eXistenZ Read Online Free Page A

uncertain of what was about to happen to them.
    Allegra quickly brushed a finger over a nipplelike protuberance on the game-pod in her lap.
    Immediately, the other players closed their eyes and went rigid. Their hands, resting on the pods in their laps, stiffened, and the knuckles began to show white. Meanwhile, the game-pods began a rhythmic, peristaltic rippling.
    Pikul moved over to Wittold Levi.
    “Allegra Geller seems shy,” he said quietly. “It wouldn’t have occurred to me that a big star like her would be shy.”
    “That’s what a lot of people like about Allegra,” Levi said. “She spends most of her time alone in her studio, designing the games. I sometimes think she’d be happier if she never had to show them to anybody.”
    “She doesn’t like this adulation?”
    “I don’t know about that. No matter what she says to make people feel good, it’s what she’s doing now that she’s nervous about. Porting in with her fans. She says it’s too intimate, too much of an intrusion.”
    “Then why does she do it?”
    Levi glanced at him, grinning slyly. “I guess you could say we make her do it,” he said.
    “We? You mean the game company, Antenna?”
    “That’s what I mean.”
    “Why?” Pikul asked.
    That look came at him again, but now Wittold Levi was no longer grinning.
    “I haven’t seen you before,” he said, suspiciously. “Are you with Antenna, or did an independent security contractor send you?”
    “I’m with you,” Pikul said at once. Inwardly, he resented the man’s tone, but he fished in his back pocket for his ID and showed it to Witt. “I’m working through the Antenna management training program. Security is what I’m doing right now, but I want to end up in marketing and public relations.” He held up the electronic wand. “To be completely honest with you, most of what I know about security is confined to knowing how to switch this sucker on and off.”
    Levi ducked back from the wand, which Pikul had waved incautiously at him.
    “Okay, then you’ll know that corporately we’ve spent a fortune developing eXistenZ. We all realize it’s a risky project. Allegra Geller might have to make more changes yet, and these kind of seminars are just about the only way we can convince her there might be a problem.”
    “By a problem you mean bugs?” Pikul said. “You’re saying there are bugs in her new game?”
    “All gameware has bugs, but we can iron them out as part of the testing and evaluation procedure. eXistenZ is a lot more than a game, though.”
    “Yeah, right. It’s a game system. I heard you say that. It’s a kind of emphasis you keep making.”
    “There are some top people at Antenna who are worried that eXistenZ is an intellectual program, too complex, too weird and artsy.”
    “What do you think?” Pikul asked.
    “Me, I think it’s the hottest product Antenna has ever had, marketwise. And Allegra’s not bothered by accusations of being highbrow. Not until she faces her fans. She hates to be rejected in the flesh, so from time to time we bring her out and let her take some of the heat.”
    “I’ve heard that she’s sensitive,” Pikul said admiringly.
    “I guess you could say that’s what she’s good at. We pay Allegra Geller for being sensitive.”
    A strange, choral humming could now be heard, filling the high vaulted roof of the old church building. Pikul and Levi turned their attention back to the stage, where the participants were rocking and swaying in their seats, moving in time with the pulsing, throbbing pods in their laps.
    “What’s going on now?” Pikul said quietly to Witt.
    “That’s the new Antenna Research theme song. We thought this might be a way to launch it. Anyone who plays eXistenZ is going to be familiar with that tune.”
    Loyally, for at heart he thought he should at least attempt to be a good company man, Pikul tried to hum along. He gave up after a few bars.
    “That’s catchy,” he said.
    Levi made no