The Body Scout: A Novel

by Lincoln Michel

  “The Janus Club is exclusive and secretive. While here, you can remain anonymous, like everyone else.” It rolled back to the bar.

  I sipped my red drink through the slit in the mask. It tasted like cinnamon mixed with cough syrup.

  Two men walked through the curtains, woozy and talking excitedly to each other. They high-fived.

  “Next time, pick the same guy and I’ll go downstairs and watch.”

  “You’re a freak. I love it!”

  I was feeling alive, like I was a balloon inflating with hot blood. I wasn’t sure if it was the drink or the neck needle or both. I took another sip before heading in.

  19

  THE SKIN COSTUMES

  As soon as I stepped through the curtains, I realized I hadn’t had enough drinks. Inside were dozens of people floating in tanks of pink water. They looked like sensory deprivation tanks, but the people were sensing all right. They moaned, groaned, and grunted, splashing the water up the sides.

  The people seemed nude, except for the masks. The nodes glowed and lit the room with a multitude of faint blue lights, like eyes of bizarre fish encountered on a deep-sea dive.

  There was another drone in here, in the same amorphous yet vaguely sensual shape. It took my arm and I could feel the warmth of its plastiflesh. It guided me to a free tank and instructed me to undress. It asked me to put on a thin and clear plastic suit that was lined with yellow nodes. I did so. The warm waters reached above my ankles.

  “Lie down, please.”

  The bot connected a red, fleshy tube to the back of the mask, on the other side of the mouth device. The screens over the eyes turned on and my sight lit up with options. Solo, Couple, or Group. I could feel the nodes humming around my head and a strange sensation in the spine like it was being licked. I said “solo” and it was selected. Then my screen lit up with people. Lots of people. A treadmill of bodies went by all in different shapes and sizes. Big, tall, wide, or skinny. Skin of various shades and genitals in every known configuration. All of them had devices embedded on their temples. Ones that looked like the devices on the human telegram the Mouth had used to call me outside of Penn Station.

  I selected one more or less at random. A skinny male body with stimulator rings embedded along his shaft. Costume is currently worn by another member. Please select again.

  I picked the next one, a sleek androgynous body with genitals that had been edited smooth all over. Dressing, the screen said. The humming around my head turned into a roar. My vision flashed white and black. Then I was gone.

  And then I was somewhere else.

  I was with the person I’d selected. Or rather inside them, looking out from their eyes. They were looking down at their skin and when I wondered how it felt, the right hand ran along the body and I felt what their fingertips felt. The skin was so different than mine. Smoother, softer. And yet I could also, in some part of my brain, feel my own body sitting in the tank.

  “What do I do here?” I said. But when I said it, they said it.

  “What do I do here?”

  They were in a small bedroom with no one else around. Beside the bed was a table with an array of plugs, rings, squealers, and other sensation devices. I thought about sitting down on the bed and, with about a two-second lag, they moved to the mattress.

  I was controlling them. It wasn’t just like the device the Mouth had used to speak with me on the street. It was the exact device. I realized why Zunz was a member of this club. It was a Monsanto club. A test ground, perhaps, for new devices they hadn’t yet brought to market. Suddenly, I felt angry and afraid. I wanted to get out of them. The person was screaming, because I was screaming. We fell backward off the bed and hit our head.

  Then I was back in the tank. Another amorphous shape floating above me, this one pale blue and covered in wiggling protrusions. It lit up as I sat up. It held a needle with green liquid in an extending claw. “Sir, would you like a shot to calm yourself? Stress can disrupt the connection.”

  “I’m good,” I said. “Just getting used to it.”

  “Very well. I am required to remind you that any damage to the Astral will be deducted from your account.”

  I took a minute to calm myself. Then I went back in.

  I was at the start screen again and this time picked “group” and a costume that seemed to be a stout, hirsute man. Please wait a moment while we transport the costume.

