Last Tango in Cyberspace

by Steven Kotler

  “You can have both,” says Penelope.

  “Lady,” snaps Kumar, pointing through the windshield at two stories of electrified steel mesh and razor wire. “That’s airport property. Bad people want to do bad things, and the American government, like the thousand eyes of Varuna, always watching. Spy drones, spy satellites, spy everything. Your dirty drug business going to send me to jail time.”

  “No one’s going to jail time,” says Lion.

  “I want jail time, I could’ve stayed in India. My country is very, very happy to do this for Kumar.”

  A sharp knock on the side door. Lion startles, feels his pulse rate spike. Outside the window, two female shapes. Takes a breath. Whatever is going to happen next is actually happening now.

  “Here they are,” says Penelope, dropping the hundred in Kumar’s lap and opening her door.

  Lion squares his shoulders and follows her out. The shapes cohere into twins. Two identical women who both seem to have stepped straight out of Black Power central casting circa 1975. Afros and army jackets. Like someone cloned Angela Davis.

  “Apologies for the subterfuge,” says one of the women, waving a slender hand in a circle. “It’s a maze around here. Our hangar’s hard to find.”

  “I’m Kali,” says the other. “This is Shiva.”

  Clicks.

  “You sang backup on ‘More Human than Human,’” says Lion, “the White Zombie cover on Preaching, Teaching, and Steaching. That haunting Creole chorus, over the xylophone solo.”

  Both women beam.

  “It’s really nice to meet you.”

  Research and flattery, classic journalist weapons, feels pretty good to dust them off again.

  “We’re this way,” says Kali, or is it Shiva—they really must be identical twins.

  Across an empty parking lot, around a half block of industrial storage, through a gate, then another. On the far side of the second gate, they cross a long alley between two rusty warehouses and out into a manicured courtyard.

  The baritone growl of large dogs freezes Lion in his tracks.

  Two small guard robots, essentially Lidar sensors and loudspeakers mounted on wheels, pincer in from either side. They’re armed. Lion sees the electric crackle of Tasers mounted behind chrome grills aimed in his direction.

  “Um…,” he says.

  “For fuck’s sake,” snaps Penelope, glaring at the afro twins.

  Kali steps forward and palms a scanner plate behind the Lidar sensor on guard dog one. White light whoosh and instant silence. The ‘bots must be networked, Lion thinks, as they spin around and begin to move away simultaneously.

  Looking past them, he realizes they’re standing in front of an oval of saw grass, and beyond that, the hulking shadow of Exec-Jets, like a partially deflated zeppelin airship being attacked by giant glass shards from outer space.

  Private aircraft terminal chic.

  Must be 24/7. Wide glass doors and lights on in the lobby. The doors retract and an armed guard, human this time, strides into view.

  “Just us,” calls Kali.

  The guard waves, and they skirt left, around the zeppelin and down another alley and into the shadow of a gigantic aircraft hangar. Four-story bay doors shut tight. Hidden in a far corner, a red awning over a small entranceway.

  “We’re this way,” says Shiva.

  Stepping inside the hangar, Lion sees a football field of mirror-polished concrete. One large jet in the center and two Ehang 184 autonomous drone taxis, like oversized quadcopters, in a far corner. Pretty Lights blasts from invisible speakers, making Lion think about candy-flipping back in high school.

  “Welcome to the Bay of Shiz,” shouts Kali, over the music.

  Closer in, he realizes he recognizes the plane: an Airbus ACJneo, the panoramic model, with huge plate glass windows wrapping the upper third of the aircraft. The interior is caramel-colored calf leather and done by that sports car maker. Ferrari. No. Pagani. Lion knows this because Lorenzo flew to a gig in Hawaii in one and wouldn’t stop talking about it. Made him look at pictures.

  Kali and Shiva lead them across the gray sea. In the light, clearly visible below their afros, Lion spots bar code neck tattoos. A few more steps and the twins stop beside a yellow aircraft maintenance ladder that leads up to an open door in the side of the Airbus. They take up posts on either side of the ladder, something hard and military in their countenances that Lion didn’t notice before.

  Clear as day now.

  And the hip-side bulges under their army jackets, which he couldn’t see outside, also clear as day.

  “I don’t do guns,” says Lion, no longer walking.

