Loose Ends

by J M Thomas

  I blinked twice. “We are in the deepest shit you’ve ever seen.”

  Blade nodded gravely. “Trust me, I’m overwhelmingly aware. The question is, how do we do it?”

  I gestured at a security camera, a mere dot on the side of the cement wall, with my chin, then made a show of popping my neck to cover the motion. “That is a question for the wide open spaces.”

  The lunchroom reminded me of a school cafeteria, with skylights all around and a single, undecorated, rectangular expanse. This was broken by rows of benches and tables, with a single serving line down the left side of the room. I scanned my card for what seemed like the dozenth time, then pointed to the foods I wanted as an Ehksmian grandma ladled out of chrome platters and deep pans.

  “I’ll have a scoop from that pan,” I said, pointing to the last square centimeter of free space on my plate. Her slitted eyes narrowed as she balanced the requested food semi-atop the other steaming, melting blobs.

  “Chafing,” Blade corrected, and I smirked.

  “Sounds like a personal problem.” I shot back. “I haven’t noticed an issue, but perhaps that’s because my thighs are in better shape than yours?”

  I’m fairly certain Blade’s deep sigh could be heard for miles around, and his smack to the back of my head registered on the richter scale for earthquakes.

  “Not me chafing, ya moron. The dish. It’s a chafing dish, not a ‘pan.’ Pans are for cooking the food, chafing dishes are for serving it.”

  “Oh,” I said, drawing the word out with as much sarcasm as I could pack into it. “A life-altering distinction. I will be certain to never make such a grave error again.” A burst of laughter bubbled up from within and nearly tipped my entire plate of food into Blade as he dashed around me to take the lead.

  We found a fairly uninhabited section of the room and sat down at the tables. This food, unlike the horrifying mess the little restaurant in the highrise served, was well-seasoned and downright palatable. I wished I knew what any of it was. For all I could tell, it was some kind of seasoned root vegetables.

  I didn’t dare ask Blade, though. He’d already begun observing the others’ eating habits and was attempting to formulate what etiquette and protocol they used. I’d be done shoveling my food by the time he got his first bite in.

  “Mind if we join us?”

  I looked up to see a matching pair of synthetic Ehksmians as they creaked out the tones their people used as a greeting. Blade gestured to the empty seats beside us and the pair slid into them.

  “I am called Marsh in us words.” The first tapped himself on the shoulder, then patted his partner’s. “This is Marsha. We are beloved.”

  It took me a minute to work out what their introductions meant, and by the time I had, Blade had already extended whatever customary greeting I was supposed to have paid attention to and didn’t. I waved my hand awkwardly and figured it couldn’t be any worse than whatever they’d just done.

  On second thought…

  I tapped my own shoulder. “I am Jet.”

  Blade saw my shoulder pat coming and blocked it with his forearm. “We are not beloved.”

  At my laugh, Marsh and Marsha broke into toothless grins. With shy nods, they quickly slurped up the translucent green soup before them, then attempted to make their approximation of conversation again.

  I let Blade take the lead, as he was much less likely to unintentionally cause a riot by doing or saying something insensitive or uninformed. He comported himself like an ambassador in their presence, leaning in to understand every syllable and intonation. Within minutes, his own accent shifted to draw out his S sounds and aspirate his H noises.

  It amazed me how quickly his body posture, simple gestures, and rapt attention won them over. The Ehksmian couple’s shyness and awkwardness melted away within minutes, and I quickly discovered just how handsy these folks were. Marsh’s sticky finger pads were one second poking Blade in the arm, the next second wrapped lovingly around Marsha’s shoulders, the next waving demonstratively through the air.

  Though I only understood about three-quarters of their pronoun-ambivalent dialect, I caught enough to realize the two had managed to secure an invitation to Blade’s this evening. One day on the job, only a few hours into a boring cycle of patrolling empty hallways, and the man had secured us some inside assets who we could talk to outside of the building.

