Last Tango in Cyberspace

by Steven Kotler

  Lion smokes another cigarette, finishes his drink, and decides to give up. He’s only getting older sitting here. Uber app on his phone. Car ordered. “Roberto,” he calls to the bartender, “can you close me out?”

  His math wasn’t that far off. $3,985. Of course, with Arctic picking up the tab, he tips 35 percent.

  Sliding off the stool, Lion walks toward the exit. A couple of heads nod in his direction. A woman who looks like Betty Boop after a bar fight; a man beside her in Western garb sporting a black eye. Lion had heard rumors about a Fight Club revivalist movement; this might be confirmation, but not the kind of proof he was after this evening. Apparently, his hunch was wrong. Hudson’s isn’t a Rilkean hangout.

  He’s five feet from the door when the young blond “niece” stops him with a hand on his wrist.

  “Thanks for the drink, Lion Zorn,” she says.

  Steady eye contact. Something familiar about her gaze.

  “You’re welcome,” but it’s not coming to him. “I’m sorry—do we know each other?”

  Shakes her head no.

  “How do you know my name?”

  She twirls her finger through her hair, and Lion realizes she’s wearing a wig. He catches sight of a few errant strands of her real hair, dyed silver and jutting out from behind her ear.

  “Sarah?” he asks. “Is your name Sarah?”

  The woman squeezes his wrist, just once, and then a sly smile as she strides quickly away. As she heads out the door, Lion catches sight of a bar code tattoo on the back of her neck.

  “Sarah,” he calls again, but she doesn’t turn.

  Trying to follow her out of the bar, Lion bumps into her companion, the older Japanese man, who has suddenly stumbled in front of him, possibly drunk, definitely blocking his way.

  “Very sorry,” the man mumbles.

  Lion tries to step around him, but the companion steps with him, wobbles again, then grabs his sleeve in an attempt to stay upright. Precious seconds pass before Lion can untangle their limbs and head out the door. By the time he makes it into the street, there’s only a taxi pulling away in the distance and steam pouring out of manhole covers.

  No sign of Sarah.

  He looks back at the Japanese man, wondering if this was somehow planned, but he’s disappeared.

  “Did you have a good time?” the doorman wants to know.

  Lion glances right, then left. Still no sign of him. No sign of her. And the motorcycle, nowhere in sight.

  “Fuck, man, it was better than Disneyland.”

  THE OTHER SIDE OF THE OTHER SIDE

  Lion wakes to sunshine through the Ludlow windows. A rectangle of shivering blue sky and brighter than he’s used to.

  He must have forgotten to close the blinds.

  Sitting up slowly, the room swims a little, a few inches left, as if the furniture were on rollers. One too many whiskeys the night before. Determines to fight his hangover with exercise. Then he remembers Arctic waiting for his decision. And the fact that he was definitely followed by a dragonfly, and maybe followed by a motorcyclist.

  Makes the hangover worse.

  Stretching his arms above his head, Lion chews on the idea that his being followed might not have anything to do with him. Arctic Pharmaceuticals is the kind of play that would attract unwelcome attention. Everyone from business reporters to business rivals would want to be in the know.

  He climbs out of bed and starts to make coffee, recalculating probabilities as Indigo Smooth percolates. If Arctic heard Sietch Tabr rumors, other companies probably heard as well. Richard isn’t the only tycoon crafty enough to see commercial possibilities in the drug. Or steal a sample. So maybe Walker’s mounted head has nothing to do with animals or Rilkeans; maybe it’s about business after all. A severe way of warning off the competition.

  That’s more crazy than Lion’s prepared to handle.

  An outside opinion might be useful. Texts Lorenzo to see if he’s awake and starts pulling on workout clothes. As he moves his jacket out of the way, the snuff container falls out of a pocket. He picks it up, stares down the tube and waits for the flash. Now that he knows what to look for, he can make out Muad’Dib’s name. It reminds him of a monogram. And if it’s a monogram, then this container might belong to Muad’Dib. Does this mean that the man Arctic wants him to find is actually the murderer of Robert Walker?

