Last Tango in Cyberspace

by Steven Kotler

  The limo slides over a lane, down an exit ramp, and into the city. Traffic is worse. It takes ten minutes to churn six blocks to the Four Seasons. As they edge into the driveway, Lion counts town cars and limousines. An old journalist habit. Three autonomous, four human-chauffeured, and one giant pink stretch.

  Snorts.

  Penelope looks up from her phone, quizzically.

  “The pink limo,” he explains. “I didn’t think Jenka had it in him.”

  “Don’t make that mistake.”

  “Which one?”

  A stern look. “Underestimating Jenka.”

  Then the valet opens the door, notices the whipped cream heart, and congratulates them on their nuptials. “Not another word,” says Penelope, stepping out of the limo and into his face.

  And inside the hotel.

  The lobby is boardroom chic, dark wood paneling and geometric art. Marble floors and high ceilings. Crossing beneath a long skylight, a ribbon of sunlight catches the back of Penelope’s neck, illuminating, for an instant, the question mark.

  Something about the sight bothers him.

  Then it comes to him. The origin story Bo had told: Richard forcing her to get the tattoo. Tongue ma fart-box Penelope doesn’t really seem the force-able type. Doesn’t exactly know what type she is.

  A desk clerk in a dark suit behind a tall teak counter welcomes them to the Four Seasons. “Did you iris-scan your reservation?” he wants to know.

  Penelope shakes her head no, taking an Amex Centurion out of her wallet and sliding it across the counter.

  “We’re old-fashioned.”

  The clerk needs to go into the back to run the card.

  After he’s gone, Lion asks: “Old-fashioned?”

  “Glutch.”

  “Is that more Welsh?

  “‘Glitch,’” she explains, “with a u instead of an i. A collective started in Lithuania. They figured out how to hijack the camera in your phone and make it scan your eyeball whenever you take a selfie. Over time, enough selfies, enough detail, you can hack an eye-scanner.” Shrugs. “They’re our partners, but Richard prefers to be careful.”

  The clerk returns, sliding a pair of key cards in their direction.

  “We have you in adjoining Superior Executive Superior Suites,” and without a hint of irony.

  RESIDUAL GOAT SHIT

  Five minutes later, Lion slides the key into the lock and steps inside his hotel room. Beige and tan on nearly every available surface. Midcentury modern desk and chair. Living screen covering nearly one wall. Suitcase in closet, pocket detritus on table, and as far as his habit machinery can take him.

  What the hell was he doing?

  He looks around again, spotting the expanse of white linen and plump pillows in the other room. California king with hospital corners. There’s a buzzing in his pocket. It’s the twitch that means text. A note from Penelope. The meeting with Shiz is set, 1:17 A.M.

  Odd hours, alright.

  The clock on his phone tells him that 1:17 A.M. is six hours away. He changes into his workout clothes and heads to the hotel gym. Fifty minutes of yoga, then push-ups until he crumbles, then more yoga.

  Afterward, Lion stops in the lobby café for a sandwich before heading back up to his room. Kicks off shoes, plops down on the bed, and starts to check messages on phone. He changes his mind.

  It’s going to be a long night: A nap might do some good.

  Rolls into comforter and nods into the land of nod. Two hours later, a buzzing wakes him. Deep in his head, a hard rattling between his ears, like a brain-quake.

  “Shit.”

  Incoming text—he’d fallen asleep on his phone.

  He sits up in bed, notices the room’s completely dark and where is he? Waits for his eyes to adjust.

  Hotel room, San Francisco.

  And the heavy thump, thump of someone knocking on his door.

  “Hold on,” he calls, setting his phone down and getting out of bed. But when he opens the door, the hallway is empty. Just a long plush carpet bereft of souls.

  Thump, thump.

  Coming from behind him, he realizes, the door to the adjoining suite.

  “Wanna get dinner?” asks Penelope, once he gets it open. She’s changed out of her dress and into a pair of jeans, a black T-shirt, and an army jacket. “We’ve got three hours until we meet Shiz.”

  He does fuzzy math in his head. Which means he’s been asleep for over an hour. Looking around the room—that would explain the darkness.

