The Artificial Mirage

by T. Warwick

  “What is it, Badr?”

  “No problem,” Badr said as he continued to fidget.

  “Right. What’s the problem?”

  “Nothing,” he said as a small sheep squirmed its way from under his seat and into the aisle.

  “You have got to be kidding me. Look, you crazy Muppet—” He was careful not to use the word fuck so as to avoid getting reported for blasphemy; it was a constant and never-ending challenge to come up with new non-blasphemous insults while he was on the job.

  “Crazy?!” Badr shouted as he stood up with an air of indignation that only a Saudi could conjure at the slightest hint of insult.

  “Get that thing out of here, Badr!”

  “Wallah!” And then he trailed off in Arabic with a declaration that didn’t register with Cameron’s AR translation app.

  “Please, Mr. Cameron. We will slaughter it in Udaliyah,” said Dawood, a plump, bearish version of a Matawah.

  “Oh, so you both planned this?”

  “We all planned it.”

  “Really? I’m the team leader. You should ask me first if you’re bringing a sheep on the bus.”

  “But you would say no,” Dawood said. He was the most respected on the team because his beard was the longest.

  “Of course I’d say no. You don’t bring a sheep on the bus. That’s SSOC policy. You can read your handbook, right?”

  “We know the rules,” Badr said as he leaned forward and tickled the sheep’s left ear.

  “Why can’t you bring a sandwich like everyone else?”

  “We prefer this,” Dawood said.

  “I know you do. That’s the problem. Guys, eh…the sheep has to go.”

  The bus driver, an older Pakistani man with a long white beard, had turned around to observe the interaction and was pointing and shouting at Cameron to sit down. Although the bus drove itself and knew its relationship to all of the other vehicles on the Autohighway by keeping in constant contact with the chips embedded in the yellow lines, it had a driver for a reason. If it came in close proximity to something, it would automatically brake in time to prevent a collision, but camels were a variable the bus’s computer couldn’t adjust for. They had a certain pride and indignation admired by the Saudis, who raced them and ate them and sold them to one another through VR auctions. Camels would look both ways before crossing a highway and step right out into the road and cross it anyway.

  And that’s exactly what had happened. The whole purpose of the driver was to compensate for the computer’s shortcomings, but the distraction created by Badr and the sheep—which had begun bleating its way up and down the aisle—had turned his attention away from the road. The camel strode out just a second before the bus would have passed it, and the bus jerked from the impact. Cameron observed the camel’s face and teeth press up against the front windshield and the loud guttural noise it made as it was pulled under the bus. The bus halted a moment later, and everyone went out the door to see what had happened. The camel was definitely dead. It had crossed over a drifting embankment of sand that had reached the same height as the wire fence that lined the highway. The bus was still drivable, but there were more pressing concerns that prevented them from continuing their journey. The police would have to be summoned, and the necessary reports would have to be filed. The owner of the camel would have to be located so that he could be duly compensated for the loss of his property; it was going to be quite a payday for him, whoever he was. Cameron got on the phone to arrange for another team and another bus. Undoubtedly, the current team would refuse to work until they were medically evaluated. And then he recognized one of the cars in the opposite lane, ambling along at 10 kph. He crossed the street deftly, just missing the front end of a light-blue Porsche with a silver opaque windshield, before walking to the passenger side of Saleh’s Chrysler and quickly rapped on the window with his knuckles.

  “Oh, Cameron, my old friend. How are you?” Saleh said as he came out of the daze of meditating on the camel’s carcass. He motioned for Cameron to enter and watched as he slid in next to him. A symphony of Arabian violins was accompanying the latest Lebanese diva.

  “Hey, Saleh. It looks like a nice day for camel,” Cameron said as he took in Saleh’s sunglasses and the white cotton sweater with the arms draped around his neck just so. In the back, his thobe and gutra were neatly pressed in anticipation of his return from Bahrain.

  “Unfortunately, my friend, I have just come from a wedding. No more camel for me, my friend,” he said as he rubbed his large belly and smiled contentedly. “But I am most certain the Chinese can spare some riyals.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No, I am joking, my friend. I have some business to take care of.”

