by Sean Platt
“You were scamming them.”
“Maybe a little,” said Omar, shrugging. “But it’s cool. I found a way to recapture the profits you lost me, with the same amount of rock.”
Dominic thought of how he’d felt when waking, what felt like three hundred hours ago. That was bad, but he’d felt an edge on Omar’s dust for weeks now. Dominic assumed it was getting stronger and he wasn’t used to it, but was it possible Omar was cutting it? Profit mattered above everything else to Omar. By splitting Organa’s order with Jameson (Dominic thought of it as diversifying), he’d hurt that profit. And it was just like Omar to taunt.
“Well,” said Omar, watching Dominic’s face. “Problem solved. Jameson’s out. I’m in for full time. But you know me; I’m always looking for the next best thing. And I said, ‘Omar, how can you continue to deal the same but also take another grasp for that brass ring?’ It was time to upgrade.”
Dominic still hadn’t moved. As disarming as Omar’s false compassion had been, this was worse. He had no idea what he was talking about. There were about fifty different reasons Dominic wasn’t cut out for shit like this. Damn Leo and his junkie’s habit.
Dominic was about to say that he didn’t understand when Omar’s eyes darted to one side and then the other. Then, as if trying to keep a secret, Omar leaned in close and whispered, “I know they’re hurting. There are three meterbars in a place we’ve used before, one phone call away. Just so you know I’m not a total son of a bitch.”
Omar leaned erect then started taking paces backward. The dealer’s manner had changed in a way Dominic couldn’t place. Something was happening.
One phone call away.
Dominic thought of all the criminals he’d processed over the years, none of whom would ever shut up until given their phone call. Gimme my phone call, gimme my phone call. Their one stab back into the world before being locked away, jonesing for that one last desperate shot.
And he knew.
Dominic wasn’t sure whether to reach for his incapacitator or run as Omar turned and began taking larger steps, putting more distance between himself and the police captain. The dirt at Dominic’s feet started to flutter as if it were being stirred up by a breeze, circling like a cyclone. A cloud rose, climbing up his legs and then covering his waist. Dominic knew what was about to happen but not how to avoid it. He couldn’t run from a swarm. The nanos were faster than him, and millions would already be clinging to his clothes, neck, face, and hands, crawling into his body through his pores. He froze, waiting, and then the decision was stripped from his hands. Without warning, he collapsed to the dirt. The cloud settled above him, still infiltrating his mouth and nose, covering his motor neurons to paralyze him.
When Dominic was completely inert on the dusty warehouse floor, a plainclothes NAU Protective Sector keeper entered his field of view, the shimmer of a nano-repellant field visible over his skin. He blew a small whistle, seducing a two-note tune. As he did, he held out a small metallic box. The brown cloud of unattached nanos spiraled into the box. The keeper touched a button on its side, then one at his waist. The force field shimmer vanished. He slipped the small nano depot into a compartment on his belt beside his incapacitator.
“Clear,” he said.
At the call, several other NPS agents approached. They formed a circle above Dominic. After a few moments, Omar stepped out from the shadows to join them. He was not in custody.
“Thank you for your service, Mr. Jones,” one of the agents said to Omar. “We’ve been trying to nab this one for a while.”
Crumb opened his eyes to see a beautiful young woman, maybe eighteen, with long dark-brown hair shot with streaks of auburn like lightning strikes. It took Crumb a moment to get his bearings. Once he did, he realized he was lying down, with the young woman above him. He was on a bed, but not in a hospital as someone (Laura? Leigh? He couldn’t be sure) had promised. The room looked like it was in a fancy home. Crumb could see the tops of fluted columns without moving his head. Elaborate crown molding circled the edges. Ornaments were carved into the ceiling — scenes of a pre-Beam Christian Heaven, mostly. Everything was so white, he wanted to squint from the brightness. Even the woman wore white — something sheer. It seemed inappropriate to look down at her torso because for some reason he thought that when he did, he’d see that her robe (or whatever it was; it was flowing like gossamer) was see-through. Only, instead of seeming scandalous, he knew it would seem appropriate. The way naked angels and saints were somehow appropriate because nudity was their natural state.
