by Cody Sisco
Victor nodded. “It’s like living in a thick fog. I almost didn’t recognize that my grandfather was—” Karine was shaking her head. “I wasn’t going to say anything about that!” Victor said to her. “I was going to say that he was sick!” He turned to Lisabella, “I almost didn’t recognize myself. On Personil, I’m not much fun to be around.”
“I want to make one thing clear to the LT public,” Karine said. “Personil is an effective treatment for cutting down resonant episodes. It acts on the emotions and leaves higher reasoning function intact. Victor produced exceptionally complex and sophisticated computer models for Gene-Us Enterprises when I was chief and while he was taking Personil. Intellectually, he was not at all affected by his medication.”
“That’s a fair point,” he said bitterly. “I was the best emotionless human computer that ever worked for Karine.”
Lisabella laughed, and no small portion of it was at Karine’s expense, Victor thought.
“‘Personil takes the person out of you,’” Victor said. “It’s what another Class Three and I joked about those few times we were lucid.”
Karine smoothed the fabric of her dress, running her hands along her thighs. She said, “I’d like to clear up a misconception. Personil was originally named for its green coloring, based on a derivative of parsley, which in French is persil.”
“What I find puzzling,” Lisabella said, looking down at Karine, “is that the drug wasn’t renamed after Broken Mirrors became stigmatized in SeCa. Wouldn’t that have been the compassionate thing to do?”
Karine waved a hand in front of her face as if she were shooing a bad odor.
“Let me ask you now about Samuel Miller,” Lisabella said, turning back to Victor.
“Fine,” he said, steeling himself.
“What will you say when you see him?”
Victor touched his pocket, remembered that the King had the data egg. He hopefully wouldn’t have to speak to Samuel until he got it back. “I honestly don’t know.”
Lisabella looked down at her MeshBit. “That’s all the questions I have for you, Victor.”
Karine said, “We still need to touch on Victor’s injury.”
Lisabella regarded him, waiting for his comment.
He gestured to the bandage on his head. “Look what can happen. Just another reason we need protection.”
Karine said, “But—”
“That’s all I’m going to say about it,” he said. “I do want to say something about the Classification Commission, though.”
“I don’t think now is a good time,” Karine said.
Lisabella leaned forward. “I’m listening.”
“I want the citizens of the Louisiana Territories to know they have a choice to make. In Semiautonomous California, people with mirror resonance syndrome are treated like criminals. That must not happen here. Our symptoms get worse not because the disease’s progression is inevitable, but because we are ostracized and locked up. The facilities and camps were a mistake. I’m opposed to any attempt to recreate the Classification Commission here without significant reforms to how people like me are treated. Our rights must be respected. We deserve better. The Louisiana Territories and all its people deserve better.”
“I see,” Lisabella said. “That doesn’t quite align with BioScan’s official position. Care to comment, Karine?”
Karine sniffed and said to Lisabella, “As Circe worked out with your suits in advance, we’ll be reviewing your footage carefully before it goes live. We’re all on the same page, or we will be by the time it reaches the feeds.” She glared at Victor and then turned a fake smile toward the reporter.
“Of course,” Lisabella said. “I do have one more question for you, though, Karine. It’s about a death at Oak Knoll Hospital.”
“I’m sorry?” Karine looked confused.
“The death at Oak Knoll. A suicide.”
Victor froze.
Karine said, “Are you—are you asking me about Jefferson Eastmore?”
“No,” Lisabella said.
Victor heard the sound of an eagle shrieking before it dove at its prey. He was almost entirely sure the sound was only in his head.
“I’m referring to Dario Sanchez, the nurse who killed himself after caring for Samuel Miller. Given the circumstances of his death, how will you prevent more suicides here in New Venice?”
14
All citizens are classified by their level of Mesh access, whether they are aware of it or not. At the top are the system administrators and content consultants who have unrestricted access. Then there are those like me who can hack their way to knowledge. Then there are seekers, who delve one layer at a time at great expense, worming their way toward the truth. And then there’s everyone else, the blissfully, contentedly ignorant who accept whatever comes through their Mesh feeds.
