Headspace

by Damien Boyes

  Dub takes this opportunity to drop right back into a crouch and continue the story he was telling before I walked over.

  I grab my jacket from the back of my chair and while I’m slipping it on I notice Dora still hasn’t left. Her tab is on her lap but the screen has timed off. She’s watching me from under her bangs. Almost like she was waiting for me.

  I duck my head, give her a little smile. “Goodnight, Doralai.”

  She doesn’t say anything and I head for the door. I’m pushing the bar when she catches up with me. We step out into the lobby and it latches behind us with a clatter that echoes down the dark hallways.

  “Mr. Gage,” she says quickly, timidly, glances up at me then back at the brown-tiled floor.

  “Call me Fin.”

  “Fin,” she says to her shoes, takes a breath and then raises her head as though her thoughts were made of iron. “Did you really do those things?”

  “What things?”

  “In your head? Visit those places?”

  “I did.”

  “And you...?” she trails off, but I know what she means.

  “It wasn’t easy at first. None of this has been, but it gets easier, I think. If you let it.” I sound like Elder.

  “How?” she asks, and for the first time she looks at me, really looks at me, and I can see the panic in her eyes.

  I take a breath, considering, and I’m surprised by my answer, like I’m revealing it to myself as well. “At first, I didn’t want to accept that I was different. For the first few days, I tried to force myself into thinking everything was the same as it used to be, or I could will it back into place. But it’s not. And even though things aren’t the same, it doesn’t mean they’re worse. In some ways they might even be better. My back doesn’t hurt when I bend down anymore.”

  She smiles, a little. “Can you show me? What you saw?”

  “You don’t want me, I know Elder would be happy to—”

  “No,” she cuts me off, the first sign of life I’ve seen from her tonight. “He expects us all to be like him. I am not like him. What you said, last week, about being a stranger in your own head. I feel that too.”

  “You’d have to get a cuff.”

  “I have one,” she responds. “My husband bought it for me the first day I came home. It’s still in the package.”

  “Okay, well, how about on Friday? We can pick some place to meet in the Hereafter and I can show you around.”

  “Can we—can you be there when I first put it on?”

  “The cuff?”

  She nods.

  “Wouldn’t you prefer to be at home? Maybe your husband could—”

  “No,” she says again sharply, and then turns quiet once more. “I’d prefer to be somewhere that isn’t so full of…the way things were.”

  “I get that,” I say, remembering how I felt walking into our old condo. “You can come to where I’m staying if you’d like. It isn’t much, but it will do for a place to rest our skyns.”

  “Thank you, Finsbury,” she says, gathers her coat around her and hurries into the night.

  I follow a moment later, my thoughts on the Dwell and my stomach quivering at the thought of opening up my head to the unknown.

  StatUS-ID

  [fdaa:9afe:17e6:a2ef::Gage/-//GIBSON]

  SysDate

  [11:48:29. Friday, January 17, 2059]

  Ari Dubecki’s expecting me. An invitation waits when I get in my head and think up my console.

  I reach out to hit ‘accept’ but hesitate at the last second. This guy has already tried to kill me once. Threatened Mom and Dad. Tried to pry something from my mind. Who knows what would happen if I step out of the safety of my head and into a virt he controls?

  I don’t trust Dub and I don’t much trust Shelt, but Dora—I believe she’s being honest with me. She believes Dub is innocent of attacking me, that someone infiltrated his head. And with Dub dead, Shelt convinced he’s next, and Dora terrified to be alone, if this is some kind of elaborate con, they’re doing a hell of a job.

  Something is going on. Whether they’re being targeted or whether I had anything to do with it, I can’t tell yet. But I’m not going to get any closer to finding out by hiding in my head.

  I poke Dub’s invitation. The oriel peels open and I push through into the thick, pina colada air freshener balm of Dub’s private virt.

  A woman anticipates my entrance. She’s tiny, wrapped in a red and white sarong, with a white tropical flower half the size of her head tucked behind one ear. Her eyes are brown and impossibly big.

