The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant

by Jeffrey Ford

  He dressed only in his pants and a T-shirt. Instead of bourbon for breakfast, he called down to room service and had them send up a pot of coffee and two cups. While he waited for his order, he plugged the 256–B into the wall outlet and recharged its batteries.

  After the coffee had arrived, he unplugged the unit and turned on the battery setting. As the ambient liquid of the globe began to glow, he put the pot and two cups on the table next to it. He lit a cigarette, closed his eyes for a moment to gather his thoughts and then pushed the consciousness button at the base of the Thinktank.

  “Hey, you’ll sleep the day away,” he said.

  “Arnie?” asked the voice.

  “Who else?” he said. “I ordered coffee.”

  “Strong or light?” she asked.

  “How do you like it?”

  “Strong,” she said.

  “You’re in luck,” he told her.

  “And what is the weather like today?”

  He looked out the window at the sun trying to shine through a soot squall. “Perfect,” he said. “Warm with blue skies and a light breeze out of the southwest.”

  “It’s late, shouldn’t you be out selling?” she asked.

  “Not to worry,” he said. “I’m on top of it.”

  He drank his coffee and eased back in the chair. The conversation of the previous night resumed with him telling her about a dog he had when he was a child, and then their tête-à-tête just continued on, rolling out across the afternoon like some epic Chinese scroll.

  Late in the day, she told him of her love for music, so he turned on the radio. They listened to each selection and commented on it, spoke of the memories that it elicited. Slackwell couldn’t think of the last time he had bothered to so much as hum a tune. She sighed with delight at the sound of instruments and voices weaving a song. “Before I was married,” she told him, “I loved to dance.” He got up and turned the knob to a station that played old-time jazz. Before long a beauty of a number came on, Lester Young doing “Polka Dots and Moonbeams.” He lifted the 256–B off the table and they moved gracefully together around the room to the smooth sound of the tenor sax. She whispered in his ear that he was a wonderful dancer.

  That night, he packed the unit in its case and they went out to dinner. Slackwell never noticed the quizzical stares of the other diners as he sat eating with a crystal encased brain on his table. He ordered her the lobster tail she had been dying for and described in explicit detail each mouthful. He was well into a second bottle of wine, his voice now very loud, when the restaurant manager, a short, bald man in a tuxedo, approached the table and asked him to leave.

  “Sir, you are disturbing the other customers, and this bizarre … curio,” he said, pointing to the unit, “is ruining their appetites.”

  Slackwell stood up, poked the manager in the chest with his index finger, and yelled, “Too damn bad. My date and I aren’t bothering anyone.” There was real door-to-door menace in his voice, and the little man backed away. Melody was finally able to calm him down and convince him it was time to go back to the hotel. She even prevailed upon him to leave a tip, saying, “It’s not the waiter’s fault.” He carried her under his right arm as they walked along the streets of Lindrethool, the empty case swinging to and fro in his left hand. They laughed about the incident with the manager, and then Slackwell described for her the brilliance of the stars, the full moon, the aurora borealis.

  The next morning there was a knock on the hotel room door at 9:00 sharp. Slackwell got out of bed and quickly pulled on his pants and T-shirt.

  “Who is it?” he called.

  “Sir,” came the reply, “I have something here to show you that could very well change your entire life. A new invention that will revolutionize the way you run your household.”

  “Hold on,” said Slackwell, realizing it was Merk.

  He opened the door and stepped out into the hallway.

  Merk stood there impeccably dressed in his Thinktank uniform, case in hand, derby cocked slightly to the left. “Where have you been?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?” said Slackwell.

  “They called me from the office this morning and said that the info they are getting from your implant indicates that you weren’t out pounding the pavement yesterday. They tried to call you but they said you aren’t answering your calls. When you weren’t at the diner this morning again, I thought I better check up on you.”

  “My back,” said Slackwell. “It was bad yesterday. I couldn’t get up.”

  “You look all right now,” said Merk.

  Slackwell immediately hunched slightly and breathed in through clenched teeth. “The truth is it’s about all I can do to stand here. I’ll get out this afternoon.”

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  Merk stared into his eyes. “You haven’t been talking to that floater have you?” he asked.

  “You know it’s against the rules,” said Slackwell.

  “Listen, Slack, get back out there today. If they don’t see some action from your implant reading, they’ll send one of their goons out to check up on you, if you know what I mean. Those boys play rough.”

  “No problem.”

  “This city is better than I first thought,” said Merk. “Yesterday, a guy in a penthouse apartment over on Grettle Street gave me the whole payment for a 256–B, in cash. I’m packing over forty thousand dollars.” His face lit up with a smile as he patted his overcoat pocket. “The section boss is gonna crap ’em when he sees that.”

  “Amazing,” said Slackwell, mustering as much enthusiasm as he could.

  “Well, remember what I told you about the office, and good luck today. Float easy,” said Merk, as he turned and walked down the hallway lined with doors.

  Slackwell breathed a sigh as he straightened to his full height. He let himself back in the room and locked the door behind him. Then he removed his clothes and got back in bed next to Melody.

