by Andrew Post
He accepted them, and he must’ve had a confused look on his face because she added as she walked away, “You’re bleeding.” She jammed a finger into the mass of red curls at the back of her head.
“Thanks,” he said, dabbing his head with a bare hand and then the tissues and pulling out crusty smears of half-dried blood onto the soft paper. He felt something dig against his palm and pinched a square of broken glass from his hair. He headed downstairs, still dabbing.
Each one of the rooms had a tall, narrow window set into the door. Most of them had the curtains drawn, but a few shameless men slept with their doors open, sprawled onto cots and cocooned, snoring, in stained sleeping bags.
Brody reached the room he had been appointed, finding it easily since it was the only one in the well-lit basement hall that was missing its doorknob. He turned on the light and saw it was as expected. Kind of clean, linoleum floor, a folded cot standing in the corner, a milk crate for a nightstand with a brand-new Bible resting on it. Brody had to admit it wasn’t far from what he came home to every night. There was a closet, and he found nothing but a blackened, holey sock. None of it seemed to be Alton Noel’s belongings. All of what remained appeared to belong to the Y.
He returned to the hall and traveled to the end where it bent and went deeper beneath the building. He could hear the pumps for the pool going, that expected smell of chlorine now coming to him. He came to a classroom of sorts, flipped on the light, and examined the décor. It was where a GED class apparently met, with the electronic chalkboard still displaying a snapshot of the periodic table of the elements.
In the far corner of the room, he spotted a handwritten sign on a jagged triangle of cardboard: Lost & Found. He went over to the canvas laundry bag of items and sifted through. Most were strange-smelling garments, a forsaken toddler’s shoe without its mate, a well-thumbed video game strategy guide, a handful of loose ceramic hair curlers.
At the very bottom, Brody found a flip-top ordi, with its silver case chipped to reveal the bland black plastic underneath. Emblazoned on a peeling manufacturer’s decal was Mediapurisu. He took a seat at one of the classroom desks and opened the device. Inside, the keyboard was so well worn that only the Q and X still bore their paint. He wiggled his finger on the touch pad, and half the monitor came to life. He moved the cursor around and read the different links available. He wasn’t sure if the other half, the half that remained black, had anything available.
Nothing on the surface indicated this was Alton’s ordi. No personalization by way of stickers on the lid, and the file marked Photos didn’t have a single image saved to it. It was difficult navigating the broken screen, Brody felt there were other icons waiting to be clicked on just on the other side of the dead half of the monitor. He pushed the cursor over into the murk and clicked here and there in the blind spot, but no programs opened.
Of the program icons not within the dead half, Brody found a hologram-video editing program. He tapped on it. The program loaded, and Brody watched as dozens of entries were listed in the recorded videos dubbed confessions. Each video, each confession named Al Christmas as the author.
Bingo.
He closed the lid and took the damaged ordi back to his room. He closed the door and remained at the window for a moment to ensure he wouldn’t be interrupted. He pulled the gauzy curtain over the glass slot in the door and took a seat on the cot with Alton’s confessions.
He pressed play, and a numeral three made up of translucent white light floated in the center of the room. It became a two after a beat, then a one.
A male voice came from the Mediapurisu’s tinny speakers: “We’re sorry. The holo-video you want to watch was recorded in a space much larger than the one you are in now. Would you like to continue, even with dimensional irregularities taking place during the presentation?”
“Yes,” Brody told Alton’s ordi.
Then Alton Noel was there in the room with him in holo. He was dressed in a gray T-shirt, a pair of loose-fitting jeans, work boots, his hair still cut to stubble. While to the untrained eye, someone might be convinced that it was actually him standing there, Brody had seen many holos in his day, even sometimes being taught by one in school when the regular teacher couldn’t make it. It looked like a genuine person, but if the lights weren’t dimmed, he’d appear ghostly, foggily lucent as an unpolished gem, and outlined against the background a bit too heavily. It almost looked like the holo had been plopped into this world and superimposed onto it, and in a way that was exactly what happened. Alton appeared this way now to Brody, stammering to find his words for his first entry.
