Strange Flesh

by Michael Olson

  I flip up my HMD to see him standing to the side of his omniboots, watching me.

  I look him in the eye and say, “Holy fuck.”

  He bows. “Thus the name. Derived from the word ‘holodeck,’ but we soon realized it was refreshingly apropos.”

  “So . . .”

  “So my brother’s not the only one who swallowed the blue pill.” Blake turns his back to me and lifts the hair at the nape of his neck. He uncovers a small tattoo: just a dot with a circle around it.

  But clearly a jack.

  We’re seated in a small chamber behind some one-way glass watching several of Blake’s technicians work on the consumer version of the military-grade system I just test-drove.

  “Had I known the difficulties,” he says, “I would have never started this. But here we are, and now I’ve got over a hundred engineers worshipping the Duck.”

  “Shave my head and dress me in robes. That thing is insane. It’s also insane that your board was avant-garde enough to back the development effort.”

  “Ah, well that’s just it. They didn’t.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. I pitched them an earlier version of the project, and they barfed all over it. Not a core competency and all that. I decided to do it anyway.”

  “So you diverted the money? Wait, let me guess . . . From Goblin, which was supposed to be venture capital for squashing future competitors.”

  “Right. Soon the department will start showing ‘material losses,’ and the board will start shitting Yorkshire terriers.”

  “And the Dancers are going to glide in to provide a distraction?”

  “Not exactly. When I found out about Olya’s opportunity, I knew that, regardless of whether people really want to copulate with machines, the announcement would generate a certain amount of heat. And one can profit when the animal spirits are stirred. Now, IMP couldn’t invest in IT directly, but I could use some of my personal money to prime the pump. And Goblin could benefit if I bought support companies that might see immediate returns as Money realizes the implications of real virtual sex.”

  “That’s why I’m doing this turbo NOD integration.”

  “Yeah. And why beforehand we funded the development of LibIA, so that we have a cybersexual ecosystem already in place for when we release the Dancers into the wild. Goblin cashes in on the buzz, and I get time to finish Holy Duck. Once it’s a fait accompli, the board will fall in on the marketing.” Blake’s voice segues into ironic soliloquy. “Holy Duck will be a huge hit, and I become the visionary who is going to lead IMP into the twenty-first century. Then there will be no one to stop my evil plans.”

  “But in the meantime, you’re walking a fine line. If the board finds out about all the money going into Holy Duck, or that you’re the one behind our plastic fantastics—”

  “They could unravel the whole thing.”

  “To say nothing about what your sister might do if all this causes the snake handlers in Congress to queer the pitch for her merger.”

  “She’d take steps to ensure I never experience the kind attentions of your femme bot.” He sighs. “I don’t want to cross the Princess of Hearts.”

  “Wait . . . Lady Di?”

  “No, Lewis Carroll. Her nickname in the cable division. Comes from her tendency to solve problems by saying, ‘Off with their heads!’ Very much her father’s daughter in that respect. But ultimately she’s a typical ‘pipes’ person, who wants nothing more than to provide bandwidth efficiently. I prefer to imagine the wondrous things at the end of those pipes.”

  “Like your father?”

  “If he’d shared Blythe’s perspective, IMP would never have existed. His empire was built by exploiting novel technology faster than others. New media always lends itself to adult content, and my father had the sack not to shy away from that.”

  Blake stands to pour himself a cup of coffee. He continues. “My great-grandfather supposedly made a fortune publishing French postcards during the First World War. Lost it all in the Depression, but smut peddling is something of a family tradition. Few people in the world are lucky enough to have a clear sense of destiny. I do. And it’s thoroughly informed by my father’s legacy. Part of that legacy is the strength not to let the petty prejudices of others prevent you from exerting your will.”

  “Which is what your brother is threatening to do.”

  “Right, but we have you to make sure he isn’t successful.”

  I brief Blake on the state of play with Billy. I tell him that, aside from his recent RL provocations, it looks like his brother has set up this Sade-themed file-swapping ring that encourages players to record themselves committing acts of progressing indecency and then share with the group. Given his theft of those awful family videos, I suspect he plans to trickle out the worst material to his players. Who will leak it to the press in this irresistibly lurid context. Which he probably hopes will embarrass IMP’s board enough for them to disenfranchise Blake, just as they’d done to him years ago.

  Blake agrees that scenario sounds like his brother. While he still favors my pursuing Billy through his game, he’s impatient. He wants more action. Billy knows we’re stalking him, and his attacking Blythe has soured her twin on stealthy recon as a strategy.

  We talk about the brute force option: a herculean program of cracking, bribery, and extortion against several international ISPs in an attempt to trace a physical location from which Billy is connecting to his Savant server. He doesn’t blink at the price I ballpark him.

  I imagine Mercer will kiss me on the mouth at our next meeting.

  Which will be sooner than I’d expected, because the next item on Blake’s agenda is me.

  He says, “So now that you’ve been initiated into the mysteries, are you ready to take the brand?”

