Last Tango in Cyberspace

by Steven Kotler

  Back in his room, after a long shower, Lion tries to figure out what he wants to do next. Does he head to New Mexico? Between the dragonfly drone and his missing room key, the chances that Muad’Dib will actually be at the Spaceport? Even if he can’t trust Penelope, what about Shiz?

  His earlier instinct was correct: call Lorenzo for advice.

  On speed dial. But the call goes straight to voicemail, and he doesn’t feel like leaving a message. Instead, he decides to review the crime scene photos one more time—a long shot, but he has no other ideas forthcoming.

  Carrying his sling-pack over to a rolltop desk, Lion opens the lid and finds the plane ticket Penelope left for him. I and I friendly skies from San Francisco to Albuquerque, then a Virgin America charter for the short hop down to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. He leaves tomorrow morning.

  Which is when the phone starts to ring.

  “You can’t travel in space,” says Lorenzo, when he answers, “you can’t go out into space, you know … with fractions. What are you going to land on? One-quarter? Three-eighths?”

  “Funny that you should mention that,” says Lion.

  “Fractions?”

  “Space.”

  And he fills Lorenzo in on the happenings of the past forty-eight hours, his evening with Shiz, his discovery of the drone, and the supposed meeting with Muad’Dib at Spaceport America.

  “Penelope was the one spying on you?” asks Lorenzo afterward. “I didn’t see that coming.”

  “When I went to visit Walker’s house, for sure. On the motorcycle, when I was back in New York City, maybe, maybe not. But I can’t figure out for whom. Can’t be Arctic. A second player? A rival pharmaceutical company? Something else entirely? You get what I’m saying here?”

  “Let’s table those questions,” says Lorenzo. “You gonna quit?”

  “Fuck no,” with a vehemence that surprises him.

  “Okay. So your first job is to find Muad’Dib. Shiz said he’s gonna be at the Spaceport.”

  “If he’s not there already.”

  “Any chance that Shiz and Penelope are working together?”

  “It’s possible. Why?”

  “Well,” says Lorenzo, “if they’re working together, not sure if I would trust the info about the Spaceport. If they’re not working together…”

  “Yeah,” he says.

  “But you’re still going?”

  “I guess, technically, you’re right, my assignment was track down Muad’Dib and arrange a meeting with Sir Richard. The trail leads to New Mexico, and that…,” thinking it through, “should mean I’m going.”

  “Should?”

  “Let me ask you something. The snuff container I found had Muad’Dib’s name engraved into it, like a monogram on a shirt. Would you lend a monogrammed shirt to a friend?”

  “You ever met a bongo player with a monogrammed shirt?”

  “But it’s unlikely, right?”

  “Unlikely,” says Lorenzo.

  “Which places Muad’Dib at Walker’s house during the murder, at least.”

  “And pretty high on the suspect list.”

  “So I’m heading into a meeting with a killer, or a friend of a killer.”

  “Which isn’t—”

  Lion cuts him off. “But if I don’t talk to Muad’Dib? I don’t know. Sietch Tabr, even Penelope, I can’t get a bead on where this leads.”

  “Unusual for an em-tracker.”

  “Which is why I want to have that conversation.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?” asks Lorenzo.

  “Pardon?”

  “I could get on a flight tonight. The band will understand. Hank will be pissed, but whatever, family emergency, he’ll get over it.”

  “I don’t think there’s time. Plus…,” with a conviction he doesn’t quite feel, “pretty sure I got this.”

  “But just that. Go to the Spaceport, find Muad’Dib, have your conversation, preferably in a well-lit public area, arrange the meeting with Arctic, get paid, and head home. Penelope spied on you with a drone. My advice—never see her again.”

  Lion thinks about this for a moment. “Maybe.”

  “Christ,” says Lorenzo, “you want to see her again.”

  “Say that’s true,” but then he remembers what Bo said about not telling his mother about Sarah, even after she had him roofied and tattooed. “No, that’s too crazy, even for me. You’re right. I go to the Spaceport, have a talk, arrange a meeting, and be done with it.”

  “Safest play, Kemosabe.”

  “So I’m heading for Truth or Consequences.”