  “That business wouldn’t happen to involve a few pints of Guinness, would it?”

  “Perhaps, my friend.”

  “Perhaps. Yeah. Look, I’ve still got that hash on me.”

  “What hash?”

  “I picked it up in Qatif this morning.”

  “You are going to Udaliyah, yes?”

  “That was the plan…but the police are coming.”

  “So what? Police? This is routine, Cameron.”

  “Routine for you, maybe. I have other things to consider.”

  “So…”

  “So.”

  “You don’t want the hash?” Saleh said as he looked into Cameron’s pupils.

  “No, I want it.”

  “Good. Then get it to Udaliyah, or take it to Bahrain. Problem solved.”

  “This is my stop,” Cameron said, nodding to the car in front that was beginning to accelerate.

  “I will see you soon, my friend,” Saleh said.

  “Count on it.”

  Cameron’s phone rang as he was walking back toward the bus. His supervisor, Schnaiber, appeared translucently before him, walking around a conference room. The room and the table were too perfect to be anything but a VR construct. He was probably still in bed.

  “Report back to Abqaiq with your team, Mr. Cameron.”

  “We’re all still here, Mr. Schnaiber. There are no injuries.”

  “The hospital will decide that. You and your team will get one day of rest, but you must report to a hospital, too.”

  “I see.”

  “This is procedure. You know that. Another team has already been dispatched.”

  “OK.”

  “Wait there for a new bus to take you back.”

  “OK.”

  Everyone in the bus was fully reclined and either sleeping or off in fully occluded VR. Even the baby sheep was asleep as it lay in the aisle tucked under Badr’s legs. Lenny’s friend would have to wait. The police lights showed up first through the dimly shaded windows with an AR message announcing their arrival surrounded by blue-and-green sirens. The new bus wasn’t far behind. The driver had to submit his ID and make a statement. When they finally let him go, he stepped onto the bus and headed back to Abqaiq with downcast eyes.

  After a few hours of waiting with his team at a government hospital, Cameron returned to Abqaiq with everyone’s medical reports, which had to be physically stamped by the HR office. The sun was setting when he finally got on the causeway to Bahrain. The immigration island looked like it was floating above the fog of the evaporating Gulf. Above was the faded blue sky that seemed to have been seared by the white sun. Detached confidence was the key to not getting searched. He didn’t even get out of the car, and the Saudi customs official checked his passport with a motion of his index finger without getting off of his high stool. Swarms of Dragonflies and a small flock of Hawks were lazily performing figure eights without the slightest hint of interest in him. He was waved through by the Bahraini police, whose smiles and white uniforms contrasted with the Saudis’ frowns and brown uniforms. The causeway to Bahrain opened up before him, a wide gray line through the vast gray ripples of the Gulf on either side. He accepted the terms of the Bahraini Autohighway that popped up on the windshield with a flick of his st
ylus and looked over to his left at a sailboat whose mast seemed like it might be too tall to make it under the causeway.

  19

  Saleh never went to the Formula One races. He rented a studio suite to watch the amateur races that took place the rest of the year. After telling a Lebanese singer and her two friends that the price they wanted was too high, he left them with a fresh bottle of champagne. The latest chart of oil futures splashed across the windshield of his car as he headed toward the glimmering lights of the Manama CBD. Oil futures were down. He heard a crackling to his right and looked through the market report that flickered as it came across the windshield and saw that the passenger window was shattered and folding in with the plastic sun filter. The Bahraini Shiite protesters often vandalized cars with Saudi plates coming back from Formula One events, but it had never happened to Saleh. Seeing the plates, they just assumed he was Sunni, and he wasn’t about to argue with them. He crouched down on his side and waited for the attack to end. Another rock sputtered across the front windshield but didn’t crack it. After a few minutes, the car came to a stop on an unpaved desert road. He sat up and looked around before getting out with a small plastic shopping bag containing ten fist-size balls of hash.

