Last Tango in Cyberspace

by Steven Kotler

  They ride ten floors down in silence. He feels oddly shy and keeps his eyes glued to the numbers. The sensation of slowing, and then the elevator’s doors slide open, revealing the beer garden abustle and the K-Holes between sets.

  Lion glances around. Definitely a healthy crowd, well-ornamented coeds with a smattering of poly-tribe. He notices Hank in the corner by the bar, talking to the same Vietnamese runway model he’d seen the night before. Notices Lorenzo standing beside them, a beer in one hand, a cigarette in another, a look on his face that reminds him of the look on his face.

  The rest of the band is nowhere in sight.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” he tells Penelope, stepping toward the bar. She starts to walk with him, but Lion stops her with two fingers on her right hip. Rilkean guerrilla marketing—still a possibility. Other things.

  “Alone, please.”

  Not wanting to deal with Hank, he leaves Penelope and angles through the crowd until he’s about twenty feet away from Lorenzo, directly in his line of sight. Eye contact. Waves him over.

  It takes a moment. On his way, Lorenzo has to pause for a poly-triber in a pair of fuzzy white pants and a fuzzy white coat, a series of living screens built into the jacket’s sleeves. His left arm displays wooden crates filled with morphing fruit. Kumquats become Asian pears. The right sleeve shows stacks of old video games. Sonic the Hedgehog being masterfully played on a Sega Mega Drive transmogrifying into Space Invaders on an Atari Flashback 6.

  The Atari Flashback brings up another flashback. Actually two. The first is the fruit-and-classic-video-game combo that he’d seen on the streets of New York, again on the streets of Kuala Lumpur, and now, a third time, here in the bar. Definitely a new kind of subcult trend.

  The second flashback is more insistent. The Atari console reminds him of Pong, that other Atari game. Also Jenka’s name for the AI scrubber. Pong. Data bit finds data bit and a full-body twitch, like he’s mainlined electricity in the megawatt range.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  But before he has time to do anything with his realization, Lorenzo appears in front of him.

  “Someday this war’s gonna end.”

  For the first time since he started looking for Muad’Dib, a viable way forward has begun to form in his head. Not a plan. Too risky. Way too dumb. But more than he had just moments ago. “Sooner than you think,” says Lion, wrapping his friend up in a hug, “sooner than you think.”

  Lorenzo pulls slightly back from the embrace. “How do you figure?”

  Lion doesn’t reply immediately, and he doesn’t break their hug. Instead, he spins Lorenzo slightly, turning them both around until he has eyes on Penelope.

  Standing where he left her, not looking in their direction.

  “I need another favor,” says Lion, leaning in closer so he can whisper.

  “You want me to call Charlotte again?”

  “Yes, and,” he says, doing quick math in his head. New York is ten hours behind Kuala Lumpur. “When do you play your last set?”

  “I’m cashed,” says Lorenzo, extinguishing his cigarette in a nearly empty martini glass. “Hank’s hungover. With the rain, we’re thinking short and sweet and calling it. Done in maybe an hour.”

  “When you finish,” he says, “I need you to phone Charlotte.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And I need you to bribe a jeweler.”

  “Tajik?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t know if I can deal with that asshole twice in one day.”

  “Not Tajik.”

  Then Lion lays out his plan and pulls Lorenzo in for one final squeeze before starting toward the elevator.

  “Kemosabe,” Lorenzo calls after him.

  Stops and looks back.

  “You sure?”

  “No, brother,” says Lion, “not in a long time.”

  MINUS THE GOAT SHIT

  On Arctic’s dime, Lion flies Cathay Pacific, first class KL to NYC, with a refueling stop in Dubai. Flight attendants in snappy red outfits and another private cabin to himself. Minus the Goat Shit and the Eye-and-Eye VR, it’s not all that different from Air Jamaica’s cabin. Maybe a darker version of faux-mahogany and a slightly smaller flat screen.

  Takeoff is a blur. Despite his hopes, he’d gotten little sleep the night before. Tossed and turned for hours on end. Now he feels … well, is it jet lag if it happens in a jet?

