Upgunned

by David J. Schow

  I thought a lot about recorded data in the next few weeks, when I wasn’t sneaking in and out of hospitals. That part came soon enough.

  There was a remarkable tension-release flow to the sort of work I do. Sometimes the setup involved weeks, months of prep, playing roles and living in assumed skins; other times the action was fast and fatal. There was no artificial high quite like this sensation, and once the mission was closed, release flooded every nerve ending. This required the discipline of learning to eat stress the way ordinary people crave love. It was almost a regressive state, taking me and people similar to me back to jungle law, to sleep when tired, eat when hungry or instead of being eaten—raw Darwinism with a dash of Nietzsche. It put me beyond the clock of regular citizens and out of reach of their law enforcement. Planning stages were so comprehensive that police interference was always accounted for and factored in, so officers of the normal-world law represented mild deterrent potential at best. Hell, half the time I worked for some shadow-ops government agency that guaranteed my immunity as a deal point—I could always escape custody with a single phone call. A fifty-two card deck of alternate identities didn’t hurt, either. Nor did secure drops, safe houses or the finest modern weaponry military and black market subcontractors could provide. Tax free.

  I had just pulled off the subterranean equivalent of winning the lottery. A sealed and delivered deal had taken the worst turn imaginable, and instead of folding, my team and I rebounded with solid improvisation. Money was always more fun when you feel you have actually earned it. For “money,” substitute “all the things you desire” if you’re not a complete capitalist.

  About ten o’clock that evening I got a secure cell message that three tailored suits were ready for my pick up. Bad timing; I did not know whether Cognac would elect to stay past midnight.

  When I arrived at Mal Boyd’s aerie, I found him ashen. Not eating.

  “We’re severely compromised, dear boy,” he said. “Your face and crimes are all over the Internet.”

  PART THREE

  ELIAS

  Char left me without even a contact number. If I had been paying closer attention, I would have seen she had been moving her stuff out for weeks, piecemeal, in increments too small to be remarked.

  Yes, you could say I had been distracted.

  Gun Guy had labeled me a pornographer. That was conditionally true. Most of my catch for the past year had come from shooting fashion spreads instead of nurturing my own tentative idea of art. There’s a reason they’re called “spreads” and they’re generally more obscene than anything featuring split beaver or pink-think or the anal avenging found in the newsstand sections you always pretend to avoid.

  We’ve all become street whores for the fashion industry. It barks trends and we lie back and spread our billfolds, queuing up in a desperate grab for this season’s insane idea of faux class. Wander over into that other section of the magazine racks, you know the one I mean. Where the bedsheet-sized glossies beckon with empty promises of style and cool. Where they’ll teasingly tell you about this season’s ten essential must-have accessories, or how howlingly ridiculous parkas are the in thing, why all the hoi polloi are wearing them this week.

  It makes celebrities of people who have never accomplished anything apart from being celebrities, and offers them to you for worship. You already know the brand names and labels and their snakepit pecking order, because you still believe you can buy pedigree for the cost of a stupid magazine.

  It’s not your fault you’re such a sucker for this garbage; hell, we’ve all been conditioned … or I never would have let Nasja delve my crotch after that last shoot. There are some kinds of candy that don’t permit the word no.

  Insiders would attempt to dazzle you with a fireworks display of dropped names, feeding your mad lust for dirt, the real scoop, the hot gossip. Or they’d blind you with the glare of trivia; the chewy argot and insider jargon of the mavens of high style.

  Your lust object has butt implants, a face full of botulism, a vaginal tuck, a penile implant, fake pecs, surgically mutilated eyes, a decalcifying skeleton, two or three serious drug monkeys, a coyote’s sense of entitlement, a head full of bees, and is so utterly devoid of human emotion he or she might as well be from another galaxy.

  But now, used, scared, and abandoned, having filled my pants like a toddler and quaked like a sissy, minus a picture on my wall that I really liked and was compelled to give away to avoid being handily murdered, you may forgive my abrupt and uncharacteristic introspection.

