Headspace

by Damien Boyes

  “And Tala, do you know anything about what she did?”

  “I didn’t even know her that well, I only saw her once outside of counselling.”

  “When was that?”

  “The night before my husband died. When we went to visit Doralai.”

  StatUS-ID

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

  SysDate

  [13:59:52. Friday, April 19, 2058]

  I’m on the couch, prodding my bruised torso and trying to come up with some way to figure out who’s behind the threats, when, at exactly two o’clock, the building announces Dora’s arrival. It’s as if she’s been sitting downstairs, waiting until the precisely arranged time before presenting herself.

  I tell the building to let her up, ease my shirt over my blue and yellow chest, and take a last glance around.

  I’ve tided up some. Thrown the old soup-cans in the recycler. Wet my hand and run it around the bathroom sink. Gathered the laundry and piled it in an empty cupboard that just became a closet—I’m eventually going to have to get the housebot started on the laundry. I can’t keep ordering new clothes when the old ones get dirty.

  I’ve also gathered up the collection of illicit grams that had been lying on the coffee table and tossed them into a kitchen drawer. No point in outing myself as a professional hypocrite just yet.

  A minute later, there’s a hesitant knock at the door, like the person on the other side isn’t sure I’m home and, even if I am, would be just as happy if I weren’t.

  I open the door and Dora’s there, hands clamped around the straps of a simple black purse, her feet together, head down, shoulders slumped forward. It’s as if she’s submitting herself to the headmaster for punishment.

  She’s wrapped in a simple grey cardigan over a muted pink-and-white floral-patterned blouse buttoned all the way to the neck, loose-fitting grey slacks, and what look like ballet slippers.

  I stand aside to let her pass. She peeks up at me, smiles briefly, then notices the bruise on my temple. The rest are hidden under my clothes, but I couldn’t hide that one. Her eyes fill with concern and she reaches instinctively toward the mottled skin but stops herself before I have to flinch away.

  “Are you okay?” she asks in a quiet voice.

  “Commute trouble,” I say with as much levity as I can muster and step aside to let her in. “I’m fine.”

  Her eyes narrow but she scurries by, and then stands in the middle of the room, unsure what to do next.

  “Have a seat. Can I get you something—” and as I say that I realise I have nothing to offer. “Water…? Soup?”

  “I’m fine,” she says, her voice nearly cracking. And then I realise she isn’t. She’s not fine at all. She’s terrified.

  “Come here,” I say, take her gently by the elbow, like I would have with my grandmother, and lead her to the couch.

  She slumps down, gnarls her fingers around her purse. I sit in the chair perpendicular, lean forward and lightly clasp her hands. They’re trembling.

  “Don’t be scared,” I say.

  “I’m not,” she answers, her voice breathess.

  “Dora, look at me.” Her chest swells and then releases. She straightens her back and she looks directly at me, like she’s facing down her executioner. Her lips are drawn tight and her eyes have begun to well, fear and anger battling it out. I hold her gaze, try to break through and make some kind of connection. “Just breathe. There’s no pressure. We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

  “I want to,” she says, that flare of defiance once again. She flips open her purse, yanks out hefty cuff and holds it out to me. It rests on her palm like proof of her resolve. Like an offering. A bulky, gamerboi offering.

  It’s three times the size of mine. A two-inch semi-circle of Harajuku-ready, bright pink-and-purple paisley that’ll render her visible from orbit. Whoever bought this for her either hates her or thinks she’s a twelve-year old.

  “I would have expected you’d have picked something with a bit of colour,” I say, keeping my face neutral. “Your initials in shinestone at least.”

  Her face draws into a confused scowl, just for a moment, and then softens as she realises I’m teasing. She looks down at the pink pulsing cuff and barks a laugh. Her free hand flies to clamp down on her mouth as if she can’t believe that sound came from her body, and her eyes, filled with shocked embarrassment, jump back to me.

