“Muad’Dib,” says Lion, struggling to not get lost in Penelope’s touch, “I’m trying to find him.”
“Difficult man to find,” says Shiz, toying with the keyboard, a little stride piano riff dancing out of the speakers. “Is it you who’s looking? Or your employer?”
“You talked to Penelope?”
Shiz shrugs. “All she told me is she met you through Sir Richard. But I know a ting or two about Sir Richard. And now I know a ting or two about Lion Zorn. I don’t see me Bredren chillin’. Two tings and two tings together—you’re working for him.”
“Deductive logic,” says Luther.
“I’m not sure who I’m trying to find Muad’Dib for,” Lion says. “I told Richard I’d locate him, have a conversation. I didn’t say anything about what I’d do next. Right now, I just want to chat.”
Lion also wants a smoke. Looking around, he seems to recall his cigarettes are still in the bedroom.
“About?” asks Shiz.
“About Sietch Tabr and…,” trying to find the right language, “his agenda.”
“Big word for this time of night,” says Luther.
“I think it’s morning,” says Kali.
“It’s got connotations,” Luther continues, nodding toward Shiz. “I think my man needs to understand those connotations.”
A lonely sensation, full body, a warning shot across the bow—the drugs are starting to fade. Not vanishing completely, just dropping him down a level.
“Lion?” asks Shiz.
“Sorry,” he says. “It’s still a little … inchoate.”
“Another big word,” says Luther.
“Gentlemen,” says Kali, pointing at Luther and Shiz, patting the couch. “Man’s inchoate, bring it in.”
Luther settles on the far end of the sofa. A land grab, his large frame taking up most of the remaining space. Kali shifts toward him, leans back against his chest, and pats her lap, which Shiz half-occupies. Legs extend, arms rearrange.
“Better,” says Kali.
“Inchoate?” asks Shiz.
“How do you feel right now?” asks Lion.
“Little high,” says Shiz.
“Lot high,” says Luther.
“A little on the edge of the comedown,” adds Penelope, “like it’s starting to sneak up on me.”
Slow nods all around. The motion activates Shiva’s display bra, bringing up another image: the Lorax in sherbet colors, standing on a tree stump, looking pissed.
“The drop, right?” says Lion. “How the drugs wear off and leave that pit of lonely. Cause you know you’re going to miss this…,” gesturing at the body sprawl on the couch. “This oneness. Molly extends the boundary of self, so when it retracts, feels like a part of you has gone missing.”
Shiva massages Luther’s scalp. Shiz, he notices, is actually paying attention.
“Ironic,” Lion continues. “We ache for this feeling, but it’s everywhere. Booze, drugs, sex, sport, art, prayer, music, meditation, virtual reality. Kids, hyperventilating, spinning in circles, feel oneness. Why William James called it the basic lesson of expanded consciousness—just tweak a few knobs and levers in the brain and bam. So the drop, the comedown, it’s not that we miss oneness once it’s gone; it’s that we suddenly can’t feel what we actually know is there. Phantom limb syndrome for the soul.”
“Lion Zorn,” says Shiz. “Preaching, steaching, and teaching.”
“Em-tracking,” he says, “feels like that, not at a personal level, at a cultural level. Like the drop never quite ends. That’s why I want to talk to Muad’Dib. Follow out Sietch Tabr, and that’s a future that feels different.”
“Different how?” asks Shiz, unwinding an arm to scratch his dreads. “Less lonely?”
“Maybe. More promising. More dangerous. I honestly can’t tell. That’s why I want to talk to him.”
Shiz becomes silent, glances at Luther. A long pause before Luther nods. Shiz nods back before turning to face Lion again. “Muad’Dib’s going to space. Low earth orbit. He’s on the next Virgin Galactic flight to the Bigelow Space Hotel. Wants to experience the overview effect.”
“The what effect?” asks Kali.
“Edgar Mitchell,” explains Luther. “Sixth man on the moon. Looked back at the earth and realized every molecule in his body was exactly like every molecule in the solar system. All manufactured in the same star factories. Mitchell experienced oneness as a result, but what he’d discovered is that it’s not just a sensation. It’s physics, the actual geological history of our universe. He called it the overview effect.”