  “Aren’t we all,” says Lorenzo, “aren’t we all.”

  TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES, HERE WE COME

  From above, coming in for a landing, the main terminal of Spaceport America looks like someone parked the Starship Enterprise in the middle of a desert, coated it in dust, and dotted it with blue lights. Also, a little arachnoid.

  Touchdown on runway two, taxi to the terminal.

  Out the window, Lion sees undulations in his field of vision, heat shimmers rising from the baked soil of the high desert. He lifts his gaze up to take in the larger view: an empty blue sky, scrub brush, sandy plains, and the shadows of jagged mountains in the distance. Like the land that time forgot.

  And now, a gateway to outer space.

  Stepping out of the cabin, he’s greeted by the midday sun and a searing heat. The breath being sucked from his lungs. It only lasts as long as it takes to walk down the ladder and across thirty feet of tarmac and into the terminal, but long enough to make him sweat.

  Inside an aluminum-clad holding area, Lion dabs his brow with his sleeve and looks around. Oversized doorway to his starboard. He walks through it and into a large hallway, sleek and modern, with a twinge of Western rustic. Arched ceilings and couches made of faux-cowhide. To his left, a rectangular window peering toward a pair of forty-foot-high steel curtain doors modeled, a wall-mounted scrolling screen tells him, on NASA’s blast-shielded launch control center from the early Apollo days. To his right, the Spaceport’s main hangar visible through another rectangular window. On the other side of the glass, he sees the bullet-shaped frame of SpaceShipTwo and the larger, more recent upgrade, SpaceShipSix—both named, another screen tells him, not for the iteration of the spacecraft, but rather for its passenger carrying capacity.

  Then down a hallway and into the terminal itself.

  A squat stadium. High white walls, beige stone floors, and the building’s front, a giant window of glass looking out onto the New Mexico desert. The light reads early afternoon, but you could have fooled him.

  A cup of coffee might help.

  He looks around, seeing an octet of gates serving standard terrestrial travel, then a long wall separating the extra-terrestrial wing. On the wall, there are photographs of astronauts and aircraft designers, and a framed advertisement for the Bigelow Space Hotel, back when it was still just three inflatable pods ringed by solar panels.

  Lion takes a step closer to get a better look. A cutaway reveals the interior of the main pod: a woman in a wedding dress, a man in a tuxedo. They stand on a starship bridge not much bigger than a phone booth, surrounded by the whole of the galaxy. GET HITCHED IN SPACE.

  And in the corner, thankfully, a caffeine dealer.

  Lion orders a triple-shot Americano and carries it over to a small chrome table in a miniature food court. The chairs are gunmetal curves atop steel bases. They don’t look, in any way, comfortable.

  Seated, the experience is worse than advertised. He shifts his weight, sips his coffee and slow-scans the terminal. First thing he notices is heavy muscle. Young, fit, and not your standard airport fare. Private contractors, by the looks of them.

  And a lot of them.

  Lion remembers an attempted bombing, like two years back. The Islamic Brotherhood took the initial blame, but it turned out to be a crazed Amazon fan who wanted Bezos to defeat Branson in the race to become the first legitimate space tou
rism outfit.

  He counts maybe a hundred-plus people in the room, maybe a hundred and fifty if you include security. East Asians and West Texans dominate, what seems to be a healthy group of each. Also a dusty conglomerate of New Mexicans off a commuter flight, sunbaked skin and long-distance stares. No one, at least no one he can see, has a bar code tattoo.

  It dawns on him that what he’s actually doing is scanning the Spaceport for signs of Muad’Dib, which leads to another realization: He has no idea what Muad’Dib actually looks like. Also, come to think of it, what his real name might be. Or if he even has a bar code tattoo.

  Way to journalism, Lion Zorn.

  He finishes his coffee, drops the cup into a recycling bin, and walks toward the glass wall. Moving out the terminal’s main doors is like walking into a sauna. And now what?

  He spots a taxi stand a half block to his left. A single yellow cab idles at the curb. It’s the old-fashioned kind, still burning gasoline, piloted by an actual human. Cowboy hat, plaid shirt, black Wayfarer sunglasses. “Adonde va, amigo?”

  Lion doesn’t actually know.