  A small lamp on the table to his left. He clicks it on.

  “Dinner?” she asks again.

  “I need to shower first,” and heads toward the bathroom.

  “Lobby bar, ten thirty,” she calls after him.

  Ten minutes later, Lion’s dressed and downstairs. Black boots, black denim, black hoodie. Passing a matronly woman on her phone, he remembers the text he has yet to check, the one that woke him from his nap. He parks himself on the armrest of a cream-colored couch and digs his cell out of his sling-pack.

  Two texts, actually.

  The first from Lorenzo: We R GO for Operation Charlotte, and an emoji: a pair of rainbow-colored unicorns, one mounting the other from behind.

  The second text is from Balthazar Jones. Call a brother back. I found your engraver.

  Lion had totally forgotten about the jeweler. Checks the time. Ten minutes before he’s supposed to meet Penelope, almost 1:00 A.M. in New York. Balthazar does not strike him as the early to bed type.

  He slides off the armrest and into the chair and calls a brother back.

  Rings once, rings twice. “Good evening, Lion Zorn,” booms in his ear before the third ring starts.

  “Hello, Balthazar.”

  “Are you still in New York?”

  “I just left.”

  In the background, echoing through the phone, a female voice, the sounds of a ninja: “Is that Lion? Tell him I say hey-hey.”

  “Woman,” snarls Balthazar, “you’re a travesty of diction.”

  “Tell her I say hey-hey back,” says Lion.

  “I will do no such thing—but I did track down your engraver.”

  “Where is he? Or is he a she?”

  “He’s a he. And he moves around a lot, so I don’t have a location. But I’ve got a name, if that helps.”

  “It helps.”

  “Tajik Tabbara.”

  Did not expect that.

  “Lion?”

  “Can you repeat the name, please?”

  “Tajik Tabbara.”

  “Spelled how?” Digging his Moleskine out of his pocket and checking his notes. Sure enough, Nassir Tabbara, the Lebanese zookeeper. And their last names are spelled the same.

  “There’s a little more,” says Balthazar.

  “Hold up a sec.”

  Lion grabs a pen from his pocket, pins his notebook between his hand and his left knee, writes down Tajik Tabbara and a short reminder—find out if Nassir is related.

  “Okay, ready.”

  “GFP engraving, as I told you, it’s pretty rare. You need specialized equipment. I checked to see which labs were capable of pulling it off.”

  “Are there a lot of them?” Making another note: possible lab locations. Draws a line under it.

  “Not many. Because of the legalities, all are in Asia. Two in Tokyo, one in Malaysia, couple in Shenzhen. When Tabbara made the engraving, it had to be in one of those places.”

  “That’s useful,” says Lion. Then it dawns on him. “That lab in Malaysia, do you know where, exactly, in Malaysia?”

  “Got it right here,” says Balthazar. “Kuala Lumpur.”

  There’s that city again.

  “Thanks, man, that really helps.”

  Lion puts his phone back into his pocket, and his notebook back inside his sling-pack, thinking it could be coincidence. Digs out his phone again. A search tells him Tabbara is a common Lebanese last name. And, certainly, Kuala Lumpur is the same city that Jenka just visited, but it�
��s a big city.

  Still …

  Looking up, Lion realizes he’s sitting across from a marble pedestal displaying a miniature sculpture version of Picasso’s Guernica—must have been 3-D printed—in what looks like green glass. Lit from below, the demonic bull, the braying horse, the suffering of the innocent.

  BETWEEN THE SIGNIFIER AND THE SIGNIFIED

  The bar at the Four Seasons looks like a British men’s club from a bygone century. Dark wood walls, white Victorian ceiling, dim lighting. Penelope is seated at a mahogany rail, her back to him. She’s removed her army jacket, and her black T-shirt has a slender slit down the back. Pale skin decorated with dark tattoos. Lion sees a line of text. Can’t read the writing, but her flesh—that translates just fine.

  More Arctic guerrilla marketing?

  “Good evening,” sliding onto the barstool beside her.

