The Ghosts We Hide

by Micah Thomas

  His own faith found support in Dan, his husband. Dan was his ground wire. From their time as partners on the police force, to dating, to their marriage, they knew each other were the real deal; honest love, tough love, sweet love. The rest of the story of how they got here was a fever dream. The city was his job, in a sense, and that was all that mattered. The city was an idea, not a place. An interconnected series of locations; a mega-city bound by a singular mystery, and it was all his to protect. This was his job. He might as well enjoy a cup of coffee without worrying where it came from or how it came to be.

  The coffee was as good as the croissant, no matter what they were made of. Nothing—goods nor people—came in or out in the years since the border wall had stopped traditional supply chains. Oh, what a mess it was in the beginning. People quit going to work, but not working was fine. When people got hungry, though, and the stores either weren’t open or had nothing to give, Hakim was there.

  Sanders had attended one of the early town halls. The meeting had been in all instances of the city at once. They were all one city. The audience was global, spanning across these chosen, walled in worlds. Those who wanted to lead were given authority to do so. Hakim—their strange figurehead, a god in flesh, the alien—personally marked some leaders as part of the satrap management. It was fantastic to watch the birth of a new nation comprised of a single law: don’t hurt anyone who didn’t wish to be hurt. Of course, it was phrased differently: “No nonconsensual harm will be tolerated beyond the simple maxim. Do as you will.” Great concept, but Hakim left it to administrators to carry out the details. There were shades of grey. Sanders had anticipated them, so with some prodding from Dan he’d volunteered to be a cop.

  He’d raised his long black hand and had been selected by Hakim himself. Not to be cop as he was before—he was the cop. In his wildest dreams, Sanders always thought if he was in charge, he could do it better. Then he had his chance to make and enforce the very mechanisms of justice in a land where wealth was absolutely equal.

  Law and order were almost easy at first. People were so damned happy to not have to do anything, but there were so many of them—billions. Hopeful dreamers. We were all hopeful dreams, he recalled.

  The follow-up meeting was much more practical. Hakim sat in his throne and listened to the pragmatic issues per each administration area. People were hungry. Hakim gifted the food-mongers devices to produce any raw ingredients they could want; a complete dish or material of any kind. Where did it come from? This was less the replicators or nanotechnologies of science fiction and more some strange magic. Whatever the case, Hakim wasn’t prone to explanations. Food appeared and the people ate. If you had a notion to be in food service, then you could do that work. If not, you could do something else, or nothing at all.

  Sanders wasn’t in the food service industry. He’d been a cop in the before time. Though he’d had modest ambitions, his race and sexual orientation had never allowed him to climb the ladder. Here, things were different. Hakim saw something in him—read his mind, even—and gave him the police power.

  “Why not a general? Someone with experience managing large-scale infrastructures?” Sanders had asked.

  “This is not a prison, nor a war zone. You are the one,” Hakim had said, and it was done.

  Sanders took the charge seriously and returned to his home, a handpicked brownstone in Bridgeport outside of Chinatown and close to Comiskey Park—one he never could have afforded before. Not on his salary. Sure, there was new construction in the city again, utilizing materials and alchemy coming straight from the source. Magical tiers of city strata climbed skyward almost immediately, bending notions of architecture and physics, but Sanders was simple. The ground-level property was abandoned and he wanted it.

  The problem as he saw it, having had a long career on the beat back in Phoenix, Arizona, was the human psyche could not handle the police power responsibly. Corruption seemed to take half or more of every force he’d ever seen. Individual good-doers never stood a chance. Sanders had read his history, and he knew this was a common a human failing as any. As there was just one law, and Sanders thought it a good one, there could be another way. His pitch to Hakim was simple and accepted immediately, with a few additions of his own.