  Penelope’s note says she booked him into the Space Ace, which his phone tells him is the latest installment in the Ace franchise and conveniently located seven miles away, on the way to the town of Truth or Consequences. But does he trust Penelope?

  Apparently not.

  He opts to change those plans. Untraceable is what he wants to be, at least for a little while.

  “I need a bank,” says Lion.

  “Closest one is Truth or Consequences.”

  “Truth or Consequences, here we come,” says Lion, no pun intended.

  The trip takes about a half hour. A long stretch of desert and then, in the distance, the town rising up to greet them. A white church steeple, adobe buildings, also, like the landscape, untouched by time.

  Or sort of.

  They stop at three banks before Lion finds one with actual human tellers. He doesn’t want to leave an electronic trail. No credit cards, cell phone calls, or ATM transactions. Nothing anyone can actually track. Not that he knows a damn thing about how not to leave an electronic trail.

  Taking a thousand dollars out of his account, he pays cash for the cab ride and more cash for two nights at the Holiday Inn. His room is on the third floor, and the elevator takes too long.

  But it gives him time to think.

  Before the doors open, he’s got the semblance of a plan. Luther said Muad’Dib would find him, so Lion decides to believe him, at least for the next few hours. Right now, he wants to reread the file on Shiz that Penelope assembled. He’s less interested in the actual articles, more interested in why she might have selected them. Could be that he’s been coming at this from the wrong direction. The dragonfly drone, the whatever the hell happened in San Francisco. Maybe this isn’t about Penelope spying on him, wanting to know where he’s been. Maybe this is about where he’s going.

  Maybe she’s been trying to steer.

  SPACE ACE, POR FAVOR

  Early evening when he gives up on the Shiz file. He tosses it aside, absently, thinking it doesn’t explain anything. That’s not entirely true. When Shiz was younger, a journalist from the Tokyo Sun claimed, he had a fondness for boy bands. That explains something. Just not the something that needs explaining.

  Either way, if Penelope chose these specific articles for a particular reason, it’s not coming to him. Em-tracking machinery failing to em, and his head hurts from trying.

  He gets up from his chair and looks around the room, noting the décor for the first time. Some kind of brown hashtag pattern for carpet, walls made of mauve. The bathroom is beachside chic. Baby-blue tile, white towels in a neat stack. He considers a shower but decides to splash cold water on his face instead. Turning on the faucet, Lion notices the Holiday Inn logo imprinted in the soap and realizes his hotel choice might be a problem.

  If Penelope did her job, then she told Shiz where Lion is staying. If Shiz did his job, then he passed that information along to Muad’Dib. Is Muad’Dib hunting Lion in the wrong locale?

  Time to visit the Space Ace.

  Back in the bedroom, Lion pulls on his boots, texts Lorenzo to let him know he’d arrived in New Mexico and is heading to the Space Ace, then remembers his decision to stay off the radar—cellular paranoia still with him—and does not hit SEND.

  Instead, he sets down his phone and notices his copy of Dune. It must have slid out of the pack when he grabbed the file. This reminds him of waving the book around Hudson’s. Might be worth another shot at the Space Ace. Might be enough to catch Muad’Dib’s attention.

  Maybe, if he’s even there.

  Out the door and down the hall and the slow elevator. A courtesy pot in the hotel’s lobby gives him an okay cup of coffee and, still not trusting the anonymity of apps, he asks the desk clerk to call him a cab.

  “You’re a cab,” says the clerk.

  “Funny,” says Lion.

  He walks out of the hotel to wait. The day’s heat has faded, leaving a mild night and the sound of crickets in the distance. Behind the parking lot, he sees the faded remnants of an old BMX track, mostly overgrown with weeds, except for a single straightaway of raked dirt and a solitary tire track running down its center.

  Glancing around, he doesn’t see anyone with a bicycle. But he does notice the same yellow taxi pulling up in front of him. Same driver too. Same shirt, same hat. No sunglasses this time, revealing eyes, dark and weary.

  “Adonde va?” as he climbs inside.

  “Space Ace, por favor.”