  Mohanned was waiting for him. He grabbed the bag with his right hand as he pressed an envelope of dinars with his left hand into Saleh’s belly. “It is almost time, brother,” he whispered through the pitch-black air.

  “When?” Saleh asked.

  “Call the number tomorrow morning,” Mohanned said as he got on his scooter.

  “You have been praying a lot, brother,” Saleh said as Mohanned tilted his head in the moonlight to reveal a shiny festering sore at the center of a large bruise on his forehead.

  “Yes, brother. When did you last pray?”

  “I will pray when I complete Haj.”

  “You should not be so confident, brother. It can be dangerous.”

  “Only if it is written,” Saleh said as he watched a series of cars drive past.

  “Leave. Now,” Mohanned said in a hushed shout.

  Saleh got back in his car and clicked on the CBD Manama icon. The phone number was in the stack of dinars, and he memorized it before eating the small slip of paper. It would be entered into a disposable phone registered to an Indian laborer at the last possible moment. As he approached the radiant lights of Manama, there was a police checkpoint with two police cars and floodlights running on two loud combustion-engine generators. The policeman didn’t bother speaking over it. He looked at Saleh’s passport and noted the glossy green holographic Sunni visa exemption with an AR app that verified his lack of a criminal record in real time. The policeman gave him a look that implied that he didn’t believe he was really Sunni. Saleh looked up at him with solemn defiance as he flipped the side of his gutra with the Dunhill logo showing over his shoulder. The policeman smirked as he handed Saleh back his passport, and they stared at one another silently as the other policeman finished checking the underside of the car with a mirror on an extendable aluminum pole. When he had finished, he waved him through while looking back at the skyline.

  Saleh got out of his car in front of Club Silver as it was still inching its way toward the car in front of it and ambled past the stocky Filipino bouncer who was holding the shiny black velvet rope open for him. He had set the car on a two- block loop since he wasn’t planning to stay more than a half hour.

  Upon his entrance, a blonde woman appeared beside him with a smile and seated him in a corner. At least twenty women were dancing on the stage. His favorite Canadian singer was dancing in a neon green bikini with at least a dozen plastic wreaths around her neck. Saleh shoved his hand into his thobe pocket and pulled out a stack of dinars two fingers thick. The waiter brought him a bag of wreaths. Saleh flipped them back and forth around his hand as he looked past the blondes and zeroed in on his favorite Romanian with a jet black bobbed hairstyle and sunlight-allergic white skin. He smirked at her as the waiter uncorked the bottle of Moët champagne and walked up to the stage to put several wreaths around her neck. He clapped his hands twice, and the waiter came rushing over with more wreaths. The Romanian, who called herself Angel, bowed her head as he placed the three wreaths around her neck in quick succession. The women’s dance routine consisted of three simple steps that they continued incessantly to the simple beat of decades-old techno music. Saleh looked to his left at the painted black wall that was stained with spilled and thrown drinks as he took a sip of Moët. He felt something contracting around the back of his neck; it was someone’s hand. He looked over his right shoulder and up at Harold.

  “Did you miss me?” Harold looked as if he had been drinking all day.

  “You look unwell, my friend.”

  “Really?” Harold began a laugh that became spastic and ended in a series of coughs.

  “Please, sit down. Relax.” Saleh motioned with his entire right arm in a gesture of formal hospitality.

  “Thanks.” Harold slouched into the lounge chair next to Saleh, grabbed Saleh’s glass, and sloshed the remaining champagne down. Saleh immediately clapped his hands and pointed to the glass. The waiter grabbed a glass from behind the bar and scurried over and placed it next to him. Saleh took the bottle from him and filled both glasses before taking a large gulp and shifting his attention back to the dancers.

  “No. Only bai jiu,” Harold said.

  “Of course, my friend.”

  “You have the new car?” Harold spoke into Saleh’s ear as they both kept their eyes on the stage.

  “Soon. You have found a man to help you?”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “Charlie?”

