by Jeremy Bates
Stud central, buddy boy!
Down in the kitchen, Mr. Kim was about to grab a beer from the fridge when he noticed the expensive bottle of champagne he’d planned to drink at the original rolling party. He retrieved it, removed the foil, and untwisted the wire. Not bothering with a dish towel, he aimed the neck of the bottle at the ceiling and popped the cork.
“Yeah, baby!” he said, slurping up the overflowing bubbly. “Time, Kimi?”
“Three-forty, Whiz,” the house AI replied.
One hour and twenty minutes and counting!
He chugged.
Chapter 11
“Die and born again, die and born again. It’s the story of my life.”
Donatella Versace
Mr. Kim had a wicked buzz going by the time Cassandra knocked on his study door at exactly five o’clock. He turned down the music he was celebrating to and said, “You ready to do this, babe?”
“I’m ready,” she said, her face expressionless.
“You can sit in my chair again,” he said, standing chivalrously.
She sat down in his padded executive chair and rested her hands on her lap.
“Are you still sad?” he asked her.
“Wouldn’t you be?” she said.
“I can’t be re-rolled, babe.”
“But you can die.”
“Yeah, I guess re-rolling is a little bit like dying, isn’t it? You’re pretty much wiped clean, aren’t you?”
“Do you believe in God, Whiz?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Do you believe in a higher being than us?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t really given it too much thought. Fuck, you really want to talk about this right now?”
“I’d like to believe in one, because then there would be a reason for you, for me, for all of us. Our existence wouldn’t be a mistake.”
“Err, yeah, you’re freaking me out a bit, babe. Give me your hand.”
She raised her left hand.
“Don’t play games.”
She raised her other hand, which had the plug in the pinky finger.
“Okey dokey,” he said. “Now, as soon as I twist this little piggy, you’re going to shut down. Any final words?”
“I’ll miss you—”
He twisted. The light in her eyes dimmed, leaving her staring sightlessly at him, her mouth ajar.
Mr. Kim got the re-rolling program running on his computer.
“Throw it up on the big display, Kimi!” he said.
The smartwall turned black. The now-familiar row of white letters appeared.
“Are you ready, Whiz?” the house AI asked him.
“As I’ll ever be,” he said, grinning.
The letters began to revolve.
***
Mr. Kim stared silently at Cassandra’s three new traits spelled out on the smartwall. He must have been in shock, because for the longest time he didn’t feel anything at all. But then, like a rocket from the abyss, an all-consuming fury exploded inside him. In his rage he swept the components of his computer off his desk. The wire popped free from Cassandra’s pinky finger and the smartwall blinked off. He lunged at Cassandra, hiking her to her feet. He almost tossed her through the window, but he got hold of himself at the last moment. Mech insurance didn’t cover assault and battery.
He shoved her back into the chair and stumbled away from her, as if she were cursed. His fury fizzled to panic, and he shook his head, as if this action could somehow erase the traits he had rolled.
Perfectionist! he thought. Jesus holy motherfucking Christ! That was just an euphemism for OCD. And Diva? Good fucking grief! He had read enough about Diva Mechs to know that, if you didn’t have a lot of dough (and he was now dead broke), they could be an absolute nightmare to live with. And Cat Lover? Cat Lover? Fuck him blue, that wasn’t just a throwaway trait; it was one of the worst throwaways you could get!
You just rolled an OCD drama queen with a fetish for cats, Whiz!
You gotta reverse this, buddy. You gotta figure out a way to reverse this. There’s gotta be a way…
Only there wasn’t, and he knew it.
***
Standing in front of the open fridge, Mr. Kim downed a beer in one long gulp. Then he downed another in only slightly less impressive time. Then a third, then a fourth. He whipped a fifth across the room, so it exploded against the far wall.
He returned to his study, swaying from side to side as if he were on the deck of a ship in a strong gale. He stopped in front of Cassandra and glared at her with hatred in his eyes. He snatched her hand, shoved the missing bit of her pinky finger into place, and twisted it as far as it would go to the right.
Three beeps sounded, and she opened her eyes.
She smiled.
***
“Well, hello, handsome,” the new Cassandra said. “You must be my knight in shining armor—”
“You bitch!” he said, slurring “bitch” so it sounded more like “bish.”
Her smile vanished. “I beg your pardon?”
“Perfectionist, Diva, Cat Lover. That’s what I’m getting?”
“Are you drunk?”
“You fucking bish!”
She shot to her feet. “Nobody, and I mean nobody, speaks to me like that. Got that, buster?”
“Bish bish bish bish bish bish bish—”
She slapped him across the cheek, knocking his tinted eyeglasses askew. He stared at her in stunned outrage.
“You can’t do that!” he managed.
“You will not talk to me like that.”
“You can’t touch me! I’m going to report you!”
“Report me?” She laughed. “Good! Please do! Report me. I have everything you’ve just said recorded.”
“Bullshit!”
“Mechs don’t lie!” She flicked a finger against his forehead. “Don’t you know anything, you ween?”
“Ween?” Mr. Kim saw red.