  When the nodes hummed and I was transported into the man, I realized I’d made a mistake. My senses were overloaded by the moans, touches, and licks of a dozen bodies. I was in a pile of people inside a hot, small chamber. You could have called it an orgy, except the controls weren’t precise enough. Everyone moved as awkwardly as glitching robots. When I tried to stand up, the man moved to his knees, then fell back down. We steadied ourselves on someone’s behind. Our feet slid on the sticky floors.

  There were several of the amorphous drones floating around the orgy like bizarre clouds. They were all different colors. Violet, orange, crimson, sage, umber. They had long arms extended, and they were hoisting up the people. Helping them stroke, grab, spread, and thrust.

  I had to keep adjusting my movements to fit this different form. Shorter arms, wider girth. The simplest thing, like snapping a finger, felt uncanny in this shape. I could feel everything though. The sensations were perfectly passed directly to my body, the one sloshing in the tank. Too perfectly. The parts rubbing over his parts, which felt like my parts. It all crashed over me like a tidal wave.

  In the tank, I sat up and ripped the cord out of the back of my neck. Some hot fluid dripped on my back. I felt both ashamed and angry. I wasn’t sure at who. Zunz for coming to this fucked-up place. The Mouth for making it. Or me, for enjoying it. Because I did enjoy it. Less the sex than the skin. The ability to move myself into another body like I’d always wanted.

  It wasn’t perfect tech, that was for sure. There was a lag between thought and movement, between neurons and nerves. And there was resistance throbbing in the space between that pushed back on me. I guessed that was what philosophers called will. Still, I couldn’t deny I felt alive.

  I got out of the tank and ripped off the plastic suit. The smell of human fluids of all different kinds filled the air of the dim room. One of the drones floated by, and I reached out to squeeze one of its protrusions. It was warm and wet.

  “Where was that?”

  “Where was where, sir?”

  “The people I went into. Where were they?”

  The slick red drone hummed in the air. It tilted downward. “Why, right below you, sir.”

  I looked down and realized all the sounds and smells weren’t from the people in the tanks, they were from the people down below. The costumes, the system had called them. Through the opaque-glass floor tiles, I could see them rutting, moaning, and rolling around in a large glass structure with the assisting drones floating between them. And I could make out other people, the ones watching and cheering.

  Back in the jazzy room, I found myself desperately thirsty. I chugged a glass of water from a droid’s tray, then two more. I could still feel the outlines of the bodies I’d been in. Like they were following me around in vengeance. But the effect wore off after a couple minutes and I found myself back in the dull reality of a sleazy club filled with obnoxious people laughing loudly and bragging about their exploits.

  “I can’t wait until this gets on the market,” I heard a woman say. “Imagine showing someone precisely how you want your kitchen cleaned.”

  “That’s grotesque, Cynthia,” her friend said. “You want to be inside the help?”

  “Oh, it was just a joke. Lighten up.”

  I looked around for a while, on the off chance I might see a physique that resembled Kang’s. But I couldn’t make out who anyone was with the masks. I headed outside, pulling off the flesh hood, and telling myself that what I’d done didn’t count if I left quickly after.

  Outside, I saw two people in black coats alternating betwee
n smoking and breathing through filters. One pale and androgynous, the other a short woman. The first’s brown eyes and short fingers looked familiar to me. Then I realized why. I’d been inside them.

  They looked at me and then looked away. I didn’t see any recognition in their expression. So I pulled out an eraser and joined them.

  The woman noticed me gawking at the nodes on her temple. She flared her nostrils. “They come out, if you’re wondering.”

  “Although not the neural mesh they injected,” the smooth-bodied one said. “Gives me weird dreams at night.”

  “Do you mind telling me? What it’s like, I mean.” I smiled in what I hoped was a friendly way. “I’m a prospective member.”

  They sighed and then exhaled a cloud of smoke. “I do mind. First off, I’m not allowed to talk about it. The contract is pretty explicit. Secondly, we’re on break just trying to relax, okay.”

  I nodded. Looked away.

