by Sean Platt
“Goodbye, Isaac.” He killed the call. Three seconds later, the handheld woke again, also without permission to connect.
“I can’t tell you, okay! But it’s real. It’s all real.”
“Why? What’s behind all of this that you can tell me?”
“Someone has leverage on me. He’s…he’s kind of a…a disruptor? Like it’s his job to make messes. Because it maintains balance between the parties.”
“I see. So this is politics.”
“Yes. I mean no. Sort of.”
“You’re so eloquent.”
“He wants this event ruined.”
Dominic rolled his eyes. That’s what saboteurs did. They ruined parties.
“Why?”
“He has leverage on me.”
“What kind of leverage?”
“He knows something about me and Natasha.”
“What?”
“I can’t tell you that, either. Wait! Don’t hang up. I just can’t. But that part doesn’t matter. Because Natasha’s going to find out anyway, from someone else. At the party. So there goes that leverage. And I don’t think he’d have me killed.”
“Why not, Isaac?” Dominic resumed walking. False alarm, nothing to see here.
“I’m too important. People look to me as an important man in the party.”
“Sure you are.”
“I just need you to arrest me. It’s the only way. It’ll give me time. If I’m not at the party, I can’t do what I’m supposed to do, and it won’t have been my decision. And Natasha, she’s into me right now, so she’ll chase after you, all up in arms. She won’t go to the party either and won’t find out the secret.”
This all sounded like a terrible soap opera. Dominic considered hanging up again, but the station was in sight. He would have been there already if he’d taken a cab or skipper, but he was out of shape and needed the exercise. Dominic also didn’t give a single tiny shit if he was late. Someone else could take the mantle for a change.
“You want to get arrested, break a window.”
“I can’t! Everything is shatterproof!”
“Then rob a store.”
“I don’t have a weapon.”
“Use a cake knife,” Dominic suggested.
Isaac huffed.
“Look, Isaac. This all sounds like a huge pile of not-my-problem cut with I-don’t-give-a-fuck.”
“When you see me at the event, you can take me in. You don’t need a reason.” Pathetically, he added, “Please. I’d consider it a personal favor.”
“I’m not even going to be there, Isaac. Not at first, anyway. I’m temporary commissioner. Dick Grabel will be in charge on-scene. You know Dick, right?”
“Sure. I like Dick.”
Dominic dodged the obvious joke. “You want to get arrested; have him do it.”
“I don’t know him that well. I’m not sure I can talk him into arresting me.”
“Insult his mother,” Dominic suggested.
Isaac started to say more, but Dominic hung up again then turned the handheld entirely off, knowing he could be fired and not caring even a little.
Chapter Twelve
Isaac had the perfect reply on his lips when the connection went dead and The Beam beeped to let him know his party was no longer listening.
Again.
And when Isaac tried once more to force a call through to Dominic, he was met with a wall. Dominic’s handheld was off. Entirely. Disconnected. Given his maddening lack of in-body augmentation, it meant that right now, not even DZPD could contact their captain.
Isaac should call up the chain and have Dominic fired for this. He could do it. But Isaac felt certain that Dominic wouldn’t mind.
And really, what would that solve? Then what would Isaac do? Who would he talk to? Who would he confess to? Who could he boss around? Officially speaking, the Czar of Internal Satisfaction could shove his big dick all the way down the throat of any state Directorate body. But practically? If he busted Dominic, and someone unfamiliar with Isaac stepped into his place? Well, that wouldn’t do at all.
Feline hands ran along Isaac’s collarbone, then draped theatrically across his upper chest from behind.
“Are you ready, lover?”
Right now, the affectionate pet name only annoyed him. Isaac felt resentment bubble inside. He didn’t feel like being “lovered” by Natasha right now. She’d started this. If she hadn’t insisted on holding that little fuck-you-Isaac concert, he never would have needed to concoct his rescue. It wasn’t his fault that Natasha’s show had been stormed by genuine revolutionaries. Well…fine, yes, it was. But it wasn’t his fault that she’d held the concert in the first place, forcing him to take drastic action.