  And so the Coppers were born. Sanders was very proud of them; shining bronze robots idled across Eden by the thousands, springing into action when there was an altercation. Though rare, there were altercations—more so in the early days of rolling out the program. There were communication issues mostly. Did Hakim think human nature would change over night? Sanders could not fathom what thoughts dwelled in Hakim’s mind. The man wasn’t human. Not really. Sanders had some experience with these types after all. They were smart, but also naive. Intractable and incomprehensible.

  Where their grand plan had deviated was what to do with perps. Sanders passionately wanted to avoid prisons and avoid strict liability in the administration of justice. This was a chance to do something different. Hakim was not without compassion towards those suitable for rehabilitation, but the vector was unusual. Sanders’ influence ended at the administration of deducing the crime. The rest of justice…the rest was…well, out of his hands. Hakim had special projects for those who raise a hand to their neighbors.

  Sanders checked the daily interaction reports on a hologram display in his kitchen. The trend lines looked good. Fewer and fewer intakes every day. The numbers were so small that Sanders personally interviewed many of the perps to understand what had happened. It reminded him of the old days, the personal connection to the community he had lost over the years. He even dressed in something similar to his old uniform: the blue and the badge, symbols of law and order—a classic policeman’s armor—and headed out to start his shift.

  He called up a global Eden map on his holographic projection. Sanders could have had the technology place images directly upon his vision in an augmented reality display, but it made him dizzy. The paradigm of viewing a screen fit his old world mind better. Leave the fancy stuff to the kids. The data was overwhelming in detail. Just over two billion citizens contained in a dozen city sites across the world. And they lived in relative peace and harmony. He was looking at a miracle. The promises had been fulfilled. Now, all they had to do was live with each other. It was going to be a good day.

  ***

  In the north side of Chicago, Thelonious lay in his bed. There was a song in his head even before he woke . A melody of minor chords, pretty and scary at the same time. He wished he could get it written down before it faded, but everyone was sleeping. Thelon couldn’t play music himself—didn’t want to—but he’d remember it for later. His mind held on to dreams. Always had. He didn’t want to be the musician. He wanted to be the one to get it to the people. In high school, he’d taken a personality test. Thelon was a connector personality; he’d find things in common between total opposites, or two people each needed something the other had. What did he need?

  His senior year, Thelon ran away from the military academy in New York to get into the city. He’d meant to send an email to his parents about joining up with the movement, but there wasn’t time. He hadn’t had a real talk with them since they sent him there anyway. At first, he thought he’d find them in the city, too, but they must have stayed behind. They were an upper middle class, tad left of center, black family. He didn’t want to believe they’d bought the government story about the Raid. Thelon hoped they’d seen through the bullshit, but they might have been scared. Best not to dwell. His big mama—his grandmother—had put it that way. If a bad memory came up at the dinner table, it was best not to dwell.

  Thelon found a new family on the inside. At first, it was a small family; other children close to his age, some who would have been street kids on the outside. They would have been gobbled up by Family Services, foster homes, or just out on their asses. Inside, no one was going to make them go to school or insist they had a guardian. They were the merry band in Oliver Twist, only with no need fo
r Mr. Bumble or Fagin or a tidy rescue in the end. Yeah, Thelon knew the history of the Lost Boys. Peter Pan, too. He was as well read as anyone. He knew the kids hadn’t come to the city because they were sick of their day jobs, the mendacity of the government, or the banality of life. They’d heard the message loud and clear: come in and have fun. This wasn’t Oliver Twist. This was Neverland and he was Peter Pan and they the Lost Boys.

  He had a crew and a reputation. There were so many goddamn people in the city. Thelon had watched in awe as the thing was built up into the sky. Layers of city life and the sun still shone down to street level where he’d set up shop. Thelon lived alone in a loft apartment. He kept it tidy, Spartan—a holdover from his time in military prep school. His place lacked any tell-tale signs of city technology, but he had books. Loads of books. And he’d read them all.