—Osirus Smythe’s “Data Isn’t Free,” an unpublished term paper
13 May 1991
New Venice, The Louisiana Territories
“I can’t answer that question,” Karine said slowly as if she were tiptoeing out of a cave, fearful of waking sleeping bats.
Lisabella stared at Karine, waiting, looking unsatisfied.
“I wasn’t there, need I remind you?” Karine’s voice hitched and sounded almost like a child’s.
“Surely you’re aware of the suicide, though,” Lisabella said. “You’re second to the chief of the company bringing Samuel Miller to New Venice. I looked through the SeCa MeshNews records, reported and unreported. Surely you’ve discussed the history of mass hysteria and hallucinations around Samuel Miller, and you’ve a plan to protect your staff and the public?”
“Do you want to create a panic?” Karine asked. Hardness gave her voice a hammer’s heft. She and Lisabella were sizing each other up. Lisabella maintained her relaxed posture, seated, though she’d turned toward Karine, who was standing and seemed to be struggling to maintain her composure. If she’d been holding anything in her hands, Victor thought, it would have already been shaken to pieces.
“There is no risk,” Karine went on. “I don’t see any reason why we would need to cause undue alarm.”
Lisabella frowned and stood. “I see I’ll have to take this question up with Ms. Eastmore.”
“I’ll let her know you’ll try,” Karine said.
“Thank you, Victor,” Lisabella said. “You did admirably.”
Victor stuttered a response. The tension in the room could power a generator, and he wasn’t sure what it was all about. A suicide at Oak Knoll? When?
Lisabella left the apartment without another word. As soon as she was gone, Karine cursed, “Laws,” grabbed a pillow on the couch and squeezed it with both hands, fingers digging into the soft material, and then threw it down. She crossed to a table where her purse was resting, took out a MeshBit, and started speaking. “Circe, this is Karine. Our reporter just launched a sneak attack named Dario Sanchez. MeshNews is going to fuck us hard if they run this. The LTs will come down harder on Broken Mirrors than SeCa ever did. Hang on.” Karine breathed, held a hand to her forehead, started speaking again. “She’s a fame-hungry bottom feeder, but she’s not going to rattle us. Nothing bad has happened here in the LTs. No matter how they try to play it, we’re talking about an event that’s decades old in a country no one here cares about. It’s probably a bit of colorful fluff to raise curiosity. Still, we really need to know what angle they’re taking. Talk to your friend and get back to me.”
Karine hung up. She seemed unaware that Victor was sitting in the elevated nook. Her anxiety left him feeling oddly calm. Perhaps he’d so demonized her that he wasn’t at all tuned in to her emotions. Or maybe the relief he felt was a confessional afterglow, the benefit of speaking truthfully to Lisabella without reservation. And he hadn’t had to lie about being attacked. Not a bad day after all.
When he stood up, Karine looked at him and grudgingly said, “Not bad. Then again, I’d say she went easy on you.”
“What wa
s she talking about? Mass hallucinations?”
“Not now. Alia wants to run another scan on you.”
“But—”
“I promise we’ll fill you in. This is more Circe’s area than mine. I wasn’t there. Go on.”
Victor walked past Karine and left her apartment. He rode the elevator to the ground floor and made his way to the BioScan campus, pelted by rain and feeling buoyant but not in a blank way, in a things-are-going-great kind of way.
He pinged Alia, and she sent a message back that something had come up with a patient and they should meet later. He went to his desk and returned to the data he had on Karine, focusing so hard his head throbbed. He drank a vial of fumewort and carried on.
He heard a chime and saw that a message had come through on his screen.
Cogitron Exelus, now.
Oddly, there was no sender listed. Maybe Alia had a problem with her MeshBit.
Victor jumped from his chair, trying to ignore the pain in his head, rushed out of the room, almost ran into an employee in the hall, apologized, never slackened his pace, and rocketed into the blazing outdoors. The storm had passed, leaving in its wake the scent of rain on pavement and wet grass.
