Zendegi

As they drew closer to the palace the streets filled with people and they found themselves weaving through a crowded bazaar. For their benefit, everyone around them was speaking Farsi – albeit without the usual modern colloquialisms, and in accents that sounded plausibly Arabic to Martin’s ear, down to ‘w’ in place of ‘v’ and ‘b’ in place of ‘p’. Customers were haggling with traders for bolts of cloth, jewellery, fruit, grain, spices. Martin felt a pang of guilt at the sheer profligacy of the backdrop – surely software couldn’t conjure all of this effortlessly; surely some human designer had slaved for days to get the details right? – but then he decided that it was probably all recycled, with a little tweaking, from one setting to the next. There were a thousand games and stories that would need a bazaar like this; once all the elements were set up, changing the faces and permuting the merchandise would probably be easy enough.

Javeed stopped, confused. ‘Where’s the man who’ll give us the job?’

‘We have to go through the bazaar to the side of the palace. Remember?’

‘He doesn’t have an office here?’

Martin smiled. ‘I don’t think so.’ Maybe it made sense that the king’s elaborate domestic bureaucracy ought to have a recruitment centre out in the bazaar, but the notes on the website had pointed them towards the palace kitchens themselves.

At Martin’s urging, Javeed asked directions from a carpet merchant; they didn’t have time to get lost in this maze. The woman’s instructions led them past an unsavoury-looking garbage dump; it was mercifully incapable of sharing its aromas, but the buzz of flies alone was enough to turn Martin’s stomach.

There was a bead-curtained doorway at the kitchen’s entrance to keep out the insects without blocking the passage of air. Martin parted the curtain with his hands, wondering for a moment if Zendegi was tweaking the physics to ensure that not one bead brushed his face or shoulders and punctured his suspension of disbelief. The room was dim after the afternoon sunshine; when his eyes had adjusted he saw sacks of rice and legumes, and shelves stacked with earthenware bottles.

A harried-looking middle-aged man came through from an adjoining room. He introduced himself as Amir and greeted them politely, but it was clear that he expected them to explain their business without delay. Against all plausible cultural norms, it was Javeed he engaged with directly.

‘We’re looking for work,’ Javeed explained.

‘Really? What can you do?’

‘I can sweep the floors,’ Javeed said. ‘My father can carry things.’

Amir looked dubious. ‘You have a strong back?’ he asked Martin.

‘Yes, sir.’ That might have been a bare-faced lie in the real world, but the morning’s exercise had actually left him feeling flexible. If he was dealing with weightless provisions, he could probably lift enough to feed a small army.

Amir turned to Javeed. ‘And you’re a hard worker? The new cook won’t forgive a scrap of dirt on the floor.’

‘I’ll do a good job,’ Javeed promised.

Amir made an elaborate pantomime of thinking it over, running his hand through his beard and scowling as if weighing up all manner of pros and cons, but this part of the story was preordained.

‘You’ll need to start straight away,’ he said finally. ‘There’s a banquet tonight, for the king and three hundred guests. The cook will expect to find everything spotless.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Martin said. ‘You won’t be disappointed.’

He reached down and tapped the back of Javeed’s hand.

‘Thank you,’ Javeed added. Martin was glad that his son understood that Amir was no more real than the guides and assistants who smiled out from the screen of their home computer – but if they were going to take the story seriously, he expected Javeed to behave with courtesy – even if only to avoid acquiring bad habits.

Amir returned to his office, where he appeared to be agonising over the accounts. Martin wondered if the plot generator stretched to the kitchen manager embezzling money to bale out his no-good, hard-gambling brother-in-law, but he wasn’t about to hijack Javeed’s crucial mission just to test the machinery at its margins.

Martin found the broom and handed it to Javeed. Even though the haptic gloves could exert no net force, the sensations they produced were enough to make light objects feel eerily tangible. As Javeed set to work, Martin didn’t envy him; the floor was filthy, and sweeping up nonexistent dust and food scraps would be barely less tiring than doing the same thing for real.