  She bows slightly and smiles, as if physically apologising for her lack of English, which, being a simulation, she’d speak if she were programmed to. She spins on the balls of her bare feet and pads ahead of me toward a wide balcony, her body compressing against the intense blue sky.

  Shimmering polished concrete glows yellow underneath her feet, and the ceiling is rough, hewn from solid rock. Floor and ceiling bend around the black stone and trickling water and green vines of a living volcanic mountainside. The furniture is simple and modern. Thin white cushions resting on insubstantial wood. Gauzy white curtains blow in the tropical breeze. Further along the rock wall a tunnel carves away into the mountain itself.

  Outside a verdant canopy stretches to the island’s edge, and the wide-open sea stretches beyond to meet a clean-blown sky.

  For a guy who just died, Dub’s living pretty well.

  I follow the woman through the swaying curtains to the balcony, where a man, short and slight, leans on a railing, his face to the sun, eyes closed as the distant hiss of heavy surf crashes around him. Next to him a thin white tablecloth ripples over an invisible table, set with a narrow bottle peeking from a sweating bucket next to two small square glasses.

  That doesn’t look like the man who attacked me.

  He looks like an accountant.

  The man senses our silent approach and pushes up off the railing, turns to meet us, his grin wide but his eyes narrow. He’s someone’s grandfather, nothing like the hulk in the alley. Pale skin with short, thin hair and dimples in his cheeks. He looks like he should be baking cookies or repairing shoes, not beating the hell out of other human monsters for fun.

  But he doesn’t move like an old man, his hand shoots out and when we shake his arm moves mine.

  He nods a dismissal to the woman, puts his hand on my shoulder and turns down his smile. I resist yanking myself away from his grasp but ready myself for another attack.

  “Fin,” he says. “I heard about what happened. I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I would have attacked you.”

  “You seemed to have a pretty good idea why when your knee was on my throat, Mr. Dubecki.”

  He winces and releases my shoulder. “Dub, please. The last thing I remember is laying down for my evening sync and then I was here. I had to be told what happened. I attacked you. Then…a train,” he shudders.

  I know exactly what he’s thinking. He’s imagining what it would be like to die. “It’s not easy,” I offer.

  He nods, faces the sky. “I keep picturing it. What would it have felt like? The finality of it all.”

  I could tell him from experience he’s better off not having a detailed image of his death rattling around in his head. I wish I didn’t.

  “What was in the shyft?” I ask instead.

  He turns back to me, perplexed.

  “When you attacked me, you held a shyft to my neck,” I clarify.

  “I wouldn’t—”

  “I can show you the bruises.”

  “I didn’t know you’d restored. Didn’t even know you were planning on it. We were friends, sure, but it’s not like I kept up with your life. I have no reason to hurt you. And why would I—? The training. The investment. My skyn cost me everything I had. I was supposed to fight Nyx tomorrow. Do you know who that is?”

  I nod. “Ludus Humanitech’s next superstar. The feeds are all over it. People are saying that’s why you killed yourself.
You were going to lose.”

  He sighs. “Of course I was going to lose.”

  I wasn’t expecting that. “You were prepared to die?”

  “I wasn’t looking forward to it,” he says with a tired smile. “But I was going to give Nyx a hell of a fight, and the crowd a show they’d never forget. I’d be the clear contender for the next audition. Not the Novi, but next in line. The sponsors would come hat-in-hand, and I’d be back with a next-gen skyn and six-months of intense training in here. Plenty to defeat Skyrinx or even SaMuelson. This was my ticket. Next year at this time, I’d be on the Humanitech arena team. Now—”

  “Your career is over,” I finish for him. “They decide you killed yourself, it’s on you. No sponsors. No skyn. At least you have a nice virt to retire to.”

  “That’s why I need you to clear my name.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “I’ve been thinking, nothing but. I must have been mindjacked, and whoever jacked me used my skyn to come after you.”