  Listen to me: It’s not the Year of Gloss. Buzz can eat you alive. You don’t care about the A-list party animals or Fashion’s Best Catfights, or which supermodels are courting which labels. The Foot is not the New Face; trust me. It doesn’t matter what look is the talk of the runways, or how some daring doyenne turned a gallery opening into an all-night bacchanal.

  There are other things going on besides the political peccadilloes, breathless soap opera, and empty calories fed us all by a world where advertising has gone berserk. Remember that the next time you find yourself tempted by a logo.

  Right now I knew what I wanted more than anything was to kick that whole steroidal designer monster in its warty asshole as far as my boot would sink. Or at least give it a good poke in the eye. It had made me a slave. It took Char from me. It showed me what a naked coward I truly was.

  There was a whole other universe out there where Gun Guy operated, invisible in plain sight. That was the fulcrum of genuine power.

  And I wasn’t a part of it until that night.

  Thanks to the speed from my medicine cabinet, I couldn’t slip into bed on the far side of the no man’s land across from Char. So I dumped more tequila down my neck and replayed Nasja’s “erased” spycam tape.

  At about the fifty-minute mark, it showed me and Gun Guy entering the loft. The audio was crisp:

  Is that the bitch from before?

  No.

  Then hop-to, and let’s try not to wake her up. You don’t want her to wind up in a can of cat food like your buddy Dominic Sharps … do you?

  I’ve never swooned before and don’t know how it feels. Probably something like what was jacking my metabolism now, punching my heart, husking my breath, making the room swim as dust motes in the air ballooned to the size of asteroids.

  Then I remembered I had purposefully used the Clavius paper to run the prints for Gun Guy, in my own covert attempt at rebellion.

  The Clavius paper is thick archival bond with a hidden watermark asserting copyright, about which Clavius has always been dictatorial. If you were to digitally scan the photo—say, for illicit reproduction—a huge diagonal bar appears across the image face advising you not to do that. Neue Helvetica type across the bottom edge of the bar provides a Web site address where Clavius blogs about twice a year. Its main function is to employ a platoon of nitpicky workers who keep constant watch for violations of intellectual property rights as detailed in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Plagiarisms. Unauthorized usages or postings. Anything actionable.

  He won a whale-choking settlement from Google just last year as the distribution apparatus for “free first looks” at items that were not free. Clavius had enough of a war chest to paper them out, and the details of the accord were sealed under a strict gag order. It was a very large numeral, following a dollar sign.

  As a result, Clavius found himself in the unelected position of a popular media figure with a boner for creative rights, which is a rarity on the order of finding a still-breathing Tasmanian wolf raiding your larder’s stash of sorbet. Daily hits skyrocketed. His Web site was much-followed and often-commented upon.

  So I uploaded the video to it, without fanfare, in the MEMBERS section.

  The only reason I had thought of this was because Gun Guy had kicked such a stink about the photos not being digital manipulations. What he was really talking about—although he didn’t know it—was presenting pictures that could stand up to forensics on the fractal
level.

  The Clavius watermark on the paper would autoreference any Internet upload on prohibited material, including the photos I had shot. To this red flag system I added a footnote, which could be done using an access code and a phone, as long as the message was fewer than 140 characters. I sheltered it using a “dead pixel” protocol so that it would not appear unless those specific photos were uploaded. This was possible because every single piece of Clavius paper has its own registry number; you just entered the appropriate numbers.

  SHARPS SEX PHOTOS A COMPLETE FRAUD

  BY BLACKMAILERS RED FLAG REPS

  FOR DETAILS AND EVIDENCE

  If the machinations stayed underground, no worries. But if they came anywhere near the Internet … fireworks. And my ass was covered. Without the photos, the video would mean nothing to the average Web surfer.