  And that really should be way more crazy than Lion’s prepared to handle.

  The sensible thing would be to thank-you-no-thank-you Sir Richard, pick up his already large check, and head home. But the fact that Muad’Dib murdered Robert Walker—damn if that doesn’t make Lion want to track him down that much more.

  No return text from Lorenzo, so he puts a to-go lid on his coffee cup and carries it down the hall to the elevator. The car crawls, as usual. Somewhere between floors 18 and 19, he decides to turn down the job, then changes his mind by 22. Walking into the gym, he realizes it’s already settled. Sits down on the rowing machine and texts Penelope.

  I’m in. Please set up the meeting with Shiz.

  He rows for twenty minutes, alone in the room. That ends when a stern woman in a bright blue tracksuit with the flag of Switzerland embroidered on her left sleeve stomps in, slides on a pair of nonslip AR glasses, and unleashes five rounds of frustration on a punching bag in the corner. Whatever she’s seeing on the other side of those glasses—could be an onslaught of Tibetan demons or a parade of ex-husbands—reminds him of something William James once said: “Each mind keeps its own thoughts to itself.”

  Decamping from the rowing machine, he unfurls a yoga mat and works through his push-up protocol and a series of stretches. Moving from the backward arch of camel pose into the forward fold of child’s pose when Penelope texts back, waits until he’s flattened into pigeon pose before checking the screen.

  Can you leave for San Francisco this evening?

  Replies in the affirmative, then pigeon on the other side.

  Coming out of corpse pose, he’s got a response.

  Flight’s at 4:00. Newark. Bo will be there at 1:30. I’ll meet you at the airport.

  An attached document reveals he’s first class on Jamaica Air. Despite himself, he grins. More Arctic research at work. Of course it’s Jamaica Air. The very product he predicted on his first official job as an em-tracker, the root of the Rod of Correction. Checks the icon parade below the ticket to see if further suspicions are correct, noting a small circle with a baby crawling inside and a red line through the infant, another showing a familiar three-pronged leaf, no red line. The signifiers signify: a child-free and pot-friendly flight.

  Sliding his phone back into his pocket, Lion wonders why Penelope’s meeting him at the airport. Decides he’ll find out soon enough and double-times the back stairs to his room for a shower.

  Toweling off, he catches sight of himself in the mirror. The circles under his eyes have expanded their colonization mission and are beginning to resemble the outline of the state of Florida. Walking into the bedroom, he notices the sprawled bedcovers seem to resemble California. Pattern recognition system stuck on national geography perhaps.

  Gets dressed, calculating in his head. If he’s leaving for the airport in a few hours to meet Shiz, definitely enough time to review the Arctic folder once again.

  And drink more coffee.

  After waiting for the lie that is large cup to finish brewing, Lion carries his coffee, phone, and sling-pack out to the table on the terrace. Removing the Arctic envelope, he pages through the stack of articles until he finds the story about the zookeeper in Dubai.

  Decides to start there.

  Reading it again, it dawns on Lion that freeing wild animals has to be a crime in Dubai. And crime stories always generate more press. He combs the article for the zookeeper’s name: Nassir Tabbara, then picks up his phone, clicks open a browser window, and types “Tabbara, zookeeper, Dubai,” into a search engine.

  Dozens of offerings dated to the incident, too many to sift.
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  Narrows search parameters, focusing on stories written about the aftermath. A three-month-old piece from the International Herald Tribune tells him Tabbara was arrested and taken to the lockdown ward of a local hospital for medical and psychological evaluation. Nothing unusual there. But a follow-up article from a few days later shows that someone broke Tabbara out of the hospital, stole his blood work and deleted his records.

  That’s unusual.

  Playing a hunch, Lion grabs the article from South Africa. He scans it for the name of the family that found themselves sleeping with lions. Taylor. And the last graph contains the detail he’s hunting: The Taylors were taken to Mandela Memorial for medical care.

  Follow-up article from the Zulu Independent, the last free voice in South Africa, contains a telling detail: Two weeks after the Taylors were admitted to Mandela Memorial, a break-in occurred. Biological samples destroyed, computer records deleted. Lion takes a sip of coffee and stares into the middle distance, trying to think this through.

