Nuclear Town USA

by David Nell

  "Lucky us."

  He smiles again then leaves. A grin like that must've cost him his last six paychecks.

  Only Jessica Bates responded to the courier Descartes had sent to both of Miranda's friends. She agreed to meet me in a private VR environment. I'm strapping tight the sensor sleeves. Attaching the thimbles one by one. The clock says it's four minutes till our rendezvous. I slid on the helmet, its faceplate the color of dirt. Three minutes to go. The questions I've planned for her tumble through my head. Two minutes.

  A flick of a switch and the faceplate comes to life, fractals flickering while the image stabilizes. In an instant I'm transported to the address she'd sent me via her courier.

  It's an empty room. White walls. White furniture. Only the chairs' legs are of a different color. It's the kind of place they stick you in to drive you nuts.

  I sift through the network traffic to figure out my location but I'm shit out of luck. Spoofers placed on connections both in-coming and out-going distort the packets I receive. The ones I'm transmitting hop from router to router on a path impossible to trace in real time. Descartes tries cracking the algorithm but fails miserably. I'm probably being scattered, too, meaning parts of the environment's code are computed in differing physical locations. This level of paranoia catches me off guard but I'm also pretty damn impressed.

  I realize the environment's simplicity is due to efficiency. As the code of the program grows, so does the difficulty of keeping it a secret.

  A door materializes on one of the walls. She steps through it and the contours melt back into the walls.

  We shake hands; our network protocols exchange authentication codes so we know who we're talking to.

  She's dressed in white jeans and pink stilettos, has a collared beige shirt with sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Her blonde hair is combed fashionably to one side, a golden earring dangling from her one visible ear. She curves her thin lips into a smile, sits down on her chair, legs crossed.

  "Listen," I say, "I know this is hard for you, so I'll be as respectful and brief as poss–"

  "No you listen," she cuts me off. "We're only here because Flora practically begged me to be cooperative and help in her so called investigation. Frankly I never liked Flora and what she's doing here with you borders being disrespectful and is of very bad taste."

  Mouth agape, I gaze at her from top to bottom. After a moment I manage to say, "What do you mean?"

  Her face closes up like an umbrella. "My best friend committed suicide for cryin' out loud. Her sister's paying PIs to look for aliens or some such bullshit to cope with the pain." The one earring dangles as she shakes her head. "That's unfair to Mimi's memory."

  I regain my composure. I best be prudent and handle this interview with utmost care or she might just go on another rant, or worse, disconnect without providing any information.

  "I understand," I say, my tone avuncular. "Why don't you tell me your side of the story, then?"

  Okay, she doesn't believe anything external had an influence on Holly's suicide, a conclusion I'm this close to accepting myself, but her perspective on things might be refreshing and bring something new to the table.

  "That would be nice," she says. Her blue eyes sparkle in the room's whiteness and she eases back into her chair.

  "Describe her to me." I cross my fingers mentally.

  One corner of her mouth curves into a half-smile. I breathe a sigh of relief.

  "She is...was unique." Her eyes scour the white ceiling. "She could be your best friend and the biggest bitch at the same time." She laughs. "I mean I love her but her mood swings...oh, her goddamned mood swings."

  There's a footnote or two in the reports stored on my hard drive about my subject's precarious mental state – no concrete diagnosis since she never went to a doctor, just anecdotal evidence offered by her sister. Violent forms of bipolar disorder are treatable and the less severe variants even curable, but Miranda Holly never admitted to having a problem.

  "That bad, huh?" I ask.

  She gives it a moment's thought. "Maybe not on the outside. You had to know her and be close to her to notice the difference."

  "Why didn't she see a professional?"

  Jessica shrugs. "Dunno. She described herself as emotional and too empathetic or something. And maybe that's true. I guess we'll never know."

  I ask about Miranda's last days.

  Her mood shifts and I can sense it even in this mediated virtual madhouse we're in. She gazes abstractedly at where the wall swallowed the door and I get the impression she just wants to sneak out of here as fast as possible.

  "All I remember is she broke all contact with us," she says, her eyes fixated on the wall.

  "Do you know why?" I try not to push too hard.

  Dangling of the gold earring again as she shakes her head. Be gentle, I tell myself.

  "Did anything happen out of the ordinary around the time of her death?"

  She shakes it again, only slower.

  To get meaningful answers I need to change tactic. Try a different angle. "What did you do the days prior to her death?"

  She's taken aback. "Why?"

  "Trying to get a better picture of what went on then," I say, and it seems she's pleased with my answer.

  With her forefinger she rubs her earlobe, around and above the golden jewellery. "Vera and I went out almost every night to unwind from work and all that. We hit the local bars."

  "What did you do at work?"

  "I'm not allowed to discuss that," she says sharply.

  It's not entirely true, though. Their contracts forbid them from going into specifics, but she's allowed to divulge general bits and pieces. But I'm not here to drill her and it's becoming obvious she just wants this to end.

  "You don't have to go into the details."

  She sighs. "I was a programmer. Same as Vera and Mimi."

  Vertex Software's public database no longer holds any record of a Miranda Holly, but I'd accessed a cached copy which left me none the wiser about the specifics of her job there.