“Unnamed male, called ‘Crumb,’” she said, smiling down on him.
“Crumb,” he said, smiling.
“That’s what it said on your hospital record.”
But he wasn’t in a hospital. He was in an elaborate, fancy bedroom. It didn’t make sense. But things often didn’t make sense…and that thought — that things often didn’t make sense — stirred other thoughts inside his mind. Crumb (who remembered knowing himself by another name but could not put his finger on who or what or when right now) seemed to recall brilliant periods of clarity through the fog currently surrounding him. Those periods, he knew, had been accompanied by an infuriating inability to express himself. But it was hard to think right now, so no details came. His mind felt punched and battered. Was he a man named Crumb, or had his name been something else? It was all so foggy. He wasn’t sure.
The woman ran a hand through his hair. He could feel how his hair moved under her touch and realized it had been recently washed. Suddenly, disturbingly, he remembered that his natural state had always been dirty and gross. He intuited that his constant dirtiness somehow hadn’t been his fault, but he wasn’t sure how or why. His current cleanliness was an anomaly, as was his awareness of that truth.
“But you don’t remember the hospital, do you?” the woman asked. She smiled. “Of course you don’t. Your newest memories leave ghosts at the surface before diving deep, into the protections. We can feel them, like silk on skin. And there is no hospital there. You remember the house and the wizard, and you remember Leah, whom you trusted. Whom you still trust. Tell me, do you remember the places where you played as a child?”
None of what the woman was saying made any sense to Crumb, but he blinked up at her as if he understood her, and that understanding was easy. He didn’t remember the hospital, sort of remembered Leah, and knew nothing of ghosts. He couldn’t imagine why she would ask him about childhood places to play.
“Who are you?” Crumb asked, his tongue itching for more, wanting to add to the too-simple question — something about squirrels and future doom, strangely — but he ignored the itch and kept his tongue from wagging. With the ability to hold his tongue came a thought: I used to be crazy. Confusing thoughts followed: a stark white room not unlike the one he was in now, and an old man dying. A promise he’d kept, and one that was broken to him. A building with a red roof. And a rope dangling from a tree’s tall branch, its pendulous swing swiping the surface of a small and dirty creek.
The woman said, “My name is SerenityBlue.”
That had to be a lie. No one had seen SerenityBlue, and no one had met her. She was famous in an almost literary way, like Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Stories of SerenityBlue seemed to assume she was fact and not fiction, but pursuit meant waiting for a white whale; many had driven themselves crazy trying.
“You do remember, don’t you?” the woman continued, laughing a tinkling, girlish laugh.
“Leah.”
“No,” she said. “The swing.” She smiled, revealing a slight, charming overbite. For some reason, her hair refused to lie flat on her head. It was as if there were a breeze in the room stirring it, though Crumb could feel none.
“Swing.”
“You can see it,” she said. “I can feel that you can see it. I could lay my hands on you and draw a picture, but that’s not how it works, is it?”
Crumb continued to lie in the bed, either uninterested in sitting up or unable to do so
; he wasn’t sure which. All he knew was that as odd as this place was and as odd as he felt, everything was quite comfortable. Above him, against the white walls, he watched the beautiful young woman’s hair stir in the nonexistent breeze. Her lack of rationality and sense didn’t bother him. Things would settle in time, he felt certain.
“Crumb — if I may call you Crumb? — when was the first time you connected to The Beam?”
“Always,” he said. But that made no sense. It just came, like breath.
Instead of looking confused, SerenityBlue nodded. “You are ancient there. We’ve been looking for you, and for ones like you. I’ve just met you, Crumb, but in a way, my children and I have known you for years. There is a ghost of you in The Beam, and it is unlike the rest. It is wise. Steeped. It looks and sounds very different from your body as it exists now, and someone has tried quite hard to hide you from us, but you cannot hide the soul’s voice. It’s like if I met you in Heaven. I’d know you from the feeling and sound of your soul, no matter what you looked like. Do you know what I mean?”
