demand their heads?

The old man grinned several layers beneath his expression-less mask. He could arrange it

for them. In fact, he already had. A number of cowardly keiretsu lords could attest to this fact

—if only they were able to speak, that is. He had amassed quite a col-lection of their

extracted consciousnesses, utilizing the compres-sion technique that the young master had

so expertly developed for him.

Neuro-netsukes, that’s what the old man jokingly called them. Brain bonsai! He had a dozen

figurines on display inside a glass cabinet. Let’s see, there was the traitor Ono, who had

secretly conspired against him with the Fuji clan of Osaka. Then there were his other prize

pieces—Shigehara, Tamba, and Ikeda. Had they not declared themselves against the House

of Kobayashi? Now they all were part of his priceless netsuke collection. Who else in the

world could boast of playing host to such handcrafted houseguests!

Each of his former enemies had been transformed into a sin-gularly unique work of art.

Miniatures, befitting their new status, the old man chuckled silently at the thought. Tamba

was a wild boar; Ono, for his insolence, a rat; and that slippery Ikeda, a fish writhing in a

net…

Such exquisite detail! Such pathos! There was such life and movement to them. They ought

to be grateful that they had been permitted to evolve into fine art from the scum they were!

The old man caught his breath. He watched as the young master performed each delicate

movement in the ceremony with other-worldly grace. From the way he handled the glove,

almost like a calligrapher with a brush, to the way he drew the meta-ROM bowl from the

stand and held it with reverence.

It was an old Kyocera ceramic bowl bristling with holotropian chips, brown, almost black in

color. Except for the bowl and the tea caddy, which was a Hitachi vacuum bottle, each of the

uten-sils was a functional hologram, from the teaspoon to the ladle. Even the boiling kettle

was a high-density mirage. Priceless!

The master now took a ladleful of water and put it in the bowl. He washed the tea whisk and

replaced the ladle on top of the kettle. He emptied the tea bowl. He wiped the bowl with a

cloth swab. He placed the swab on the lid of the kettle.

Finally, the moment of truth had arrived. The master un-screwed the lid of the Hitachi

vacuum and the green glow of the virus lit up the room.

Incredible. So this was it. The young man had transported it himself from the source. The

unreal made real, the old man sighed, as he contemplated its radiance.

The young man took out three spoonfuls of the green pixels, placing the virus into the

Kyocera bowl. He poured a ladle of hot water into the bowl and whisked the tea rapidly.

Then he took the tea bowl in his left hand and presented it with his gloved right hand to the

old man.

The old man rotated the tea bowl just so, held it up, and peered into it intently. Through the

green haze, he saw the moun-tains and rivers of old Yamato. He saw the virtual reality

factories of New Nippon, and the coded vision of its people. He saw their aspirations and

their fears, their allegiances and their longings.

He saw the long scroll of their births and the incense clouds that shrouded their deaths. He

saw the skies above New Nippon, grey and blue and green, and the weather pattern moving

obliquely over the islands as it dissipated above the Inland Sea.

He saw everything there was to see from the moment the islands knew creation until the

green froth of the tea covered them up again in the impenetrable present.

Yes, it was the present that was always impenetrable. The old man had known that truth for

a long time, and he would take it with him to his grave. The most impenetrable moment,

indeed.

He almost sighed, but it would have been bad form in the face of this great gift. He held the

bowl to his face, inhaled the fra-grance of the mountains and the rivers and the sea and the

fields, then drank it all down noisily, slurping his appreciation.

Nothingness never tasted so full.

The young man bowed. It was a moment he would allow to pass without comment. The old

man had swallowed New Nippon, down to its very essence. Let him enjoy his fleeting glory.

The virus was everywhere anyway, and no one could stop it now, much less control it. He

had not bothered to mention this fact to the old man. How could he possibly appreciate that

he did not exist?

That he never ever existed in the first place? But let us return to this innocuous dualism for a

moment, and to the burbling of the tea kettle.

Every single moment was linked to every other moment. There was no separating anything.

Every fragment was attached to every other fragment. Time and space, life and death, it was

all so ephemeral. Digitized nothingness.

Gatay gatay paragatay parasamgatay bodhi svaha. Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone

beyond even the beyond into full enlightenment…

The ceremony of virtual reality was only just beginning. So let it begin.

Arroyo

U.S.-Mexico Border, Spring, 2027

It was a broiling day; the blue sky shot through with hot, white light like a shot of mescal

chasing the worm down the throat. The man with the silver face waited on the U.S. side of

the Mexi-can border between Tijuana and San Ysidro. He wore a long tan suede coat and a

pentium-studded rasta cap.

He didn’t have too long to wait. He’d been watching the hill-side for about twenty minutes

through the form-finder. The chap-arral on the Mexican side was teeming with chi energy

waves. Now the first figure stepped out into the open, followed quickly by five forms.

The U.S. immigration officers in the jeep were parked below in the arroyo. Chi waves

undulated like vapors of shimmering heat. The man checked the form-meter: 35 hertz. Not

bad. He spit. Vamonos, amigos. Time to get on. Hayaku.