Late spring in the Louisiana Territories was hot, though not quite swamp-gross hot. New Venice lay hundreds of kilometers upstream from where the Mississippi disgorged into the Gulf of the Americas, so there was always a hint of dryness inside the insufferable humidity, suggesting that the situation could be worse, that it could be even wetter and stickier than it already was, and people should be happy it wasn’t.
Victor stripped off his shirt, arranged it to cover his head—there was nothing so stupefyingly hot as a head full of sun-baked curly hair—and headed uphill. By the time he reached the annex, sweat dripped down his chest and back. He wiped himself with his shirt, and as he did, he swayed, a rush of woozy pleasure moving through him. Victor’s skin, glistening like the upper reaches of Lake Caddo, almost matched the mud in color, its muted brownness, like pale bluish clay smeared thinly over a darker, richer coffee-ground layer of healthy soil.
He’d been standing for a minute or so, looking at his skin and the landscape, trying to figure out whether the similarities were an illusion or an accurate representation of reality, when he heard someone call his name.
Victor blushed, realizing that he was standing naked from the waist up where anyone could see him, adding to the eccentric Eastmore rumors that were no doubt already circulating.
“Victor!” the voice called again, and this time he recognized it.
Ozie was walking up the hill, looking somewhat winded. He wore gray pants, a navy windbreaker, and two black gloves. Sweat covered his face.
“I was worried about you,” Victor said.
“Put your shirt on, and stop showing off. No one wants to see that.” Ozie patted his stomach with his right gloved hand, an oddly stiff and halting movement. His belly lacked the washboard firmness of their college days. Ozie said with a grin, “I need to start eating whatever you’re eating.”
Victor looked at Ozie’s glove and remembered. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “Your finger…”
“What about it?” Ozie asked.
“Tosh showed it to me! I scanned the fingerprint.”
“He what? You—ohhh…” Ozie shook his head, wearing an expression of rueful admiration.
Ozie’s right shoulder was lower than his left, as if he were carrying a heavy weight. He saw Victor looking at him and smiled. “You want to see?” His grin was playful and sly.
A memory of one of the few times they’d stripped naked and wrestled came unbidden to Victor. A brief sexual phase of their relationship had been fun at first. Then it had turned weird. One or both of them would usually go blank during the act. Neither liked the idea of getting it on with a mindless version of the other, and the sexual attraction they felt toward each other had quickly dissipated.
Ozie raised his hand. The dark gray glove covering it was large and loose, a giant’s glove on a child’s hand. He pulled the glove off and showed Victor the most bizarre prosthesis he’d ever seen.
Flesh the clear snot color of a pale jellyfish surrounded chrome metal bones and red and blue tubes that looked like optic cables and liquid pulsing capillaries. The hand flexed and made a fist, its inner pieces shifting smoothly.
“How far up does it go?” Victor asked.
Ozie gestured with his human hand to his upper arm where the curve of his shoulder ended.
Victor shivered. He’d never thought about this type of enhancement. Chemicals and brainhacking were one thing. This was replacing a part of yourself with something foreign, alien.
“Why?” he asked.
“Why not?” Ozie grinned. “In all seriousness, you’re looking at the most sophisticated, high-powered mobile computing device in the Louisiana Territories. And it’s impossible to lose or have stolen.” He reached into his pocket and pulled something out. Cupped in the palm of his translucent hand was the data egg, a black oblong on the oceanic blob of his prosthetic hand.
Victor took the data egg, pressed it briefly to his forehead, then stuffed it in his pocket. “Care to explain?”
“It was the King’s idea to see if I could fully open the egg once you’d cracked the initial message. I couldn’t. Though I now have a good idea what it’ll take to unlock it again. I didn’t know Tosh was going to bash your head in to get it. Sorry about that.”
Victor punched Ozie in the shoulder hard.
“Ow!” they both said at once.
“Thanks a lot, asshole!” Victor said, flexing his bruised hand. “So you were never hurt? Your finger?”