  “Yes. I think he is perfect. ”

  “Good. Inshallah, we will begin in two weeks. ”

  “Two weeks?”

  “Inshallah.”

  “I hope so,” Harold said as he stared back into Saleh’s glass for a moment before downing it.

  The music stopped, and the women on the stage ceased dancing. The Romanian walked to their table, her heels clicking in deliberately short steps.

  “Good evening, my dear.” Saleh looked up at her and offered her a seat.

  “Thank you, Saleh. Such a gentleman.”

  “You look so beautiful. Your skin is so white and pure.”

  “I have to keep it that way because of my condition. If I did not have this, I would be on beach every day.”

  “No, Angel. Never do that. You are so beautiful this way.”

  “You make me shy, Saleh,” she said, casting her eyes down theatrically.

  “Never be shy, Angel.”

  “Hello, my name is Angel,” she said as she held out her hand to Harold. He responded with a wave of his glass. Sensing his level of intoxication and the heaviness between Saleh and Harold, she grew anxious. “I will talk to you guys later, OK.” Her heels clicked as she made her way to the other tables of expectant Saudis who put down their hubbly bubbly pipes in honor of her visit.

  “Saleh!” Cameron stood up and gave Saleh a big hug. His eyes were bleary and full of the joyful tears of someone who had been drinking all day.

  “I was not expecting you, my friend,” Saleh said as he stood at the bar next to Cameron without looking at him.

  “Where’s your gutra?” Cameron said as he grabbed Saleh’s plain dark-green baseball cap by the bill.

  “Cameron, my friend. When did you get here?”

  “A long time ago. I don’t remember.”

  “How long in Bahrain?”

  “Years.”

  “Years? I mean—when did you leave Saudi, my friend?”

  “Last year.”

  “Last week?”

  “Yeah. Last week. I remember I came back on the causeway, and I remember thinking I never want to see that place again.”

  “I understand, my friend.”

  “Do you? I don’t give a fuck. I got cut from a fucking professional hockey team. I got injured. Can’t fix me. I don’t give a fuck—I can
go to a racetrack…work in the stables…with the horses.” He paused and looked into the bottle of tequila in his hand. “Here, have a drink,” he said as he waved the bottle in front of Saleh.

  “No,” Saleh said as he held it steady with his hand and set it back down on the bar.

  “I don’t like camels, Saleh. I like horses. I really do.”

  “Yes, my friend.”

  Cameron let out a howl of pure anguish. It was the same sound that Saleh had heard the night before the wedding from the baby camels waiting to be slaughtered. But Cameron’s howls had a defiance beneath them. He was on the floor, his body prostrate and his forehead on the ground in a form of hybrid alcoholic prayer. He took a deep breath and howled some more. Saleh knelt down and cradled him in his arms. He looked past the entrance of an adjacent room where a long line of Chinese women in their twenties were dancing on pedestals. AR greetings in Arabic and English floated above their heads amid animated zoo animals that seemed to be from a children’s show.

  “Come on, Cameron. Let’s go,” Harold said, arriving at the bar. He helped him to his feet and gestured to the newly arrived Filipino bouncers to let them leave peacefully. Cameron took a deep breath, and the bar was quiet for a moment. He snarled condescendingly at the women on the stage as he followed Harold with one of the bouncers to the exit. The music came back on. Saleh signaled the waiter for more wreaths.

  20

  Charlie had contacted SSOC shortly after his arrival in Bahrain. Lauren was no longer employed with them, and they had no further information available. He spent his days and nights with AR renditions of her. She was with him when he woke up in the morning and when he washed the boats in the marina. Occasionally, there was a slight delay in her movements or responses, but interacting with her had become familiar to him. The shop in Saigon had incorporated every look and expression of the real Lauren, and her movements and gestures could be repeated whenever he wanted. Even when she wasn’t there during brief conscious moments when he wasn’t in AR, there were faded translucent images of her etched in his visual memory that appeared to him. And yet he felt she was gone. Eventually, their conversations began to ebb, and he became content with short exchanges and her signature gestures.