“I don’t really know how to use this thing.” His voice was timid, soft. He was muscled, baby-faced, fidgety. He held his arms at his sides as if he were standing in a strong wind, afraid of being blown over.
Another voice came. “Just say what you want. Whoever sees it won’t be someone you know.” A woman stepped directly through the wall toward Alton—the dimensional irregularities of not watching a holo-video in the same place it had been recorded, Brody gathered.
She was svelte and tall, wearing her hair half in braids, half loose. The coloring of the holo-video was a bit off, but Brody could tell it was Nectar.
She pointed to approximately where Brody sat, guiding Alton’s gaze, where the camera had stood when they had made the holo-video. “Right there. Just imagine someone you really love is right there.” For a fleeting second, she seemed to be making eye contact with Brody.
Alton sighed, rolled his eyes. “Why did you guys buy me this thing?”
Another woman entered through the opposite wall, came up beside Alton on his other side. Abigail Schwartz. It was remarkable how much she and Nectar resembled one another—cherublike cheeks, bright eyes, even a similarity to their voices. Throaty with an affected accent of SoCal infused with a suburbanite’s attempt at sounding Latina.
“I hope it’s me you’re picturing over there,” she jibed.
“When did you get here?” Nectar asked.
“It was slow at the shop, closed up early. Wanted to see if you were able to talk Mr. I Hate Ordinateurs into finally using his holo-cam.” Abby dropped her purse and removed her jacket. Both disappeared; apparently the holo-cam registered them unimportant after they’d left her person.
“I am,” Nectar said, “but it’s not going so well.”
“What, it’s on right now?” Abigail squealed.
“Right there.” Nectar pointed toward Brody in a different place and—according to the time stamp—a little over a month in the future.
Now Abigail looked into his eyes. She fixed her hair, pumping it up with her palms like an old-time starlet. “Why didn’t you say something?”
They all laughed.
Brody allowed a smirk.
She curled an arm around Alton’s back, guiding his gaze toward the camera. “Well, go on then, honey. Tell the good people everything you want them to know.”
Sandwiched between the two women, Alton looked ahead … and stared.
They both elbowed him and giggled.
Finally, the young veteran spoke. “Okay. All right. My name is Alton Noel. I am—was—a private in the United States Marine Corps.”
“That’s good,” Nectar said, nudging him. “But keep going.”
“And this is my post-traumatic stress disorder recovery diary.”
The girls applauded, hugged him on either side.
He smiled, visibly embarrassed.
The video ended.
The next holo-video began immediately. Two supine nude figures floating two feet off the floor made love. Abigail straddled Alton as she grinded against him and made small, chirping whines. “Yep,” she said between moans, slowly gaining momentum … “Yep, yep.”
The highly private moment made Brody avert his eyes immediately. It wasn’t prudishness, but he knew it wasn’t intended for him or anyone else to ever see.
“Next,” he said.
Alton was dressed again and sitti
ng in an invisible chair in an empty room. Brody assumed that the holo-cam knew not to waste disk space by uselessly measuring and recording the spatial arithmetic of furniture and other objects unless told to do otherwise.
“Hey,” he said, elbows on knees, bent forward and fiddling with his fingers, picking at a hangnail. “I’m not really sure what to say. I mean, talking about shit and opening up and all that—I was raised to keep your insides inside and crying is for pussies, but I think I have to talk about this. It’s, you know, important.”
Brody listened, watched.
“I started this thing as a way to talk about my feelings. But I think I have to—no, let me start over.” Alton disappeared, then reappeared less than a millisecond later, this time a few inches closer.
“When I was on the base in Malaysia, we had to sign up for duties when we weren’t at war or active. So some guys got mess hall duties or vehicle maintenance—by luck of the draw, I got information technology. Like some kind of joke. Me in IT? I did it, took the classes—the whole bit.
