“What’d you think of the chip?” he asked.
“What makes you think I played it?”
He grinned. “You got that look in your eyes, like they ain’t all the way focused. You had a good night of dreaming. I can tell.”
I stopped and looked at him. I had to smile back. He reminded me of an overly eager kid begging for acceptance.
“It was good,” I said. “Amazing, really.”
“You find God in there?”
“I found something, sure.”
We walked for a bit, more of a shuffle, really, given how slow Jaime was moving that morning.
“I see why it’s illegal,” I said. “I always got it from a moral perspective, but living it… I get why it has to be bottled up.”
“But that didn’t stop you from hitting it over and over, did it?”
“No,” I admitted. “I played it a lot, until I couldn’t anymore. It was fierce.”
“There’s a lot more out there. The circumstances are worse, maybe, but the rush is better. The feeling of it all. When you get all these different emotions wrapped up in it, all those chemical bombs… that’s where it’s really at.”
“The war dead?”
“Sure, those are a fucking trip. You know, when you step on a landmine or have a bomb dropped on you, they say you don’t feel a thing. It happens so fast, your brain doesn’t know how to process it, and it sends the body into automatic shock mode first thing, to prevent you from feeling it. Fact is, though, there’s all those chemicals rushing around in your body, and the DRMR picks up on it, etches it into place. Now that—that is a fucking trip.”
He had a measure of awe, of reverence, in his voice. It chilled me, but also drew me in and made me curious. I had already eaten from his poisoned apple. What was one more bite?
“You got any of those?” I asked. I wondered how deep his private stash was, what sort of experiences and memories he had buried for personal consumption, and what was for sharing.
I told myself the question was purely professional curiosity. That was what I had been curating, after all—all these experiences, all those random, powerful, vivid moments that made and shaped life. Those experiences were both unique and universal.
He smiled and clapped his hand on my shoulder. “Nah,” he said. “I don’t.”
We took our walk slowly, the morning chill quickly turning to warmth. We found shelter in the shade, and I looked around for Mesa, but she had a knack for disappearing completely when she wanted to.
“You get the sales pitch about immigrating to Canada yet?”
I nodded.
“Supposed to be, the UN is forcing PacRim to set up a refugee camp in LA, a few others spread across the old state boundaries. Truthfully, Canada or the NA Alliance, or whatever the fuck they’re calling it—it won’t be much better. One refugee camp is pretty much all the same. Maybe if you got to an NA state, might be you can get Alliance citizenship. Stay at the PacRim camp, probably you won’t. It’s going to be fucking Somalia around here before you know it.”
“I’m staying,” I said.
He looked me in the eye, maybe gauging my seriousness.
“This is my home,” I said. “My daughter and I, we’re staying put.”
“Thinking about it myself,” he said. “I’ve always been a California boy.”
He shifted, trying to work his butt into a more comfortable rut on the ground. His gaze traveled across a clump of guards taking a smoke break, talking animatedly and laughing.
“Our new overlords,” Jaime said. “New boss, same as the old boss. Only a little bit louder and a little bit worse.”
We laughed, but without the good humor to bring it to life.
“What do you think about all this?” he asked me.
I told him about my brief turn with the so-called militia. He asked if I’d ever killed any PRC, and I told him that I had. When he asked me if I’d been comfortable with it, I said I was. I asked him about the burn, and he gave me a story about an accident with hot oil, when he had been a cook before the war. He said he had fallen in with a militia, too. Then he took a small square of fabric from his pocket and unfolded it. The edges were frayed from where it had been torn loose and burnt, but the few stars and stripes that remained were easy to recognize.
“You still believe in this?” he asked me.
I said I did. He said he wasn’t sure if he did anymore or not, but he wanted to.
“I might go to that Echo Park camp,” he said. “I hear it’s supposed to be pretty relaxed, at least as far as refugee camps go. I might have a job or two you can help with, if you’re willing.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
I didn’t ask what kind of jobs, and he didn’t offer any details. He refolded the small square of flag and pocketed it. He seemed grateful when I helped him to his feet.
He dug around in his pocket again and pulled loose another chip. He handed it to me before we went our separate ways. I spent the rest of the day in my cell, alone and high on DMT, playing through my small collection of snuff chips. I got jacked up on the pain of others and high off the misery and death of strangers.
It felt good.
Chapter 13
In the morning, Alice and I drank coffee and ate bagels. It’d been a long time since I’d had a bagel, even longer since it had felt satisfying. The coffee was rich, black, and strong, not at all similar to what we were given at Echo camp.
Alice was talking, but I was tuned out. I was lost in my own thoughts, staring into the liquid pitch in my cup. She was surprised, but not offended, when I finally interrupted her.
“I need the memory chips from the men we killed at the restaurant.” I was troubled by her lack of communication with her PRC contact. “Call him,” I said.
She was a woman not used to taking orders, but she nodded. The ground we stood on was constantly shifting beneath me, and I thought she was still more than a bit angry at me. That was fine, though. I was still upset with her over hiding the details of the Echo Park attack from me and angry at her conflicting loyalties. She left half of her food uneaten and went into a different room. I finished mine and poured a second cup of coffee.