  Needing to remedy this, Lion locates the recline toggle amid three dozen other switches and buttons that populate a cabin-control remote complicated enough to run a nuclear power plant. He turns the seat into a bed and crashes hard for some indeterminate time. Could be hours or days. Weeks are not entirely out of the question.

  And where is he again?

  That question opens the floodgates. Before he has time to reconsider, his brain jumps to light speed. The night before and all its permutations. Not quite ready to deal with the influx, he keeps his eyes shut tight and tries to pretend it’s a temporary interlude in an otherwise fine nap.

  “You’re asleep,” he says to himself, that ancient prayer.

  After leaving Lorenzo, he’d gone to his hotel room. Penelope accompanied him along the way but stopped at the door. He needed to get some sleep, she’d told him, and she needed to take care of a few things.

  But not much sleep after that.

  Then, like now, his brain was spinning. Not the typical hyper-agitation of emo-stim overload, more like em-tracking machinery in stunned mode. Not able to process the future he’s feeling. A blank spot on his map.

  Kept him up most of the night.

  Now, he realizes, he’s starting to get a little twitchy. Chase the calm, he tells himself. Taking his own advice, Lion runs through a breathing exercise and the Dune mantra. First lying down and then, after those attempts fail and he swats around in the dark until he finds the toggle that turns the bed into a chair, sitting up.

  No dice.

  Giving in, he flicks on a small light and surveys the uber-remote until he finds the call button. Cathay Pacific first class does not screw around. Instant stewardess. Same snappy red outfit, long white gloves that he didn’t notice before.

  “Bourbon?” he asks. “Is there a list somewhere?”

  The stewardess extends a finger and clicks on his flat screen, runs through a couple of menus until arriving at a long list of whiskeys and scotches. Arctic’s still paying the freight, so he orders expensive and Japanese. Something he’s never heard of and can’t quite pronounce.

  “Right away, sir,” and strides down the aisle.

  Back in a minute with his drink and a tray of salted nuts. Lion takes his glass, takes a healthy swallow, and holds it up. He glances at the stewardess. “Please come see me again soon.”

  And she does.

  But two drinks don’t help. His brain refuses to calm. He doesn’t want any more booze. Doesn’t want to risk a hangover upon landing. Eventually, he realizes the way out is through.

  Export the data.

  He unearths his pack from a cleft beside his seat and digs out his Moleskine. Decides to order what he learned the night before. According to Luther, until the Robert Walker incident, this really had been about an autism drug. Arctic Pharmaceuticals started out legit. Even Jenka deploying the AI scrubber to erase the Rilkeans was nothing beyond standard industrial espionage, at least at first.

  Walker’s suicide changed things.

  “When you cased the house,” Luther had asked, “did you notice anything missing?”

  “Sietch Tabr. In the photos I got, there were three lines left on an end table. But when I searched the house, the table was missing. Richard told me they stole it for research.”

  “Of a type. Richard and Jenka both wanted to try the drug. That’s what happened, what changed, their conversion experience.”

  “That was the genesis of their…,” trying to find the language, “off-label distribution plan?”

  Luther nodded. “Bloggers and podcasters were alrea
dy on the payroll, part of the prep for launching Arctic Pharmaceuticals. But they had a problem. They could try the drug, but they couldn’t synthesize it. For the tests, I customized Sietch Tabr, a hack against hacks, like the syn-bio version of a sleeper worm. When Arctic tried to reverse-engineer the compound, the molecules scrambled themselves.”

  “So even though they had a sample,” said Lion, “they still needed the formula.” Then it clicked. “That’s why they hired me.”

  “Sort of.”

  “It’s my fault,” said Penelope, a look on her face that he recognized. The same look she’d given him on the day they’d met, standing at the edge of Arctic’s waiting room. Regret. Remorse. The same remorse he’d seen in Walker’s eyes. “Jenka was starting to get suspicious of me,” she continued. “Since I was in charge of Arctic research—I needed to give him something.”

  Lion had been that something.