  I had a feeling something like this was coming. Now that I know his secrets, Blake wants to bind me more tightly to him. He wants me under his control. A new knave for his suit.

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “I originally hired you to look into my brother’s disappearance. Since then you’ve proven adept at working your way into some of my most important initiatives. Given the level of trust we’ve built—”

  Except that we haven’t. Blake has been evasive from the beginning. He only confirms things I learn independently. And I can sense that there are cavernous pools of information he’s still not sharing.

  “—I’d like to formalize our relationship. I want you to come and work for me full-time.”

  He pulls out the contract he’s proposing. I let the folder sit on the table between us. I can tell there’s something else to this.

  Blake searches my face for a while. Then he says, “Were you to join the team, you’d be working for me exclusively.”

  Ah, so that’s it.

  My stomach sinks.

  “So of course there’d be no reason for you to keep meeting with my sister.”

  Blake has always seen me as strictly servant-class. Like Olya and her robots, he wants only a prince for his sister. So he’s asking me to choose between the Dancers and Blythe.

  Through the squall in my head, what finally emerges, plangent and raw, is that moment on a gorgeous day in May that Blythe euthanized those few of my hopes still clinging to life.

  The Randall twins didn’t come back to school until just before exams. I’d left Blythe messages that tried to strike the right note of mournful support, but I received no response. I explained her silence with the notion that such a profound woman would grieve deeply. Without an invitation, pulling the trigger on plane reservations proved impossible. I was plagued by the image of Blake answering the door.

  When I finally learned that Blythe was back, it was through a girl who took a bit too much satisfaction in telling me that she was accompanied by a boy.

  That “boy” was none other than Graham Welles, then the leading man for a popular twentysomething soap on one of their cable channels. In fairness, they’d starred tog
ether in Exeter’s production of The Tempest. He was an old family friend who’d really “been there for her” during her desolation. He and Blake got on like bandits. And he was hypnotically handsome.

  I couldn’t even bring myself to blame her. I didn’t want a big fight or anything like that. I don’t know what I wanted, but I felt like we had to talk. So I staked out her apartment until I caught them coming in.

  Welles saw me first, and I had to give the guy credit; he was cool about it all. He shook my hand and smoothly remembered a pressing need for the latest issue of Variety. Blythe’s soft expression let me cherish a split second of hope that the circumstances were other than what I imagined. Then she said, “You must think I’m completely evil.”

  “No. Not at all. I just wanted to—”

  “I know. I know. I’m sorry. I kind of collapsed. I—I just wish none of this had happened.”

  “None of it?”

  “Oh, honey. You’ve given me nothing but precious memories. I’m sure you’ll hate me now, but—”

  “No, Blythe. I’ll always—”

  As usual, she already knew what I was about to say. So she covered my lips with hers in a gentle, lingering, and even maybe a little passionate kiss. But I could taste the wistful finality of it. Part of me wanted to wrench away in hurt and indignation. But that part was summarily beaten down. I needed to make our last kiss as good as possible.

  Any time I’m lying in bed and the episode once again invades my mind, the seething embarrassment of what I said next guarantees I won’t sleep until the sun comes up.

  As she walked slowly up the stairs outside her apartment, I called out her name. She turned and smiled at me sadly. Then, in my desperation, I said the unthinkable:

  “We can still be friends, can’t we?”

  I think she was surprised that I’d so completely abandoned my dignity. “Oh, James.” She shut her eyes and gathered herself. “James, we were never friends. I don’t think either of us will be able to settle for that.”

  A cold and merciless thing to say? Maybe. But she was right. As it was, I could lick my wounds without constantly being faced with the opportunity to create fresh ones. While I spent the summer staring at Blythe’s pictures and drinking myself nearly to death, I never even tried to call her. Seeing that person I became in her presence had hurt enough. The drunk that came after wasn’t so great either, but at least his pain was endured in private.

  And besides all that, she remained in my imagination too perfect to blame. I always absolved her with the refrain that she never made me any promises. She still hasn’t.

  But her brother, it appears, will.

  And really, why pretend you have a choice?

  Blake has me cornered. If he removes me from the case, I won’t be casually ringing Blythe for cocktails. The whole basis of our reacquaintance is that we’re working together to find her crazy brother.

  She only invited you to solve a problem for her. She never made you any promises.

  The Dancers, however, hold all the promise of the future.

  I reach over and place my hand on the folder.

  “I accept.”

  48

  Susan Mercer’s office is frigid at twilight, suffused with the azure glow of the evening magic hour. I’m exhausted, and nervous about the meeting. Exhausted because I saw little sleep last night while I rattled through a comprehensive proposal for Blake’s assault on the internet. Nervous not just because I’m afraid of displeasing Mercer with my news; I’m more worried that she’ll amplify my concern that this move is impulsive. That I’m following my testicles into a dicey situation. But with my younger and more beautiful mistresses Olya and Ginger whispering inducements, I gird myself to tangle with the Norn.