  It makes sense. It’s what he tried to do to me. Or whoever was inside his head at the time. “Who would jack you? Who could?”

  “Someone we had in common, right? Has to be. Someone from counselling—”

  “How do you know it’s related? Maybe Nyx was more worried about you than you think, had someone hardlock you, ruin your reputation.”

  Dub’s face hardens. “She would never do that. She’d rather lose.”

  “Someone else? Close to her, maybe thinking they’re doing her a favour?”

  “If it was a mindjack I’d still need to ack the shyft. No stranger could get me to do that.”

  I nod. He believes it, but I know firsthand you never truly know what you’re capable of.

  “So it had to be someone you know. Do you have family, anyone else close to you?”

  “Just a sister. She’s in Florida. She didn’t agree with my decision to go digital.”

  “So, counselling—”

  “I can’t figure how it could be anything but.”

  “Not Shelt or Dora?”

  He shakes his head, definitive.

  “Who then? Miranda and Tala are stocked. Carl gave up. Shelt did say Petra and Vaelyn were slinging shyfts…”

  He waves the thought away. “They’re harmless. Good girls, really.”

  “They’re rolling shyfts from scratch and you claim you were mindjacked. You don’t think the two might be connected?”

  He steps over to the table, pours himself a glass of clear bubbly liquid, offers the bottle up to me. I shake my head. I don’t get the point in putting fake water in my imaginary body. He takes a long sip sets his glass back on the table.

  “We spent time together,” he says, clearly embarrassed. “Petra and Vaelyn and Shelt and I. Sure, we got up to some hijinx. I was like a horny teenager then. The paps got some pictures and they hit the feeds and Poly thought it would be best if I wasn’t seen with people…like them. Humanitech didn’t want me around where so many shyfts were being openly used. The Gladiators have to stay wholesome.”

  “Wholesome decapitations, live to link?”

  He grins. “Gotta play to your audience.”

  “So you don’t think they’d have anything to do with this?”

  “I don’t, but I guess it won’t hurt to ask.”

  “Who’s that leave then?”

  “Elder,” he says.

  “Dora said he disappeared months ago.”

  “Sure. That doesn’t mean he can’t come back.”

  “There’s been no rep-hits, nothing to indicate he’s resurfaced.”

  “It isn’t hard to stay off SecNet? Shelt said Dora did it for months.”

  “But why?” I ask. It’s the question I keep coming back to. “What would he want from me so bad he’d risk mindjacking you for the chance to beat it out of me?”

  He nods. He doesn’t know either. “That’s what I can’t figure out, but he sure went squirrely right before he bugged out. Of all the people we know, only he’d be capable of engineering a way into someone’s Cortex. He took a real shine to you. Who knows what you two got up to.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Fin,” he says, looking me in the eyes, “you died in an explosion days after you were suspended from the Service for some kind of misconduct. I don’t know the details, but let’s not kid ourselves, you were up to something.”

  Got me there.

  He continues, “I’ll do anything I can to help. I have resources. Contacts. And I have nothing but time, waiting here while my future is decided for me.”

  Looks like I’m on the case. “What would you have done in the time you lost?”

  He looks up and in, comes back a second later. “Calendar shows training, buzz flails for the upcoming match. A pattern-scan in the aft. I probably spent most of the time with Poly, my trainer at the Ludus.”

  “I’ll need to talk to her.”

  “Done.”

  “And I need your dox, comms, anything that might help me get a sense of what might have happened.”

  He hesitates for a second then shrugs. “Okay.”

  This has all gotten so complicated. My mysterious restoration. Dub dead. Shelt and Dora terrified they’ll be next, their minds invaded. Could Elder really be behind all this? It’s hard to believe he could possibly want anything from my head.

  Maybe Dora’s right, maybe we should run. It’d be easier.

  I’d never have to find out who I became, delude myself into thinking whatever I want—

  Even as the thought flickers through my Cortex, I know I’m kidding myself. I could never run. Not without finding out what happened first. Not with someone out there, hurting people in my name.

