Chapter 9

It was later that afternoon that she found an email from Steve in her inbox. “Just the first chapter, to give you the idea.” She clicked on the attachment.

VIRTUAL PARIS (OR WHATEVER)

    So, as I was saying, when I finally got to see Paris, it wasn’t quite what I expected. When all you know is movies you figure it’s going to be all black and white: narrow cobblestone streets, great big churches and broad panoramas dominated by that funny-looking tower—what was it called? Uffel? Kerfluffel? No, Eye-full, that’s right, now I remember.

Has Steve spent time in Europe? That didn’t come up in our first conversation. And what exactly was the timeframe here? near or long-term?

    Some people say the Paris of the past was preserved in those films, and of course there are plenty of people around who still have those precious memories, at least for the time being, but you can’t exactly resurrect the city as it was by tapping into their brains, or anyway not with the current state of technology.

Okay, now he’s lost me. Paris is gone, I get that, but some people remember it, so we’re not too far past it. Especially because of the mention of movies. So maybe this is your standard post-apocalyptic. But is the narrator male or female? And what exactly is the “current state of technology?”

    I personally think they would have more luck trying to bring it back from the imprint the city made on the environment, the scars it left after centuries of standing in one place—surely if we poured money into research, we could find a way to conjure it up, just as it was, by reading its tracks, so to speak. The alternative, I suppose, would be time travel. Again, we just aren’t there yet. And do you really want to go back to the days of flush toilets?

What in the world does he mean about the city leaving tracks? It’s not like it’s been galloping off, flicking its tail, leaving distinctive paw-shaped prints all over. Or maybe, given the reference to flushing, he means that dark partially dried-up heap called scat? Now that I could believe.

    Anyway, when I first heard about Virtual Paris, I was totally intrigued, and the more I found out, the more I wanted to visit it. But it took a while to get to my part of the country (which I’m not going to reveal at this point, so don’t expect it, and if it bothers you, you don’t have to keep listening.) In the end I had to drive to the nearest city. It cost more than I wanted to pay, since they charged by the hour, and what would you do with an hour in Paris? I mean, think about it! I’m sure it was very expensive to build, but even so, they must have raked in a fortune just in the first week. By the time it came to where I was, they had to have gotten their money back several times over. I went ahead and signed up for a tour, since it didn’t cost much more than the basic experience, even though it only included Notre Dame and the Latin Quarter.

How would I feel if I had a chance to experience Paris in virtual reality? Wouldn’t Rome or Athens be more exciting? And how much more realistic than a movie would it really be? They say when the Lumière brothers were starting out, people ran away the first time they saw a moving picture of a train coming right at them. In Paris, no less!

    Virtual Paris! How can I do it justice? There were some minor flaws in the projection. So for example the horizon tended to be the same no matter where you were, and they wouldn’t let you go into the Louvre, which I guess turned out to be too big a job to reproduce. And everything smelled like French fries. But those are petty things compared to how well they managed to do the streets and the cafés and the metro, to the life, at least to my unpracticed eye. And the sounds! Edith Piaf singing in the background, passersby jabbering in actual French, not an approximation (not that I personally would know the difference, but it was one of the things they bragged about in their advertising).

As long as they’re re-doing reality, why not make them speaking French, but the visitor understands every word? Doesn’t seem like it would be that much harder. I like the smell of French fries, that’s a nice touch.

    You started out underground, or at least you felt like you were. Then you went up the steps and burst out into all the glory of a sunny day, antique cars and buses going by, a line of little shops on your left with lots of tiny balconies above them, and people all over the place. It was overwhelming. I stood stock still and turned around 360 degrees, just taking it all in. The people behind me just kept going, kind of flowing around me. After a minute I moved over to a spot where I was a little bit less in the way. There was a metro map posted next to the steps, so I went over and pretended to be consulting it, just to look busy.

I know what that’s like. I guess you could get used to that shock of finding yourself in a place so utterly foreign compared to your everyday experience, but for most people there’s at least something in the way of transition, like an airplane ride or even walking into a movie theater. If you were just thrown into it, it would be very disorienting.

    It was a while before it occurred to me that none of those hustling, well-dressed (although out of style), youthful-looking people were making eye contact. I wasn’t expecting them to interact; that had all been explained in advance, they were programmed not to, so there was no point in trying to talk to them. We had to be satisfied with the maps we had been given, since we couldn’t ask for directions.

This guy -- it’s a guy, right? -- just paid a small fortune to be catapulted into an imaginary Paris and the first thing he thinks about is not asking for directions? But actually, I think it would be more interesting if he did interact with them.

    I got in line with the other people waiting at the tour bus, and once I got on I only had to jockey a little bit to find a place next to a cute girl. Just to get things going I asked her where she was from, and when she said, “San Antonio,” I decided to shade the truth a bit and say, “Me too.” So after that she was all pleased, and we both thought we had some kind of a connection, more than just being on the same bus.

It’s funny how reassuring it is to meet someone who comes from the same place you do. Steve’s got that right. There are lots of ways to make a connection (with him it was both of us having dogs), but place of origin is surprisingly strong.

    We had gotten that far when the bus pulled out and I had to concentrate on looking out the window and listening to the tour guide. I wasn’t sure how good their research had been, and they wouldn’t put a date on their reconstruction, so I was more or less prepared for an inconsistency or two. The reviews had pointed out a few. To me it seemed completely understandable, and I even appreciated the fact that most of the buildings were clean, rather than soot-covered, and they were pretty much all in better condition than they had ever been known to be all at the same time. You have to consider who they were trying to appeal to, which I imagine was people like me, who know zero history and, at most, rudimentary French. People who want to feel the flavor of the place without having to put up with the drawbacks. Nobody wants to pay a bunch of money to step in dog poop, no matter how historically correct it may be. The girl next to me agreed. She also pointed out that not a single one of the people sitting at the outdoor cafés was smoking a cigarette, which according to her was impossible, but neither one of us was going to complain.

So is this the beginning of a love affair or what? We don’t know what she looks like though. Or him either, as far as that goes. I’m no expert, but I think he needs to put that in right off.