AE in the Irish Theosophist

AEROPHILIA
BY TOBIAS S. BUCKELL

"You know, the thing about zeppelins is that they got a bad rap," Vince
says. He's actually twirling a virtual mustache. Nutjob. "I mean, in the
famous 'Oh, the humanity' accident only thirty-five passengers died.
Out of ninety seven!"
He steps forward and looks at me critically.
"Ever heard of a sixty-four percent survival rate in any crash? Space or
air?" He doesn't wait for an answer, but turns around. "No!" I can't
answer him anyway. My mouth is gagged with a rubber ball and strap,
and my hands are cuffed. My lips are starting to dry out and stick to the
black rubber ball.
The key to the handcuffs has been flushed out of the airship through the
toilet. It's probably still falling, and will fall for a few hours more until
crushed into liquid metal by the deadly atmo-sphere far below us. It
would continue falling, being crushed even smaller, until it joined the
great diamond core of the gas giant that was Riley.
Or so some physicists I once saw quoted in a touristy introduction to
Riley had said.
Four passengers sitting on the side of the gondola stare at me with wide
eyes. They're local colonists. Three guys in tuxedos on their way to a
party and a lady in a hoop skirt and purple plastic corset. Probably lived
all of their lives in any one of the aerostat cities on Riley's upper
atmospheres. They've certainly never seen a down on his luck spacer
like me, likely because there has never been such a thing as a down on
his luck spacer. It's almost oxymoronic.

"On a planet like this," Vince continues, "Zeppelins are too useful to
ignore. But I think the colonists are missing something."
The colonists: they look at me as if am crazy. And from their
perspective it can't be too far off, right? What they've seen with their
normal, unaugmented, fleshy eyeballs has been me, and only me,
boarding their dirigible for a regular flight from one city to another.
Routine for them, until I knocked out their pilot, took over the airship,
and reprogrammed the ship's destination to somewhere deep into the
atmosphere of Riley .
"Nobody try to fly this ship, or call for help, or you'll all regret it," I'd
announced. Then I'd stuffed a ball gag in my mouth, handcuffed myself,
and slumped into the corner of the gondola.
The problem being, from my side, is that my Id is a total asshole. He
hates my guts. We split up yesterday and he hijacks my skull today in
retaliation.
So I'm not really me right now. And no one else can see Vince. He's
just a computer-induced hallucination inside my own skull. I work up
some spit to try and moisten the ball gag a bit. Drool runs down my lips,
and one of the men across from me shakes his head in disgust.

#

Even though Vince is using my own body-wide neural network against
me to induce hallucinations and control my motor movement, I can still
access some basic functions. I dial out of the airship and make a call.
As a spacer I'm totally cyborged, constantly seeing and interacting with
information laid over every thing I see.
I manage to contact my ex-girlfriend's secretary persona. A virtual
image pastes itself in the left corner of the inside of my artificial eyes.

The persona looks just like Suzie as I remember her sixty years ago:
blond, brown eyes, but more digitized. It laughs when it sees me.
"You look exactly as we remember you," it says.
My hopes lift.
"I need help," I subvocalize. "Can I talk to Suzie?" The secretary
mimics sitting back and folding her arms. Lifts an eyebrow.
"Why in hell would we want to talk to you?"
"I'm in trouble." My subvocal throat grunts get another disgusted look
from the colonists in the actual gondola. In the picture in my head the
secretary leans forward.
Somewhere between the two I can see Vince flickering as he paces
around the edge of the gondola, muttering to himself. He passes
through one of the colonists, like a ghost.
"You're always in trouble, Vincent," the secretary says.
"Yeah, but now I'm in really deep. I need Suzie's help."
A click.
Then it's Suzie. The real Suzie.
"Hello?"
The secretary fades away. I try to clear my throat, gag, and close my
eyes. The insides of the gondola disappear, but Suzie remains, still
staring at me.
"Suzie," I subvocalize. "My god, you look . . . great." She doesn't. She
looks really old. Even with aging treatments, she's been sitting in real
time for sixty or so years while I skipped out a relativistic few months
near the speed of