  “What will you do if I can’t prove you didn’t kill yourself?” I ask.

  He takes a deep breath and blows it through pursed lips. I imagine it takes a long time to unlearn the habits ingrained in our bodies. There’s no oxygen in here but my chest is still rising and falling.

  “We live in a strange world, Fin,” Dub says. “Stranger every day. Look at me, who would have thought a Jewish kid from North York would grow up to fight for the New Gladiators? The Glads didn’t even exist when I was young. Reszos didn’t exist. Death was forever.” He shrugs, gestures out at digital waves crashing into a digital shore, the artificial warmth from the artificial sun, the simulated ecosystem surrounding us. “As strange as things are, tomorrow they’ll be even stranger. And the day after tomorrow the world will be unrecognizable. Did you think you’d ever throw your career and reputation away?” I shake my head, still not willing to accept I did. “I bet Miranda and Tala never expected they’d be stocked for murder, but that happened too. We’ve changed, Fin. You and I and everyone like us. And because we’ve changed we’re only going to change more. Faster. Every day. All you can do is try to remember who you are, stay focused on it, because the second you look away you’re miles from who you thought you were. And it doesn’t take long until you’re so far from yourself you’ve become someone else.

  “So that’s what I’ll do. I’ll stay here and try to remember who I am.”

  He turns and leans heavily on the railing, back to the spot he was when I arrived, and the woman in the red sarong returns to show me out.

  StatUS-ID

  [a646:d17e:8670:511f::Finsbury/D//GAGE]

  SysDate

  [22:46:32. Tuesday, April 16, 2058]

  The Dwell weighs almost nothing, but it’s still a struggle to lift it to my cuff. I nearly drop it as I fumble to find the contact port. Finally, I get close enough the cuff invisibly grabs out and snaps the shyft into place. I agree to the warning message without reading it.

  My heart thrums like an autocannon as I wait for something bad to happen, for my body to be hijacked or to collapse, spasming in a pool of bodily fluids as my mind wipes.

  A half-second later, the room snaps its fingers and a white screen folds out of nothing, hovers thirty cm from my ches
t, blank except for the word ‘RETRIEVE’ in bright blue capitals.

  I stare at it, waiting for the terrible consequences. But none come.

  None I can perceive, anyway.

  I stand, step away from the couch and around the screen, run my hand over the smooth surface. It doesn’t move, bolted to the air.

  “Retrieve,” I say and the screen folds down into a flat console containing a series of controls. Dates. Words. Smells. Feelings. Locations. It’s intuitive enough, I could fiddle with the inputs, rummage through my memories with molecular precision, but I know exactly what I’m looking for.

  It won’t be hard to find.

  “Connie’s death,” I say and the room beyond the console shears off in straight edges. Turns the apartment into a life-size diorama of the moment Connie died. The pale asphalt road. The watery sky. The glowing leaves. The halo of shimmering glass.

  The car, its front end obliterated by the compressing edge of the van.

  Connie, her mouth contorted in pain.

  Happening all again.

  I’m in my head. Standing outside it.

  My throat tightens and my stomach heaves. I have to look away.

  “Back,” I croak. The console shows a slider, control buttons, but ‘back’ gets me there. Wheels spin backwards and trees shoot ahead and the car reforms and we have our lives ahead of us.

  I step around the screen and the apartment vanishes behind me. I’m standing at the edge of the forest, road gravel sharp under my sock feet, a ghost in a frozen world. The air is cool, scented by the earthy smell of dying leaves.

  I walk to the car, pass through the door, sit down into myself.

  I’m there. The lingering scent of lotion on Connie’s hands. Her fingers on my thigh. This is real. Memory made place.

  “Play,” I say. “Slow.”

  The world crawls into motion, creeping toward the inevitable.

  We’d been quiet. Mom’s passive-aggressive longing for grandchildren in her declining years hitting harder than our casual rebuffs of ‘when it happens’ could shield. We’d been trying for a baby but, not yet.