  Arctic’s not responsible for the break-ins; of that, he’s almost certain. If they were, Richard would have deployed the AI scrubber, removing any news of the events from the web. The fact that these stories exist seems to be more proof of a second player involved. But that’s as far as his thoughts take him.

  He turns his attention back to the articles, grabbing the Robert Walker story next. The papers reported him missing, so he wasn’t taken to a hospital. No medical records to steal. And the shellacking of his head, plus whatever other chemicals were pumped into it for preservation, would pretty much obliterate anything an autopsy could discover.

  But still, those twin robberies? Up to now, Lion had been thinking they were unrelated incidents. The by-product of Sietch Tabr starting to transition from a Rilkean sacrament to a street drug. But these missing medical records tell a different story. Someone wanted to know what Sietch Tabr did to unsuspecting strangers. Someone went to a lot of trouble to find out.

  Was this a Tuskegee-style drug trial?

  It makes sick sense. If Lion were testing the compound, his first go would be on an unsuspecting friendly. An animal lover. Someone like a zookeeper. Second test on an animal-friendly group: the Taylors on safari. Were other trials run that he doesn’t know about? And if Arctic’s not responsible, could it be the Rilkeans?

  His thoughts are interrupted by the ringing of his cell.

  “Are my methods unsound?” says Lorenzo, when he answers.

  “I don’t see any method at all, sir,” like putting on a favorite shirt. “So you’re still in Japan?”

  “Tonight’s our last night.”

  “End of the tour?”

  “We have four days off, two weeks in Kuala Lumpur, then we’re done.”

  Lion flashes on Jenka in the white room telling him he’d flown in from Kuala Lumpur. “How good’s your connect in KL?”

  “Hank and the club owner go way back. It’s why we’re staying two weeks. How come?”

  Lion brings up a search engine and types in Arctic. The website loads and he finds the last name he never got. “Jenka Kalchik,” spelling both words out.

  “The guy who stole your notebook?”

  “Yeah. But the day before he stole my notebook, he was in Kuala Lumpur. I was wondering why.”

  “Know anything beyond the fact that he was there?”

  Lion searches Arctic’s page for partners in Malaysia. Doesn’t find corporate interests in the region. What he does notice, after clicking the link for “recent mergers and acquisitions,” is a preponderance of net media—bloggers, podcasters, and virtual-casters—all with deep ties to the healthcare and human performance industry. Must be three dozen of them, and most appear to be newly formed partnerships. Yet none of this helps with his current problem.

  Then he starts laughing.

  “Kemosabe,” says Lorenzo, “did you need me to ask Hank something?

  “Never mind Hank. Didn’t you sleep with that woman from American Express? The head Centurion concierge.”

  “Charlotte Brontë.”

  “Really?”

  “No relation.”

  “How’d you leave things?”

  “We bumped into each other in an elevator in Hong Kong, like two months ago. Then we spent the night bumping into each other in her suite.”

  “Didn’t she tell you every card came with a GPS tracker?” says Lion, getting up from the table and crossing to the railing to look out over the city. A dozen passenger pigeons mill on a nearby roof, their red breasts giving them away, New York’s much lauded de-extinction program in full swing. Lion remembers the advertisements: See Central Park as it once was.

  “Uh-huh,” says Lorenzo.

  “If Jenka was in Malaysia for Arctic, I’m pretty sure he brought an Amex Centurion with him. Think Charlotte would tell you where it went?”

  “No, nope, absolutely not. But it can’t hurt to ask.”

  “I’d owe you.”

  “No worries, I have a few days off and Charlotte’s still in Hong Kong. Maybe she wants to bump into me some more. How come you want to know?”

  Lion brings him up to speed: Arctic Pharmaceuticals, his decision to meet Shiz, his Tuskegee-style drug trial suspicions. Quiet on the line when he’s done. He waits out the silence looking at the passenger pigeons.

  “If the Rilkeans were running tests,” says Lorenzo eventually, “how’d they do it? How’d they get them to take the drug?”

