The Caryatids - Bruce Sterling [29]
“I can’t believe my eyes! This is so swift and brilliant! People would queue up to see this, they would make long lines to see!”
“Yes, that would be the basic business plan,” Montalban told her. “Mediation is a key enabler for tomorrow’s heritage economy.”
“What?”
“ ‘The replacement of national sovereignty and class consciousness by technically sophisticated yet ethically savage private cartels which dissolve social protections and the rule of law while encouraging the ruthless black-marketization of higher technologies …’ That’s what a famous Acquis critic once said about this technology. Augmentation is a little dodgy. I agree it’s not for amateurs.”
Vera couldn’t understand this long rote-quote of his—Montalban was a Dispensation gentleman. It was as if he were quoting classical Latin at her. His chatter didn’t seem to matter much. Not when confronted with this. “Did you say this is ‘dodgy’? Mr. Montalban—this isn’t even supposed to be possible.”
“I’m pleased that you appreciate our modest efforts,” said Montalban, with just the lightest hint of imperial sarcasm. “Would you care to step outside this tent, and have a look around?”
Vera lurched at once for the flapping tent door.
She stood outside. The excavated soil of old Ivanje Polje had suddenly become a Slavic Dark Age village. The spex augment showed her writhing plum trees, clumsy vineyards, muddy pigpens, a big stone-fenced villa. The stone longhouse was half surrounded by squalid peasant huts, homemade from mingled mud and twigs. It looked insanely real, like drowning in a glossy cartoon.
The sky above medieval Mljet was truly astounding, staggering: a heartaching vista of pure fluffy clouds. That medieval sky was scarily blue and clean. Vera had never stood beneath such a sky in her whole life. Because this sky was not her own deadly Greenhouse sky, the sky of a world in the grip of a global catastrophe. This historical sky had never known one single smokestack. It was the natural sky of the long-vanished natural Earth.
Vera took one reeling, awestruck step and tripped over her own feet. Somehow, Montalban was there for her. He caught her arm.
“Are there people here?” she shouted at him. “Where are all the people?”
“We didn’t yet write any avatars for this Dark Age augment,” Montalban told her, his calm voice close to her ear. “Our Dark Age plug-in is still in alpha.”
Vera plucked the clinging spex from her face. Karen appeared in the flowering field, with Mary Montalban. Karen had both her bony arms out, and she was laughing. The child was cheerfully climbing her exposed ribs.
“Watch me throw her high in the air!” Karen crowed.
“Oh my God,” moaned Montalban, “please don’t do that.”
VERA FORCED HERSELF to pick at Dr. Radic’s elaborate lunch, for the old man had outdone himself in honor of his guests. This done, they hiked on foot to the ruins of Polace, over a narrow trail that Radic’s people had taken some pains to clear. Montalban carried his daughter on his shoulders. Karen was in a buoyant mood, bounding along comically and making the child crow with glee.
When they descended from the island’s rugged backbone to the northern shore, it was clear why Montalban had been so eager to visit these ruins.
The augment for Polace simulated ancient Roman Palatium. Palatium, an imperial Roman beach resort in the year zero.
The island’s beaches had changed a great deal in the passage of twenty-one centuries. This meant a design conflict between strict geolocative accuracy and an augment that everyday viewers might willingly pay to see. That controversy hadn’t yet been settled, so much of imperial Roman Palatium appeared to be hovering, uneasily, over the rising Greenhouse waters of the bay.