Project Recollection

by A A Woods

  My face must look like a damn tomato, I think now as I see the fresh memory circling at the top of the obelisk. Recorded last night.

  Right when I was facing Anubis.

  “Damnit, Damien,” I snarl, my fingers digging into Pixel’s fur. He doesn’t seem to mind, purring deep enough to match my growling breath.

  I’m going to let him lose the next match and see how he likes working on his own, I storm, shoving his channel aside without even glancing at the new memory. It’s probably one of his stupid pranks on the other Gamers in his house, but if it’s another useless recollection of him eating Pueblo Pizza and watching someone else practice their gaming skills, I think I’ll explode.

  Besides, experiencing his memory feels like throwing oil on a fire. He’s arrogant enough without me tuning in.

  I pull out of the VERAN without unplugging my IRIS, letting my fingers wander thoughtlessly over Pixel’s vibrating spine. I can smell the cat litter in the other room—Mom probably hasn’t cleaned it in days. The dusty air from the heating vents settles on my skin.

  As if drawn by some masochistic inner demon I can’t quite control, my mind drifts into what if. I wonder who’s taken over our old apartment. Is a family living in that three-bedroom villa in an eastern high-rise with views of the river? A mother and father, maybe? Still together, their children packing lunches as they head off to school? It’s frightening how easily I can picture them. Black-haired like us, but different. Smiling. Happy. The mother doesn’t think to hide in memory and the father doesn’t care about the IRIS cables his kids have. But that’s because their cables didn’t blind one of them. No, these kids are success stories of the Kinder program. They get to grow up whole, healthy, connected to the VERAN. Plugged into the topside system. Neither of them are Gamers. Neither of them are outcasts.

  A new generation of technology, as ProRec says. The light of our future.

  But our family didn’t turn out that way. My blindness was the fulcrum around which our history diverged. It was my mother’s idea to get my cable installed so young. Despite Dad’s objections, Mom wanted me to be ready for what was coming.

  I don’t think my fried optic nerves were supposed to be a part of that future.

  I release a sigh and lean my head back against the chair.

  My life is so tangled up in Project Recollection that sometimes it’s impossible to see where their story starts and my own begins.

  To distract myself, I pull up my advertisement. Freelance repair, the only thing I can do without showing up on the VERAN and exposing myself to ProRec’s security network.

  There’s one response.

  Five hundred virts to fix my restaurant’s internal network. Sky Market, stall four hundred and thirteen.

  I rub my face as I consider the offer. It’s a meager sum for a hefty risk, but I need the money. Mr. Consalos isn’t going to wait forever, no matter how much he says he likes me. I know from experience that the world is full of sympathetic faces, but, in the end, no one really does anything. Sure, they step aside for the blind, offer their arm to the elderly. But people’s kindness ends where the scales of inconvenience shift out of their favor. They only want to help when it fits their busy schedule.

  I might be a loner, but the truth is that everyone’s alone. That’s why the citizens of this city love to share memories so much. The illusion of connection makes our cosmic isolation less painful.

  Well, I’m not swallowing ProRec’s pill. I’ll fight their influence with every step, ignore the temptation of both my own and others’ memories. Even offering to fix their machines in the Sky Market leaves me feeling cold and queasy, as if, despite my best efforts, I’m still a cog in their giant machine.

  But a girl’s gotta pay rent.

  I’ll be there in an hour, I write back to the restaurant-owner before yanking my IRIS cable out of the port. The vast virtual landscape disappears and my world narrows to what I can hear, touch, taste, and smell. Lifting Pixel off my lap, I place him, protesting, on the ground.

  I’ll do the restaurant job, pay our landlord, make sure my mother has something to eat.

  And then I’m going to hunt down Damien.

  I have one chance left to enter the tournament. One chance to find out what my brother hid in my cable, solve the mystery of his disappearance, maybe even bring him home.

  I’m not going to let that self-centered, arrogant prick ruin it.