  Blade didn’t waste time. I got the feeling he’d known these Ehksmian contacts already, but I didn’t dare ask him about them here.

  I told him so after our shift was over, when we headed for the “park” on the roof of our apartment. The sunset was relatively uninteresting as the sky had clouded over, portending rain overnight.

  “I figure it this way,” he answered, leaning on the railing separating the raised flower beds from the stone-covered path. “If you’re trying to go undercover, what do you do?”

  Slapping at a large flying insect that buzzed around my head, I considered my answer. “I wait awhile and slowly burrow my way in, so as to not stand out or arouse suspicion.”

  Blade squatted to pluck a leaf from the sea of green that spilled over this and every other rooftop. “And what do you do if you’re just starting a new job?”

  As per my usual when listening to Blade explain things, I felt stupid. “Point taken. I make friends and settle right in.”

  “There you go.”

  “So what do we do about that bullet?” I asked, careful to keep my face looking out toward the setting sun and away from Blade’s prying eyes.

  “I’m not sure. I’d love to run ballistics on it, see what kind of gun fired it, where one might obtain such a device on a planet like this.”

  “You do that.” I shifted my position, putting my weight on my other heel and stretching it out a bit. “I’m already working the witness angle.”

  “What witness angle?” Blade sent the full force of his gaze’s keen intensity straight through me.

  I smiled.

  He rolled his eyes. “Sheesh, already, Jet? And here you are saying I move fast.”

  “Hey, if you’re going undercover, what I hear from the experts is that you need to get started quick and get settled straight in there. And yes, that’s what…”

  “Hello, gentlemen, I trust you’re enjoying your stay!”

  Something about that girl’s silent-as-a-mouse footfalls made her invisible until the second she opened her mouth. And it wasn’t just me, either. I watched Blade nearly jump out of his socks the way I’d been startled earlier when Lila had sneaked up and spoken.

  “Absolutely! Come enjoy it with me!” I patted the concrete seat next to where I was as I settled into it myself.

  Lila shook her head. “I really must return to my desk. I just wanted to catch the last of the sunshine we’ll get for awhile. Forecast calls for three straight days of rain.”

  Her pleasant, soft voice rolled off her tongue as if she was shaping every note. I could listen to her talk for weeks straight and forget to sleep. She didn’t look too bad, either, coming or going. That still-young woman shapeliness, prim gentle nature, professionalism—damn, I’d picked quite the target if I was going to be extracting information.

  “Earth to Jet, come in Jet.” Blade’s voice cut through my reverie and I realized we were alone again. “You alright?”

  “Yeah, just tired. I think I’ll go turn in. See you at work.”

  Now to just stay awake long enough to play ghost and scare the shit out of him.

  Chapter 12 – Dumped

  I slept like a rock from the second my face hit my pillow until the built-in alarm chimed a stupid, perky tune. I wasn’t entirely sure why synthetic bodies even needed sleep, any more than I understood why the dome cities felt like they needed to create rainfall. Maybe it was something about being a person—being unconscious for a few hours a night to reset our minds, process, store.

  Human bodies used that time to heal and recuperate. I couldn’t think of a single reason a body with no
lymph nodes nor need to process experiences would require a shutdown. Maybe it was for some other stupid reason, like conserving energy. But we converted caloric intake to energy the same way human bodies did, more or less. So we could just eat an extra midnight dinner and be good to go, theoretically.

  Shit not making sense was my very favorite, and by very favorite, I mean I loathed it with a burning passion. Speaking of shit that didn’t make sense, eliminations in my new body were all-fired weird as well.

  They were regular enough and not nearly as uncomfortable as old man ablutions, just heavy pressure in the rear, like a brick was about to fall out of my ass. I journeyed to the toilet, and it did. My body had finished off its waste and I was ready to fill the ol’ tank with coffee and breakfast somewhere besides within the highrise.

  To my pleasant surprise and immediate disappointment, the soft wave of a pale hand from within the cafe shattered my dreams of a pleasant-tasting breakfast, while soaring my chances of pleasant company.