  “Oh, it’s fine. Could be worse,” the woman said. She took another drag. “I don’t have to worry about the clients’ diseases or freak-outs. We only touch other workers, and I can count on them to be professional, at least.”

  “It’s steady employment. Not a lot of that going around,” the other said.

  “I can relate.”

  “Somehow I doubt that.” They pointed at the mask I had in my hands. Then tapped one of their nodes. “You know, you people linger up here. A little bit of you remains. Like an infection. So I know exactly what you’re like.”

  A little line of blood was dripping out of the woman’s nose. She cursed and wiped it with her coat. She turned to her friend. “We should be going back. Tick tock.”

  The two workers finished their cigarettes and flicked them on the ground. They slid back in the employee entrance without saying another word.

  I thought about shouting that I wasn’t like that. That I was a working stiff too. But instead I sat there against the wall, smoking my eraser, wondering what else I didn’t know about my brother’s life. What other secrets had he been hiding?

  I was feeling pitiful enough that I wanted someone to cheer me up. Someone to touch my actual skin. I thought maybe Dolores would be up for the task. I called her, pretending it was about the case.

  “Jesus, Kobo, where have you been? I called you twice.”

  I couldn’t see where Dolores was, but there were lights flashing behind her.

  “Couldn’t check my phone. I think I found out where Kang and Zunz were meeting up,” I said. “I was just there. You aren’t going to believe it.”

  “It’s Kang I’m calling about.” Her voice shook and her skin looked pale. “He’s dead.”

  20

  THE SURVEILLANCE FOOTAGE

  I got home late, drained and still partly drugged from the Janus Club mask. I scratched the back of my neck where the metal tongue had gone in and lapped my nerves. It was inflamed but didn’t hurt.

  If there was one immutable fact of life, it was that you got one body and that was that. You could shape it. Upgrade it. Pray it didn’t get injured. But there was just one vessel for your consciousness. You didn’t get a do-over. It was the one thing that put everyone on the same level. And now someone had invented a loophole. A device that could pour your mind into a different vessel. Sure, the connection was wonky. It was like driving a car with a broken axle and two tires missing. You could move it, but not the way you wanted. Still. It was thrilling.

  Before I could worry more about the ethical implications, there was a knock on my door.

  “I’m starved,” Dolores said, walking right by me and into the living room. “Let’s order pizza.”

  She was wearing a black jumper made of light-absorbing fabric that made her appear as a flat silhouette. Her hands and face seemed to float in the air, attached to a two-dimensional form. It was more than enough to see though.

  “Do you know how long I got chewed out about letting you slip into the Pyramid compound?” she said. She was wearing sleek black goggles, like twin black holes. “You could at least offer me a drink.”

  “Right, right,” I said and headed to the fridge. There wasn’t much inside, just a couple beers and energy waters. I cracked two of the beers and handed her one. She drank half of it on the spot.

  I looked around my messy apartment. There were clothes tossed around in piles and a big stain on the couch from where the Sassafras sisters had stabbed through my hand. But it was too late to clean, so I sat down across from Dolores and asked her if she saw the game.

  “I did. Those bastard Mets got lucky in the seventh. Casares almost never misses that throw.”

  “O’Gorman was a beast on the mound though. His sinker was dropping on a dime. Best of our bullpen.”

  The Mets had evened things up 1–1, and it looked like they’d make it a real series. That meant I had some time to solve the case and get my medical debt erased.

  Dolores stretched her arms and sighed. “Don’t you remember what it felt like to have all those gigantic lights shining on you as you stepped up to the plate?”

  As she said it, I could see those lights, floating like angels above me.

  “It was better times. For me at least.”

  “For us too. We were good together, back then.”

  “Yeah,” I said. My voice sounded very far away.

  Getting nostalgic with Dolores made me feel sad. Regretful. Which was something I couldn’t afford to feel any more of right then. I switched the topic to something less painful.

  “Tell me about Kang. You said he died?” I felt suddenly cold. I leaned against the counter. “Was it like Zunz?”