  Tora

  Tuesday, September 18th, 2195

  8:03 A.M. EST

  Tourists often describe the Sky Market as a dream. Frilly, ethereal, lit by the glow of over a thousand stalls selling things from holograms to body modifications to food experiences, it sprawls between three super-scrapers and sixteen levels, squatting over half of midtown and bursting with activity even at nine in the morning. Taxies hum around the scattered docks and private vehicles park on the upper levels, spewing the rich and exotic into the wealthier high-story shops. The lower stories of the Market are a hive of night workers grabbing post-shift drinks and smoke shops stuffed with addicts of a different sort. Cheap restaurants flash their specials signs and prop up holographic boards to lure in the hungry. Bodies are everywhere.

  The Sky Market might be a dream to some, but to me it’s a nightmare. Always in motion and teeming with cameras, it’s everything I have built my life to avoid.

  Unfortunately, five hundred virts might be the only thing that lets me keep that life, so I park my half-charged Bi-Bike in a tiny slot on level four, check to make sure my Fuzz Specs are in place, and plug myself into my PAP. Holding it at an angle by my hip, I can see the ground a few feet in front of me. Mentally tracing a Sky Market map in my head, I set out toward the four-hundreds, darting through the crush of pedestrians already filling the narrow walkways.

  Voices and smells wash over me, crowding my senses like radio waves on a frequency. I hear children demanding gifts from their exasperated parents (“Mommy, I want a holographic super-scraper!”), gossiping ladies headed to work (“Honestly, the memories she posts on her channel…”), and vendors trying to bait in potential customers (“Come and get it, a fresh breed straight from the fields of Colorado”). The tiny cone that the PAP’s camera illuminates for me is constantly interrupted by bright shoes and heavy boots, black heels and fuzzy slippers. As the weather turns with the end of summer, the styles swing toward faux fur and moody colors, despite the warmth that the smog holds against the city.

  I flick my PAP up to check the number on the nearest stall, frustrated by how slow I have to move. Three hundred ninety-nine. Hooking my thumbs in my jacket pocket, I stroll casually down the sloping bridge and hope no one notices the way my hand shifts as I walk, the way my feet stumble every time a pair of legs blocks my view. It’s strange to have my chin tilted up and still be looking at the ground, but hey, it’s what I’ve got.

  I keep my steps purposeful, clipped, calm, picking my way forward like an ordinary shopper… until a hologram appears in front of me.

  Danny’s Diner, it proclaims in flashing green and gold letters, surrounded by dancing four-leaf clovers.

  With a twist of my wrist, I check the number.

  This is the place.

  I memorize the entrance—the glass door and the immediate area beyond—before unplugging and twining my IRIS cable into my hair. The black electrical tape around the cord of my cable might be fake, but it still marks me as a Gamer. An outcast. A girl who doesn’t belong in above-ground society.

  I’m not sure how the owner of the restaurant will react to someone like me, so I use the sharp end of my IRIS cable to hold my hair in a loose bun, hiding the black tape.

  The door hisses open and I’m welcomed by a rush of smells. Hash browns. Bacon. Beer.

  “How can I help ye?”

  The man’s accent is blatantly fake, but there’s enough noise echoing off the walls to make me think that the tourists don’t care.

  “You posted a request,” I say, letting the door shut behind me. “Br
oken internal network.”

  “You the freelancer?” he says, accent dropping away like a coat. I hear a rustle and imagine him crossing his arms. “Bit young, aren’t you?”

  My lips twitch.

  “Young enough to do what you can’t.” The man huffs and I curl one side of my mouth in a mockery of manners. “Perhaps I have the wrong place—”

  “There’s a glitch in my system,” he interrupts gruffly. “Keeps switching the flavors in the memories. People think they’re gonna be tastin’ cheesecake and they get tripe. That sorta thing.”

  “Sounds simple enough,” I say. “Why not call the manufacturer?”

  The man shifts again and I know the answer before he says it.

  “We… altered it. A bit.”

  My smile grows wider. More feral.

