Engineman - Eric Brown [203]
She stared at me. I felt the weight of pity in her eyes that I came to understand only later - at the time I hated her for it. The usual reaction to my injuries was horror or derision, and I could handle that. But pity was rare, and I could not take pity from someone so beautiful.
She said in a whisper, "Take her away." And, before I could dive at her, the chauffeur dragged me from the silent room and frog-marched me through the mansion. I was holding back my tears as we hurried outside and through the grounds. He opened a pair of wrought iron gates, pushed me to the sidewalk and kicked me in the midriff. I gasped for breath and closed my eyes as his footsteps receded and the gate squeaked shut. Then, painfully, I pulled myself to my feet, fumbled with the buttons at my chest and limped back to the main drag.
I knew the woman. I'd seen her many, many times before.
That same face...
Her poise, the way she had of making her every movement a unique performance.
Stephanie Etteridge.
But that was impossible, of course.
Dan was out when I got back. I left the lights off, swung the Batan II terminal from the ceiling and dialled the catalogue of classic Etteridge movies. I sent out for a meal, sat back in the flickering luminescence of the screen and tried not to feel sorry for myself.
For the next hour I ate dim sum and noodles and stared at a soporific succession of dated entertainments. Even in the better films the acting was stylised, the form limited. At the end of every scene I found myself reaching for the participation-bar on the keyboard, only to be flashed the message that I was watching a pre-modern film and that viewer participation was impossible. So I sat back and fumed and watched the storyline go its unalterable way, like a familiar nightmare.
There was no doubting that, despite the limitations of the form, Stephanie Etteridge had something special. If I could suspend comparison between her movies and the holographic, computerised participation dramas of today, I had to admit that Etteridge had a certain star quality, a charismatic presence.
When I'd seen enough, I returned to the main menu and called up The Life of Stephanie Etteridge, a eulogistic documentary made only two years ago.
It was the usual life of a movie star; there was the regular quota of marriages and affairs, drug addictions and suicide attempts; low points when her performances were below standard and the fickle public switched allegiance for a time to some parvenu starlet with good looks and better publicity - and high points when she fought back from slash addiction, the death of a husband and universal unpopularity to carry off three successive Oscars in films the critics came to hail as classics.
And then the final tragedy.
The film industry died a death. In Geneva, a cartel of computer-wizards developed Inter-Active computer-simulated holographics, and actors, directors, script-writers were a thing of the past, superseded by the all-powerful Programmer. In one month the studios in Hollywood, Bombay, Rio and Sydney shut up shop and the stars found themselves redundant. A dozen or so mega-stars were paid retainers so that their personas could be used to give Joe Public familiar, reassuring faces to see them through the period of transition - until a whole new pantheon of computer-generated screen Gods was invented for mass worship. Etteridge was one of these tide-over stars, which was how I recognised her face; I'd seen many 'Etteridge' Inter-Active dramas as a kid. But it didn't take a degree in psychology to read between the lines of the documentary and realise that lending your face to a virtual character was no compensation for the denial of real stardom.
The documentary didn't dwell on the personal tragedy, of course; the last scene showed her marriage to an Italian surgeon, and while the credits rolled a voice-over reported that Stephanie Etteridge had made her last film in ten years ago and thereafter retired to a secluded