Accidental Creatures Read Online Free PDF Page A

number. Her page circuit was open, but she didn’t answer until the seventh beep. “Helix, hi.” The holographic image of a slender woman with long, straight dark hair and olive toned skin appeared before Helix. She was reclining on a white vat leather chair. She wore black jeans, a black leather jacket, and round, opaque sunglasses.
    “How do you like it?”
    Oh, Helix liked it. A lot. “It’s cool.”
    Night Hag grinned. “Cool would be what? Menacing? Dangerous? Chilled?”
    “Dangerous, tough.”
    “Oh good. Tough is good.”
    The last time Helix had “seen” Night Hag, she was blond and dressed in leopard skins and white silk. The time before that she was a man in spats and a fedora. Night Hag changed constructs a lot. A lot of people did. It was easy, just pick out an image from the zillions of pictures in warehouses all over the net. There were even clubs you could join, Face of the Month, Columbia House, Backgrounds R Us. What you saw when you talked to someone on the net was no indication of what that person actually looked like. Some people felt it set them free to express who they really were. Helix had used constructs a few times, but she hadn’t felt that way. She’d felt as if she were hiding, which of course she was. She was always hiding. Kind of takes the entertainment value out of it, and so she preferred a blank mask. Let them use their imaginations; she could be secure in the knowledge that whatever they dreamed up, it would not be the truth.
    “So what’s up?” asked Helix.
    “That’s what I was going to ask you. I haven’t heard from you in days. You don’t write, you don’t call. What, you can’t pick up the transceiver?”
    “There just hasn’t been much to say. Nothing’s going on, that’s all.”
    “Tsk, tsk, tsk. A young woman like you, with nothing to do. That’s too bad. You oughta get out more.”
    “I don’t like out.”
    “How do you know? When was the last time you actually left that apartment?”
    “This morning, actually.”
    “Really?” Night Hag’s construct raised its eyebrows in surprise. “Where did you go?”
    Helix pursed her lips. “I went down to the first floor lobby to buy danishes.”
    Night Hag’s construct shook its head and rolled its eyes. “Oh, Helix. Dear. You have got to get over this. I know you have a good relationship with your father and all, but, you’re a grown woman. Get out of there! Get some independence.”
    “Why should I go anywhere? I’ve got the whole world right here in my living room.”
    “No, no you don’t. The net, it’s lies and illusions, mostly. You think you know me. You think we’re friends. But you have no idea what I really look like, and for all you know, I’ve made up everything I’ve ever told you about myself. If we were in the same room together talking, there’d be a whole second conversation going on. One that we can’t have, not even with the constructs, maybe not even with true visual contact. The conversation between our bodies and our faces, the sensation of sharing space and time. That’s what’s out there, Helix. That’s why you have to go, because that’s where the truth is.”
    Helix laughed ruefully. “You sound like my father. He was just this morning talking about me going to school on an actual campus.”
    Night Hag’s construct tilted its head thoughtfully. “School, hmm. Is that what you want?”
    “I don’t know,” Helix sighed with exasperation. “I don’t know what I want.”
    “But you want something, don’t you?”
    “Y-yes,” Helix admitted, “only I don’t know what.”
    “That’s why you should get out of there. You’ll never know as long as you remain dependent on Hector. Maybe you should get a job. Live independently for a while.”
    “Oh yeah, jobs are just falling from the sky out there. You checked the unemployment rate lately? It’s still holding steady at fifty percent.”
    “What about vatdiving? They’re always hiring people for that.