  I smile back at her, glad for an unguarded moment. One where I don’t have to worry about who’s trying to kill me.

  “It’s horrible, isn’t it?” she says through her hand. Her voice has loosened up, there’s a trace of an English accent. She sets the cuff on the table and stares at it.

  “Not at all. The guys at counselling will be very impressed,” I counter.

  Another giggle fractures the tension and this time she doesn’t stifle it. Years crumble from her face as she laughs. It’s like she’s a different person, one who isn’t carrying around the constant weight of resurrection on her.

  “Maybe I should try out a new look to go with it. Dye my hair into cute purple pigtails, borrow my granddaughter’s ballerina costume, find some giant silver boots, cartwheel over to my chair and see what they think.”

  The image of this demure woman suddenly transforming into a linkfeed caricature cracks me up, and I laugh too.

  “When was the last time you did a cartwheel?” I ask.

  “Yesterday,” she replies, matter-of-factly, defying me to argue.

  “You did a cartwheel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yesterday?”

  “I did,” she says, challenging.

  “Where did this alleged cartwheel occur?”

  “On the sidewalk.”

  “The sidewalk?”

  “In the valley. I walk after breakfast, a half-kilometer. Everyday after breakfast for thirty years I walk down to the lake, turn around, and come back,” she’s narrating now, describing it like it happened to someone else. “Yesterday I went fifteen kilometres without thinking about it. I got to the lake and I wasn’t tired so I kept going and didn’t ever need to stop. I found myself in the valley, nowhere near home, no money, nothing. So I did a cartwheel to see if I could.”

  “How long since your last one?”

  She only thinks about it for a second. “Sixty years.”

  “Welcome back,” I say.

  “So should I?” she asks.

  “Should you what?”

  “Put on that outfit and cartwheel in?”

  “Elder’d get down on his knees and propose on the spot, I’d imagine, if Shelt or Dub didn’t get to you first.”

  “They couldn’t handle me. It’d take all three of them.”

  This shocks me into silence and then we’re both laughing in raw, unrestrained bursts. I remind myself that this woman is older than my mother, and that makes me laugh even harder.

  I start to settle down, wiping tears with the back of my hand, when she looks at me, suddenly serious, reaches up, fills each fist with a handful of hair, pouts her lips and twitches an arched eyebrow.

  That sets us off again and we’re no good for two minutes. When we finally calm down my sides are aching, but it’s worth it. I feel better than I have since the restoration.

  “It’s been a long time since I laughed like that,” I tell her. My body feels lighter somehow. Synthetic endorphins probably but who cares.

  Dora’s reclined her head on the back of the sofa, the heels of her palms pressed against her eyelids. Her long pale neck is stretched, taught. Her chest rises and falls rhythmically, the curve of her small breasts clear through her blouse. Her skyn really is quite attractive, especially when she lets herself smile—and the second the thought passes through my head, I’m stabbed with pangs of guilt.

  A wave of disgust crashes through me. Connie’s barely been gone a week, what’s wrong with me? Why did I even invite her here?

  What am I doing?

  And why d
o I have to keep asking myself that?

  “Let’s get started,” I blurt. It comes out far harsher than I intend, and I immediately regret it.

  Dora’s watching me, her smile waning. I twist my mouth into a grin, try to cover, but it’s too late. “I mean, we’ve got a lot to see today, right?”

  She nods and silently fixes the cuff to her neck, trying to figure out what changed. Hell, she might even know.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” I say. “I just—”

  “I understand,” she says simply, brushing away my apology. Then she looks at me, really looks at me, and I look back.

  She knows what it’s like, being a stranger to yourself and desperately terrified to accept that stranger as the truth. To realise that everything you are, however familiar, is not what it was.

  Suddenly I get what Elder was talking about.

  I’m no longer me. I’m something else. Something very similar, but nothing like I was. And while it might cause the old me some pain, this new me can be whoever I want.