  In this city, there is nothing more dangerous or illegal than tampering with the Neurowiring that has become so critical to our lives. It’s why Gamers are the lowest of the low, reviled for their decision to risk their health and sanity for the rush of Yokai dueling. It’s why animal memories—which can enhance the feral chemistry of a human brain and spin a person’s thoughts wildly out of control—have become the most illegal and repugnant black-market item.

  It’s why the code in my cable is so valuable, code that not only works but works smoothly, keeps my neurons safe. My brother’s effort to tip the scales back in my favor after the error that left me blind.

  But, of course, greed is insidious and Gamers aren’t the only ones betting against the house.

  “How?” I ask, planting my hands on my hips.

  I hear the man’s feet shift, the floor beneath him squeaking like vinyl.

  “We laced them.” His voice is low, but the words are heavy enough to be heard over the joyful noise of people eating.

  “Laced?”

  “Just a bit. I got a guy to come in and code a bit of euphoria in the more expensive meals. Nothing dangerous.”

  My smile has become a grin as the man’s voice grows more and more uncertain.

  “So you can’t call the manufacturer anymore,” I say.

  Understatement of the year.

  “Look, are you gonna help or not?”

  “Show me where your main port is,” I say, gesturing with one hand. “And I want the money in advance.”

  The man grumbles, but he’s desperate enough not to argue. He shoves a data-drive at me and I plug it into my PAP while his steps echo, walking away. Under the guise of checking to make sure all the money is there, I use my handheld to watch where he goes, following his rounded shadow as he weaves through the tightly-packed circular tables, each with an access port in the middle. Around me people laugh and gesture over their coffee, each tossed hand and sprawled leg a danger. A risk.

  I swallow.

  But the owner is waiting, so I memorize the route and unplug myself, striding confidently toward him.

  I don’t quite make it.

  My toes catch on the edge of something soft—a carpet?—and I fall, scrambling to keep my footing before my outstretched hand slaps against a wall. I feel a large shape next to me, the owner’s aftershave pungent at this distance.

  “Sorry, it’s early,” I say, cheeks burning.

  He sniffs and the sound carries all the dismissive exasperation I have come to loathe. “The port’s here.”

  “Any firewalls I should know about?”

  “Just the basics. Password is luckoftheIrish. No spaces”

  “Creative,” I say with a deep breath, forcing myself to regain composure.

  “Hurry up then. I’ve got the brunch rush coming up and I don’t want people getting blood pudding instead of pancakes.”

  I wait until his footsteps squeak away before I reach out and feel my way toward the port, hoping no one is watching my fingers fumble over the wall.

  As I plug in, my mind falls out of habit into the security cameras. I breathe a sigh of relief as the whole restaurant is laid out before me, every detail in high resolution. The owner, still making his way through the forest of customers, returning to the front door, is a red-faced, red-haired man with thick arms and pale blue eyes. He looks like something that was once soft but was left out in the sun too long, baked and brutalized by the heat of the world. Around him are customers enjoying his menu’s offerings in a variety of ways. One table has an enviable spread of real food, their clothing pressed and clean. Probably hungover college students. They’re all plugged into their handheld devices, eyes bleary as their minds drift into memories that aren’t theirs, listening to voices that aren’t here, every so often shoving a spoonful of something into their slack faces.

  Beside them, six boisterous gray-haired men in a corner booth crash mugs of coffee together, spilling on the waterproof port in the middle. They are the loudest in the diner and the only ones without IRIS cables. Purists, perhaps, or just men of tradition.

  Next to them are three women, perched like starving birds at their empty table as they experience the memory of the meals served in this establishment at half-cost. Whether they are too broke or too vain to want the real food, I can’t be sure. A waiter passes their table in a green apron, but all three are blissfully lost in the mind of someone else, unaware of the voices around them or even the presence of their own companions.

  Of course, there’s one woman in the corner, surreptitiously plugged into her own device as the people at her table enjoy the memory of food. It’s impossible to be sure, but from the shifting pleasure on her face and the way one hand keeps straying to her crotch, I suspect she’s tuned into Channel 34, using the excuse of a restaurant outing to enjoy the carnal pleasures of the VERAN’s most infamous station. Perhaps that’s her husband next to her, enjoying a memory of steak and eggs and totally oblivious to his wife enjoying a meal of an entirely different nature.