  Lion picks up the stack of photos and thumbs through them, remnant Yamazaki-hangover finding him as he does. That swimming sensation again, tinged with an unfamiliar loneliness. He wonders if Japanese whiskey brings Japanese hangovers, as if the bad dreams of a society could be disguised as a good time, bottled and sold.

  “Kemosabe?”

  Refocuses. “None of the photos show signs of a struggle, but a gun would solve that problem.”

  “True, but why bother? If it was me, I’d tell ’em it was a new drug with a killer high. Some coke-Viagra mix that won’t melt your ticker. Seriously, we send men into space, but nobody can figure out how I can keep my dick hard while on gak?”

  Lion snorts. “The zookeeper, maybe, but the Taylor family on vacation?”

  “You’ve met my family. Wouldn’t even have to ask twice.”

  “Walker doesn’t fit. He what? Liked the drug so much he cut his own head off and used a taxidermy robot to mount it on the wall?”

  Lion hears the soft tap of fingers on bongos, “Down by the Crossroads” in three-four time and what Lorenzo does when concentrating.

  “From this point on,” says Lorenzo, “I want you to text me from wherever you end up. Send me locations and times. Where you are, when you show, when you split. Best I can do from here.”

  “I don’t think it’s that kind of thing.”

  “You’re not em-tracking the Rod of Correction. This isn’t product development. This is some guy’s head on a wall. Plus, you find futures for other people, that’s the job.”

  “Yeah?”

  “But they’ve always been other people’s futures.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “This time,” says Lorenzo, “the animals, the empathy. This time you found a future that includes you.”

  Lion glances back at the pigeons. Sees a flicker he didn’t notice before. Remembers that the de-extinction program was a failed effort, realizes that what he’s actually looking at is a light-vert. An AR projection of an almost. The bad dreams of a society disguised as a good time.

  JAMAICA AIR

  “I and I wan welcum I and I to dem friendly skies,” says a dreadlocked first class steward in a dapper blue suit, colonial-ironic brass buttons, and red, yellow, and green piping up the side.

  “Thank you,” says Penelope, who, Lion learned upon arriving at the airport, will be accompanying him to San Francisco. “Shiz needs me to identify you as you when we get there” was her only explanation.

  Then she led him through the terminal in silence. Form-fi
tting black dress, black leggings, her elegant braid of red hair.

  The steward leads them to a pair of side-by-side first class suites, like something out of The Jetsons. Bubble domes, seats as big as couches, doors that close completely. Like a futuristic hotel with wings, back before we discovered the future doesn’t look like we thought it would look.

  “Flown Jamaica Air before?” the steward asks Penelope, his heavy patois suddenly melting away.

  “My first time,” she tells him.

  “Smart glasses to the left of the console,” pointing with exceptionally long fingers. “Ganja menu on the screen. Edibles and combustibles. Please wait until the sign turns off before ya fiyah up.” Long fingers point to a small overhead sign.

  Lion looks up and sees a snow-cone-sized joint with a red line through it. The very symbol he suggested.

  Is it déjà vu if it actually happened?

  “The Eye-N-Eye VR app responds to touch,” continues the steward. “Controller to the right of your seat, beside the vaporizer.”

  “Any suggestions?” asks Lion.

  The steward thinks for a second, his dreads hanging over his eyes, his hand rising to his chin, like some poly-tribe remake of the Lincoln Memorial. “Goat Shit with the nose cone view, give thanks.”

  “Yes-I,” replies Lion.

  The steward lifts an eyebrow. “If I and I need anyting,” pointing to a button on the armrest, icon showing a megaphone, “hit de holla button.”

  Then he’s off to help other passengers.

  Lion, seated across the aisle from Penelope, removes his Moleskine from his sling-pack, uncaps a pen, and turns to face her.

  “Tell me about Prince Shiz.”

  Penelope reaches across the aisle and takes the pen out of his hand, recaps it, and passes it back. Reaching beneath her seat, she lifts a small black backpack. Out of the top compartment comes another Arctic envelope. Passes it over. “Full biography. Plus everything the scrubber caught, before it got erased.”