  With simultaneous reluctance and eagerness battling with each other for control of my facial expressions, I joined Lila at the tiny, round cafe table.

  “Hey!” I grinned, giving my excitement the nudge it needed to win out. “Room for one more?”

  “Certainly!” Lila’s soft brown eyes lit up with her smile.

  As I went into small talk subroutine mode, I looked over her for clues as to what might make her tick. She had a practiced ease about her that made me want to tip my chair back and just chat about the weather until the sun went down. It also made it difficult for me to get an edge in on how to obtain my objective. She wore her social grace like armor, as if it protected her from impropriety of thought or deed.

  A tough nut to crack indeed. But I was all about cracking tough nuts, though not quite so skilled at the task as Blade. He could turn on grandfatherliness like flipping a lightswitch and get folks gossipping with him in minutes. My tactics had to be a little more subtle, or I’d scare people.

  “So, I have to be honest with you,” I said, making eye contact with the woman. “I was an officer back before I came here, and that stain and hole in the couch has got me all nostalgic for my old job. I would love to see the security footage of what happened that day, wouldn’t you? I mean, aren’t you a little bit curious about what happened?”

  “Oh, silly, of course I am! But you can’t just go watching security footage from six months ago, that’s not even stored on-site. And you’d have to have clearance to even get in the central mainframe!”

  “It isn’t?” I widened my eyes the appropriate fraction for surprise and awe, inwardly doing a victory dance that I likely had both the on-site clearance and the access to the location where the information was stored. “Whoa. So if you weren’t here, and you didn’t see what happened, who did? Did it scare the whole building? Were there rumors around afterward?”

  “Slow down, it’s impolite to interrogate a woman before breakfast.” Lila slid a slow wink in my direction. I had the sudden urge to take her back to my room to continue the line of questioning with fewer garments between us, but I got the distinct impression she would not be down for that sort of business just yet.

  Lila continued, “There were rumors, whispers of what happened, but they all contradict and no one has any clear memory of it. Traumatic moments are generally erased before the offending thoughts can rewire our minds. Brains for humans and synth are both easily damaged by adverse life events, and we cannot operate at our best with horrible thoughts running willy nilly between our ears.”

  “Ah, I see,” I said. I did not, in fact, see. I was confused as all hell and determined to sort through the matter with Blade later. One thought did occur to me in that moment, and I realized why I was so drawn to this woman. “You’re not a synth!”

  She smiled and shook her head. “Not yet, no. I came here as an exchange student and loved the peaceful atmosphere and the nice, clean surroundings so much that I decided to stay.”

  Something in her delivery of the words “nice” and “clean” triggered something in my mind that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. The whole line struck me as a bit too rehearsed, as if she’d decided afterward what her reasons were and told them over and over to herself until she believed them.

  But I was at least getting to the lies. As I was learning fast and hard about this place, you had to get past a wall of lies to get anywhere close to the truth of the matter. It wasn’t just the synth or the Ehksmians. It was all of us.

  “I have one more thing before I have to head in for work,” I said with what I hoped was a charming smile. “Tonight, I thought it might be time for our little ghost to come out and roam the halls a bit. Wanna help?”

  She giggled like a schoolgirl. “I wouldn’t miss it, Jet. Thank you for the lovely breakfast.”

  I appreciated the few extra moments of silence on the way to work, especially when there was a ruckus once I got there. Alarms blared, people were milling around outside with a general look of shock on everyone’s faces.

  I scanned the crowd for a particular tall, bald, dark-skinned synth and finally saw him sitting under a shady tree, sweating profusely. The sky did indeed promise more rain, but that only increased the humidity. The atmosphere felt like it was raining, but with no direction to the liquid suspended midair.

  It was the first time I’d ever envied the amphibians who inhabited this world. This weather would leave a nice sheen on a slimy amphibious skin. Quite attractive to the other frog people.