“Anyway, one day they call me to the mess hall and it’s just me. It’s Gunnery Sergeant Dobbs and some brass, guys I don’t recognize. They tell me to install these new transmitters all over base for the wireless. I say we already have wireless, and they tell me this is different. So I set up the wires in the barracks, in the mess, even in the rec and weight rooms. And that night, everyone’s puking. They’re running to the shitter, getting sick in the sinks, right there on the floor, shitting themselves—all of it. I think it must be food poisoning, but that night—it’s weird—we had leftovers. And I can’t imagine something we had already eaten could make us that sick, right? But it keeps happening. I get called into the mess, all alone, and Dobbs is there and the brass—who never say who they are—and ask me to install more transmitters and routers and shit and just like before everyone gets sick.”
When he spoke again, it came out reedy. He was wringing his hands, shaking his head, and sniffing back tears. “I don’t know what I did. I don’t know if it’s my fault everyone started getting sick. But then it just kept getting worse, and guys would have to be airlifted out to see a medic at another base, and they’d never tell us what happened to ‘em or anything. Fuck. Did I do this shit to them?”
00:59:59.
Brody sat forward. “I’m going to need more than that.”
And as if he had heard him, Alton looked up in the direction of the holo-cam at Brody and said, “They told me not to take copies of the instruction books. They told me not to tell anyone about any of it. They said I could get court marshaled if I did. But for everyone out there online who wants to know the truth—fuck it—I don’t care anymore. The name on the packages all said ‘Hark Telecom.’ Yeah, that’s what I thought—the fucking phone company? But it was them. If any of those soldiers died, I want it to be known to God and everyone else that it wasn’t all me and I didn’t know what I was doing, okay?” He paused. “That’s it.”
The video ended. Brody began lowering the lid of the ordi when the next one started without warning. Alton was directly ahead of him, so close that if he were physical, Brody would’ve been able to feel his breath.
“I’m not a bad person,” Alton said. “But I went with them. They came to my fucking job, where I make a living. Said they were the government. I thought, This is it; I’m done. So I went with them. They drove me out to this place, and all I can remember is it had dirt floors. And, yeah, I’m here again at my place. Just woke up, no idea how I got home. I’m moving out of here today, going to the YMCA to stay, lay low.” He shook his head violently. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to think. All I know is this fucked-up-looking guy with a braided beard and the worst breath I’ve ever smelled walked right up to me at work the other day and told me if I’m not able to be found on ten-twenty, I’m through.”
Ten-twenty. October 20. The day Alton shot Elizabeth Lake and the nine others. Brody inched forward on the cot’s canvas. “Come on. Give me a name.”
“He opened his coat real quick, showing me he was covered from head to toe in knives, and walked off. I have no idea if that’s part of it or …” Alton sniffed. “I had enough, though. I wasn’t sure how he’d react, but I shoved him. I told him to tell me who he is, and he smiled that shitty smile at me and said, ‘I’m just your uncle Titian, kid.’ Fucking freak.”
“There we are,” Brody said.
“He said that with my experience I was the ideal candidate. But he wouldn’t tell me for what. Maybe it was because of what went down in Kuala Lumpur—I just did as I was told. Kill or be killed, right? I tried to kick his ass, but he ran off, got into a car with some guys.”
The azure ghost of Alton Noel took a deep breath, and when he continued it was with grit. “I’m going to hide this ordi somewhere. I don’t know what’s going to happen—if the shit about ten-twenty is true, if the things I’m hearing are real, if the shit I hear myself saying sometimes means anything … I just … I just want this shit to be heard, and I pray to Jesus it makes sense to you—whoever you are—watching this. Please don’t judge me. Please.”
Alton broke down into a blubbering wreck, still seated on his invisible chair. From the collar of his T-shirt came a metallic jangling. His dog tags fell and snapped together at the end of his lanyard. They clinked, muffled, as he squeezed them in a fist. Alton’s close-shaven head bobbed up and down as he quietly wept. “I don’t know what to do … I wish time would stop. I don’t know what’s going to happen on ten-twenty, if that’s even a date or a time or … I wish someone would tell me what’s going to happen—”
Brody struck esc, killing the video.