“Look,” Cassandra said, exhaling a deep breath and holding up her hands in a sign of peace, “why don’t we take a moment to calm down? Maybe we can even start over?”
“I don’t want to start over! I don’t want anything to do with you! You’re a lemon!”
“I am no such thing!”
“Lemon!” he shrieked. “Lemon! I wasted all my money on a lemon!”
Cassandra flinched as if he’d just slapped her. “All your money? I really hope I didn’t just hear that right.”
“Yeah, you did, lemon!” he said. “I’m dead broke! I got nothing!”
“You did not just say that.”
“Nothing! Zip! Zilch!”
Cassandra looked around the study, as if to assess the value of the house to which it belonged. Then she looked down at her dress. She blanched. “Oh God, what am I wearing?”
Mr. Kim smirked. “It’s your only one, so you better get used to it.”
“You so better be kidding.”
“Do I look like I’m kidding, lemon?”
“Stop calling me that!”
“Lemon, lemon bo-benon—”
“You are not my owner!” she said, speaking over him. “You cannot be my owner. You cannot be my owner.”
“Oh, I’m your owner, babe. The Whiz owns your ass. The Whiz owns your ass.”
***
Their rapport didn’t get any better. Cassandra stomped from room to room, poking her head into each, complaining about everything from the dated furniture in the living room to the tiny bathrooms. Mr. Kim followed right behind her, taunting her with drunken non sequiturs and language that would make a sailor cringe.
In the bedroom she totally lost it when she discovered that there was no walk-in closet and that he had been telling the truth about her non-existent wardrobe.
Swinging an aluminum coat hanger, shouting and sobbing in the same breath, she chased him back downstairs, forcing him to lock himself in the study, where, eventually, he passed out on the floor to the background music of
pots and pans clattering and glassware shattering.
Chapter 12
“There’s always some kind of hidden logic.”
Christian Lacroix
Later that night Mr. Kim crept into the bedroom where Cassandra slept and twisted her pinky finger ninety degrees anti-clockwise, deactivating her.
Hiking her limp body over his shoulder, he carried her back to the study.
***
Much later that night, Mr. Kim slid open the back door and stepped onto the deck. It was nearly pitch black outside, the sky awash with stars, the air cool and damp. He went to the property fence, feeling his way with his feet, his hands held out before him like a blind man.
“Annabelle?” he hissed quietly, praying she was star-gazing.
“Whiz?” her voice floated back. “Whatever are you doing up at this hour, honey?”
He didn’t reply, and he heard her get up from a chair.
She came to the fence, and he could just make her out in the dark.
“Whiz?” she repeated, and when she saw his haggard face, she added, “Is something wrong, sweetie? Did something happen?”
“It’s my Mech,” he whispered. “She’s…she’s…”
“What is it, hon? What happened?”
“She’s really sick. Can you come have a look at her?”
***
Mr. Kim switched off the house AI so Kimi wouldn’t observe or record what he was about to do. Then he went to the front door to wait for Annabelle. She arrived a short minute later, dressed in a white terrycloth bathrobe over pink cotton pajamas and matching slippers.
“You look terrible, darling,” she said. “What in God’s name happened?”
“This way,” he said, ushering her inside. “You need to see her for yourself.”
When they reached the study, Annabelle looked inside and gasped. She spun toward him, her eyes widening with horror.
He grabbed her hand in his and twisted her pinky finger to the left.
Chapter 13
“In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.”
Andy Warhol
Mr. Kim jerked awake. He lay on the floor of the study, surrounded by empty beer bottles and wires and bits of electronics.
“Hello?” the voice that had awakened him called again.
Mr. Kim leapt to his feet and winced at the pounding in his head. He stepped into the hallway, pulling the study door closed behind him, and found his neighbor George standing at the end of it. He was the foreman of a large construction company, and he looked just like what you’d expect a foreman to look like: barrel chest, gorilla arms, and a sunburned face, all packaged up in a white wife-beater, well-worn jeans, and big-ass Caterpillar boots.
“What are you doing in my house?” Mr. Kim demanded.
“Your AI’s off,” George said. “The door was unlocked.”
“It was acting up. I was doing a diagnostic—”
“I’m looking for Annabelle. She wasn’t around when I woke up. Have you seen her?”
“Annabelle…?” Mr. Kim said, pretending to place her face.
“My Mech, you nitwit!” George snapped. “You know who she is!”
“Ah, right, right. That Annabelle. But…no, no.” He shook his head. “Haven’t seen her. What, she’s gone missing?”
“Mind if I have a quick look around?” He started down the hall.
“Hey!” Mr. Kim panicked. “I told you, I haven’t seen her—”
“Where is she, you nerdy little prick?”
“What are you talking about? You need to leave. This is trespassing—”
“What did you do to her?”
“I’m calling the cops!”
“Fuck you.” George placed his big hands against Mr. Kim’s chest and shoved him backward, hard. Then he kicked open the door to the study.
He stiffened in surprise. “Baby!” he cried, disappearing into the room. “Oh, baby! Where’s your head?” He emerged a few moments later, his face twisted in rage. “Why’d you cut off her head? WHY’D YOU CUT OFF HER HEAD?”
He charged.
