Alien Landscapes 2 Read Free Page A

It felt extravagant to select what they wanted , rather than what they could afford.
    Chandler hunched over the lacquered table, resting his elbows on it as he reached out to her. “I want to show you something,” he said. He dipped a hand into his shirt pocket to pull out a deck of newly imprinted plastic wafers, business cards with a magnetic strip containing autodialer information. She recognized the basic logo, but he peeled off one of the wafers and slid it across the table to her.
    “I changed the company name from Chandler Damon, Worldbuilder , to Worldbuilders, Inc. I put your name on the ID strip, too.”
    He grinned at her, his pale, freckled face looking ruddier in the cast-off light from the imitation fire. She held the plastic card in her hands, rolling the edges against her fingertips, as if afraid they might turn into razors. “You put my name on it?”
    Chandler shrugged. “Well, you’re going to be a part of it from now on, aren’t you? Especially considering the new contract I got offered today—something really spectacular. We’re reconstructing ancient Egypt, an interactive diorama environment displaying the creation of the pyramids and the great sphinx. It’ll go in one of the top recreational floors in the financial center towers.”
    “You mean I can quit my other job?”
    He shrugged, as if not sure how she would take the news. “Well, you keep telling me how much you hate it.”
    Before she could find a way to express her delight, the server placed their meals in front of them. Chandler sliced into his dripping red Porterhouse, eyeing the meat as if he were a predator. Tara talked with her mouth full, tugging out details of the Egypt project as she let the excitement wash over her.
    The filet was delicious, perfectly cooked, but she had already received a far greater treat than the steak could ever be.
    #
    A hot sun baked the desert along the Nile. A simulated sky shimmered with the heat, refracted blue glinting off airbrush-smooth sands. Holographic slaves clad in dusty loincloths and rimed with sweat and mud constructed the monumental pyramids as Tara and Chandler worked at constructing the rest of the program.
    Chandler’s ghost image stood up a level on the pyramid adding details to the animated work crews. The slaves hauled enormous limestone blocks into place, sliding the chunks along mud-slick tree trunks. Chandler looked ridiculous in his guise as a slave driver: arms crossed at his bare chest, legs spread apart, bright white linen wrapped around his waist. He had added a dark Egyptian cast to his normally pale, freckled skin. His red-gold hair hid under a headdress. His lips pressed together as he concentrated, an expression she had not seen him wear before.
    He stared down at the work gangs roped together, sweating as they maneuvered their loads up ramps. Working with a palette grid he pulled out of the air, he adjusted their expressions and routines, altering the dirt and details of their rags.
    Tara’s ghost image walked up one of the slick ramps and clambered across a network of palm-trunk scaffolding to inspect the architectural details. Playing the game, she had dressed her image in the gaudy garb of a Pharoah’s wife, her eyes black and greasy from a layer of kohl, her neck burdened with a necklace of gold and lapis lazuli, her knuckles adorned with scarab rings.
    “Hey Chandler!” she said, raising her voice. Automatically the synthesized sounds of rumbling stone, cracking whips, and shouts of pain damped and faded into the background. “Do we have a revised estimate of the completion date? We’re ahead of schedule, aren’t we?”
    Chandler’s image nodded from the other side of the pyramid. His headdress wagged in the bright sun. “I want to emphasize the immensity of this construction, yet leave the impression that it’s perpetually in progress. A metaphor for life: constantly building—and no matter how large it gets, you’re never actually done. Like La