“I guess.”
“Aww,” Natasha purred into his neck, her immaculately styled red hair visible as a golden halo at the edge of his vision, “are you still sad that we can’t head out of town this weekend?”
Sad? That was a laugh. Angry was closer. Because how dare this Shelly Godfrey bitch decide it was her business to blab about confidential squad deployments and how they might or might not relate to certain husbands. Husbands with motives that said bitches couldn’t possibly understand. Isaac and Natasha had been married for sixty years, and their relationship had layers of nuance. Explained correctly, Natasha might even understand the whole twisted situation. She’d known the corner she’d forced him into. But now this Godfrey whore was going to say it all wrong, and again Isaac would look like the bad guy.
“I hate things like this,” he said.
“Like what?”
“Stupid political parties filled with posturing assholes.”
Isaac forced his internal fist to unclench. His words were as bitter as he could make them, sharpened by the sting of what had just happened with Dominic. There was an expression Isaac had once heard, about people being made irrelevant: You won’t be able to get arrested in this town. That’s where Isaac was, and it sucked.
But venting his irritation on Natasha solved nothing. He could still keep her away from Shelly Godfrey. He could still find a way to explain. Maybe he could even turn it back around if Godfrey did want to tell Natasha what Isaac suspected. He made his living speaking and swaying opinion, right? Isaac was eloquent enough to twist the woman’s words around and hang her with them. Fuck him? No, fuck NATASHA. Even Godfrey would end up sneering at her after seeing what her friend had done to force Isaac into such decisive action.
But there was also the chance that nothing would happen. Isaac had a president to kill, after all. That was bound to cause ripples. He shouldn’t rock the boat now by speaking sharply.
Fortunately, Natasha didn’t seem to take offense. She kissed his neck.
“You look fabulous.”
“It’s the same tux I tried on last night.”
“Yes, but now you’re actually going to wear it where I can show you off.”
Isaac turned around. He watched Natasha for a few seconds before deciding she was probably being sincere. Usually, she liked to display his shortcomings. Did you see Isaac’s socks? I told him not to wear them but he’s so unique that he insisted, ha-ha.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
Isaac sighed. The answer was no. But she’d rejected his request to leave town, Dominic had rejected his request for jail time, and he’d gone ahead and dressed. By the book, they should be at Braemon’s place in twenty minutes, with fashionably late baked in already. So unless he planned to grab the doorframe and throw a tantrum, there was no escape.
“I guess.”
“And you’re ready. For Micah’s trick.”
“No, not really.”
Natasha brushed playfully at Isaac’s sleeve as if to say, Oh, you. “Just clear your mind. Like Jameson said.”
“It would be helpful if he’d tell me more than my part of the trick. Or if you would. Or Micah.”
“We’re inside the magician’s code, dear. Jameson asked me not to tell you my part, and he asked
Micah the same. I don’t want to know the details of what you’re doing and won’t tell you the details of my part. We’re fortunate someone of Jameson’s caliber is willing to let us inside at all.”
Clear your mind, Jameson had told him. Same as Natasha. It didn’t sound to Isaac like he knew more about his own part of the stage show than Natasha did because that was nearly the sum total of what the illusionist had said. He wasn’t allowed to know the technology that would take him offstage for nobody to see. He only knew that his return would happen by hologram…but that if his Beam presence at that point was too loud, Braemon’s canvas would move to fill his needs like anyone’s. Given that everyone was supposed to believe the holographic Isaac was the real one, being too present might cause problems.
So that’s what Isaac had practiced while Natasha and Micah had been working on their parts: doing nothing, being nobody, doing his best not to exist. Just like everyday life.
Micah was to wave and say magic words.
Natasha was to look pretty and show off her beautiful assistant’s legs while distracting the crowd.
And Isaac? He was supposed to stay quiet and go away, making his mind stupid.