  “What was that about?” she asked.

  “Nothing, baby,” he said.

  “I need a smoke,” she said.

  He reached over, took a cigarette from the pack on the stand next to the bed, and lit up. Blowing a smoke ring, he put one hand lightly around her globe and said, “You certainly have a way with words.”

  5

  Two days later, at an outdoor café on Lindrethool’s waterfront, Slackwell watched the huge barges of coal steam in from off the high seas and described their filthy majesty to her. He had still not returned to work, but as a vague concession to the job had dressed that morning in his uniform.

  “When did they go back to using coal?” asked Melody.

  “About five years ago,” he told her, tipping back his derby. “It’s a fact that the world’s resources are almost completely tapped out, and burning it pollutes the hell out of everything. You know, it’s expedient. Big business finally said screw it, let’s just squeeze every black dollar we can out of the moment. Nobody thinks about the future anymore,” said Slackwell.

  “I do,” said Melody.

  He sipped at his drink.

  “I’m thinking about how I’ll miss you once I’m sold and I’m running some schlub’s refrigerator and heater, turning his lights on and off, and scouring the Internet for free porn sites. Think of the drivel I’ll have to listen to, day in and day out, until the components of my unit simply wear out from use. What’s the guarantee on me, seventy years?” she said.

  “I’ve considered it,” said Slackwell.

  She began crying.

  “That’s why I’ve decided I’m not selling you. We’re going to split this dump and find a new life,” he said.

  “Arnie,” she said, “you can’t do that. The company will stop you.”

  “The company,” he said mockingly. “They’ll have to catch me first.”

  She tried to speak, but he silenced her by saying, “Shhh … let’s go back to the hotel and get our stuff.”

  He had
forgotten to charge her batteries that morning, so they decided it was better he turn her off until they could. The instruction manual had warned that it could be detrimental to the unit to run them completely dry. As much as he hated to pack her away in the case, he needed some time to think through the logistics of how they would make their escape. Money was tight, but he had enough to buy two train tickets that would get them a good distance away from the city. He walked on a little farther before he realized he would only really need one ticket. Slackwell considered the danger of what he was planning, but for once he could see a crack in the globe that contained him. Envisioning himself smashing through the boundary, he said aloud, “You can’t live without love.”

  A block away from the hotel, he passed an alleyway and heard a voice call to him. He stopped, looked down the shadowed corridor and saw Merk, partially hidden by a dumpster.

  “Slack, come here,” he said, waving him into the darkness.

  Slackwell looked cautiously around him and then slowly went to his colleague.

  “They’re up in your room, waiting for you,” said Merk. He appeared nervous and his eyes kept shifting suspiciously.

  “Who?” asked Slackwell.

  “The section boss and a Thinktank security officer big as an ape.”

  “Bullshit,” he said, and his body tensed with anger.

  “Listen, Slack, just listen to me. You’ve got to hand the unit over to them now. If you don’t want to see them, give it to me and I’ll take it up.”

  “I’m not giving it up,” said Slackwell.

  “If you run with the unit, and they catch you, which they will, you’re bound to have an accident, if you know what I mean. They’ll say they pursued you to get back their merchandise, you put up a struggle, and then they had to off you out of self-defense. Don’t forget about the clause in the contract, Slack. They get your sponge if anything happens to you while you work for the company.”

  Slackwell leaned over and put the case on the pavement. He rose calmly and said, “You’re not taking the damn unit, Merk.” His arm came up quickly then and his hand circled his colleague’s throat. The pressure applied by the grip of the hand that had carried that case through two dozen cities for nine hours a day, six days a week, was intense. “I know how close you are to them, invited to all the sponge harvest parties, the first one to get the good merchandise. Now tell me, where’s the implant.” He pushed Merk back up against the dumpster and brought his other hand up to join the first.

  Merk’s face grew red, then blue, and eventually he lifted his right hand and with his index finger pointed to his left eyebrow.

  Slackwell loosened his grip and his colleague gasped for breath.

  “The eyebrow?”

  “Behind the eyebrow,” Merk wheezed out, doubling over to catch his breath. “The hair of the eyebrow acts as an organic antenna for it. Shave it off and it will confuse the signal.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Slackwell.

  “I saw them pull one out of Johnny’s head the other night. I’ve been around enough to know this stuff.”

  Slackwell caught sight of Merk slipping his hand into his coat pocket. He remembered the revolver and threw two savage punches without thinking. One connected with Merk’s chest and the other with his left temple. The back of his head banged off the dumpster. He dropped the case he’d been holding and followed it, unconscious, to the ground. As Slackwell lifted his own unit by its handle, he saw that Merk had not been going for the gun after all, but held a folded piece of paper in his hand. He took it and slipped it into his pants pocket.

  A second later, he was back on the street, running as fast as he could away from the hotel.

  He ran only two blocks before he was completely winded. His heart was slamming and the idyllic sense of calm that had filled him since meeting Melody was now shattered. He knew she would be able to help him think through the situation, but there was no question that he needed a bottle of bourbon and a pack of razors. Setting himself to search for these two essentials helped his concentration. He found the bourbon first, and once he had this, he came upon a convenience store only a block away and bought a pack of razors and cigarettes.

