by Eric Brown
‘Let’s do it.’
Halliday eased the car onto the narrow jetty and headed for the end, tyres rippling noisily over the ribbed concrete.
He braked the Ford, facing the dark immensity of the ocean. Kat switched on the overhead light and in its feeble glare set to work. Barney closed his eyes, his head back against the rest, as if asleep.
‘Okay,’ Kat said. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got ourselves here.’
She slipped three short needles into the NCI’s ports, wires trailing to a device like a com which she held in her left hand, and glanced at it occasionally.
Halliday looked through the rear window, uneasy. He was about to leave the car and patrol the area when Kat said, ‘Hey, jackpot, Halliday! It ain’t no sub-cortical implant, you’ll be delighted to know. It’s a plain old-fashioned needle device. Trouble is, it’s fitted with a retrieval code, so I’ll have to hack through that to get it out.’
‘You think you can do it?’
She nodded, tight-lipped. ‘I’ll do it. Just give me time, okay?’
He left her to it and climbed from the car. He walked back along the length of the jetty, aware of the weight of his automatic in its body-holster.
He sat on a concrete capstan and stared inland. The coast on this stretch of the island was dark, the approaching tracks unlighted. If a car tried to reach Barney at the end of the jetty, it would have to get past him first.
He thought about the stranger in the car who sounded like Barney, seemingly had all the memories of Barney, and with the chu even looked like his old partner. But the body of the man in the car was not Barney’s - so was his partner nothing more than a set of memories and behaviour patterns downloaded into the NCI? And, if so, then what of the body? Who had the body belonged to before Barney’s occupancy? Did it still have its own memories and thoughts, its own identity, locked somewhere within its skull?
The twin cone projection of a car’s headlights appeared in the distance, swinging wildly through the night as the car bounced along the rough track. Halliday tensed, then ducked behind the capstan and watched as the car approached.
If it tried to drive onto the jetty, he decided, he’d shoot out its tyres and hope its occupants were from Mantoni, not a couple of lovers looking for privacy.
He drew his automatic.
The car approached the jetty and swept on by, heading for a line of beach chalets about five hundred metres away. Halliday stood and watched, just to make sure. The car halted before the first chalet and four figures climbed out, laughing.
He breathed a sigh of relief and wondered how Kat was doing.
To the west, Manhattan showed as a lighted blur on the horizon, a pastel halation of combined neons and holo-façades. It looked like some kind of fabulous ocean liner bedecked with party lights, about to embark on some epic voyage. It was a wonderful lie, he thought; beneath the lights it was more a rotten hulk, becalmed.
He looked up. Overhead, rainclouds gathered in preparation for another evening deluge.
He heard a noise from the end of the jetty as the car door opened and slammed shut. A small, slim figure strode towards him.
‘Halliday!’ Kat called. ‘Got a present for you!’
She stopped before him and swept a strand of jet hair from her eyes, holding it in place against the warm breeze.
She held out a small needle.
Halliday took it, examined the innocent-looking object. ‘That all it is?’
She nodded. ‘That’s all. Simple tracking device.’ She continued staring at him, hand to her forehead to pin back her hair. ‘Halliday, I want to ask you something.’
He drew his arm back and flung the needle into the ocean. ‘Yeah?’
‘That guy back there,’ she said, hesitant. ‘Barney or whatever he calls himself...’
‘What about him?’
‘Well, I don’t really know how to ask this ... But what the fuck is he?’
He stared at her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, the people who’re implanted with NCIs, techs and scientists and whoever, well...they’re usually alive.’
He was suddenly aware of the salt tang of the sea air, the sound of the waves soughing on the beach beneath the pillars of the jetty. The first warm drops of rain, harbingers of the torrent to come, pattered down around them.
‘You mean Barney isn’t?’
She shook her head. ‘He’s brain dead. He’s a zombie. It isn’t his cerebellum running his autonomic nervous system, or his cortex controlling all his higher functions, it’s the fucking NCI. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life, Halliday, and it’s sure as hell spooky.’
He shrugged. ‘He’s on our side, Kat. That’s all that matters.’
‘Yeah, but I’d like to know exactly what it is that’s on our side.’
‘He’s on the run from the Mantoni organisation,’ Halliday said. ‘He was my business partner, before he died.’
She looked at him. ‘So he’s some kind of Mantoni experiment?’ she said. ‘Christ, Mantoni are bringing the dead back to life?’
Halliday pointed to the car. ‘Let’s get going, Kat. I don’t want the bastards to find us now.’
They returned to the car through the strengthening rain. Barney was staring out at the darkness of the ocean. Or rather the stranger was staring out, expressionless.
Halliday started the Ford and backed the length of the jetty, then spun the wheel and careered along the track, heading for the highway and Manhattan.