  Penelope shouts over the music, “What?”

  “They’re strapped,” pointing at the bulges. “I’m out.”

  She glances at both women, takes another couple of steps closer to the ladder, and shouts up toward the plane. “Shiz, ya fuckin’ bampot—get your arse out here.”

  The music stops. A wall of African muscle fills the plane’s door, like a shadow against a shadow. Lion sees only the whites of his eyes and a bald head. Not Shiz.

  “Luther,” says Penelope, pleasantly, “the twisted sisters are armed.”

  “I don’t make the rules,” says Luther.

  “I don’t care who makes the bloody rules. Tell that radge wee shite to lose the weapons.”

  Luther ducks back inside the plane, comes back about thirty seconds later. “Shiz says protocol. The Bene Gesserit stay strapped.”

  Lion blinks. The Bene Gesserit? Lethal sisterhood from Dune, protectors of Muad’Dib?

  Penelope does not blink. Before anyone can react, she ninja-slides beside Shiva, traps her right arm with her left hand, de-holsters the gun with her right. Points the Ruger straight at Kali. “No,” she says, still pleasant, “as a matter of fact, they do not stay strapped.”

  Luther clucks his tongue, stares at her for a second, and ducks back inside the plane.

  Down on the concrete, nobody moves.

  He comes back a minute later. “Shiz says come on up. You can bring the guns with you.”

  Penelope turns to Kali. “Slowly, just your fingertips.”

  Kali removes a matching Ruger, passing it over. Penelope slips it into her waistband, the other into her pocket. Starts up the stairs. Four steps up, calls over her shoulder to Lion, “You with me?”

  “Your therapist suggested Krav Maga?”

  Penelope winks at him and disappears inside the plane. Luther follows. Lion stands there.

  “Go on, sugar,” says Shiva. “You’re down. Shiz is down to meet you.”

  LET THEM EAT CRACK

  Lion’s eyes take a second to adjust to the dark of the plane. So spray paint and sandalwood incense, those scents hit first. The interior of the cabin is awash in them. And a hissing sound, coming from somewhere in the back.

  As his eyes adjust, he can make out a small candelabra resting on the floor in the corner. Eight slender tapers with long wicks, and the only light in the room besides a tiny reading lamp above Luther, who, having seated himself near the side door of the plane, pages through the Sunday Times, in the single remaining caramel-colored calf leather chair. The rest of the furniture is missing. The floor covered in thick plastic tarps. The walls covered in—what the hell is he looking at?

  Directly in front of him, a six-foot black rat standing on its hind legs, holding an umbrella in one hand, a briefcase in the other, wearing a striped tie and a clip-on name tag. Dollar bills leak out of the briefcase, a couple floating away. Beside the rat, in large, bloodred block letters: LET THEM EAT CRACK.

  Data bit doesn’t find data bit.

  But it percolates. Crack not as split, break, or fracture. Crack, the drug, from back in the day. Cocaine coated with something evil and baked. Mandatory minimums, three-strike laws, and everyone in jail—kept the prison-industrial complex filthy with lucre. Now he gets it. Let them eat crack.

  Graffiti. Cranes his neck around the interior. Similar graffiti ever
ywhere.

  Technicolor hieroglyphs coat nearly every inch of the plane’s walls, from the bottom of their curve to the lower edge of the upper windows. That explains the spray-paint smell.

  And those windows? Lorenzo wasn’t kidding about the panoramic view. Lion feels like he’s in a glass-bottomed boat, but inverted. The plane’s roof is nearly all windows, a mosaic of dark glass ovals in different sizes. The smallest five feet long, the largest stretching over fifteen. A sea of eyes, like Varuna, always watching.

  He walks a few steps onto the plastic and can’t help but recall all the movies he’s seen where the bad guys lay down drop cloths before they shoot the good guys, so the blood splatter doesn’t ruin their expensive interiors.

  Okay, not going to think that thought anymore.

  He squints around the main cabin again. About thirty feet long and twelve wide, though it felt much bigger when he first stepped inside.

  No sign of Penelope. Or Shiz either.

  Lion glances back at Luther, who remains hidden behind the newspaper. So he’s supposed to do what now?

  Not a clue.