She was gone for a long time before water started running from the shower. She came out twenty minutes later, dressed and with her hair wrapped in a damp towel.
“PRC were able to recover the bodies,” she said. “My contact will have access to the bodies this morning after they’re autopsied. He can obtain a copy for us, but the originals would be too risky and would compromise him.”
I gave it a moment’s thought then shrugged. “That’s fine, as long as the data is unaltered. Maybe we can find out where Jaime is.”
“If those men were his.”
“They were.” The more I replayed events over in my head, the more certain I became. “They were the same team that had carried out the attacks on the 101. Jaime’s personal hit squad.”
“Christ,” she said.
“When will we have the chips?”
“This evening, I think. He’ll contact me to arrange a rendezvous.”
I ate another bagel, trying to arrange the pieces. Jaime must have realized I’d been abducted during my shift on the city reclamation crew. It didn’t take much figuring out that Kaften had been behind it or that I had been severely compromised. I knew about Jaime’s operations and was, therefore, a liability.
My role in the murder of the PRC chiang made me a powerful bargaining chip if Kaften ever needed leverage. He had trawled my memories, which would have exposed Jaime and Alice’s role in the affair. And if Kaften could compromise me, odds were the PRC could dig up even more information.
The big question was whether Jaime knew I was still alive and that Alice had bought my release from Kaften. The attack on her restaurant told me she was the primary target, and it was possible his hit squad hadn’t known I was there prior to the attack.
Jaime was cleaning house.
“I’m takin
g the car,” I said. “I have a few errands to run, and I need to know where today’s checkpoints are.”
“Well, I’m coming with you,” she said.
“No. You’re staying here, where it’s safe.”
“If my contact calls—”
“Then you’ll call me and tell me where to meet him, and I’ll pick up the chips.”
“But—”
“No arguments,” I said, cutting her off again. “Jaime obviously thinks we’re a danger to him. If we’re together, it’s easier for both of us to be killed. If we’re separated, he has to devote twice the amount of energy toward eliminating us. We stand a better chance of evading him if we don’t have to worry about watching each other’s backs.”
“It’s too risky. I don’t like it.”
“I don’t care,” I said. “You hired me to do this job, and this is how it’s going to be.”
She relented, perhaps surprised by my newfound authority. We agreed on a specific commNet frequency and promised to stay in touch. If the checkpoints changed or if she heard from her PRC source, she would contact me immediately with the details.
I drove down from the hills and took a circuitous route to my destination, checking for tails. I avoided the checkpoints, but found myself behind roving military convoys twice. They paid me no attention, but they moved slowly, and traffic quickly grew congested. Although I was used to the sight, the incongruity of Chinese tanks sitting in the middle of Ventura Boulevard still struck me and filled me with unease. The people who walked around it gave it a wide berth. The scene reminded me of news footage of riots in Egypt, Libya, and Iraq.
I took Ventura to White Oak. I had an odd sense of a misplaced anxiety. After so long away, I was going back home, and with that decision came a streak of trepidation over what I might find, or what might be waiting for me.
My hands were sweaty against the leather of the steering wheel when I pulled into an empty driveway. The front yard was a riot of weeds and dry dirt patches. The house was caked in grime, and wooden boards had been nailed over broken windows. The front door was a thin piece of plywood, where the words “dead inside” were spray painted in red. The markings had become a common sight over the months, and I paid it little attention. Squatters sometimes tagged houses with that message in an effort to keep the authorities or other squatters away. On my last visit here, I’d sprayed that message in hopes of deterring the homeless from seeking shelter in my house.
The wooden steps leading up the country porch were warped and rotted, and they protested loudly under my weight. I had been to the house twice since Selene’s death. The first time, I’d sat on the porch and cried, waiting for Mesa. She came home confused and frightened. Her steps slowed as she realized I was alone. She saw me crying, and it may have been the first time she’d ever seen tears line my face. Between sobs, I told her that her mother was dead.
Although the inside of the house was dark, I could make out the lumps of figures sleeping on the floor. In the center of the living room, an old, rusted barrel cradled a dying fire inside. Dark streaks of soot from the curls of smoke lined the walls and ceiling. The room stank of excrement, cigarettes, liquor, and vomit.
I caught a flash of movement and turned toward it. A man sitting on the floor was dressed in layers of rags and covered in filth. He squinted at me but seemed disinterested. As his head swiveled away, I caught shiny flashes in his eyes and a small glint of metal from the port behind his ear. Vanity bionic upgrades from another life had become cybernetic nodes that were nothing more than a reminder of the way things had been. The work hadn’t been cheap. He burped loudly and fell back to sleep, a bottle of amber liquid stoppered in his lap.
A sledgehammer had been taken to the walls so that the vandals could steal the pipes and wiring. A TV that had been made useless by the EMP blast at the start of the war had been smashed to bits. The photos and their frames that we’d hung on the wall had long ago burned to ash.