  As they pull out of the parking lot, Lion’s phone grabs a signal from the ether and buzzes with an incoming text from Jenka: Where are you? Is Penelope still with you? Sir Richard wants a sit rep, ping me ASAP.

  So hotel-swapping worked? He smiles at the possibility that he slipped Arctic’s radar, if only for the moment. And the fact that Jenka thinks Penelope is still with him? Didn’t Jenka call her back to New York? Didn’t she go back to New York? That’s interesting too, in a way he can’t quite figure.

  He glances out the window. A moonlit desert, a wide sky, and a sudden flash of silver. A lone jackrabbit, bounding off through the sagebrush. Then he looks back at the text.

  What time is it in New York?

  A little after 6:14 P.M. here in New Mexico—converting Mountain Standard to Eastern Standard—makes it 8:14 there. Early enough that he could call Jenka back, but his desire to avoid Arctic’s radar exceeds his interest in whatever Jenka might tell him about Penelope’s whereabouts.

  So no sit rep for now.

  THE PROBLEM IS VIBE

  The Space Ace is a dimly lit anachronism. Victorian gas lamps illuminate walls of repurposed aluminum siding, and Shaker-style furniture patched up with Grunge-era flannel filling the lobby. Lion spends two hours at a wooden table in the bar, reading Dune, not exactly waving it around with the same Hudson’s verve, but enough to get him noticed.

  So far, no one’s noticed.

  Glancing right and left, he takes in long, low couches in soft grays and blues, a small crowd beyond. Apparently, some kind of historical reenactment biker convention. Everyone in sight has a beard and a Budweiser. Black leather vests with archaic gang patches. Names he recognizes only from old movies and conversations with Lorenzo about playing in bars behind chicken wire for audiences who wore these vests. And no sign of Muad’Dib.

  He needs a better plan.

  Lion pulls out his Moleskine and decides to try to order his objectives. First priority: locate Muad’Dib. Underlines it twice. But—chewing on his pen cap—not much he can do about that one. Muad’Dib is supposed to find him and not the other way around. And, he knows, if that’s going to happen, there are only two locations that make sense: the Space Ace or the Spaceport.

  The problem with the Space Ace is vibe.

  Everything in sight is commoditized hipster. More poly-tribe light. The Rilkeans are legit subcult. Oil and water. Also too many ifs. If Penelope told
Shiz; if Shiz told ’Dib. Plus, Penelope he no longer trusts, and, seriously, when has depending on rock stars been part of any sane plan?

  A graybeard carrying Budweisers swings past his table. He eyes the color of stone and two front teeth missing. Since dental regrowth stem cell kits are available via Facebook ads, he knows this has to be a fashion choice. The patch on the back of the biker’s vest another choice. REAPERS written across the top, BALTIMORE across the bottom, and dead center, a skeleton in a purple cloak, hood up, fists extended, letters tattooed on bony knuckles. GAME OVER clearly visible.

  The issues with the Spaceport are equally vexing. Heavy security deters excessive loitering, so doubtful he can spend the next two days in their lobby. But when is Muad’Dib’s actual flight to space? Doesn’t know.

  Turns out, the Space Ace has been designed with such questions in mind. There’s a QR code etched into the top of his table and a little brass plaque beside it, reading SPACEPORT 411.

  Using his phone to scan the code brings up an information menu. He selects “flight schedule.” If Muad’Dib is on the next shuttle out … reading his way down the page … the launch is the following evening.

  Which gives him less than twenty-four hours to find Lion.

  But Lion seems to recall some kind of pre-flight quarantine requirement. A quick search partially confirms his suspicions: Astronauts are supposed to arrive early for their flight, but it doesn’t say how early.

  He takes a sip of bourbon and considers his options. He could text Penelope and pretend he knows nothing about her not flying back to New York and ask what to do next. Or he could text Penelope and ask her why she didn’t fly back to New York. Or he could text Penelope and ask her why she’s such a lying … Think like a reporter, Zorn, not like a twelve-year-old.

  A sharp crack behind him. Lion whips around, smashing his arm into the table. Impact dead center. The same spot where the buffalo horn hit. A searing pain from forearm to elbow, a low groan, and the sight of a large tan suitcase rocking on its side, having flopped off a bellboy’s luggage trolley.