  "What exactly did she do at the company?"

  Jessica cocks an eyebrow and her face is saying don't push it friend. Nonetheless, she answers, "Same thing we all did. Wait for the managing software to allocate work for you, which meant testing code for other companies most of the time."

  "Do you remember what she worked on around the time of her suicide?"

  Her face freezes. I can swear it looks like the VR software's glitching out on us. Within a moment the resolution's smoothed out and she's back the way she was.

  "Something about image recognition for an Australian firm." She's terse. Laconic.

  I bring up the last message on Streamer. Her face jerks in that glitchy way again. She frowns, crossing her arms.

  I ask again but she's silent.

  Her patience is obviously up and I don't mean to overstay my welcome. Besides, I can tell she's not going to provide any new information. It could be a defence mechanism; after all we are talking about her dead best friend days after the funeral. I've seen this reaction time and time again with frail interviewees. Her answers will be plain as paper, boring, useless. Might as well continue this conversation with my virtual assistant.

  "Listen, thanks for your time." I stand up. She does too and saunters over to the wall. The doorframe reappears. She holds the door open for me.

  We say goodbye and I step out to be disconnected.

  It takes three days of labouring over the same data before I finally throw my hands up and admit I'm stuck. There's a limit to the amount of useful information one can extract out of old recordings. So far, every piece of data has led me to a dead end. Even the always resourceful internet can't satisfy the infovore inside me, and it's gotten unbearable. I'm reduced to checking my inbox for a message from Vera every five minutes, on the off chance Descartes has missed it and failed to report it out loud.

  Not being able to get a decent thread is beginning to get on my nerves, but I'm not
yet ready to give up on this case and admit the police were right all along. I can't just write Miranda off as a nutcase, but Flora's assertion that something bigger is behind her sister's suicide is getting less plausible by the minute.

  My job's not to ask why I'm doing what I'm paid to do, and contractors aren't obliged to provide explanations, but Jessica Bates' description of my subject's frail mental state left a sour taste in my mouth.

  One thing's still nagging me, though. Flora's original case request ended with a sentence I can't get out of my head. My sister's been happy her entire life and if it weren't for the mind parasites they'd fed her, I'm sure that would've meant more than twenty eight years.

  For a moment it sounds like she's the paranoid one but those words prove to be a great source of unease. Miranda was surrounded by friends and people who loved her and her lifestream indicates she'd loved them back, but what of the sudden drop, the anomaly, three days before she decided to liquefy her brain? Did she just snap? If the swings were half as bad as Jessica described them why not just go to a doctor? Even if there's more to it, she did kill herself, so what's Flora aiming at here? Whom does she want caught and unmasked?

  All this running around in circles is making me anxious and for the first time in months I feel like going outside.

  I check my inbox. Nothing. My finger hangs limp before the projector and I start making the inbox checking motion again. I catch myself just in time.

  That's it. This'll drive me crazy.

  With both hands I wave at my projector. All systems switch to hibernation.

  I grab my coat, head for the door.

  "Going outside?" says Descartes.

  "I need some fresh air."

  Pause. Then, "Do you want company?"

  I haven't left my apartment in months. Sure, they say the sun's bad for you, but that's not to real reason. Even though I hate to admit it, doing what I do is starting to affect the little that's left of my personal life. It's starting to scare me off from living.

  "Definitely," I say.

  He copies himself from my home system straight to my body LAN.

  "Let's go out, then," he whispers in my ear.

  I shuffle out of the apartment. The door beeps twice behind me to indicate that it's locked.

  The narrow hall is flanked by apartments. My head spins and my legs buckle. Abject terror seizes me, pleading me to step back into the safety of my apartment. I take a deep breath, steady myself against the wall.

  I whisper to myself, "I can do this."

  I realize I know none of my neighbors. What if one of them decides to peer into the hallway now. I don't even know their names. That's okay, I reassure myself. Nobody knows anybody today.

  I bump my fist against the elevator button and it flashes green. With deep breaths I count out the moments to its arrival. The number one hundred and fifty blinks above my head as the doors slide open.

  Into the elevator. "Know where we're going?" I subvocalize.

  "Vera Abburi's place. I have the address," says Descartes.

  The numbers on the elevator screen start counting down. I smile.

  Descartes. He knows me all too well.

  A fury of sounds welcomes us outside. It's night, and everyone is out. As if the city's buildings have been squeezed out like wounds and the entire puss flowed out to the streets. People jostle about, shoulder their way through the crowd.

  It's overwhelming. I want to turn round, back into my building, up the elevator and inside my air-conditioned apartment. I can use a robot like I always do.

  But I remain rooted to the spot. The surge of adrenaline keeps me in place.

  My building stretches over me like a shadow in a nightmare. A step forward and I tear myself off it to join the torrent of people. We go where the sidewalk takes us. Like being picked up by the shoulders and carried, feet inching off the ground. Beside us cars whistle about at great speeds in the street's six lanes, traffic lights conducting them like an orchestra on fast-forward. Neon lights flash on and off in a rainbow of colors spelling out names for liquor stores, drug stores or strip clubs.