I made my way to the stairs and saw that the guardrail had been chopped away. More kindling for the fire. I was glad I’d made it back before the place burned down. I wanted to be angry with the squatters for what they had done to my home, but I was too detached and lost.
I kept an eye on the bums. I wasn’t afraid of them, but it never hurt to be cautious. The stairs creaked loudly under my weight. I tried not to make any more noise than I had to in order to avoid drawing any undue attention to myself. If they felt I was a threat, things could get nasty.
The upper floor was a small loft with two bedrooms on opposite ends and a bathroom in the middle. The walls were torn up in ugly patchworks where the copper pipes were missing. One of the bedrooms had been Mesa’s, but I had no need to go in there. I stuck my head through the doorway anyway and was surprised to see a child in there, lying atop a natty sleeping bag on the floor. The boy was small and grimy. His long hair was thick with grease and sticking up in clumps at odd angles. He had one large blue eye. Where his left eye should have been, he had only an ugly, jumbled mass of scar tissue. That side of his face was webbed with broken flesh over sunken bone. Although he was dressed in layers, he was clearly emaciated, and the left side of his body was deflated from where he had lost his arm and leg. His right leg was bent at the knee before him, his right elbow resting on his knee. He regarded me with his single eye then mouthed hello. The scar tissue from his face continued down his neck and across his throat before disappearing beneath the collars of his shirts. I returned his greeting with a simple nod.
When I turned my back on him, he resigned himself to loneliness or boredom with a noisy huff. I treaded lightly down the hall, to our old bedroom. The mattress we had slept on was shredded and stained with black mold. Its stuffing had probably been used to line clothes or sleeping bags or burned for warmth, along with the dresser and chest of drawers. The walls and carpet were moldy, and the room smelled rank. Somebody had shit in the corner, but it was old and dry.
I pulled open the closet door, half-expecting to find a dead body based on the stink, but I was relieved to find it empty and free of any horrors. The attic entrance was closed. That didn’t mean much, really, but it gave me hope. I yanked on the pull cord and caught the ladder as it slid down toward me. The climb up was short, but my eyes had to adjust to the darkness. The squatters hadn’t had reason to come up this high, and the rafters were still jammed with our boxes and the detritus of life. It took me a minute to spot the gray duffel bag I had come for. I hauled it over and down the steps, then knelt on the floor, everything else forgotten.
The bag was heavy. Inside were a couple pistols, boxes of ammunition, a folding Benchmade knife, and twenty-some mem chips. Most of the chips were copies of what I’d had in my possession at Echo Park, minus the chiang’s murder. I had maybe enough to unload on the black market to raise money for passage north or east, to the seasteaders. Other chips sat at the bottom of the bag, though, ones that were far more meaningful to me.
In this bag was my entire life—my wedding, the first time Selene and I had made love, the birth of our daughter, and her first day of school. Sending her off to kindergarten had been painful. For the first time in her life we had left her surrounded by strangers, and she had been afraid. She hadn’t wanted to be separated from her mother or me, even though the teacher had seemed pleasant and smiled at her, holding out her hands for Mesa to take. Instead, Mesa had screamed and hugged my leg, tears streaming down her face as she begged us not to leave her alone. At the end of the day, she was sullen and vowed not to go back. The next morning, she put up no fight. By the third day, she was almost eager to go.
I slung the bag over my shoulder and stood. I stepped out of the closet, and instinct took over. I smelled him before he was on top of me, and I easily sidestepped the punch he threw toward me. He was slow and drunk, but his words were oddly clear.
“They’re doing it,” he said. “You Muslim?”
His fists were balled at his sides, and he was breathing heavily. He was fat and tired.
He waited for my answer, bringing his hands up in front of his face.
“No,” I said. “I’m not Muslim.”
“That’s good,” he said, seeming to relax. “They’re doing it. They’re putting the thoughts out there, making people into them, into terrorists. It’s them doing it.”
“Okay,” I said, not sure what else to say.
“I’m for Jesus. Them ones, though, they fucked up, gonna blow up. Blow up for sure. But I gots Jesus. That’s good, that one. It is.”
“Okay.”
“Yup. You got Jesus?”
I noticed a glint from his hand. He had a knife up his sleeve.
“Yeah, sure,” I said.
“Yup. That’s good. Better to have Jesus in you than the other one.”
I nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I hear, man.”
“You watch yourself. Watch out for the gooks and the Allah assholes. It’s bad out there.”
“Amen, brother.”
“Amen to you, sir. Fucking amen.”
He stepped back out of the doorway and spread his arms wide, granting me passage in sage fashion. I walked past, but made no show of my nervousness. He nodded, I nodded back, and we were copacetic.
“What happened to the boy?” I asked. The words escaped before I realized it.
“Thems was the gooks did that. Not the ragheads. Rags got me, though, once upon a time. Lost a fucking toe.”
“Huh,” I said.
“Yup. You go on, now. Git.”
I wasn’t going to argue. This was not my house, not anymore. It was from a past life, a dead life. The house shrank and receded in the distance as I drove away. Then it disappeared from view, lost to me forever.
Chapter 14
Convergence Page 17