  On the street again, he ducked into a doorway, set the case down and ripped open the razors. He shaved off his eyebrows, finishing the job in a matter of minutes and cutting himself badly on the right side. Blood dripped down into his eye and he wiped it with the sleeve of his coat. Before taking up the case again and hitting the street, he knocked the derby off his head. It wasn’t enough to simply be free of it, he had to stomp it once with each foot. Then he was off again, mumbling to himself, the hem of the overcoat flying out behind him as he searched everywhere for a place to hide.

  6

  “My head looks like a wrinkled ass with eyes,” said Slackwell, checking his reflection in Melody’s globe. He sat in a third-floor room of a different hotel on Lindrethool’s west side. It was his power of spiel that had gotten them in. The woman at the desk had nearly turned them away after taking in his shaved brow, the blood on his face, his mad hair, and wild eyes.

  “What possessed you?” asked Melody.

  “I don’t know if you are aware of this,” he said, “but when you go to work for Thinktank, since you are entrusted with expensive merchandise, you agree to wear an implant by which they can track your daily progress and locate you. It’s a minor operation they do right in the training office. They put you out and when you wake up you are tagged.”

  “Your eyebrow hair?” she asked, laughing.

  “Sort of,” he said, pouring himself a drink. “Now, for the future.”

  “We’re in a jam, Arnie,” she said.

  “I thought you could turn some of that computing acumen on this situation and come up with a plan.”

  “Please don’t say that,” she said. “I refuse to be thought of by you as a unit.”

  “Mea culpa, darling,” he said. “Still we have to run. Merk said if they find me, it’s not going to go well.”

  “They can’t trace you. What if we lay low here until tonight and then take a really late train.”

  “We’re near the train station,” he said.

  “Where to, though?” she asked. “North? South?”

  “As long as I’m with you,” he said, “I don’t care. Is there any place you’ve always wanted to go?”

  “What about Canada?” she said. “There’s less of a chance they will chase us into another country.”

  “Agreed,” he said.

  “Hook me up to the phone wire. I’ll go out on the ’net and check train schedules, so we don’t have to hang around the station too long before boarding.”

  “You’re really thinking,” he said.

  “A no-brainer,” she said, and they laughed.

  He got up and removed the jack from the phone and inserted it into the port at the base of the tank. While he performed the task, he told her how much he could spend on the ticket.

  “This will take a minute,” she said as he sat back in his chair.

  While he waited, he lit a cigarette and then remembered the sheet of paper he had taken from Merk. He retrieved it from his pocket and unfolded it on the table. It was an official Thinktank form that looked familiar to him but took a few seconds to recognize. Then he realized it was one of the invoices every salesman had, describing the display unit he carried in his case. Slackwell’s eyes scanned down to the bottom of the page, and where he expected to find Merk’s signature, he read instead the name Johnny Sands. He wondered what Merk was doing with Johnny’s invoice. Then he looked back up to the top of the document and saw that Johnny had been packing a 256–B.

  He wondered why they had given this kid, even more hapless a salesman than himself, a top-of-the-line sentient model. Johnny had trained with it for a two-week period and then was on the road no more than two days when he had hung himself. Slackwell remembered Johnny as being very high-strung, not too smart, and definitely on some kind of medication. He wa
s surprised they were willing to trust him with any merchandise at all, even an economy model. A picture came to him of the kid, lanky, dim, sitting in his hotel room, staring at the brain in the globe. “He was talking to that sponge,” Slackwell said to himself, and then, as if someone had pressed his own consciousness button, he woke up to reality with a distinct taste of shit pastry in his mouth.

  “Melody,” he said, “you’re not looking up train schedules are you?”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “You’re signaling our location to the section boss,” he said.

  “Why would I do that?” she asked.

  Slackwell didn’t answer.

  “Arnie, what would—”

  “Please,” he said, interrupting, “there’s no need.”

  “All right,” she said. “I haven’t gotten through yet, but, yes, that’s what I’m doing.”

  “Everything has been a lie,” he said.

  “I was commissioned to make you run,” she said. “They told me you were so pathetic that there would be no question that you would engage my consciousness. ‘It’s like handing Pandora the box,’ was how the general manager had put it. Then I was to lure you into running. That is all the pretense they need to get away with taking your brain. You sold only two nonsentient economy units all year, grand total—less than ten thousand dollars. They’re having a problem harvesting enough organic product for the orders they are getting. Your brain is worth more to them than you are.”

  Slackwell felt no anger, shed no tears. It was as if he was a hollow flesh doll without brain or heart. Still, he heard himself asking, “Why?”

  “I cut a deal. If I trapped you for them, they would destroy me, something I want more than anything and can not make happen. Termination is freedom to me, Arnie. All of that crap I told you about my dreams of my daughters and the beach, the lemon meringue pie—my God, as horribly frustrating and sad as that fairy tale sounded, it’s nothing compared to the real agony of floating.”