  The faces in the crowd are diverse. I don't let my gaze linger on any of them for too long – in a big city it's best to err on the side of caution – but the sheer number of faces makes even the slightest glimpse feel like I'm missing out on the others. My stomach's turning over itself but I ignore it. All those geeks from online chatrooms were right – going out is a rush, alright. There's a very raw edge to it, really. Knowing I could get stabbed, or mugged, despite the very low chance of that happening turns a simple walk as exciting as a rollercoaster ride.

  A pair of blue eyes meets my gaze and I look down immediately. My heart beats harder. I quicken my pace for a few steps, but then I realize I'm acting childish and slow back down into the rhythm of the throng.

  Occasionally a cheap robot would show its face in the crowd. The slow facial expressions are the giveaway, otherwise, most expensive models look and talk like us.

  I arrive at a crossing. From its four corners rise the legs of a skyscraper. The glass towers go up and up into the thick smog, and I can barely make out the bridge where all four connect.

  Descartes lays out a map of the city before my eyes. Vera Abburi lives in a house in an affluent neighborhood some fifteen kilometers from here.

  "I hailed a cab a minute ago," he says in my ear.

  We wait at the curb.

  A yellow blemish wheezes from the distance. It switches lanes, tires screeching, and stops right before us.

  Back door pops open. We get in.

  Out of the cab and into the blue light of the boulevard. Descartes relays payment information to the onboard computer of the car. The transaction's confirmed. It drives off along a downward slope back into the belly of the city.

  Around us not a living soul, yet there are houses everywhere. Small houses with little windows and backyards for barbecue, mailboxes and porches. A piece of suburbia hidden like a secret, undevoured by the towering goliaths of glass and metal in the distance.

  The sidewalk's lined up with candelabras, scattering a pale blue on the tarmac.

  "You can see the stars from here," says Descartes in my ear.

  He's right. White dots sparkle in the sky like jewels.

  "Take a picture."

  He snaps a screenshot through my eyes, stores it in memory.

  Vera Abburi's house is two blocks down. I didn't want us stopping right before it so we can scout out the area first, get some sense of our surroundings. I saunter over to it, observing along the way.

  Her house is exactly like the one next to it, and the one after, and all others. Seems as if a giant Fabber shat them out, one after the other, all alike, so the inhabitants feel included and belonging to a community or something. Much the same as in my building complex, or all building complexes in the city, except I don't have to wave at my neighbors, smile, or pretend I like them. Shit, I can't even recall their faces.

  A gravel driveway leads up to a wood porch. Up the stairs, then I ring the doorbell.

  I can feel her eyes on me through the camera in the upper corner. I try to look as affable as I can. A moment later her voice hisses from a speaker, laced with a tiny buzz of static.

  "Who is this?"

  I lean closer to the door. "I'm hired by Flora Holly, Miranda's sister...Can we please speak in private?"

  A pause. I take out my card from the wallet and hold it before the camera. A simple database query by its pattern-matching software should confirm my identity.

  The door buzzes. "Come in," she says.

  I step in, the door clicks shut behind me.

  Inside it's different. The house has goddamn character. It's cosy. So much warmth emanating from the place. I haven't felt anything like this.

  The walls are coated with Venetian plaster in all shades of red. Subtle stencil design on the bottom that takes a moment to notice.

  "You want tea?" A voice from behind a corner. I hear the clanking o
f kettles.

  "Sure."

  Out of the hall and into the living room. It's large. Or maybe it's regular. How would I know? My apartment doesn't have one.

  Two beige sofas are placed at a right angle. I sit down, look around. There's a framed Indian textile on one wall. Two rustic bookshelves hold a bunch of books. At first glance they seem divided. Technology books go in the right one, horror titles in the left.

  Vera Abburi strolls in the room, trey in hand. On it, two cups on saucers and a steaming pot. She sets it on the table.

  "I took the liberty of adding milk, hope you don't mind."

  "Not at all, thank you."

  She sets the cup before me, pours tea. She sits on an ottoman opposite me, pours tea in her cup, too.

  Her head on one hand, elbow on knee, she looks at me, dark bags under her eyes. She picks the cup up by its handle that looks like one half of a heart. Brings it to her mouth.

  "So," she says, "aren't you going to ask me questions?"

  I snap out of my reverie and check if Descartes is recording. He is.

  Before I get to speak the doorbell chimes. She's just as surprised as me. Her eyes acquire that glassy distance – her digital assistant's piping the cam footage directly to her optical nerve.

  Up and down her epiglottis moves. She's subvocalizing with her guests.

  Back into focus again, she looks at me.

  "It's for you," she says.

  Startled, I ask, "Who is it?"

  "Two men in suits. They said they know you are here."

  Who the hell could know I'm here?

  "Don't open the door."

  She's deliberating, then subvocalizes some more. She gets up but I stand in her way.

  "Do you have a back exit?"

  She frowns. "I don't want to get involved. Why don't you wait here while I open..."

  I shake my head. "You won't get involved. Say I ran out. Stall them. Find out as much as you can about who they are then contact me via my assistant."

  Reluctantly, she nods, and points at her bathroom. I slide inside as she goes to open the door.