  She looks up from her drink, her eyes very green and far away.

  “Good evening,” says Penelope, then noticing the look in his eyes. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” he says, nodding.

  “Jet lag?”

  “A little. The Goat Shit didn’t help. Plus,” sliding up his sleeve, showing her the slice, “I was recently gored by a dead buffalo.”

  His cut a long scab up his arm.

  Penelope slides her drink his way. “Low-tech pain reliever,” she says. “It’s working for me.”

  Lion takes a sip. Tastes tequila and lime over ice. And then a bartender standing in front of him. An older Filipino man wearing a black vest, black tie, and black-framed Buddy Holly glasses. Lion points at the tequila. “I’ll have what she’s having.”

  “Including the steak?”

  Lion grimaces. “Steak?”

  Penelope smiles. “It’s why we’re at the Four Seasons.”

  He’s not following.

  “They’re the first hotel to exclusively serve cultured beef,” she says. “Steak from stem cells, all lab grown. Totally animal-friendly. Richard thought you would like it.”

  “Neiman Ranch,” the bartender tells him, “cultivated just for the Four Seasons.”

  “Richard’s right,” says Lion.

  He wonders if he can stomach the taste of faux-beef, decides to find out. And a side of fries.

  Afterward, Lion asks and Penelope tells. A little about her past, Irish American parents, born in Seattle, raised in Wales, then her parents went through a messy divorce, Scotland, Dublin, back to Seattle. “We moved around a lot.” Shrugs. “Single mother raising two kids.”

  “You have a brother or a sister?”

  “Sister.” Something about the way she says it catches Lion’s attention; something else tells him not to ask. But Penelope changes the subject before he can decide. “What about you?”

  “We stayed put.” He takes a sip of his drink, changes the subject again. “What does your tattoo say?”

  Holding up her arms, displaying bracelets of cursive script and explosions of crows. “Which one?”

  Lion points at her upper back and the line of text he almost saw.

  “‘Between the signifier and the signified: Rises.’”

  It’s a Tweet-Ku. No, Twaiku. Seventeen syllables tucked neatly into 140 characters.

  “Benny what’s-his-name,” says Lion, “the Twitter poet they gave that prize to?”

  “Aren’t you a journalist?”

  “Ex-journalist. They kicked me out.”

  “And you wonder why.” Smirking at him. “Benny what’s-his-name is Benny what’s-her-name. Benny Takayama is a she. And that prize was a Pulitzer.”

  “Yeah,” smiling, “I know. But why that poem?”

  “The gap before the brain makes meaning out of language, when things haven’t been completely decided. It moves me.” She touches his arm. “Have you ever been in love?”

  Sonya comes to mind. Seemed like the perfect hippie-chick-next-door type, yet carrying a pair of heavy-duty bolt cutters the day they met. Lion asked about the bolt cutters, and she’d agreed to show him, not tell him. A long ride in her crappy Ford, blaring Straight Outta Compton and driving straight into Compton. Sonya used the bolt cutters to liberate three large pit bulls from three tiny cages, passing him one of the leashes and telling him to run. His first experience busting up a dog-fighting ring and his introduction to the Animal Liberation Front.

  “Maybe,” he says. “I was definitely in something.”

  “Did it last long?”

  “Long enough to get me arrested.” Another swallow of tequila. “Why?”

  “When you met her, that first conversation, she said something, you said something, and something changed. Between the signifier and the signified: Rises. And, in your case, got you arrested.”

  Blinks. “What are we talking about?”

  “Dunno,” she says, touching his arm again.

  Their steaks arrive. Penelope orders another drink. Lion delays tasting the faux-meat a little while by doing a fast recompute. Tattooed with Twaiku poetry, yet works for Jenka. Between the signifier and the signified—something doesn’t stack.

  “Richard makes everyone who works for Arctic study semiotics,” she says, somehow reading his mind. “He thinks the failure of the twentieth century is—”

  “I’ve heard,” says Lion, “the failure of language.”

  “It’s a creative destruction. Out of that failure comes culture. Out of culture comes desire. Out of desire come products.”

  “Is that Sir Richard’s motto?”