For about the hundredth time, he wondered if this was really an all in good fun magic trick after all. It might have been a big middle finger to the party head that no one respected. But he wasn’t getting out of it, or out of the thing with Vale — who, based on their one-on-one meeting yesterday, really did believe in all of this Project Mindbender bullshit.
And given Natasha’s excitement at seeing her old friend, Isaac decided he wasn’t likely to escape from Shelly Godfrey’s accusations, either. It was nothing but fun, 360 degrees in all directions.
“James has the car ready,” Natasha said, moving toward the door. “Are you ready for a fun evening?”
“Yippee,” Isaac said.
Chapter Thirteen
Now there was a giant, faceted crystal flying around the apartment like a talking insect. Sam wasn’t sure if it was an improvement or a sign of further decay.
It had to be a microfragment, like the one that must have passed his mind’s out-of-date firewall. It looked like a smallish gemstone grown to grotesque proportions, and whenever it spoke to him, it did so in a warbling, machine-like voice. The gem also changed shape with each syllable, as if moving some sort of a full-body mouth.
The thing felt like a delusion.
Watching and listening made Sam think he might be going crazy.
But that was fine because the sanity of his apartment, in this case, was actually the lie. The microfragments causing this clusterfuck had become visible. That had to be a good sign. It meant Sam was seeing through the bullshit. Locating the truth. Maybe even climbing out of the hole.
“I’m not here,” Sam said. “I’m at Starbucks. It’s later. Hours, days, I don’t know…but later. I’m not in my apartment. This is all a loop. An illusion.”
“No,” said the microfragment, altering its facets and turning red.
“Yes.”
“No.”
The thing was obnoxious. He’d tried to swat it out of the air several times, but like the apartment itself, the microfragment wasn’t real. He was seeing his mind’s interpretation of what rogue software might look like, and the voice must be his mind’s imagination of how its words would sound. In the end, below maybe fifteen or twenty layers of platform code, it was all ones and zeros.
“You should watch a video,” the thing suggested.
Sam lunged at it. He missed and hit the floor. It seemed unfair that it should hurt if he was in a hole and not his apartment.
“Sam Dial,” the floating microfragment observed.
“How do I break the loop?” Sam asked from the floor.
“Sam Dial,” the thing repeated.
“Beam support. I want Beam central support.”
“Sam Dial Sam Sam.”
Sam came to his hands and knees. He crawled to the couch and sat. He’d heard of this sort of thing — probably the reason he’d recognized the loop. Normally, The Beam only fragmented due to line vacillation (creating a relatively short-lived hole) or due to a flaw deep in the code that Quark had never meant for users to tinker with. Down there, snippets were everywhere. In the deep Beam, hackers and walkers reported half-deleted files, corrupted and long-forgotten archives. AI had retooled much of it like tinkerers rebuilding old wheeled cars and made it into something new and custom. Down that far, anything went. If you ventured into the realm of fragments, incomplete paths, and schisms, you deserved what you got. But Sam had been near the surface, operating from a Starbucks high-fidelity hard line. He was paying through the nose for it, too. So why had he run into a hole?
It didn’t matter. Good thing he’d noticed that he was in it because he never would have seen it coming. In places like the Null forum, hackers told stories about people who went into holes and never came out. They just replayed the same few minutes or hours over and over, their minds resetting until they died of dehydration.
And, more helpfully, he’d heard from hackers who’d seen the problem in time then emerged with hours missing.
Imagine you’re trying to rock a boat, they said. You have to kick the walls. You have to do anything you can to break past what the sensors expect you to do inside that loop.
He’d seen the loop, so he could get out. He’d never once heard of someone who’d seen the trap and yet stayed stuck.
Of course, if they never left, then no one would know.
Sam dismissed the thought and tried to focus. The moondust made it easier. This mattered. This, here and now, was vital. It wasn’t just about Sam; it was about Nicolai, too. Maybe about Shift and the NAU itself. As he’d relived identical minutes in his bogus apartment, that last bit had felt increasingly certain. Integer7 wouldn’t have warned Sam about Nicolai heading into a trap if it wasn’t true. And he wouldn’t have bothered if the ensuing disruption wasn’t about to be a big one.
