Remake

They didn’t have any musicals. Not even Ruby Keeler. I worked my way back to Alis.

“Okay, roll ’em,” James Dean said. The fat tourate smooched empty air, giggled, and jumped off the box. On the screen, she kissed Luke’s cheek, and they swung out across a high-tech abyss.

“Come on,” I said to Alis and steered her across the street to Screen Test City.

It had a multiscreen filled with stars’ faces, and an old guy with the pinpoint eyes of a redliner. “Be a star! Get your face up on the silver screen! Who do you want to be, popsy?” he said, leering at Alis. “Marilyn Monroe?”

Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire were side by side on the bottom row of the screen. “That one,” I said, and the screen zoomed till they filled it.

“You’re lucky you came tonight,” the old guy said. “He’s going into litigation. What do you want? Still or scene?”

“Scene,” I said. “Just her. Not both of us.”

“Stand in front of the scanner,” he said, pointing, “and let me get a still of your smile.”

“No, thank you,” Alis said, looking at me.

“Come on,” I said. “You said you wanted to dance in the movies. Here’s your chance.”

“You don’t have to do anything,” the old guy said. “All I need’s an image to digitize from. The scanner does the rest. You don’t even have to smile.”

He took hold of her arm, and I expected her to wrench away from him, but she didn’t move.

“I want to dance in the movies,” she said, looking at me, “not get my face digitized onto Ginger Rogers’s body. I want to dance.”

“You’ll be dancing,” the old guy said. “Up there on the screen for everybody to see.” He waved his free hand at the milling cast of thousands, none of whom were looking at his screen. “And on opdisk.”

“You don’t understand,” she said to me, tears welling up in her eyes. “The CG revolution—”

“Is right there in front of you,” I said, suddenly fed up. “Simsex, paste-ups, snuffshows, make-your-own remakes. Look around, Ruby. You want to dance in the movies? This is as close as you’re going to get!”

“I thought you understood,” she said bleakly, and whirled before either of us could stop her, and plunged into the crowd.

“Alis, wait!” I shouted, and started after her, but she was already far ahead. She disappeared into the entrance to the skids.

“Lose the girl?” a voice said, and I turned and glared. I was opposite the Happy Endings booth. “Get dumped? Change the ending. Make Rhett come back to Scarlett. Make Lassie come home.”

I crossed the street. It was all simsex parlors on this side, promising a pop with Mel Gibson, Sharon Stone, the Marx Brothers. A hundred percent realistic. I wondered if I should do a sim. I stuck my head in the promo data helmet, but there wasn’t any blurring. The chooch must be working.

“You shouldn’t do that,” a female voice said.

I pulled my head out of the helmet. A freelancer was standing there, blond, in a torn net leotard and a beauty mark. Bus Stop. “Why go for a virtual imitation when you can have the real thing?” she breathed.

“Which is what?” I said.

The smile didn’t fade, but she looked instantly on guard. Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon. “What?”

“This real thing. What is it? Sex? Love? Chooch?”

She half put up her hands, like she was being arrested. “Are you a narc? ’Cause I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was just making a comment, okay? I just don’t think people should settle for VRs, is all, when they could talk to somebody real.”

“Like Marilyn Monroe?” I said, and wandered on down the sidewalk past three more freelancers. Marilyn in a white halter dress, Madonna in brass cones, Marilyn in pink satin. The real thing.

I scored some more chooch and a line of tinseltown from a James Dean too splatted to remember he was supposed to be selling the stuff, and ate it, walking on past the snuffshows, but somewhere I must have gotten turned around because I was back at Happy Endings, watching the holoscreen. Scarlett ran into the fog after Rhett, Butch and Sundance leaped forward into a hail of gunfire, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman stood in front of an airplane looking at each other.

“Back again, huh?” the hawker said. “Best thing for a broken heart. Kill the bastards. Get the girl. What’ll it be? Lost Horizon? Terminator 9?”

Ingrid was telling Bogie she wanted to stay, and Bogie was telling her it was impossible.

“What happy endings do people come up with for this?” I asked him.

“Casablanca?” He shrugged. “The Nazis show up and kill the husband, Ingrid and Bogart get married.”

“And honeymoon in Auschwitz,” I said.

“I didn’t say the endings were any good.”

On the screen Bogie and Ingrid were looking at each other. Tears welled up in her eyes, and the edges of the screen went to soft-focus.

“How about Shadowlands?” the guy said, but I was already shoving through the crowd, trying to reach the skids before I flashed.

I almost made it. I was past the chariot race when a Marilyn crashed into me and I went down, and I thought, natch, I’m going to flash on cement, but I didn’t.