  When I got a little closer, I noticed Blade wasn’t just sweating that thin coating of light condensation. This was the thick beads dropping off his forehead onto his hand as he held his head in his hands. His entire posture was wrong.

  “What happened here, man?” I asked, pulling up to a stop next to him.

  He jumped as if I’d suddenly materialized out of the ether. “Jet, I need you to do something for me, right now, and don’t ask why.”

  “But wh…”

  “Shut up and do it now. Yeah, I did this while you weren’t here. I told you before I’d do something and ask you to remember what I did for you; now I’m calling in the favor. Run, right now, to the gazebo on the other end of the field. Ask the person in that gazebo if they’re ok.”

  It was my turn to jump back in surprise. That was Blade in the illusion? This Blade? The feeling of complete confusion, of having no idea whatsoever what was going on, returned full-force. Even as my feet obeyed his words and I set my eyes on my goal, the questions threatened to overtake my mind.

  It was that Blade in the illusion he broke by splitting us past the parameters. It wasn’t the same Blade in the illusion afterward, the one with the frogman I’d beaten to death. I hadn’t meant to beat a real being to death. I’d thought none of it was real.

  I still had a hard time accepting that any of this was real. Well, except the hackles on the back of my neck that kept raising at the oddness of this whole situation. My footsteps pounded their way around little flowering shrubs, hammering the surface of this strange world with their strange beat. None of it made sense; but it had to be real.

  I turned my head to glance behind me as I ran. Black-clad SWAT-looking officers were cuffing Blade and dragging him toward a black tank of a levlorry. My stomach lurched into my throat. Who the hell were these guys and why… why any of this shit? Had he dumped me out on my own to figure this out myself?

  Resolute, I turned again toward my mission. If this is what the man wanted, he was damn well getting it. Then, when I saw him again, he was getting pummelled for real for keeping me in the dark. I pulled up hard and stepped up onto the gazebo where an Ehksmian sat, smoking a swirly, blue-glowing bulbous pipe full of the good stuff.

  I kept my distance in instinctual fear, but he only laughed. “It doesn’t affect the synth. They will be unharmed.”

  “Are you okay?” I asked, remembering Blade’s instruction. I’d do this for him, this one last thing. Then he owed me big time. Not waiting for an answer
, I turned to go.

  “We have the access we need. As promised, here is a trinket.” He pulled a child’s locket from a vest pocket and deposited it into my palm. It was a tiny, gold-colored heart on a delicate chain. Without another word, he got up and ambled off, still smoking his pipe as he headed toward a walking trail that disappeared into the thick underbrush.

  As promised? Whose promise? Who was this for? “I can’t even wear this shit.” Turning the locket over in my hand, but finding nothing about it to exploit, I shrugged and linked it around my wrist. My indelicate fingers wrapped the chain an extra time so it wouldn’t fall off. I tucked my shirt sleeve over the trinket and headed back to ascertain whether I’d be expected to continue orientation today or not.

  As it turns out, I wouldn’t. The mainframe had been accessed, unauthorized. No information stolen that they could see, but the attack was coordinated from at least three locations—one of them offworld, one at the government skyscraper, and one within this facility. I managed to piece together the information that several employees, Blade only one of nearly a dozen, had been taken together for questioning because they’d been spotted near the compromised terminal.

  So, perhaps he wasn’t in such deep shit after all. If only I could believe that hopeful thought.

  No, in the illusion, when we’d gone outside, he’d fed me that stupid line, and I’d gotten the sense that he’d meant it, that he’d been serious. He was rarely serious in a true, deep way. Gravely serious, he’d call it.

  What’d he say? Something about him needing to do something, and he wanted me to remember, or understand why. But I didn’t understand why. I barely even remembered.

  It was time to go, buy me a regular old Earth-style pencil and some dead tree paper, and work this shit out. I’d gone too long without a notebook between my fingers and they were itching to get this confusion out of the way. If I couldn’t whiz through the streets on a speedbike, wind in my hair, I could at least do this.