  This kind of control was made possible by the world-girding monoliths that really control the airflow of digital information, like a slipknot around your throat and mine. It is an ongoing global contraction of ultimate domain. The more devices you have connected to satellites, the more freedom you’ve already lost, not to mention privacy. Sign up, log in, don’t forget your password, and they’ve got you by the guts. And most people don’t mind at all. Why should a budget be wasted on intelligence when the subjects willingly spy on themselves? Convenience is king, and if you’re not willing to live a full-disclosure life 24/7, then you must be hiding something.

  I don’t wish to sound like a tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorist. But Clavius told me that the surge in liquid crystal and plasma monitors was encouraged by our hidden overseers because each new screen had the built-in capacity to passively watch and listen back at the will of some faraway keyboard jock. It was exactly like the TV that watches you from Orwell’s 1984, but generations more subtle because it did not matter if the unit was on or off; now reconsider that STANDBY light that always glows. I don’t know how true the story is, but ask yourself if you think it is really that far-fetched.

  If you don’t believe, you might change your mind if you had met Gun Guy and his pal Mister Kimber. They were supposed to be untouchable but I had managed a limp form of fight-back. A hidden dead-switch bomb.

  Nobody was more shocked than me when it blew up.

  * * *

  Tripp Bergin called the next day to pester me about the movie gig. I told him I was in a transitional phase and would get back to him.

  Joey, my assistant and facilitator, had been MIA all morning, probably snoring off an Ecstasy binge and subsequent water bloat, after having left my loft for a club that did not open until midnight.

  Nasja called twice. I erased her messages without listening to them. I already knew she would be hectoring me to see photos too soon. Or worse.

  Clavius showed up around sunset. Himself, in person.

  Which was not usual. This was no rare in-the-flesh visit to cement our bond, or a publicity op, because no media were lurking. He either had a grand new scheme to hatch that mandated my labor … or something was seriously wrong.

  His limpid eyes scanned the loft with approval. He’d gotten none less than DeMarco—yes, the DeMarco—to redesign the living space with a bias toward photography—a lot of glass, flat angles, minimalist work zones and polished wood, yet practical for the sprawl a large shoot can prompt.

  “You’ve done well for yourself,” he said. He should know: he picked out most of this stuff himself, or his creatures had. I had become a spinoff of him.

  “I’ve also done well for yourself,” I said, uncertain of his tone. Was he angry at me for Char? For Nasja? For an unspecified sin, as the parent who smacks the kid upside the noggin and when the kid yowls, “What’d I do?” the parent says, “You should know.”

  Clavius seemed calm and ready to be distracted. I already knew this was his war face.

  “Char,” he said simply. No adjectives, no qualifiers. It was his way to drop a topic like a rock into a koi pond and let others handle the splashing and ripples.

  It was also a relief that I didn’t have to inchworm my way toward the subject. I dove right in: “She’s been moving her stuff out for weeks. I just realized that this morning. I’m not mad at you … well, maybe a little.”

  Clavius waved that off; a trifle. “She’s staying at HawkNest, you know.”

  HawkNest was Clavius’s elaborate penthouse-style New York pied-à-terre. He owned the entire twenty-sixth floor of a building on the Upper West Side. In most places, Clavius liked to be up high and on top. Quite a few people could be said to be “in residence” there at any given time—models, guests, celebrities holing up incognito, assorted grotesques. Clavius had an entire wing of apartments for visitors. That way, women from all over the planet could stay there, yet none could claim they were actually sleeping with Clavius.

  From what Nasja had divulged, Clavius rarely had sex conventionally, which was just too boring. There was a ritualistic introductory phase where he might call upon five acolyte women to each perform different aspects of a single erotic collage. Like A-B-C: Abby does a hand job designed to last an hour, then Barbara replaces her for an anal penetration of one single thrust, then Cathy rotates in for other kinds of stimulation like climax hovering, Doris arrives for vigorous fornication and a precisely timed number of ins-and-outs, and finally Elsey dashes in to swallow the flow of genetic material.

  To mess with the orchestration of Clavius’s labyrinthine sexual scenarios was to squander spiritual energy like some brutish, low commoner. Why, that would just be fucking.