Thirty minutes later they crossed Brooklyn Bridge and passed through a riotously illuminated Chinatown. The rain had let up and a festival was in progress, a giant dragon undulating down Centre Street. Neons and holo-façades lit a thousand beaming faces packed onto the sidewalks.
‘Drop me here, Halliday,’ Kat called out.
He looked over his shoulder. ‘You gonna join in the carnival?’
‘Sure ... Do I look like the partying type? I’m still trying to trace the Methuselah people, Halliday. I’ll be in touch.’
She jumped from the car, and Halliday watched her as she vanished into the crowd.
Barney was quiet as they headed north. The stranger closed his eyes, feigning sleep. Halliday wished he’d put his Barney chu back on.
He almost drove past Carnegie Hill and on to El Barrio, before remembering his new office-apartment on Lexington.
He parked the Ford in the street and indicated the building. ‘What do you think, Barney?’
‘Certainly gone up in the world. Business must be good.’
‘As if. This is courtesy of Wellman. I had to get out of the old place. It’s a long story.’
They rode the elevator to the third floor and Halliday showed Barney through the office and into the lounge. When he checked the cooler, he found a dozen bottles of Ukrainian wheat beer.
‘Well, what do you know?’ he called back. ‘Wellman certainly did the job right.’
He carried two beers to the lounge and passed one to Barney. He sat on a lounger before the floor-to-ceiling window.
Barney stood in the middle of the room, bottle in hand.
Halliday stared at the stranger. He raised his bottle and said, ‘So, you gonna tell me what happened?’
As if drawn from a reverie, Barney half-smiled. ‘You’d feel better if I put the chu back on, right?’
Halliday shrugged. ‘Whatever makes you feel comfortable.’
Barney sat on the sofa and stared down at his beer. He placed the deactivated chu on the cushion beside him. ‘Know something, Hal? I thought that being in control of this body, reborn, human again ...’
‘Yes?’
The stranger shrugged, took a slug of beer. ‘Something’s missing. I have all my thoughts, my memories. As far as I know I am Barney Kluger, but something’s missing.’
Halliday tipped his beer and felt the ice-cold liquid kill his thirst. ‘Look, why don’t you start at the beginning? You said you were downloaded ... but where the hell from?’
Barney stood and moved to the window. He stared out at the holo-façades that lined Lexington Avenue, stared through the reflection of the stranger in the plate glass window.
‘Remember those sessions I had with the Mantoni people?’
‘You said you were studying VR,’ Halliday said. ‘But I found the pin, after your funeral. You were in VR with a construct of Estelle.’
Barney smiled. ‘That’s the last thing I recall. I was in the villa with Estelle, and I never got out, back to the real world.’
Halliday shook his head. ‘What happened?’
Barney’s eyes focused on his reflection; Halliday saw the sudden start of surprise in his eyes, before he turned from the window and sat down on the sofa.
He took a long swallow of beer and said, ‘The bastards at Mantoni recorded the contents of my head while I was in the tank. A while back, they switched me on ... only from my point of view I’d never been switched off. I was still in VR with Estelle, but I’d lost the ability to experience emotions. I knew something was damned wrong.’ He paused, regarding his beer.
He told Hal that a few days later Lew Kramer had turned up and said that Barney’d been copied, that out there in the real world the original Barney Kluger was dead.
‘Of course, I didn’t feel dead. I had all my memories, personality, preferences ... Then Kramer told me they had a body waiting for me - I’d be able to function again in a real, live body.’ He paused, took another swallow of beer.
‘So a few days ago they downloaded me into this - but I was imprisoned in the Mantoni building. I had my own tank in the apartment and I surfed the sites ... Back when I’d been in VR, I found the Mantoni core site, where the management team met. So while I was imprisoned, I accessed the site, heard what they were planning. I had to get out, warn you.’
‘Christ, Barney, no wonder they want you back so bad.’
Barney shrugged. ‘I’m a security threat. They don’t want competitors getting in on the act. That’s why they’re so paranoid about what the Methuselah Project is up to - they’re scared shitless that the Methuselah people have already, or soon will, come across their secrets.’
Halliday finished his beer, saw that Barney was well down his. He fetched two more from the cooler and sat back on the sofa. ‘You said you were missing something, Barney. I don’t understand. You look like you’ve got it all. A new body, better than the old one. Christ, come back into partnership with me and we’ll clean up!’
Barney smiled. Halliday was getting accustomed to the stranger’s face. How long could it remain unfamiliar when his every gesture, expression and mannerism was informed by the consciousness of the man he had known so well for so many years?
‘Hal,’ Barney said, looking across the room at him, ‘the real Barney Kluger died eighteen months ago in some back alley. The essence of him, the real Barney, ceased to exist when he died. All I am is a copy. How can I be real, when the original Barney died after I came into existence?’