  I never expected I’d get here, to within sight of accepting what I am, but realising it might happen one day eases some of the angst I’ve been carrying around. I don’t have to be afraid of myself.

  I think she sees that too. We’re very different, she and I, but in the same ways. Then she blinks, looks off into the distance. “There’s a green ball floating in your living room. Did you know that?”

  “I’ve seen it,” I answer.

  I walk her through entering her Headspace, warn her what’s going to come when she gets in, and study her empty features while she tours her head, oblivious to the outside world. She’s gone for a while, and as I wait the same thought keeps returning: maybe she does understand.

  Maybe I don’t have to do this by myself.

  ***

  SysDate

  [17:30:02. April 20, 2058]

  I’m deep into my second day off in a row, and my lack of progress in finding Connie’s killer, the nameless threat hanging over me, and the knowledge that we still don’t have a location on tonight’s fourth and final arKade are squeezing my thoughts from all sides.

  All this not knowing is making me mental. No matter what I try, I can’t seem to get traction, every burst of momentum stalled. I feel powerless and tense. Can barely concentrate. Barely sit still.

  Yesterday, Dora invited me to the Hereafter with her and I almost declined, but couldn’t stand the thought of staying cooped up in my apartment by myself, surrounded by my failures, so I agreed. And when we returned from our visit to the 1970’s New York Era, I couldn’t bear the thought of being alone and suggested dinner. She insisted on treating me at a family-owned Korean place before counselling, and when the meeting ended slipped out with a shy wave.

  I need to be careful with her. Keep this professional. Friendly, but professional. She’s fragile and I’m fragile and I don’t want this to turn into something neither of us want or are ready for.

  With nowhere else to go I hung around after counselling ended, watched twenty minutes of the Dub-and-Shelt Show until they packed it in to hit a nearby pub and left Elder and I alone in the echoey gymnasium. Just him and I and the smell of the maintenance bot’s floor-cleaner.

  Once we were alone I gave in and asked him about the arKade. He gave me a look, as if judging whether I was asking as Fin, member of his counselling group and potential disciple of his Transhumanist Manifesto, or Detective Gage, rithm cop.

  Whichever way he landed he enthusiastically answered my questions, offering up details Galvan hadn’t mentioned, giving me the backstory on Kade and her—he quickly corrected me—band of renegade Fleshmiths while I helped him clear away the remnants of the scones and returned the coffeemaker to the kitchen.

  He described the arKade’s origins as part club, part market, and part audition. A loose-knit collection of Fleshmiths, Genitects and Rithmists exchanging information and ideas. Co-operating and feuding. Tinkering with and remixing the building blocks of life.

  Eventually the group became dominated by a charismatic figure known as Kade. She was the most determined, the most vocal. Why should we be limited to these husks that were bequeathed to us at birth, unasked for? Shells of skin and meat that didn’t reflect who we really were on the inside? She was an early addition to Standard’s Most Wanted.

  She started the arKade—at first a place to learn and teach—as a safe place for people like her, where the desire to transcend humanity wasn’t seen as an illness. Eventually, it became synonymous with the constant evolution of biotechnology. The mobile church of self-directed human evolution. Prodian Mecca. Doors-open only to worthy supplicants and those able to afford their personal Past-Standard indulgences.

  That’s where she lost Elder—she made it exclusive. She made it about herself instead of the work. Elder’s post-human future doesn’t exclude anyone who wants in.

  He knew it had been held over a week under extenuating circumstances but claimed not to know the location and I believed him. If he knew he’d have told me he knew but couldn’t tell me. Elder isn’t one to hold things back.

  I walked out with him and he shook my hand and clapped me on the shoulder, gave it a lingering squeeze before jumping in a Sküte and leaving me on the sidewalk.

  No closer to finding the arKade’s location, I tried to force myself to calm down. Held off checking the results of the AMP’s ongoing drone activity scan until I walked home, but found my feet moving quicker and quicker until I finished the last kilometre at a run, and when I arrived, sweaty and dishevelled but not winded in the slightest, the AMP still hadn’t produced any conclusive results. So I gave myself a rule: only one check an hour.