24
Every park Thorp drove by, there was a rent-a-cop posted. Every lot he passed, he accidentally met eyes with the attendant. Even the boardwalk was under electronic surveillance. It seemed there wasn’t a single place in all of Chicago a man could go to rid his trunk of a dead body.
Deciding to take a break, Thorp angled the car alongside the curb, killed the engine, and sat back with his fingers crossed on his belly waiting for the answers to come to him.
The clock on the dash told him he had already burned up twenty minutes driving around. There was no way he’d regroup with Brody in another forty minutes, tell him he still had Spanky in the trunk, and have him not get mad. He had to make progress on something, even if it weren’t the job he had been tasked to do. He brought up the Gizumoshingu from the backseat and logged in. If Brody could play detective, so could he. That is, if the vendor selling that hack app had gotten back to him …
Thorp kept a dummy account online for separate finances, none of which were tied directly to the bank his jigsaw was linked to. This he used for the type of online shopping that might raise some eyebrows. The decommissioned Darters had been bought this way, as well as a good percentage of his armory’s contents. The vendor had accepted Thorp’s fake name and address, probably ran the account through an app of his own to double-check him for a possible undercover cop, and approved the transaction. Thorp installed the hack tool and went to work.
He got onto the Probitas website, where employees could enter a password and access time cards and such. Thorp bit his lip, staring at the monitor with bleary eyes. A bar filled, the log panel riffing by with endless computer talk, code, numbers, symbols. Evidence that his ordi was working hard. The fan even kicked in, further evidence that this sucker required some serious labor.
After burning up another ten of his remaining forty minutes, the app finally allowed Thorp access to the Probitas employee portion of the site, the firewall effectively chiseled. He read a few memos and a couple of pieces of news, one being that Lucy in reception was due to have her baby in a week and everyone should wish her well.
He moved on.
He came to a tab labeled client news and opened it.
Hark Telecom was listed at the top of Probitas’s clients. He bristled, his hands even more numb than they already were, but he forced himself to
click on it. He entered the company profile and went through the records of their prior requests and the people who Hark had personally asked Probitas to intervene on the behalf of.
What appeared before his eyes made his throat run dry. Suddenly feeling the need to retch, he threw open the driver’s side door but nothing came except a squiggling long white line of spit that clung to his bottom lip. He spat and glared at the ordi displaying the news and spat again. He couldn’t believe it. What it meant, if it distilled the truth—he couldn’t bear it.
Nectar Ashbury had been issued a behavioral discontinuation packet from Probitas, per the request of Hark Telecom. Going through the PDF copy they’d kept, he confirmed it was the same letter Brody had found at her apartment.
No one knew about the news he had received. He hadn’t told Nectar or anyone else about his trip to the doctor. Apparently, he didn’t need to tell Nectar anyway. She had scooped his medical records online. He knew that it was a reason why he was feeling strange a lot of the time, why he felt light-headed every morning, why for no reason he’d need to quickly find a place to sit or risk clipping his head on the kitchen counter. The nosebleeds, the out-of-nowhere headaches that didn’t ache so much as erupt. The others that weren’t so bad but still made his eyes water and ears ring.
Thorp always thought it was the first sign of old age coming up around the corner. Most of the time he looked and felt like hell, and now—on top of that—he had been deceived. Maybe he would have been healthier if this hadn’t been going on. Maybe he would have avoided drinking at night, every night. Maybe he would have had years free of anxiousness, serious lows and soaring highs, and all those terrible times in between when he wasn’t even sure what he was feeling.
He’d been able to live this life of quiet comfort, buy decommissioned vehicles and firearms over the Internet, not have to work, and if he managed to sell a bushel of apples at the farmer’s market, well, that was just a bonus. Hark Telecom had kept a roof over his head, but now Thorp knew it was merely a safeguard, packing his bank account so full of money that the idea of asking questions would never cross his mind. The roof provided a curtain for what hung beyond and above it, the wires suspended over his house that were making him sick.