  “More of his business strategy,” with a look in her eyes that reminds him of the look in Walker’s eyes. Regret. Remorse. And what’s that about? But Lion decides to head in another direction.

  “Does Arctic have a Malaysian division?” he asks. “Kuala Lumpur specifically. Anyone you work with there? Do you have branches or clients?”

  “No,” she says. “But Jenka was just there on a talent run.”

  “A talent run?”

  “Prospecting special creatives. Richard likes to collect talent. Jenka likes it when the talent can make us money. These are not always the same thing.”

  “And there’s talent in Kuala Lumpur?”

  “Two virtual worlds designers, probably a couple of meetings I don’t know about.”

  Lion would like to know about those meetings, especially if one of them involved an engraver named Tabbara. But Penelope works for Jenka and he doesn’t want Jenka knowing about this particular curiosity. Decides not to press.

  “Where are we meeting Shiz?” he asks instead.

  Before she can answer, the bartender arrives with her drink and their check. Lion reaches for it, but Penelope takes it out of his hands. “It’s on Arctic.” She signs her name and passes it back.

  “I’m sorry,” she says afterward, “what were you asking?”

  “Where are we meeting Shiz?”

  “Private terminal out by the airport.” Shakes her head. “He won’t tell me which one.”

  “So how are we supposed to find him?”

  “Uber to the corner of Cargo and Field and ask the driver to blink the headlights twice.”

  She’s not joking.

  “Very cloak and dagger,” he says, laughing.

  “Very Shiz,” she adds, digging into her steak.

  He can’t delay any longer. It’s been a decade since he’s tasted flesh, but faux-flesh isn’t that different. And he was always one for a good hamburger. He chews slowly, wondering if this is another empathy-expansion exercise, wondering if Penelope feels it too.

  They finish their meal in silence. He watches the bartender polish bottles with a white hand towel. After their plates have been cleared away, Lion stands up and helps Penelope into her coat.

  “Thank you,” she says, then extends her arm and looks at him. “You with me?”

  He loops his arm through hers, and they walk out of the bar, through the lobby and into the cool of the night. For a good hundred yards he feels her gravity and pretends the pull is his to feel—becau
se, well, you never know.

  THAT RANGE WEE SHITE

  Cargo and Field, empty and industrial. A nearly forgotten corner of San Francisco running between airport and freeway, featuring warehouses, an all-night coffee shop serving the graveyard shift, and an autonomous forklift carrying two wooden crates across a distant parking lot.

  Not a soul in sight.

  From the backseat of an Uber X, Lion looks for signs of Shiz and struggles to breathe. Heavy new-car scent being pumped in via a slender pink ionizer plugged into the dash, barely covering up the fading remnants of Chinese food.

  Lowers his window another few inches.

  Out the crack, he sees a sky like an ink stain, three lonely poplar trees, and a battleship-sized car park.

  “You want me wait more time?” asks Kumar, their Uber driver. Midsixties, dark-skinned, bald in all the wrong places.

  “Flash your lights again,” suggests Lion.

  “Don’t,” says Penelope, “it’s a game. The rules are flash your lights twice and wait. We flashed twice, now we wait.”

  “Lady,” says Kumar, “I don’t want your dirty drug business near my new-car-smelling car.”

  “We’re not here on dirty drug business,” explains Penelope, for the third time.

  “I only wish we were here on dirty drug business,” sighs Lion, lowering the window a little farther.

  “One minute,” says Kumar, “I am going, going, gone. If you are still waiting, you are still waiting outside of my car.”

  Lion looks back out the window. The empty streets, the dark night, no longer certain this was a good idea.

  “We’re meeting friends,” says Penelope, “getting out of your car, and tipping you a hundred dollars.”

  She holds up the bill.

  Kumar sucks his teeth. “And what that get me? Ten grande, quad, nonfat, one-pump, no-whip mochas? God’s truth, my wife make plenty good mocha at home. Keep your hundred dollars. Let me grow old with my wife and her mocha that tastes like sheep shit.”

  Second time today Lion’s heard mention of sheep—what are the odds?