“Tosh must have pulled it from the trash bin. The King and I have an understanding. I’m on his payroll now. Tosh isn’t as tight with the King as he claims to be.”
“And you are?”
“No one is! He doesn’t ever meet you in person. He’s a talking head on a vidscreen, a ridiculous avatar that looks just like a playing card. I’m serious! But he’s got more money than pretty much anyone. He’s paying me as a security consultant. He knows about that data we stole from the Institute and BioScan, but not about the MeshSats. That’s worth at least five million AUD.”
“And the polonium? What did you find out?”
Ozie wiped his prosthetic hand across his forehead. “Can we get out of this heat?”
They walked up the hill. Air-conditioned air blasted from an over-door chiller as they entered the research building.
“Shocks,” Ozie cursed. His glasses were steamed up. He tried to wipe them with his windbreaker. His robot hand fumbled, and he lost his grip on the glasses.
Victor grabbed them mid-air and wiped them on his shirt. “Looks like you need some fine-tuning of the interface,” he said, looking pointedly at Ozie’s arm.
“It works fine when it’s not snagging on clothing.” He carefully removed a tissue from his pocket, pinching one corner delicately with his artificial fingers, and wiped his forehead. “The King of Las Vegas procured the polonium and shipped it to Oak Knoll Hospital. He says he thought he was dealing with Jefferson Eastmore.”
“Impossible,” Victor said. “I don’t believe Granfa Jeff killed himself.”
“Neither do I. He very much wanted to live. When it became clear that he couldn’t counteract the poison, he reached out to me, to Pearl, and to Tosh. We were supposed to help you overcome MRS symptoms and find a cure.”
“The question is, Who at Oak Knoll got their hands on the polonium, and how did they administer it?”
“The answer is in the data egg,” Ozie said. “Do you want to open it or not? I hear there’s a Cogitron Exelus here. And a doctor named Alia Effendi you find very attractive.”
“How do you know I think that?”
“Your voice. It goes deeper. Like this,” he said in a baritone.
“My voice?” Victor stopped mid-stride and laughed. “You bugged my hospital room? Pearl was worried that someone was listening.
It was you, wasn’t it?”
Ozie wrapped his synthetic arm around Victor’s shoulder before he could squirm away. The arm rested there heavily, more like a thick cable than a limb. Ozie said, “She and I already caught up.” They walked to the scanning room together. Victor was surprised that Alia wasn’t there waiting for him.
“Wait, I forgot,” Victor said. “Dario Sanchez, a nurse who killed himself the first year after Samuel was captured. Did you know about him?”
Ozie didn’t answer. He pulled up his sleeve. A square of skin on the inside of his wrist glowed with red characters. It looked like the menu on a MeshBit, numbers and brief snippets of text, and while Victor watched, the characters changed.
Victor asked, “How are you—”
“Shh,” Ozie said. “It takes concentration. There’s no mention of him in public records, not even birth and death dates, which is weird, because there should be records for other Dario Sanchezes, right? Let me dig deeper. Okay, I’m in classified records now, everything I’ve scraped together from HHN. Here! A pay stub, the last one is dated June 1971. You say he killed himself?”
“That’s what the reporter said.”
“It would have taken a lot of digging at high-up access levels to uncover this. That means someone with lots of Mesh privileges is taking an interest in this. No sweat. I’m on it.” Ozie grinned. Victor knew he liked a challenge.
The glowing characters on Ozie’s wrist faded. He pulled down his cuff, then gestured to the Cogitron Exelus. “Let’s get started!”
“So how is this going to work?” Victor asked.
Ozie explained, “I helped Jefferson put your neurograms in the data egg. And now we know your ability to control your blank episodes is what triggered it to open. We also know that it’ll open next when it’s near both you and Samuel Miller. But what we don’t know is what specifically will happen to trigger it.”
“Jefferson said he wanted me to spend time with Samuel Miller. That the data egg would help him as well. ‘You must prove that alternative treatments are effective,’ he said.”
“Exactly,” Ozie said. His gaze wandered to the Cogitron Exelus machine.