  He crosses over to the candelabra. Eight candles in total, and doesn’t look heavy. He picks it up and walks over to the wall to his left to get a better look. The first image he sees has the same black-and-white stencil style as the rat, but human this time. A life-sized punk rocker, male, early twenties, spiked mohawk, head bowed, hands in the pockets of his shabby overcoat, more block text: THIS REVOLUTION IS FOR DISPLAY PURPOSES ONLY.

  Lion takes a few steps to his left, reaching the next piece. A black-and-white stencil of a leopard running directly toward him, adult female, life-sized, captured midstride and full power. Behind the cat, lying on a flatbed truck, a giant bar code has been rendered to look like a jail cell. The code’s stripes turning into the bars of the cage. There’s a pronounced bend in a few of those bars, the spot where the leopard pried the cage apart and went hell’s bells toward freedom.

  Lion recognizes the image.

  Leopard and Barcode. An anti-commodification-of-nature protest, a statement about animal liberation. That explains where he’s seen it before. Sonya. Animal Liberation Sonya. She had a poster of it framed on the wall of her crappy Hollywood apartment. He remembers lying in her bed, sweaty and naked, staring at it as she fell asleep in his arms.

  Hanky? Panky? No, Banky—that’s the name of the artist.

  He looks at the bar code cum jail cell again. The Rilkean bar code tattoo—could this be the source? Some Banky-Rilkean connection trickling up through the poly-tribe? Not Banky. Banksy—that’s the name of the artist.

  Lion glances to his left, sees more graffiti: a black boy in a white T-shirt, sideways baseball cap and a gas mask. Block text reads: IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED—CALL AN AIRSTRIKE.

  Another Banksy. Lion’s seen this one before as well. Same book. Same Sonya. The book was sitting on her coffee table the day he was fired, the day before they started shouting, the day before the day before they’d broken it for good. Buried beneath a pile of whiskey bottles, cigarette butts, and small blue pills crushed into lines of powder.

  A bitter memory that he didn’t even know he had.

  Makes him want a cigarette, but he doesn’t know if he can smoke in here. Surveying the room, he doesn’t see an ashtray. Does spot, on the floor by his feet, a break in the plastic and another image beneath, sprayed onto the carpet. Pulls the tarp back and crouches down to get a closer look.

  A small robot standing on a busy city street corner, looking around. I SEE HUMANS BUT NO HUMANITY.

  Lion stands back up and twirls slowly, holding the candelabra at arm’s length, his eyes finally focused enough to take in the whole of the visage. Wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling, the entire plane is coated with Banksy.

  “Luther,” he can’t help himself, “your ride is freakin’ dope.”

  “Affirmative,” says Luther, dropping the newspaper to peer over the top. “Shiz can spray.”

  And back behind the paper.

  SHUT YOUR MOUTH WHEN YOU TALK TO ME

  A door opens toward the rear of the plane, splashing soft light into the cabin. Lion sees Penelope in silhouette, walking toward him, from what appears to be a small bedroom. He does a quick gun scan. Hard to tell in the dim, but her hands are empty and nothing seems to be tucked into her waistband.

  And behind her, filling the doorframe, Prince Shiz.

  Fame in the room, rock-star wattage, a dopamine push to which no social mammals are immune. It’s the by-product of the ruthlessness of evolution and the critical importance of status to survival. Lion feels the jolt but stays silent.

  Shiz steps into the cabin, taller than he looks in photos, full lips, wide nose, chocolate skin, in a black crushed-velvet jumpsuit flecked with paint and a Vietnam-era gas mask, wedged high on his forehead, forcing the blue ropes of his dread-hawk to spike at strange angles.

  “Lion Zorn,” says Luther, from behind his paper, “please meet Prince Shiz.”

  “Luther,” says Penelope, arms crossed, leaning up against a wall, “you’re biting my rhymes.”

  “Affirmative,” says Luther.

  Shiz takes a step toward Lion, spreading his arms out wide. “’Sup, my brother,” his accent poly-tribe complicated. Oxford phonetics, flavored with island spices, mashed up with street New York. “Been a long time coming.”

  “Good to meet you.”

  Bro shake, bro hug, Shiz still holding on. “Long time coming,” he says again, thumping his fist once against Lion’s back.

  So he’s not just saying, he’s saying.

  “Long time?” asks Lion.

  Shiz releases the hug and takes a step back. The world’s first poly-tribe superstar and also a good five inches taller than Lion.