“Yes-I Lion Zorn,” says Shiz. “Two days from now, you can find Muad’Dib at Spaceport America, Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.”
“I can get you there by tomorrow,” adds Penelope.
“They finally got that place open?” says Lion. “I thought Virgin was flying out of Zimbabwe, Zanzibar, one of those Z places…” Then he looks at Penelope, suddenly realizing, “You’re not coming?”
She holds up her phone, the light too bright for the room. “Text from Jenka,” giving Lion a squeeze. “He needs me back in New York by tomorrow. I’m out later today.”
Lion feels a surprising jolt of sadness. Discovers he really doesn’t want her to leave, then discovers he doesn’t know what to do with this discovery. Putting it out of his mind, he tries to focus on Shiz. “How do I find Muad’Dib once I’m in Truth or Consequences?”
“He finds you,” says Luther.
Lion doesn’t like the sound of that, but something in Luther’s tone tells him there are no other options.
“Set it up,” he says finally, unwinding himself from the pile and standing up.
“You’re leaving?” asks Kali.
“To take a piss and find my cigarettes.”
“Can you bring beers?” asks Shiva.
“In the fridge,” adds Shiz, “by the leopard painting.”
“Smokes, piss, beers, coming right up,” and walks out of the room.
MEXICAN AMBER REDUX
Lion makes his way through Shiz’s bedroom, the ghost dusting of the Milky Way rotating overhead as he crosses to the bathroom. Walks inside and does not bother with the light. Navigating by the sound of the stream alone, completes the next portion of his mission without a hitch.
Locating the refrigerator, that turns out to be trickier.
The candles have all gone dark, and there are no other lights in the main cabin. As he walks into the room, Lion’s foot lands on something soft, nearly sliding out from under him. A pair of pants, maybe a bra. Falling on his ass, he decides, is not an experience he’s currently interested in having.
Crouching down on hands and knees, Lion crawls across the plastic tarp lining the main cabin until he finds the definitive curve of the plane’s far wall, just the faintest braille of a welding seam at their nexus. Flicks his lighter and sees the stenciled leopard where Shiz said it would be, just above him now, a muscular shadow pawing away from a jail cell.
He stares at it, thinking of Sonya and how strange that she was the one to teach the Rilkeans about Banksy. Even for an em-tracker, Lion knows, back-tracing a meme to its original point of emergence is a rare occurrence. He inspects the bar code more closely, thinking of the years between then and now. The lighter is burning his fingers. Lion releases the flame, watching it sputter and go dark.
Keeping his hands on the wall, he slides left until he bumps into the cold metal of the refrigerator. Hand slapping his way to the handle, he opens the door to bright white light and the scent of industrial chemistry. Two four-packs of Guinness cans and nothing else inside.
Grabbing both, he cradles the stack in his arm and hip-checks the door closed. Pitch black again. Like someone extinguished an angel.
Turning slowly around, Lion starts across the room, sweeping his path with his foot before committing to the step. And again. Finally making it back to the bedroom, he finds the Milky Way still hovering above, rotated slightly. He sets the beers down on the
bed to look around for his tobacco pouch.
On the nightstand, where he left it, but he’s out of rolling papers.
Taps his pockets for a spare pack. Maybe in his sling-pack, on the floor, beside Penelope’s backpack. He crouches down beside his bag and undoes the drawstring. The aquarium lights up beside him, a swarm of jellyfish robots reacting to his presence beside the tank, bells glowing pink and purple.
In the fluorescence, he notices that the zipper on Penelope’s backpack is open, a piece of bright orange lace visible inside. Spare underwear perhaps.
Turning his attention back to his sling-pack, Lion paws around a bit until he uncovers a pack of rolling papers tucked in an inside pocket. Pulling them free, he realizes: Not underwear.
Too rigid for underwear.
Lion glances toward the recording studio door, making sure he’s still alone. He tugs the zipper open a little more. The orange lace isn’t lace at all. It’s an insect wing attached to a dragonfly drone. A bright orange insect wing. Mexican amber—just like the one that followed him around Robert Walker’s house.
