A Coney Island of the Mind
         (Published Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Feb. 1993. Copyright 1993.)
(With immense debt to Lawrence Ferlinghetti.)
Reality Parlor.
He pays his money and goes back to the cubicle with the
treadmill and pulls on the waldos, puts on the heavy eyeless,
earless helmet. He grabs for the handlebars suspended before
him, blind in the helmet that smells intimately of someone elses
hair.

Now he can see. Not the handlebars hung from the ceiling on a
tape-wrapped cable, not the treadmill. He is the cat with future
feet. He sees a schematic of a room; all the lines of the room are
in pink neon on velvet black, and in his ears instead of the
seasound of the helmet he hears the sound of open space. A
room sounds different than a helmet even when there's nothing to
hear.

A keyboard appears, or rather a line drawing of a keyboard with
all the letters on the keys glowing neon blue. Over it in neon blue
letters is the message, "Please type in your user ID."

"Cobalt," he types, letting go of the handlebars. The waldos give
him the sensation of hitting keys, give him feedback. His
password is "Nagasaki."

A neon pink door draws itself on the velvet wall in front of him.
The keyboard disappears and the handlebars appear in pink
neon schematic until he grabs them. Then they disappear from
sight but he can still feel them, safe in his gloved hands. He starts
forward [the treadmill lurches a bit under his blind feet but it
always does that at first so he is accustomed to it, doesn't really
think about it, just kind of expects it and forgets about it] through
the door which opens up ahead of him, pulling apart like elevator
doors into the party.

The party isn't a schematic, the party looks real. The party is a
big space full of people dressed all ways--boys with big hair and
girls with latex skulls and NPC in evening gowns and tuxes--as
he comes out of the elevator he looks to the right, to the mirrors
and sees himself, sees Cobalt, sees a Tom Sawyer in the
twenty-first century, a flagboy in a blue silk jacket and thigh high
boots with a knotwork of burgundy cords at the hips. All angles
in the face, smooth face like a razor, a face he had custom
configured in hours of bought-time at the reality parlor, not
playing the reality streets, not even looking, just working on his
own look. Cobalt eyes like lasers, and blue-steel braids for hair.

Edgelook, whatta-look, hot damn.

Not what he looks like at all in the mundane world of Cincinnati,
Ohio, but he isn't in Cincinnati, ho, flagboy, he's not in Kansas
anymore, he is at the PARTY. Here he is, a serious dog, a
democratic dog, but he doesn't think he'll spend a lot of time at
the party today. Looking around he doesn't see anyone he
knows. Not that that means they aren't there, because anyone
can look like anything, but if they don't have a handle he
recognizes and they don't go calling out for Cobalt, then they
don't want to be people he knows, right? And anyway, this