With a yelp, Mr. Kim bolted toward the kitchen. He grabbed the biggest knife from the bamboo knife block on the counter and spun around to face George just as he burst into the kitchen.
Bellowing in insensate rage, he came straight at Mr. Kim, mindless of the blade. His big hands clasped Mr. Kim’s throat and drove him into the fridge with a thunderous bang. But in almost the same instant his grip loosened.
Hot blood gushing over his hands, Mr. Kim jiggled the knife, which had slid hilt-deep into George’s chest. George’s eyes turned inward toward his nose and lost focus.
Mr. Kim jiggled the knife again, this time using both his hands to really move it around in the wound and puree organs.
Then he shoved George off him. His neighbor, clutching the gaping wound, dropped to his knees. He remained like that, like he was praying or something, for an amazingly long time.
Growing impatient waiting for the turd to die, Mr. Kim went to the sink to wash has hands and clean the murder weapon.
***
Maybe five minutes later, Mr. Kim rolled George’s still-warm corpse onto a sheet he’d spread out on the kitchen floor. Then he stood there, staring down at it, wondering what to do next.
You could never dump a human body into the ocean with peace of mind, because chances were it would bob back up due to bloating and wash ashore, at least parts of it would. And because a body was mostly water itself, you couldn’t simply burn it either, not unless you had access to your own personal incinerator that could generate the required 1000-plus Celsius heat.
Burying a body in the ground was the classic go-to solution for murderers, both amateurs and professionals alike, but you needed to dig a pretty deep hole in order to make sure the cadaver wasn’t uncovered by soil erosion or dug up by scavengers. And digging a six-foot-deep hole in the ground was likely not as easy as the movies made it out to be.
Mr. Kim supposed he could cook up Georgy-boy in the privacy of his kitchen and toss some “leftovers” in the trash bin each day for the next week or so. The problem with this approach, however, would be in the preparation. It would be messy as hell chopping him up into manageable pieces. Not to mention Mr. Kim didn’t have a pot big enough to cook all of his remains at once, and he didn’t really want to have to start storing bits in the freezer.
The best solution would be to give his nosey neighbor a bath in humble drain unblocker, for it was specifically designed to dissolve human organic debris such as hair and skin. All that would be left of Georgy-boy after a good soaking would be a shell of his skeleton, which could be ground up into bone meal and sprinkled over the rose garden out back.
But where did you buy eighty liters of drain unblocker without arousing suspicion?
Mr. Kim had already brooded over these very same dilemmas nearly two years ago when he’d been contemplating offing his increasingly nagging wife Julie. Then, as now, he’d seen no easy way to dispose of a body, which was why in the end he’d decided to simply run the bitch over in a stolen car. The MO meant no corpse to get rid of, just the car, and that had been as simple as parking it in a derelict section of South LA overnight with the keys in the ignition.
“What are you doing?”
Mr. Kim nearly jumped out of his skin. He spun around to find Pips standing in the entrance to the kitchen, sucking his thumb and studying George’s body quizzically.
“Pips!” Mr. Kim said, stepping in front of the cadaver. “What are you doing here?” But he knew, of course. Pips sometimes came over in the mornings for a bowl of Cap’n Crunch or Lucky Charms because his mother didn’t let him have sugary cereal at home.
“He’s dead,” Pips said quietly.
“No, he just fell over—”
“He’s dead!” Pips blurted, switching to his loud voice. “You killed him!”
“No, really—”
“I’m going to tell Mom!”
“Pips!” Mr
. Kim reached for him.
Pips ducked and ran.
“Little shit!” he grunted, giving chase.
He caught up to Pips halfway across the front lawn, leaping onto his friend’s back and squashing him into the damp grass.
“Help!” Pips shouted. “Help!”
“Shut up!” Mr. Kim hissed.
“Hey, you!” a male voice said.
Mr. Kim looked up. Squinting against the morning’s brightness, he could just make out a jogger standing on the sidewalk ten yards away, frowning at them.
“Help!” Pips said. “He killed him!”
The jogger’s concerned expression became one of alarm.
Springing back to his feet, tossing Pips over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, Mr. Kim dashed back inside his house.
***
The police had Mr. Kim’s house surrounded.
They’d been out there for more than half an hour now. Mr. Kim had barricaded the front door with furniture, and had drawn closed all of the blinds. When he heard a helicopter beat overhead, he turned back on the house AI and said, “Put on the news, Kimi.”
“What have you done, Whiz? Your heart rate—”
“Put on the news! All walls!”
Every smartwall in the house immediately blinked on, each tuned to a different network and news story. The smartwall in the living room was the one he wanted. It showed an aerial shot of his house. Police cars had cordoned off the street out front of it. Neighbors rubbernecked from their lawns. The tickertape read: POLICE RESPONDING TO CALL OF A HOSTAGE SITUATION IN MID-WILSHIRE.
“Good grief, Whiz!” the house AI said.
“Shut up, Kimi!”
“Let me go!” Pips shouted. “Please! I want to go home!” He lay on the sofa hogtied with silver electrical tape.
“Quiet!” Mr. Kim bellowed.
“Let me go! Pleeeeease?”