A cold prickle runs up his spine, and the feeling of being frozen in place. All he can think of is how he felt about Penelope moments ago versus how he feels now. He tries to shake off that feeling. Lifting the drone from the bag, Lion runs a finger over its thorax. Lab-grown synth-flesh roughly the same texture as the dragon box. He flips it over, knowing what he’s going to see before he sees it. Exactly as remembered: a tiny Lidar sensor in the middle of the insect’s abdomen. Not much more than a micro-scale LED light. Turned off now, its bulb the color of dark, pooled blood.
REROUTING
Hard to measure how much time passes while Lion crouches, motionless beside the bed, holding the drone in his fingers. Long enough that the jellyfish robots have lost interest, swimming off to another corner of the aquarium, the tank now dark, the only light left the pale glow of the Oort Cloud traveling across the ceiling.
His brain keeps replaying the same questions. Was Penelope using the dragonfly to spy on him for Arctic? Does not compute. Richard knew where he was and where he was going. But, if not Arctic, who?
And repeat.
From the other room, he hears Shiz calling his name. That snaps him back.
Time to act, Zorn.
He shoves the dragonfly into Penelope’s pack, yanks the zipper closed, and slides the bag into the corner. Stands up, trying to get his bearings. He was on a mission. Cigarettes, beer, both sitting on the bed. Grabbing them, he takes a step toward the recording studio and stops. The rest of the evening? Facing Penelope now? Management of this particular phase of the operation uncertain.
A couple of deep breaths and he walks the rest of the way into the recording studio. Shiz and Luther are at the keyboard, playing blue notes. Comedown conversation in piecemeal mode. A thought. A pause. Maybe a response. Lion sits back down on the couch, distributes beers, and takes Penelope’s hand. Like nothing happened. Except his eyes, pegged hard to the Lorax on the far wall.
After an appropriate interlude, he unclasps Penelope, gives her thigh a squeeze, and bids them good night. “Totally shattered,” he says, telling the absolute truth while pushing up from the couch. “Can I take the bed?”
“Yours,” says Shiz, who stands up to give him a hug. “Be careful, Lion Zorn,” he whispers. “Keep this up, you might find what you’re looking for.”
Luther salutes.
“Night, sugar,” say Kali and Shiva in unison.
“I’ll be there in a second,” says Penelope, kissing his forehead softly.
The trip from recording studio to bedroom seems to stretch on for a very long time, but once Lion gets under the covers, the crash comes quickly. Doesn’t so much fall asleep as fade to black.
And when he wakes, he wakes alone.
Not just in the waterbed—in the entire plane. Maybe the entire warehouse. He can feel it. The absence of life; the null set of empathy.
Getting out of bed, Lion walks into the main cabin to check. Skylights built into the roof of the plane are blue with daylight, revealing nothing. Bedroom, bathroom, recording studio, main cabin again, even the cockpit—all completely empty.
Out the door and down the steps for a quick look at the warehouse, his bare feet slapping the yellow metal of the ladder with a series of flat thwacks, the sound echoing off faraway walls. Cold concrete beneath his flesh when feet hit the floor. Glancing back and forth, sees no one.
The place is empty.
Feeling very uneasy, Lion walks around the plane and over to the Ehang 184s in the corner. Black carbon-fiber bodies, white cabins made of reinforced composites, and nobody in either cockpit. Another glance around the warehouse.
It’s a ghost town, alright.
Lion puts his hands on his hips and sweeps his eyes back and forth across the concrete sea. Vision not quite adjusted to daylight displaying blotches of color more than stable images. But through the haze, one clear thought rises: He doesn’t want to be here anymore.
Not for one second.
Slipping into a higher gear, Lion climbs back up the steps of the plane and crosses toward the bedroom. Atop his sling-pack, he finds a plane ticket and a note from Penelope, telling him that something came up and Shiz and Luther had to run to a meeting and she had to run to New York. Can’t wait to see him when he gets back to the city, XO.
Staring at the XO, quivering at his stupidity. More guerrilla marketing.