  I had no idea what part or role Char played in all that. I only knew she had left me when we seemed evenly matched, sexually, spiritually, and in terms of knowing the same puns and finishing each other’s sentences. Her departure did not confirm anything except my single status, because if you were a total boor and lost it and screamed at Clavius, “Are you fucking her?” He would smile and answer, “Yes, I am fucking her emotions.”

  “No, goddammit—are you having sex with her?” He’d say, “Some might call it sex.” And so on, same as the child-whacking parent.

  Which was why Clavius had noted that Char was now at HawkNest.

  “She’s flown across the country already?” I said, a bit stung by her haste.

  Clavius ran his hands through his indestructible iron hair and steepled his fingers. “Yes—this morning. Where is the Targets picture that was hanging there? Did you sell it?”

  “So to speak,” I said. “Is this about Nasja?”

  Another wave. “Do with Nasja what you will. She has citizenship and a bank balance; I’m done with her.”

  I tried to stay as honestly on track as I could, even if it seemed coarse: “Is Char her replacement?”

  “Not at all,” he said. “What makes you think that?” It was the sort of question only Clavius could ask and get away with.

  Then a teeny lightbulb zapped on, somewhere, and he added, “Let me tell you a little something about our dear friend Charlene. Do you remember when you met her? Back when you were still moonlighting at that droll print shop?”

  I nodded and Clavius indicated that he would deign to imbibe a sparkling water of the appropriate brand.

  “Do you remember your mind-set then, what you were thinking?”

  “I was thinking I was really lucky to have met you,” I said.

  “Yes—fortuitous. Profitable for all. But you thought of yourself as an underdog, and still do in many ways. You hated feeling beholden. Char was the answer to that emotional stress.”

  “Yeah, that’s how I felt at the time.”

  “No—you mistake my meaning. Char was my solution to your distress.”

  “No.” I could not backtrack it. Char and I had met at a book signing that had nothing to do with Clavius. She acted as though she had never heard of him except in a distant, peripheral way. But she had never said it outright, in so many words.

  “It was simple to follow you outside my purview,” Clavius said. “I aimed her at yo
u and she accomplished her task, which was to bring you out of yourself. Look at how your work has matured and flourished.”

  My vision began to spot and plunge again.

  “She has simply flown home, you see? Now I can explain it to you, safely and without guilt or rage or reactionary hostility. Do you agree?”

  I sat down rather heavily, sloshing my drink.

  Char had been a plant. Even for her, I owed Clavius.

  * * *

  I tried to tell Clavius the story of what had happened to me. I had no other confidants at hand. He found it amusing.

  “That’s a fantastic confluence of nanochance,” he observed with a twinkle. “The hairsbreadth timing, the implied derring-do. Are you thinking of making this a series?”

  “I didn’t make it up,” I said. I showed him Nasja’s tape. He was less than convinced. I was right—without the photos, the tape meant nothing, and I didn’t have the photos.

  “Is it the assignments?” Clavius asked. He moved to the stainless bar sink near the kitchen island to wash his hands, which he did thirty or forty times per day. “Are they becoming tedium for you? The magazine layouts? Tell me what you want.”

  He was asking if I had snapped into fantasyland because my daily workload was so mind-numbing, and offering deeper debt.

  “We can easily alter that,” he said with the surety of a man who always gets what he wants. “You’ve been my champion. I don’t wish to see you unhappy.”

  Really? Then work some sorcery on Char so she never met you.

  I was being petty and cranky, resenting the control held by people more powerful than me. Same as with Gun Guy. If I would just face my low position on the totem pole, the food chain, I would at least enjoy the refreshment of an honest panoramic look at how my life sucked.

  Yeah, I spent most days sobbing over my unfair lot: I had an upward-bound profile, a killer portfolio, a million-dollar crib, the freedom of determining my own hours, a Jaguar, enough stray dollars to feed my antique camera fetish, a chorus line of lovelies, and an all-access pass to realms a TV watcher can only dream about—all the stuff I had idealized before Clavius walked into New World Inkworks that first time. Yeah, yeah, my life was a bitch.