  Nine inches if you add the mohawk.

  “I and I,” says Shiz, Rasta-izing his syllables, “have Bredren in common.”

  “We do?”

  “Actually,” taking a can of spray paint out of his hip pocket and flat-spinning it in his palm, “Sistren. I think you knew her as Sonya.”

  An elevator drop, slices right through the dopamine.

  “Animal Liberation Sonya?”

  “Who got you arrested Sonya,” says Shiz, spinning the can again. “Who almost got me arrested Sonya. Buck wild. That woman is treacherous.”

  Lion hadn’t thought about Sonya in years and now thrice in one night? And Shiz knew her too? Is his past hunting him, for reasons unclear?

  “Sonya,” says Shiz, gesturing around the plane with the can of paint, “introduced me to Banksy.”

  “Me too,” says Lion.

  “Not me,” says Luther, still behind his paper.

  Shiz nods solemnly, setting the paint can on the floor by his feet. “That’s her contribution. She introduced the Rilkeans to Banksy.”

  “Sonya’s a Rilkean?” But Lion finds he’s not surprised. “How is she?”

  “No,” with a sad shake of his head, “Sonya’s not a Rilkean.”

  But before he can ask, Shiz slips the gas mask off his head and arcs it into a corner with a flourish, dips a hand into the chest pocket of his coveralls and produces a legit Rasta joint.

  “Lion Zorn, em-tracker of the Rod of Correction, Bredren, wa gwaan, care to fiyah up?”

  Penelope walks over to join them. “Bredren,” she says.

  They both look at her.

  “What. The fuck. Is a Rod of Correction?”

  THE ROD OF CORRECTION

  “Innerstand history?” Shiz asks Penelope, unzipping the upper half of his jumpsuit, revealing a white-ribbed tank top and wiry black muscles. “Overstand Jamaica?” Tying the jumpsuit’s arms around his waist. “Overstand?”

  “Chew mah banger,” says Penelope, “I overstand former British colony, major exports include reggae, bauxite, sugar, coffee,” lifting her hand to point at the joint, “and weed.”

  Shiz lights up the spliff, taking a Rasta-sized hit from his Rasta-sized joint.

&n
bsp; “Fiyah up the wayback machine to overstand the Rod of Correction,” he says, pumping smoke out between his consonants. “Back to 1972, Jamaica’s been free from colonial oppression for a decade, but,” wagging a long finger in the air, “no-ting change. Shantytown just a pretty word for people living in garbage. Hugh Shearer was in power. Conservative, Jamaica Labour Party.” Shiz takes another hit, passes it to Lion. “But ’72 was an election year and ’ere come Michael Manley, the challenger—democratic socialist man of Jah people singing his Redemption Song. And rude-bwoy smart,” tapping the shaved side of his head, “decides to court dem Rasta vote.”

  Penelope doesn’t get it.

  “Dread-I knows poly-tricks are just con-man with con-plan,” says Shiz. “Chant down Babylon.”

  Penelope turns to face Lion. “Translation?”

  “The Rastas don’t vote. Not ever. They think politics are Babylon. Manley changed all that,” shrugs, “and that changed everything.”

  “How?”

  “He visited Haile Selassie in Ethiopia,” says Shiz, pointing at Lion, “the OG Lion of Judah.”

  “My mom saw the face of Jesus in her toast,” says Luther, finally setting down his paper.

  They all look at him.

  “I’m just saying, Selassie starved his own people. Big leap to call him the second coming.”

  “Marcus Garvey prophesied a black king in Africa,” says Lion. “Selassie fit the bill.”

  “Or,” says Luther, “smoke enough ganja, anything means anything.”

  “Jah Rastafari,” says Shiz, upping the volume, “King of Kings, Lord of Lords, ruler of the tribe of Solomon for twenty-five hundred years, Selassie I.”

  “Absolutely,” says Luther. “They locked the dude in his palace. When the coup came, they locked the God Emperor up with his butler and left him to rot. Tells you everything you need to know.”

  “At the end of Manley’s trip,” says Shiz, ignoring him, “Selassie gave him a walking stick.”

  “Selassie gave that to everyone,” says Luther, “his parting gift, ‘Thank you for coming to Ethiopia, here, have a stick.’”