Halliday lifted his beer bottle. ‘That’s one for the philosophers. So you might not be the original Barney Kluger, but you’re the only one in existence now. Isn’t that enough? I mean, you have all your memories, thoughts and feelings, and the things that make you unique to yourself.’
Barney shook his head. ‘That’s just it, Hal. I don’t ... I mean, I don’t feel any more. It’s as if when they copied the original, they could copy everything but the ability to express emotion.’
Halliday stared at the man who had been Barney Kluger. ‘You want another beer, Barney?’
They talked until midnight, when Barney yawned and complained that the big drawback of being physical again was the demands of the body. Halliday showed him to the bedroom, then returned to the lounge and dimmed the lighting.
He was stretching out on the sofa, staring out at the lights of the avenue, when he remembered Casey with a sudden pang of guilt.
He’d meant to meet her tonight, go to a holo-drama, then have a meal. He considered calling her, apologising and arranging another date.
It was too late, now. And anyway, he’d sound feeble if he tried to apologise. She’d just bawl him out, and right now he could do without that.
He’d ring in the morning, make it up to her then.
He lay back and tried to sleep.
* * * *
Twenty-Four
Kat Kosinski hurried along Canal Street. She passed a VR Bar, all lit up like a porn parlour. A few people were drifting in, to immerse themselves in the delights of other worlds, other times. Something in her wanted to rush across the street, start preaching about the folly of virtual reality. But another part of her was tired; she knew when she was defeated.
She called into the Jade Garden. ‘Hi, Mr Xing. Chicken rolls and French fries. Take-out.’
‘Hey, Kat. You quiet today.’
‘I am?’ She shrugged, smiled. ‘Thinking about the future, Mr Xing.’
She had wondered, briefly, after Colby had spouted all that stuff about Virex having been taken over, if it’d been nothing more than a ploy on his part to get her to leave New York. She’d wondered if she should hate Colby for that, or feel gratified that he liked her enough to make up such an elaborate story. Thing was, he had never said that he loved her, never. What they had was unspoken between them...
And then Halliday had turned up, and was almost burned bad by the Methuselah site. She had traced the site, uncovered for positive that it was the site she’d been routing the stolen information to for months.
So Colby had been telling the truth, and Kat had experienced a yawning pit of emptiness and despair inside her. She had been working for the enemy. Not only that, but Colby hadn’t made up the elaborate story to lure her away from New York. Maybe he didn’t love her, maybe there was nothing there but friendship. He wanted her to come to Saskatchewan not because he loved her, but because he didn’t like to see her living like she was. Because he pitied her.
So what was she going to do?
Mr Xing pushed the take-out across the counter. ‘And this, Kat. Take this.’
‘What is it.’
‘Fortune cookie, for future.’
She took the cookie, slipped it into the pocket of her leggings. ‘Thanks, Mr Xing. See you later.’
She hurried through the streets. She seemed to be seeing things with a greater clarity these days, noticing the city around her, the beauty of the old architecture not plastered with holo-façades. Maybe she was seeing the place for the first time, she thought to herself, because something in her subconscious knew she was also seeing it for the last time ... Well, maybe.
She unlocked the door of the new place she’d moved to a few days ago. It was a dive: one room with an adjacent shower unit, no kitchen. Her mattress was in one corner, the jellytank in the other, and all around the walls were her monitors and com-systems.
She stared around the room. This was all she’d had for so long, no real possessions, no comfort. For that long it’d been all she’d needed, all she’d really cared about. There was something about the intricacy of the system, and her total knowledge of it, that had empowered her, given her an identity, self-esteem. Now, all the hardware was nothing but a symbol of the futile game she’d been playing for so long.
She knew people who would give her good money for the stuff. She could sell it and clear out and head north, fast, before the bastards at Virex realised she’d shafted them. That’d be sweet.
But when she got to Saskatchewan, what then? Did Colby really want her? If not, then what the fuck would she do with herself out in the middle of nowhere?
She poured herself a bourbon, then sat cross-legged on the bed and ate her chicken rolls and fries.
All she knew was the city, New York. She’d lived here all her life, first in Brooklyn and later Manhattan, moving around various places, never still for very long. How would she adapt to a one-horse town on the prairie?
Choices, she thought. Never was any good at making choices. She had always fou
nd herself drifting into making decisions, found herself so far down a road towards a certain possibility that it seemed like too much hard work to turn back.
She finished the take-out and sat holding the bourbon in both hands, staring into the disc of golden liquid. She remembered the fortune cookie Mr Xing had given her and dug it out.
She unwrapped it, bit into the biscuit and pulled out the rolled message.
Go west for happiness,she read.
She smiled. Strange thing to find in a Chinese fortune cookie. Go west ... Saskatchewan was west of New York, wasn’t it?