  I chuckle to myself.

  Ah, the little joys of people-watching.

  Fixing the code is easy—whoever altered their system originally had somehow managed to cross two network pathways while tangling a lusty memory in with the filet minion. The consequence was a full-system confusion, pieces of the illicit recollection spreading like a plague and attaching to strange bits of other meals, sending them haywire. All I have to do is cleanse the system of the offending memory, sending out a general-recall of the pieces, twining them into an iron-tight band. I wait until I have the full recollection in hand (so to speak) before removing a single line of the code and wrapping it around the filet minion memory.

  There, I think as I reboot the system, causing a slight flicker. A murmur of discontent makes its way around the diner, but it dies just as quickly.

  My mind aches from the mental gymnastics, but it’s a satisfying soreness as I watch for a moment, enjoying the spectacle of patrons and waiters.

  I wonder if Zhu could have done what I do, could have adapted to the updated cable the way I have. He was—is—a genius in every sense of the word, gifted with people and computers alike. But he’s never been one to experiment with his own cable. In fact, he rarely uses it at all, much preferring to, as he puts it, help others. His bright aura of generosity lures people to him like moths fluttering in his wake, happy to follow wherever he might lead. Dad always said it was his brain that got him that internship at ProRec, made him their youngest programmer in decades. But I think it was his smile. The way he laughed. His relentless positivity.

  I didn’t get that gene.

  I’m about to pull out of the system when the door slides open. My mind snags on chunky heels the color of fire, wide lips, onyx eyes. A rainbow of neon tape around an IRIS cable swinging loose and proud.

  Anubis.

  Shit.

  Her eyes sweep the restaurant, looking for something. Or someone.

  They fall on me.

  I stumble backward, pulling myself out of the port, but it’s too late. Even before my mind leaves the cameras, I can see her striding toward me, shoes announcing her arrival.

  I spin arou
nd, catching her perfume even as she clicks to a stop. She smells like lilacs.

  “Hello Tora.”

  I fold my arms and try to picture where her face would be. “What do you want?”

  She laughs. “That’s no way to greet a friend.”

  “We aren’t friends.”

  “I rose to your challenge,” she says, her voice teasing. Mocking. “I think I deserve some credit.”

  My heart clenches around my windpipe. Was it just charity then, fighting me?

  “You fought,” I say, stepping forward. “And you lost. It doesn’t go beyond that.”

  I aim to shoulder past her but my hip hits a table. A customer’s voice rises in complaint and I smell spilled coffee. Something wet and hot begins to seep into my boots.

  “What’s this?”

  The owner’s voice comes from my right, impatient, outraged. I jerk back, my body colliding with the rear wall.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  “I don’t know who she is—” I start, but he cuts me off.

  “We don’t accept her kind here,” he growls. I feel eyes on me. I want to sink into the wallpaper, disappear into my darkness like everything else.

  I realize my IRIS cable is hanging free.

  “You’re one of them.” The man’s voice is closer. Harder. I feel his hand on my arm. “I want my money back.”

  “Now wait just a second,” comes Anubis, bright and cheerful.

  “Don’t,” I snap, but the owner is in my face, his breath warming my cheeks with the smell of smoke and day-old whiskey.

  “My establishment doesn’t associate with addicts. Give me back my money.”

  The ultimatum settles on my shoulders, bristling against my spine. I can’t lose the virts, can’t afford to give them back. The idea of going home empty-handed after taking such a risk is almost nauseating.

  But if anyone in here calls the police, if anyone thinks to record this…

  The Fuzz Specs might hide my face, but there are other ways to find a person. Voice, hair, the shape of someone’s shoulders. Forensic specialists long ago perfected the art of using the public’s memories to track down offenders. ProRec might already be doing exactly that, tracing me to this location. Their private police could be on their way to find the last stubborn Sidana.