He rose from his squat, popped the form-finder into a pouch clipped onto his belt, then

ambled down the arroyo toward the waiting INS officers. Sure enough, he heard the motor

on their jeep start up, purring like a cat. When the illegals touched U.S. soil, the purr turned

into a growl and the machine leaped out of the hidden hollow.

The six illegals did not seem concerned. They walked almost casually toward the INS jeep

that was racing toward them kicking up a rooster tail of dust. They made no attempt to hide

them-selves or to flee. The jeep screeched to a halt, and its sharp metal-lic reverberation

echoed across the arroyo. The illegals just stood there, waiting.

A few of them laid their bags on the ground as the two INS officers slowly got out of the jeep.

The leader of the group waved a greeting to the officers. “Hola! Konichiwa!”

One of officers turned around when he saw the man with the silver face step out from behind

a giant cardon cactus. “What the_______?” he began, but was cut short. His system

crashed in mid-sentence. His partner noticed the intruder at the same instant. But his

reading was equally slow in reaction time, thrown off by the sudden onset of shutdown.

The illegals remained motionless, frozen in their reflexes. They were accessing this new

development on their own terms. A lot of good that would do them. The wave was

irreversible for all except the one who held the chi-absorber.

Everything within a radius of fifty yards that did not match the preset parameters for chi-

compatibility wonked out like a shorted fuse.

“Welcome to the Virtual States of America,” the man with the silver face said, bending over

the erased forms. “Sorry to bust up your party,” he added under his breath as he scanned

their inert CPU units. “Just a few minor formalities, then I’ll let you go.”

The download was quick with the anti-virus protocol buffer-ing him. Just in case they were

communicable. He double-checked the reading on the meter. The two bogus INS officials

were definitely superior quality in every way except one. These new arrivals had an interface

on their consciousness processor that he’d never seen before. That was interesting. But one

of the illegals was special. Very special.

He turned to one of the forms lying on the ground and turned it over with his foot. He had

the face of a young man, about twenty-three years old. Close-cropped chestnut hair, a

smooth complex-ion, a look of innocence on his even features. The man with the sil-ver face

patted him down, and brought out a driver’s holo.

He switched it on. The voiceprint stated his name: Thomas Ferris. Date of birth: June 2,

2005. Address: 1862 Hollyoake Drive, San Diego. Occupation: Nanopharmacist, Western

Labs. His medical records showed his latest immunizations, the most recent ones being for

agoraphobia, depression, gastritis, and fear of death.

The man with the silver face smirked. Gone to a lot of trouble for a mannequin, hombre.

Still, he had to admire the depth of detail that went into the droid. It was a Kobayashi from

the neuralworks in Todos Santos.

“Okay, Mr. Ferris, let’s see if you got anything to declare.”

With a quick slash of the knife, he removed the box from the neo-cortex at the back of the

head. Still squatting in the dust, he studied the board for a few moments; his eyes lit up.

“Right on, Tyrone!” he exclaimed with pleasure. “Domo arigato, Mr. Sato!”

He dropped the board into the pocket of his long coat. Then he took a hit from his snuffbox,

snorted, spit noisily, and glanced at the other forms lying on the ground. Might as well go

for it, he thought to himself. They were all older models, not in great de-mand, but who

knows—they might bring in some extra pesos.

When he finished gutting them, he had all their neural boards. Then he walked away without

a backward glance, the spurs jan-gling on his lizard-skin boots.

Bardo One

“Many lives, Arjuna, you and I have lived.

I remember them all, but thou dost not.”

—The Bhagavad-Gita

Shuttle

L.A Metro-New Narita, 2027

As Frank Gobi rushed through L.A. Metroplex to catch his noon flight to New Narita, his

mini-cam Ray-Bans quick’corded a scene outside the duty-free shop.

He was late for the flight and out of breath, but he turned his head instinctively to witness

the exchange of corporate energies. Two American salarymen were bowing to each other.

“Johnson-san, have a safe trip,” the taller one in the three-piece hakama suit was telling his

colleague. “Domo arigato, Smith-san,” his friend replied.

Judging from their Midwestern accents, the two men were from Chicago. It was a blink of an

eye, but Gobi was sure the scene was a take. If it was, he might replay it during one of his

lectures. If he ever taught again, that is.

Strange though, he’d have to review the clip when he had more time. Their bows were crisply

executed from the waist down, just so. Their hands, palms open and pressed stiffly against

the thighs, were a tad too mechanical. Was there a new conser-vatism in the wind?

For the past three years, Frank Gobi had been teaching a course in transcultural corporate

anthropology and organiza-tional shamanism at the University of California in Berkeley,

Tokyo University extension.

His students enjoyed these real-life case studies of the new business culture that was

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RIMANovelofVirtualRealityAlexanderBesherGratefulacknowledgmentismadetothefollowingforpermissiontorepri tmaterialcopyrightedorcontrolledbythem:ExcerptfromCultofTara:MagicandRitualinTibet,byStephanBeyer.©1973bytheRegentsoftheUniversityofCalifornia,UniversityofCaliforniaPress.“Pigs(ThreeDifferentOnes...

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