Sam stood. He didn’t know where to start, so he kicked a bare wall. The plaster in the ancient partition dented. Even if this were his apartment, no bot would fix that hole. If he was wrong about all of this — if he wasn’t truly stuck in a hole — then he wouldn’t be getting his rental deposit back.
Nothing happened.
He kicked again. This time, there was a popping sizzle, and Sam almost saw smooth composite walls through his shitty plaster ones.
Encouraged, he kicked again. And again.
“Sam Dial Sam,” said the microfragment.
“Beam central support!” Sam yelled, now slamming his shoulder into the wall. There was a wider blink, a bigger pop, and sizzle.
“My name is Sam Dial, and I’m stuck in a hole!” Sam yelled toward his canvas.
Nothing happened. Sam rammed the wall again.
“My name is Sam Dial, and I’m ramming my wall!”
Another flash. And now, hope against hope, Sam thought he might have smelled coffee.
“My name is Sam Dial, and I’m smelling coffee! My name is Sam Dial, and I need to contact Nicolai Costa!”
“Nicolai Costa Nicolai,” said the microfragment.
Sam hit the wall again. This time, something seemed to pop, and Sam slid to the floor in pain. It was working. Maybe he could reach Nicolai in time. Maybe he could still pull himself from six years of hiding and failure and be someone worth dignity again.
It was working, but if he kept this up, he’d kill himself before rocking the loop from its groove.
He hit the wall with his fist. The room flickered. For a second, Sam could almost see a VR rig. A Beam surface. A delivery table.
Then it was gone.
“My name is Sam Dial,” he said from his crumpled position, “AND I’M GETTING REALLY TIRED OF THIS BULLSHIT!”
“Sam,” said the microfragment, changing shape and color as it spoke. “Sam Dial Sam Sam.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Do you see her?”
Nicolai looked at Ka
i. In heels, she was nearly as tall as he was.
“I don’t think so,” he answered.
“You said Kate is blonde. Is that her?” But the second after she’d completed the question, Kai was pawing at his arm, her eyes fixed on a totally different, non-blonde woman several feet away. Nicolai watched, thinking her unhinged. And she was. But this wasn’t nervous Kai. This was fangirl Kai.
“Oh shit,” she said. “Holy shit, Isaac. That’s not Kate. Do you know who that is?”
Nicolai followed Kai’s ravenous gaze, still looking for Kate. Other than the very brief flash he’d caught on the call earlier, he hadn’t seen Kate after her refurb. Kai hadn’t seen her at all. Doc Stahl had gone in, and they’d left. The closest thing to Kate that Kai had seen had looked like a mummy in a tank of liquid.
The woman in Kai’s line of sight wasn’t blonde. Her hair was red but had seemed almost blonde under an overhead light. Seeing her, Nicolai wanted to disappear.
“That’s Natasha Ryan,” Kai blubbered. “Natasha Ryan!”
“Easy. We’re supposed to be low key here.”
“That’s Natasha fucking Ryan!”
“I know who it is, Kai. I worked with Isaac forever. You work for Isaac, you end up working for Natasha. Besides, didn’t you break into her apartment once and watch her immerse?”
“This is different.”
“How the hell is it different?”
Nicolai watched Kai’s soft brown eyes. He shouldn’t dump his baggage on her. She wanted to be a Natasha fan; he should let her be one. Nicolai’s personal and professional lives had never before crossed, and he didn’t want them to start now. That meant accomplishing two tricky goals: staying away from Natasha and Isaac and keeping his mouth shut about Natasha’s detestable personality and her eternal crush on Nicolai — for Kai’s sake, seeing as creature comforts were rare things for them these days.
“You have to introduce me.”
“You’re kidding.” So much for goal number one.
“When else am I going to be in the same room as Natasha Ryan?”