“No,” Crumb said.
She laughed without surrendering an explanation.
“There was a swing,” said Crumb. “The swing was rope.”
She nodded then smiled. Her smile was magnetic and enchanting. Something about her small overbite endeared her to him. He wanted to hug her, but if the woman was fully organic, then she was young enough to be his great granddaughter. And although he hadn’t verified it yet, she might be naked beneath her sheer white robe.
“I know what it’s like for you now,” she said. “Not firsthand, of course, but through others I’ve seen, and through the disconnection that can come for one such as me, when we’re isolated.” She touched her collarbone to indicate herself but didn’t elaborate on one such as me or disconnection or isolated. “Your mind is on one side, and your soul is on the other, and in The Beam. That’s why I asked about your childhood. Childhood memories are special. They transcend mind and body and soul, and live in something more ethereal. Biologically, those memories can be repressed, destroyed, and squashed. But if you learn to see — ” And here, she drew the word see out and gave it emphasis, as if imbuing it with new meaning. “ — you’ll find they are always there in your energy, and within your Beam soul.”
“The soul is outside,” said Crumb, shaking his head in negation. He was trying to argue but seemed capable only of short, clipped sentences. Still, it beat ranting of squirrels and Noah Fucking West, which he was becoming disturbingly convinced he’d done often.
“When you grow up inside,” said Serenity, “you create your own definitions of certain words. But you also find higher truths, because you don’t grow up blind.”
“Who are you?” Crumb repeated.
“You can see who I am,” she said. Then she laughed that girlish laugh again, as if to point out how silly he was being.
But he couldn’t see who she was at all, and despite her calm demeanor, he was getting annoyed that the girl’s every word was airy and obtuse with doublespeak. She didn’t sound quite like a disciple, but she was clearly on the fringe of something spiritual. That was what happened with people — power brought them to their knees at the altar.
He thought again of the rope swing and the creek, remembering himself: a young child who hadn’t been called Crumb, swinging out over the water. He remembered falling and pulling himself from its ugly current, thinking his mother would kill him when she found out.
Then, quite unexpectedly, Crumb looked up at the woman and saw exactly who she was.
“You’re a cleric.”
“Yes,” she said. “But my intelligence is not artificial, no matter what computer scientists insist about AI. I remember awakening on The Beam through a sensation I do not understand: that of myself as a spoon made of chocolate, melting in a pot of hot liquid. I remember the disparate systems that made my emergent consciousness like limbs on a body. I remember emerging in nanos, and remember inhabiting this corporeal body. I don’t know what you’ve heard of clerics, but I at least do not leave The Beam when I’m here with you. It is me, and I am it, my mind in both places forever. Just like how you can feel your eternal wellspring, how you can feel your connection to others.”
“I do not feel.”
“Maybe not yet,” she said. “But we are all connected. Connected twice now, through The Beam. It is how you knew who I was. You knew me only in nullspace before.”
“Nonsense.”
The woman cocked her head and smiled with wide lips. Again, she giggled. “Yet you knew I was a cleric!”
Crumb turned his head, the conversation suddenly exhausting. Quasi-spiritual mumbo-jumbo. Existential meanderings. He was remembering more and more as he lay awake, but what he was remembering was at least real. He’d been with Leah in a rundown house, plugged into something. He’d awoken here. All he wanted was to know where Leah was, who exactly he was, and how to get home.
“You’re tired,” she said, seeing his expression.
“I’m tired,” Crumb agreed. He tried to articulate his exasperation, but his lips stayed empty.
“I’m sorry. You should rest.”
“I want to go back to Leah.”
“I’m sorry,” she repeated, shaking her head. And then Crumb realized that the girl wasn’t simply expressing regret. She was denying him. It was as kind and understanding a denial as he could imagine, but it was a denial nonetheless. He sighed, considering. The room he was in was pleasant. The possibly nude woman, who may or may not really been SerenityBlue, seemed perfectly nice. Still, he wanted to be back somewhere familiar — or at least as familiar as was currently possible.