  Thelon pulled on a pair of tight jeans and a t-shirt. His body was lean, but strong, and he felt good in it today. Maybe he should grow a beard. He had a baby face and looked younger than his actual early twenties. Beards had started being a thing when the Raid happened in 2017. How long ago was that? Fuck it. Doesn’t matter. He looked good. Everyone said so.

  Still, it was hard to get noticed in the city. Everybody was saying funny shit and you had to work your ass off to rise in celebrity. However, he preferred having hours of the day where no one was watching him. It made his shows better. The word was “mystique”. He wanted to develop a mystique, but mysterious or not, Thelon threw the best parties. He was a promoter, a hype man, a performer, and his performance was himself. In the land of the lost, parties were his way of connecting people.

  This last one had been wild. A Communist Party Party. They had dressed up as their favorite communist. There were naturally a few socialist costumes, and a few with more of a sci-fi theme, but that was cool, too. Someone had released an airborne peace drug in the club and the night had been filled with good vibes. For real, though: he’d done it by accident. His personal use pack had exploded in his hands as he’d tried to open it. Then the shit got sucked up into the AC unit. Next time, Thelon would do it on purpose.

  “Marcus, wake up,” Thelon said, jostling the young man sleeping in the fetal position on a small corner of the California king bed. Thelon lived alone, but he’d let his best friend spend the night. Sometimes, especially on mind altering mellow drugs, it was best to have someone to talk at. Marcus was usually that friend for Thelon. Marcus would have liked them to be more than friends, but it wasn’t like that for Thelon. He just hated to be alone.

  “Unngh,” Marcus moaned.

  “Wake up. Let’s get some breakfast.”

  “What time is it?” Marcus asked. His white blond hair fell past his green eyes.

  Thelon kicked the bed gently. Marcus was pretty, but that wasn’t an excuse for laziness.

  Marcus stretched his tall frame over the edges of the bed. “I had a bad dream. Something about going back in time. I saw my mom. She was crying.”

  “That’s you being silly. I checked outside and guess what? We’re still in the heart of paradise.”

  Marcus got dressed out of a pile of clothes beside the bed. “You don’t miss them at all? Your parents?”

  “Why should I? Think about it: if I’d stayed, I probably would have seen them like, twice this year.”

  “But don’t you ever get confused?”

  “Cousin, you were born confused. Let’s go.”

  The city was awake as they hit the street. The smell of baked goods, the whiz of bio-mechanical flying devices, flocks of visiting tourists wearing clothing signifying their home cultures—they came from all points of Eden’s reach. As they crossed out of the historical zone, they rode an elevated platform to the new city. This was the new downtown, home to all the shit straight from dreams. Dynamically color shifting clothes produced by the mercantile guild bore the unmistakable magic which powered this place. Textures glimmered with their own light, hues transformed following moods or some other settings to react with the environment. Naturally, every damned merchant was on the hustle. Try this new drink! Download this new app to your brain! It tells you when to shit! Have this surgery to add on two, three, or four more sets of genitals!

  “Sir? Sirs? Gentlemen, would you visit our gallery?” He wasn’t the first merchant to clutch at their attention on their stroll through the flea market of the future, but he was the most persistent. “We have something to raise goose bumps on your neck and turn the hair on your head white with shock,” the vendor extolled, reaching out for Marcus’ arm.

  “Can we take a look?” Marcus asked.

  “Can we not? I’m hungry. You’re hungry. Let’s just move on.”

  Marcus was always giving them the time of day. Thelon saw this crap as the real-world manifestation of spam emails coming from all directions. It was a mind numbing, waste of time.

  “Come on. We’ll be quick,” Marcus whined.

  Thelon knew the pitch wasn’t true, but gave in. “Where’s this gallery?”

  The vendor’s eyes widened. “Oh yes, right this way.”

  He led them through the merchant lined streets. Music blared from the store fronts as they waded into a cloud of static particles in the air, one which snatched erotic thoughts from their heads, projecting sensual images in the air around them.