  In between peeks at the agonizingly slow mapping of the drone traffic, I meticulously cleaned my apartment, a one-man shack-party like I was readying for inspection. Squared off the bedsheets, scrubbed down the kitchen, finally got the bot on the laundry.

  I didn’t sleep. Put on the closest thing I had to work-out clothes—boxers and an undershirt—and went for a run through Reszlieville before the sun came up, surprised at how many others were out doing the same thing.

  Eventually, jogged-out with my apartment shimmering, but still no results from the AMP, I dove into the Hereafter. Emerged every hour on the hour to check the scan—until just now, when I popped out of a WWII adventure virt to find the scan finished, with three locations meeting my search criteria.

  My heart rate jumps and my mouth dries up. It takes only minutes to eliminate two of the results—a movie shoot that’s been camped in a quarry up north for two weeks, and a small music festival setting up in a park in the west end—which only leaves one: an old bank building in the downtown core.

  Closed for conversion to an agri-tower five months ago, it only got halfway done before the developer was brought up on corruption charges. It’s been empty ever since.

  The drone traffic logs show a heavy flow of large transport drones within the last week—up to one a minute at times. Whatever’s going on there looks like a huge production. Construction’s on hold. No event permits issued for the address. It’s not remote, but no one’s going to stumble into a barricaded office tower by accident.

  This has to be the place.

  I’ve found the arKade.

  If there were someone here now, I’d break a personal rule and give up a high-five.

  I call Galvan. He answers audio-only, the clink of utensils on china in the background.

  “We’re on,” I say. “I’ve got an address on the arKade.”

  I hear him excuse himself and then the squawk of a chair a wooden floor. The suppertime din quiets.

  “Are you sure?” he says, his voice hushed.

  “I told the AMP to check SecNet for drone requests where drones aren’t usually requested.”

  “Woah, yeah. Of course, but we’re not on shift and I’m up at Mom’s. I’ll call the Inspector,” he says. “We’ll need to brief the response team. Daar and Brewer will want to know. Get TAC spun up, tel
l them what to expect, who to look for.”

  A spike of covetous anger flares through me.

  “This is ours,” I say, keeping my sudden emotion out of my voice. “We caught this case. We found the location. Someone’s targeting Reszos, rich asshole Reszos, granted, but either way, I’m not letting those two fuck this up.”

  “I understand your hesitation, Fin, but bringing down the arKade could be our first big break into finding Xiao. If it was held over at his request, he could be there in person. It could also launch a dozen new lines of investigation. Give us leads on the Five Marks—the five biggest Reszo Crime Organizations on the planet. Not to mention underground Fleshmiths and Rithmists. And bring down Kade himself—”

  “Herself,” I correct him.

  “Her—what?”

  “Herself. Kade is a woman.”

  “How—” he pauses. I hear him shake his head. “Anyway. We can’t risk imperilling these potential leads. You have to think about the big picture.”

  Fuck the big picture. I’m not going to stand aside and let Daar and her smirking partner mess up the biggest bust in Rithm Crime history.

  “Forget I called. Go back to your dinner. I’ll handle it myself.”

  “What do you mean ‘you’ll handle it yourself?’”

  “It means I’ll handle it.”

  “Kade will have security. Perhaps dozens of potential threats. Bots. You can’t go in yourself. You need back-up.”

  “Then you’re welcome to join me.”

  He’s quiet on the other end.

  “It’s against every regulation,” Galvan says. “And simple common sense.”

  “What if I’m wrong about the location? Then we mobilized the entire force for nothing. If I’m right, the Inspector isn’t going to care about regulations when we hand her an international threat to the Reszo community—and Xiao in the process. You haven’t been around the Service long enough. If we come at them in force, they’ll see us a mile away. This has to be handled quietly.”