  “She told Richard that Muad’Dib felt a great kinship with em-trackers,” explained Luther, “especially an em-tracker named Lion Zorn. Told him about you, your work, that you could probably penetrate the Rilkeans.”

  “But why?”

  “Because we couldn’t find the scrubber,” she said with a shrug, “we’d lost the formula, and we knew about you. If I could get you on the inside at Arctic, being an em-tracker, you might be able to dig up something I couldn’t.”

  “I’d read your early animal liberation articles,” said Luther. “Shiz knew the Rod of Correction stuff. We thought we might be able to trust you. But…”

  “We had to be sure,” added Penelope.

  “That’s why you followed me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sure of what?”

  Penelope thumped his chest just then, two knuckles knocking on his breast bone.

  “Your heart,” Luther had said, and with gravitas.

  So that was how all this started.

  Lion glances down at his Moleskine and realizes he’s not really taking notes. Or drawing up a list. More of a vector diagram, schematics for some extra-complicated heist. But he feels calmer.

  Draining the last of his bourbon, Lion goes back to work. Writes: snuff container. Underlines it once. Draws an arrow to another quadrant. Writes out what he remembers.

  After the suicide and the … searching for the right word, settles on “taxidermy” … Luther and Sarah had gotten out of Walker’s house as fast as possible. By the time they’d realized the snuff container was missing, Arctic had swooped in and closed the scene. Tight as a drum, apparently.

  Until Lion arrived, there had been significant attention from the cops and patrols of armed guards. Heavy blokes hired by Jenka, according to Penelope, and no way to get back in the house.

  Something wasn’t tracking.

  “I found the snuff container under the desk,” he’d said, “Not like it was hidden.”

  Luther confirmed, “That sounds about right.”

  “If Arctic searched the scene, they would have noticed it.”

  Indeed, they had noticed it. Jenka made the discovery. But this was before he’d tried Sietch Tabr, so the sensors in the container’s cap didn’t read changes in his mirror neuron function, because there hadn’t been any changes, not yet. Jenka saw Muad’Dib’s name, but not the formula. Still, you never know, so the container actually left the crime scene in his pocket.

  “Once Arctic decided to bring you in,” Luther had explained, “Jenka had it put back.”

  Remembering this now, Lion’s scalp prickles. It’s a reprise sensation. Happened the night before as well, when he first heard the story. A kind of kinesthetic haunting that will be with him for a while. Jenka had the snuff container put back because he knew that Lion would find it and that it would lead him to the Rilkeans.

  He’d been played.

  Not just by Penelope. By pretty much everyone involved. From the beginning and like a fiddle.

  After that, everything snowballed.

  “The problem…,” Luther had grinned just then, the image stuck in Lion’s memory because it was the first time he’d seen that particular expression on that particular face, “you were better at your job than anyone expected. Us, Arctic, no one realized you had the snuff container until it was too late. When we figured that out, taking Molly.…”

  A wider grin, Cheshire in nature.

  Penelope told him the rest. “It was an easy way to search your luggage.”

  “But you’d left the container with Balthazar,” continued Luther. “By the time we figured that out, Balthazar had shipped it to Malaysia. You pretty much know the rest.”

  Or almost.

  They’d left him at the airplane hangar to search his hotel room, sent him on that trip to the spaceport to buy a little time, then tracked him to Malaysia through Balthazar. “That man is exceptionally bribable,” Penelope had said—which, Lion realizes now, must have planted the seed that grew into his plan.

  Luther had a different plan. More of a request. Since Arctic’s play was already in motion, Sietch Tabr was going to break wide. Luther felt the best countermove was to get the Rilkean side of the story out.

  “What about the scrubber?”

  “Only combs new media. Online, virtual, ethereal. There are other ways to get a story out.”

  Other ways, old-fashioned ways. Traditional media. Thus Luther’s final request: Tell the Rilkeans’ side of the story by writing an article for Carl, his old editor. Shiz had talked to Sonya and she’d agreed to make sure it saw print. Thought it was a fitting full-circle ending to the saga.

  So here he is, some twenty hours later, and still no answer.