  Fucking god, what a mess, Thelon thought, fanning the cloud out of his face.

  The gallery was less noisy than the rest and Thelon was glad to be inside. “Nice digs,” he said to the vendor.

  Marcus touched the heavy velvet curtains and ran his hand over the old wood furniture in the lobby, tentatively caressing the brass fittings.

  “Yeah, very nice,” Marcus said.

  “Oh, this is nothing. Let me get the artist. Please make yourselves comfortable. There is rosewater there, homemade for your refreshment.”

  Thelon threw himself on a luxurious cushion and crossed his legs. “Every day a new adventure.”

  “Aren’t you the least bit curious?” Marcus asked.

  They waited and Thelon’s stomach growled. Marcus was busy taking a pointless mental inventory of the classic goods. He loved the old. Though newer and weirder than anything else in this town, there was plenty of it..

  The vendor returned accompanied by a woman. In his youthful bias, Thelon thought, sure, roll out an old-ass woman. He caught himself. This was a trick. A bit of showmanship. Nobody looked old anymore.

  “Gentlemen, the artist is present,” the vendor said and excused himself, heading back outside probably to drum up more business.

  The artist locked the door behind the vendor and sat gracefully in a chair across from Thelon. Marcus, unsure of what to do, knelt on a cushion next to him.

  She looked at them but said nothing. Her face was a calm mask of wrinkles and makeup.

  Thelon sighed, “Okay, I give up. What is supposed to be happening right now? Are you going to tell our futures or something?”

  Marcus shot him an angry glance and said, “Don’t be rude, Thelonious.”

  She spoke at last. “Why are you here?”

  “Come on,” Thelon said.

  “The man said there was something to see here,” Marcus said.

  “Obviously we didn’t have anything better to do like get something to eat. You gonna show us something or what? I’m shaking with anticipation.”

  The artist smiled, revealing teeth stained black and sharpened to points, “Ahh, yes. I’ll show you something.” She produced two little masks—sleep masks that blocked out the light. “Put these on.”

  Thelon examined the mask. Soft. Black. No obvious signs of sorcery, but that didn’t mean anything. He saw Marcus had slipped his on immediately. “I guess we’re doing this.”

  The song from his dream—the one he’d heard and almost lost on waking—played in a full synesthesia holo in his mind. He tasted the chord progression, felt the gentle breeze of an orchestra over his skin. Not bad. Neat trick. The melody fell apart into a cacophony. He was dre
aming. He hadn’t woken up today. He was somewhere else. Floating eyes watching a movie.

  Thelon saw himself getting ready for work. His house was stylish. Tasteful art on the walls. He wore a beard. A suit. Turning, he looked at himself. He wanted to say something, but the vision was moving.

  The eye revolved and Thelon shot up and up into the atmosphere at terrible speed. Space smashed forward in a light show worthy of an Academy award for special effects. Faster and faster. Thelon was a cringe wrapped in terror. With a jarring, sudden stop, he saw an angel—wings and all that shit—floating in space. Hate flowed out of it in a nightmare broadcast. A chorus of voices raised in shrieks. Horrors. The end of time. The end of everything.

  “I can’t wake up!” he screamed, and it was over.

  The woman lifted the sleep mask from his eyes. “Of course you can. You are awake right now.”

  Thelon said, “Well, that was fucking stupid.” He looked to Marcus, hoping he hadn’t been screaming the entire time. “You ready to go?”

  Marcus nodded, but didn’t say anything. Marcus didn’t say anything all the way to the cafe. Thelon ordered for both of them and gorged himself on the synthetic bacon and coffee.

  “What did you see?” Marcus asked, breaking his silence.

  “I didn’t see shit. You?”

  “I saw home. New Hampshire in the fall. The leaves had changed color. My family. My brother had a son. They were happy.”

  “Great. That’s a happy thing. Didn’t you say that’s what you were dreaming about last night? It was just some dream-trigger dope.”