Lion shoves the note in his pocket and gets out of Shiz’s sweatpants, crossing over to his own clothes. It takes a small struggle for him to get into his straight-world uniform, limbs not quite working as remembered. Finally dressed, he grabs his sling-pack and strides through the main cabin one last time, stepping over the Banksy on the floor, the lonely robot: I SEE HUMANS BUT NO HUMANITY.
“Affirmative,” he tells the robot, and heads toward the door.
Down the ladder, across the concrete sea, and banging out the entranceway. Daylight pours into the world, the midafternoon sun and much too bright. Lion lifts a hand to shield his eyes and digs into his sling-pack with the other. Notebook, copy of Dune, tobacco pouch. A short prayer of gratitude when he finds his sunglasses in an inside pocket.
Silver wire-frame aviators.
After putting them on, he surveys right and left. The warehouse standing sentinel and no one else in sight.
Lion doesn’t know where to go. He decides on a tight alley across from him, not much bigger than shoulder width and buildings on either side. A left turn and another alley, trying to reverse the route they took the night before. He expects to get lost along the way, but surprises himself, popping out near the main entrance of Exec-Jets.
In front of him, he sees an oval of saw grass, an armed guard standing just inside the main glass doors of the terminal, and a black Uber autonomous taxi idling by the curb. Another prayer of gratitude when he realizes that the only conversation required to get him from here to hotel is with a robot.
“The Four Seasons, please,” getting into the cab.
They pull away from the curb, take a left at the corner, and drive the speed limit down the long winding road that leads to the freeway on-ramp. He feels acceleration as they merge into traffic, then an even glide as they find their lane. Smooth sailing from there.
The rest of the trip stays uneventful, save for the anger, confusion, betrayal, rage, shame—Lion can’t decide how he feels about Penelope.
“But not good,” he says aloud.
“Rerouting,” says the car’s AI, “the Good Hotel.”
“No,” snaps Lion, “not rerouting. The Four Seasons Hotel.”
“Rerouting,” says the AI, “the Four Seasons Hotel.”
“Fuck you,” says Lion.
“Rerouting.”
And eventually, mercifully, back to the hotel.
YOU CAN’T GO INTO SPACE WITHOUT FRACTIONS
He can’t find his key. The door is where he remembered, the floor hasn’t changed, but his key, which
Lion is sure he slipped into his wallet before leaving to meet Penelope, is not where he left it. A search of his pockets, an inspection of his sling-pack, neither discloses a way into his hotel room. Neuro-electrical signals run the wires. Did he misplace it? Move it? Did Penelope steal it? Grinding his molars, Lion stalks down the hall toward the elevators.
The front desk prints him another copy. He fidgets while he waits. Fidgets in the elevator. By the time he makes it back to his room, he’s pretty certain it was Penelope who stole his key. And combined with the residual MDMA twitchiness, this leaves him too wound to be useful.
But tries to fake it.
Sitting down on the edge of the bed, Lion goes through the motions of checking his email. That charade doesn’t last a message. He drops his phone, lies back on the covers, and stares at the ceiling, running his hands along pillowcases made from high-thread-count Egyptian cotton. Soft and cool to the touch, but no match for brain on fire.
It doesn’t take long before he’s out of bed and pacing the carpet, a low-shag variety, gray-on-gray diamond pattern flattening beneath his feet. Maybe he should call Lorenzo?
Maybe he should calm down first.
Not, he concludes, going to happen on its own.
Lion changes into his workout clothes, takes the elevator to the fourth floor, and finds the fitness center, a well-lit rectangle lined with faux-wood rubber matting. Free weights line one wall; cardio stations line another. He sees an older-model rowing machine in the back corner and unearths an old punk playlist on his phone. Rise Against rising in his ears and pulling for all he’s worth.
Takes a half hour for his twitchiness to subside. Another forty-five minutes lifting weights and there’s space to think—though he doesn’t know what to think. Penelope spying on him for whom?
No answer forthcoming.
Heading for the exit, Lion grabs a banana from a bowl beside the door. He peels it as he walks back to the elevator, takes a first bite while he waits. The MDMA had him grinding his teeth and now his jaw aches. Drops the rest of the fruit into a silver trash can long before the car arrives.
Last Tango in Cyberspace Page 17