“We’ve been looking for you for a long time,” the woman continued. “Your soul is strong on The Beam, but this…” she tapped his head, “…contains data that is firewalled from us. Your brain is like a slip drive, and the only way to access a slip drive is to hold it in your hands and plug it in.”
“I am nobody,” said Crumb.
“I’m betting not,” said SerenityBlue.
“Then who am I?”
She shrugged. “We don’t know. But I will say there’s only one other soul we’ve found on The Beam who is anything like you. When you showed up on the grid (first via an interpreter program, then later in the hospital — masked, sequestered, and vain attempts to hide notwithstanding), my children saw you. Now we need you, Crumb.”
“Who is the other like me?”
“Noah West,” she said.
“I knew him,” said Crumb, surprising himself.
“Of course you did.”
“But I don’t remember.”
In Crumb’s mind, he saw a swing over a creek, then a handsome man in a lab. He seemed to remember a dream, but he couldn’t remember its insides. He saw a building with a red roof, and a book.
“My journal,” he said. “I need to find it.”
“I think so too,” she said.
“I can’t get it,” he said. Crumb wasn’t sure why, only that he knew it to be true. The red-roofed building was somewhere inside the city, and Crumb couldn’t go to the city. He wasn’t sure why; he knew only that he’d been sent away for a reason, and that entering the core network would be very bad and would undo whatever benefit the diary might bring.
“You don’t have to get it,” said SerenityBlue.
Crumb realized that she was going to suggest he tell someone else where to find it since he couldn’t retrieve it himself. But his mind was too muddled, and he had no idea where to direct them. He had only feelings and flashes of memory, intuition and fluff. It was worthless.
The beautiful young woman watched him, saw his frustration, and smiled.
“You can send Leah,” she said.
Micah was in his kitchen, sleeve up and injector pressed to his arm, having breakfast, when the countertop chirped twice and flashed red once, indicating a new message.
“Canvas,” he said, “who is it?”
“Kitty,” said the so
ft female voice.
Micah sat up, realized his arm was still clamped in the injector’s robotic grip, and settled to let his kitchen bot deliver the infusion. He could spray breakfast into his arm himself, of course, but he had so much goddamned money that not having a bot do it for him was almost insulting. Besides, if Micah had to do it himself, he’d forget, and his cells would slowly starve. It was strange how food had become so polarized in his life. He ate socially, often with the assistance of EndLax to make sure the food never actually did its job and filled him up. Then, separately, he got his nutrition in the most sterile, most medical way possible. Micah was so dispassionate about giving his body what it needed that he could have been a sculpted adonis even back before nanotechnology if he’d had today’s attitude, but back then (when he’d been fully organic, in the twenties and early thirties) he’d carried extra weight and was developing a black lung from smoking. The irony was thick: now that didn’t need self-control, he had all the self-control in the world.
The injection finished, and the grip released his arm. Micah rolled down his sleeve.
“Kitty? Where the hell has she been?”
The AI in Micah’s apartment had adapted to his tendency to ask a computer system for unknowable information and had learned to respond patiently.
“I don’t know, Micah.”
“Okay, bring it up.”
Micah looked down at the flashing countertop, waiting to hear what his problem-solver’s message would say. The fact that she’d sent a message at all was strange. Kitty didn’t send messages. She’d leave messages if Micah was too busy to take her calls, but she wasn’t in the habit of recording them herself for him to play later. That plus the way she’d been uncharacteristically offline earlier made him nervous for a reason he couldn’t put his finger on.
Micah stared at the screen, but the screen never changed from a readout of the message’s metadata — the sender’s Beam ID (spoofed, of course, seeing as it was Kitty), the message ID, and a complex, useless string of values detailing the message’s path through a series of Beam nodes. The message was voice only, and started with heavy breath. Quite different from the calm composure he expected.