  He lifts up his window shade and glances outside. It’s daylight out there. He closes the blinds again. Daylight no more.

  He’d love another crack at being a journalist; they had that part right. But telling the Rilkean side of the story would require breaking just about every term in his nondisclosure agreement with Arctic. Jenka would seethe. Richard could litigate. Lawsuits, headaches, plus it’s unlikely he’d ever work as an em-tracker again.

  But the other option sucked.

  Luther was right, Sietch Tabr was too big a shift to happen quickly. There’d be a backlash. Animal drug cult stories swamping the airwaves. More Robert Walker–like incidents. If ravers dying of dehydration turned the tide against MDMA, he can’t imagine what heads mounted on walls might provoke.

  Not good.

  He closes his eyes and reviews his third choice, the plan he’s already set in motion. Hopefully Lorenzo’s done his part by now. All he needs to do is visit a jeweler and set up a meeting with Jenka and …

  “We’re landing, sir.”

  “Wha…,” blinking about, he sees the stewardess in the door to his cabin.

  “Sorry to wake you. Cabin doors must be open for landing.”

  He must have, finally, fallen asleep.

  SCURVIES

  Customs at JFK Airport. Four million travelers a year, reads a scrolling screen in the arrivals lounge, greeting him as he steps off the airplane. He strolls down a long hallway surrounded by glass walls and a living carpet, red nap with flecks of white, and bright green arrows lighting up beneath his feet as he walks.

  Humans, he thinks, just point and watch them go.

  As he goes, his cell phone buzzes. Proof of life from his left hip pocket. Pulling it out, he finds two voicemails.

  Stops walking to listen.

  One message from Richard demanding a meeting, another from Jenka re-demanding Richard’s demand for a meeting. After what went down with Tajik, Jenka’s call catches him by surprise, bringing up a powerful sense memory, the feeling of a Glock nine being shoved into his eye socket.

  He shudders, involuntarily.

  A woman in head-to-toe Gucci catches his reaction, staring at him.

  This only adds to his unease.

  The issue, he knows, isn’t actually Jenka. Or the memory of Tajik. Or not right now. Right now, the issue is the thirty grand he has tucked in an enve
lope and wedged inside an old pair of Salomon trail runners at the bottom of his suitcase. He debated bringing the cash back from Malaysia—breaking US monetary import restrictions is not the kind of trouble he’d have an easy time getting out of—but knows, before tomorrow is over, if his plan has any chance, he’s going to need the money.

  Plus, thirty large is thirty large.

  The Gucci woman has disappeared, but Lion hasn’t moved. He glances toward the ceiling, tracking two different eye-in-the-sky domes and knowing there are more cameras he can’t spot. With all of them pointed in his direction, just standing here can’t appear natural.

  Not wanting to arouse suspicion, he starts walking. Glances back at his phone. Notices two texts from Lorenzo.

  Stops walking again.

  The first says 80K, 10 am tomorrow, 89 Jane; the second, “Talked to C, go for launch.

  At least that’s done. His sense of relief gets him moving. Down the glass hallway, in step with the center mass of disembarking passengers. He passes a picture window framing the rest of the international terminal. Coats, scarves, hats; the weather must have turned cold since he left. Then another hallway, branching left, right, up, down—they certainly don’t make this easy.

  Another green arrow points them through a short tunnel aquarium. Technicolor fish on all sides, coral reefs like stacked incandescent brains, the full undersea explosion. He’d read about this: a new kind of face-reading technology. For anyone walking through the aquarium tunnel, the darting fish, the immersive panorama, provide enough irresistible distraction that masking expressions and hiding emotions becomes nearly impossible. Deception defeated by proof of life.

  Clearing the aquarium, he steps into a room the size of a football field. A complicated stanchion maze, heavily armed guards and a big sign: WELCOME TO AMERICA.

  Passport control.

  Security protocols have changed since the last time he went through customs, he notices, reading through a list of new procedures from a living screen on the wall. One thing remains constant: Ten thousand dollars is still the legal limit for import. Any additional funds must be declared.