Glasshouse - Charles Stross [31]
I look at him sharply. I don’t believe you, I decide. “We all make fools of ourselves from time to time,” I say, trying to hang a reassuring message on the observation. “Here, try this.” I raise my glass. “It says it’s vodka.”
“To forgetfulness.” He raises his glass to me. “And tomorrow.”
I wake up alone in a strange room, lying on a sleeping platform under a sack of fiber-stuffed fabric. For a few panicky moments I can’t remember where I am. My head’s sore, and there’s a gritty feeling in my eyes: If this is life in the dark ages, you can keep it. At least nobody’s trying to kill me right now, I tell myself, trying to come up with something to feel good about. I roll out of bed, stretch, and head for the bathroom.
It’s my fault for being so distracted. On my way back to my bedroom to get dressed I walk headfirst into Sam. He’s naked and bleary-eyed and looks half-asleep, and I sort of plaster myself across his chest. “Oof,” I say, right as he says, “Are you all right?”
“I think so.” I push back from him a few centimeters and look up at his face. “I’m sorry. You?”
He looks worried. “We were going to buy clothes and, uh, stuff. Weren’t we?”
I realize, momentarily unnerved, that we’re both naked, he’s taller than I am, and he’s hairy all over. “Yes, we were,” I say, watching him warily. All that hair: He’s a lot less gracile than I’d normally go for, and then I realize he’s looking at me as if he’s never seen me before.
It’s a touchy moment, but then he shakes his head, breaking the tension: “Yes.” He yawns. “Can I go to the bathroom first?”
“Sure.” I step aside and he shambles past me. I turn to watch him. I don’t know how I feel about this, about sharing a “house” with a stranger who is stronger and bigger than I am and who has a self-confessed history of impulsive violent episodes. But . . . who am I to criticize? By the time I’d known Kay this long, we’d gone to a wild orgy together and fucked each other raw, and if that isn’t impulsive behavior, I don’t know . . . maybe Sam’s right. Sex is an unpleasant complication here, especially before we know what the rules are. If there are rules. Vague memories are trying to surface: I’ve got a feeling I was involved with both males and females back before my excision. Possibly poly, possibly bi—I can’t quite remember. I shake my head, frustrated, and go back to my room to get into costume.
While I’m getting ready, I pick up my tablet. It tells me to look in the closet in the conservatory. I go downstairs and find the conservatory is chilly—don’t these people have proper life support?—and inside the cupboard that held a T-gate yesterday there’s now a blank wall and a couple of shelves. One of the shelves holds a couple of small bags made of dumb fabric. They’ve got lots of pockets, and when I open one I find it’s full of rectangles of plastic with names and numbers on them. My tablet tells me that these are “credit cards,” and we can use them to obtain “cash” or to pay for goods and services. It seems crude and clumsy, but I pick up the wallets all the same. I’m turning away from the door when my netlink chimes.
“Huh?” I look round. As I glance at the wallets in my hand a bright blue cursor lights up over them, and my netlink says, TWO POINTS. “What the—” I stop dead. My tablet chimes.
Tutorial: social credits are awarded and rescinded for behavior that complies with or violates public norms. This is an example. Your social credits may also rise or fall depending on your cohort’s collective score. After termination of the simulation all individuals will receive a payment bonus proportional to their score; the highest-scoring cohort will receive a further bonus of 100% on their final payment.
“Okay.” I hurry back inside to give Sam his wallet.
Sam is coming downstairs