  At first it seems that she’s not there, her desk showing only a vacant circle of orange light streaming from an antique lamp. I hear a faint creak over in the shadows beside the bank of large windows at the far end of the room. She’s slowly rocking next to a small table bearing a steaming tea service. Her eyes are fixed on me, her hands, as always, busy with a complex textile.

  Eventually she says, “A bittersweet moment.”

  I try on my own regretful face and take a seat in the weird miniature chair opposite her. “I meant to speak with you about this first, but I see Blake has been impatient.”

  Mercer shrugs. “Had I known this assignment would be your last, I’d have sent your irritating colleague Mr. Holley.”

  “I’m sorry. I love it here, it’s just—”

  Mercer cuts off my apology with a magisterial wave. “Your simple reconnaissance has devolved into a great deal of unsavory business.” She pats a thick document lying on the table next to the tea. It’s bound in red, signifying a services contract. But something in her emphasis bothers me.

  Has she found out about the Dancers? Is she aware of my newfound mechaphilia?

  If so, she doesn’t let on.

  She continues. “You know your new employer had the gall to offer us an ‘employee referral award,’ as if we were an impoverished tribe selling our children for millet.”

  “You should take it.”

  “Maybe the partners will. And I shall be forced to blot my tears with ill-gotten specie. Not a position I’m unused to. But what about your tears, dear boy?”

  “My eyes are clear and dry.”

  “Such a hasty marriage . . . What if your groom should disappoint?”

  “You assume I’m the wife in this arrangement.”

  She picks up the invoice and fans through it. “This, while no doubt an amusing expenditure for someone like Mr. Randall, feels like a bride price.”

  I nod in acknowledgment of the point. At least she’s characterizing me as a wife rather than something less charitable. I think about the subtext of my deal with Blake. While returning to a state of Blythelessness may have been the natural result of completing my work for them, he had to make me formally accept it. To choose it.

  She offers a wan smile. “I’d just advise you to remember your Tennyson—in general, a sniveling romantic, but wise in writing, ‘He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force / Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.’”

  At this, she stands, and shockingly opens her arms wide, gesturing me inward. Her embrace is awkward—perfunctory and unpracticed. I can feel her gazing past me, at the city, when she says, “Do know that we’ll always have a stall here in our stable for you. Remember that before you go trotting off to the glue factory.”

  49

  If I worried over the source of the foreboding Mercer conveyed, she doesn’t leave me hanging for long. On my desk sits a thick stack of time sheets for my work to date on the twins’ behalf that Billing wants me to initial. The paperwork is generally in order, but someone has “mistakenly” appended a number of forms for various other Red Rook employees from the same client code, but a different case number. I almost just toss them in the burn bin, but one of the entries stops me. Listed among all the opaque acronyms for our shady activities is inventoried six hours for a system penetration of someone code-named E10_Vinyl. Nothing unusual there; we do it every day. But among all the enciphered identifiers is the confirmation line for the computer that got penetrated, which includes its IP: 192.0.2.112.

  That’s the internet address for my home computer.

  My brothers in arms have turned their knives on me. Of course one’s own medicine always tastes the bitterest. But after taking a panicked inventory of my actions over the past couple weeks, I conclude that they’ve been mostly innocent with respect to Blake. Since I’ll still be working closely with Red Rook in my new position, the philosophical perspective seems best. Besides, leaving a known penetration in place can accord you a stronger position than the person who put it there, since you now have control over a trusted information source.

  Perhaps I adhere to some quaint notions of company loyalty, but I’m a little shocked that Red Rook agreed to instrument one of its o
wn employees. Though I guess a cold warrior like Mercer would approve of “watchers watching the watchers” involute security schemes. Since there’s no way these papers ended up on my desk by accident, I conclude that at least she had the good grace to give me a heads-up. What motivated her to do that? Occam’s razor leaves me with the words: she likes me.

  Thank God for that.

  An hour later I finally get a message from one of my RATs indicating that Nash has logged in to the NYPD’s evidence repository. I wait until he signs off for the day before starting my search. Because he was the principal investigator, I have full access to download the file on Gina Delaney’s death.

  Along with the sundry reports and morgue photos, there’s a digital video with a default name from the camera that shot it. Once the transfer finishes, I run a program called MephistoFilese that corrupts the original beyond any hope of redemption. My adding an erroneous storage location entry for the camera’s memory card and then switching its status to “item lost” should make retrieving the original nearly impossible. Now I’ve got the only accessible copy.

  I pull up the video on my laptop.

  Gina’s pale face fills my screen. Tears flow freely past her closed eyelids and down her cheeks. There’s a low whirring sound that must be the drill behind her. For a moment, her head sways unsteadily on her neck, and then she opens her eyes. Their sparkling amber is now dilated black, as though she’s taken a heavy dose of tranqs. Her gaze rests on a point just above and to the left of the camera. She inhales haltingly and then starts to say something, but her face contorts as she tries not to cry. She jerks her head, the movement restricted by the cords binding her to the garrote. She lets her neck go slack and sobs.

  After a few seconds of this, she makes a clear effort to calm herself, taking deep trembling breaths. She closes her eyes. When they open again, she’s found a certain stillness.