  Dolores shook her head, waving her hand in front of her face. “No, he had what looked like a heart attack. But wasn’t.”

  Dolores explained that the Pyramid doctors had ruled it a cardiac arrest, but it was too much of a coincidence for her tastes. She’d dug through the security feed. “The footage had been scrambled somehow, but I was able to decode it enough to see. Well. Let me show you.”

  Dolores reached into one of the pockets of her jumper and pulled out a small pill-shaped object.

  “You seen these deodrives? Use DNA strands to store data. This baby could fit the entire Library of Congress server inside. And since it’s genetic, hard to scan or track.”

  I held up the drive between my fingers. A viscous white fluid sloshed inside the little capsule.

  She slid it into an adapter and connected it to her screen. Brought up the security footage. “I was able to descramble a segment.” A large figure sneaked into Kang’s house, but they looked strange on camera. I asked Dolores to zoom in to the face and when she did I saw the issue. It wasn’t just the layer of static over the footage. The person’s skin was changing. It shifted colors and configurations every few seconds. The lips would expand or shrink, cheeks grow scruff and then turn into a smooth ruddy red. I could barely discern the outline of the face underneath.

  “It’s kaleidoscopic skin,” she explained. “Advanced espionage biotech. A living membrane that transforms color and shape. Uses modified cephalopod chromatophores controlled by a signal pack. Emits a frequency that adds sheets of noise to most cameras.”

  “Shit. Anti-surveillance tech has come a long way since we were teens painting reflective triangles on our faces to shoplift at the mall.”

  The morphing figure talked to Kang for a while, with Kang backed against the couch, arms out. At some point, Kang hung his head. Seemed to weep. The figure pulled out a needle and slid a shot into his neck.

  I asked Dolores to play it a few times. The intruder’s skin was a kaleidoscope, but I could still make out his size. Bulky and mean. Chest like a barrel. I couldn’t say for sure, but I thought it was Coppelius. If he worked with the Department of Human Limits, he’d have access to the latest tech.

  “Shit,” I said. I pulled out an eraser, lit it with shaking hands. I’d barely spoken to Kang for ten minutes. Yet I might have led to his death.

  “Can I get one of
those?” Dolores asked.

  I lit a second eraser off mine, the tips sizzling red as they met.

  Dolores blew the smoke out in a little ring. “These things do numb you, don’t they? I can see why you enjoy them.”

  After we’d numbed ourselves, Dolores asked me if it would be useful to spitball the case. “I know you like to talk things through.”

  I gave her the rundown from Zunz’s pre-death call to the Janus Club visit. Both the sex and the tech. Dolores seemed particularly interested in the latter. She asked me to see the mask and I pulled it out.

  “Might be a bit sweaty inside,” I said.

  She ran her fingers over it with awe, muttering terminology I barely recognized.

  “You know, Pyramid has been working on something like this, but using optogenetics and a neural lace. It’s been a bust. Genetically editing neurons to respond to light is tricky business, and the subjects kept having aneurysms.” She put the mask down gently on the table. She sipped a little more beer. “Okay. So where does this leave Zunz?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve got a lot of pieces, but no idea how they fit together. And half the pieces are gone. The girl escaped and Kang was a dead end.”

  “That’s a macabre pun.”

  “Sorry, not intentional.”

  “Well, I can tell you one more thing. While you were busy not returning my calls, I did a little research. Did you know Kang had a sister? Hana. And she went to high school with you and Zunz.”

  “Never heard of her. It was a big school though.”

  “Zunz did. Knew her quite well, if you know what I mean.”

  I realized that’s why Mrs. Z thought Kang was a woman. She was. Just a different Kang. Dolores had some photos of her on file. I didn’t recognize her. Then again, dating in high school was one of those areas where I was watching Zunz from the sidelines with awe and jealousy.

  “That’s interesting smoke,” I said, “but I’m not sure what direction it blows. A jealous ex killed Zunz, then a Neanderthal murdered her brother?”

  “I don’t know. But I’d bet that’s his connection to Jung Kang.”