“Getting bored with your toy already?” the woman who’d spoken to her before grinned. “We haven’t got in any new stock, but I had lunch with the guy from the piercings place across the flow yesterday and I think he mentioned something about a new thing he was looking forward to trying. He might have the dirt on the latest and greatest.”
Kel left feeling happy. If the top port-install place in Toronto hadn’t heard of what she’d created, it wasn’t loose in the wild yet. She still had time to figure out who had stolen it and find some way to get it back.
Back outside the shop, she took a moment to inhale the cool air. It smelled like spring, fresh and new, and full of promise. The sensation, as always, made Kel feel a sense of urgency about her work, and how much she still wanted to do. Time was passing. She considered going home but then figured she should go talk to the piercings shop owner. Kel knew if she didn’t, she’d be awake at 3:00 a.m. wondering if she should have double-checked. Better to be thorough now.
She walked over to the crosswalk and waded into the traffic, and the pods formed a bubble space around her as they stopped or slowed to let her through. When she stepped into the piercings shop, she was halted by an overpowering wave of sandalwood incense. A man with six facial studs arranged in a curve down his cheek, starting with a large one and getting progressively smaller, greeted her.
“Hello,” she said. “Your friend across the flow said you might have a new item you were keen to try.”
He raised one eyebrow, making a couple of his studs surge upward, too. “What, like a new set of rings or something?”
“No, no,” Kel said, pointing at her port. “A new implant.”
“Oh, that,” he said. “Not sure why she’d tell you.” He went behind the reception counter and opened a drawer that rattled with lots of various bits and pieces. “It’s not something I’m selling. I’m just going to experiment with it here.” He pulled out a small black device and put it on the desk.
Kel nearly gasped aloud. She could see the intricate port interface. It was printed with a different material for the case, but it was unmistakably the brain state recording implant she designed.
“Where did you get this?” she asked, her voice barely audible.
“My mate at ReLeaf gave me one,” he said. “It’s supposed to record what your brain is doing. I’m going to try it as a substitute for anaesthetic for some of my more squeamish and sober customers.”
“No!” Kel almost shouted. The man looked at her with a combination of alarm and suspicion now. “No, you mustn’t. It’s not tested for that.”
“How would you know?”
“Because…” Kel paused. There was nothing for it. “Because I designed it. Could you give me it please?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because it’s mine and it shouldn’t be out yet. It’s not ready.”
He crossed his arms. “Some weirdo comes in off the path claiming she designed something, and I’m just supposed to hand it over? I don’t think so.”
Kel didn’t stop to think. She dashed forward, snatched it off the counter, and bolted out the door. She was around the corner and out of sight in minutes. She overheard the man shouting abuse some distance behind her.
Once she was sure she wasn’t being pursued, she stashed the device in her bag and used her wristband to find out what and where ReLeaf was. She had to move fast, before the first man got in touch with his friend, warning him, describing her. She toggled her jacket from its current bright red colour to a nondescript beige. Kel cut across the flow mid-stream, ignoring the screeching of tyres and brakes that came from not indicating her desire to cross first, and made her way down the block. She worked to slow her breathing to something more normal and pulled her hair back into a bun for good measure. It wouldn’t stop a serious effort to find her, but at a glance, she was now no longer a longhaired woman in a red jacket.
ReLeaf was apparently a marijuana dispensary. There were only four people in the store, well into enjoying the house speciality, seated in lounge chairs around a table. The air was thick with the smell of it.
“Well hello, darlin’,” said one. “What can I do for you today?” He sported an old cowboy hat, had kind eyes and a bushy moustache. He reminded Kel of a celebrity from decades ago, back when holos were called movies and still flat, but she couldn’t think who just then. She put on her best smile.
“Hi,” she said brightly, stealing a glance at his wristband. It was already flashing to show a message received. Was it the guy she had just stolen from? Would be going to Bitz to complain and get her name from the girl behind the counter? “A friend of yours said you gave him a device for recording the brain. I’m really interested and wondered if I could see it.”
He took a slow drag and closed his eyes, savouring it. It seemed an eternity before he opened them again, and when he did, he struggled to focus. “Oh yeah, yeah, I have one of those in right now.” His gaze wandered away and his face split into a slow, wide grin.
Kel waited for as long as she dared, the light on his wrist still flashing. “Could I see it?”
He looked over at her, surprised she was there. He waved the smoke away to see her better. “I’m a businessman you know. Smart one, too.”
“I can pay…”
But he wasn’t listening. “Saw one of these jobbies and thought hey ho, you know? That could seriously change the trade. Smokeless highs. Much better for you.” He reached up to scratch behind one ear. “Been trying to record the perfect high since … since … when did we start this, Joey?” He nudged one of the other men with a foot, but the other guy was even more zoned out and snoring slightly. The shop owner giggled and looked at her as if to say, ‘what are you going to do?’
Kel could feel the smoke getting to her, too. Whatever it was they were enjoying, it was potent. She was desperate to get the implant and get out but she was unlikely to wrest it out of him, even if he was stoned. “That sounds really smart, really blast,” she ventured. “Can I see this device? I’d love to see yours. Could you show me?”
“Whadya want to see mine for? You can go get your own. You could p’rolly get three.”
Kel stiffened in shock. “What are you saying?”
“Buddy at the Eagle gave me this one. He’s even smarter than me, if you can believe it,” he puffed. “Got this promo goin’ on gonna capture the brain porn market straight up, he said. Free devices in exchange for bringin’ in recordin’s.”
Kel staggered out of the shop into the fresh air, close to tears. In less than an hour, she’d found three places that had her implant, and one of them was handing them out like candy. Someone must have taken one apart and scanned it well enough to create a reliable fabber schematic of it already.
Another thought crashed into her. Pauline had told her to go look for her device.
Kel hadn’t said what had been stolen from the lab.
That meant her company probably had her original.
The genie was well and truly out of the bottle. Her only hope now was that none of the people she had just talked to would know who she was and connect her to the mayhem she was sure was to come.
SETH
Seth flicked the implant again, and felt the surge, the glorious surge.
He sat in his new rig, bought on credit, in an immense, synthleather cockpit chair moulded to his body. The stylized back of the chair arced up and over him, looking like a scorpion’s tail, its stinger the hook for a rack of ultrathin screens, each displaying a different task in progress.
One was scanning and reading out his favourite poems, the elegiac lines pumping directly into his ears at double speed, priming his brain for lyricism. Another was cranking through an enormous database of reader reviews, analysing, collating, picking out key phrases, learning why each book was adored or hated. What made the reader tick? A third screen he set to work running a plot generator on his own nascent work, inducing possible narrative directions based on what he’d written already. Into
a fourth, he poured a corpus of literary works from around the world into an AI, mashed them, mixed them, and spun up dozens of random snippets from the slurry. Some were nonsense, others made him laugh; a rare few sparked an idea that burned so hot he worked feverishly to write them down before they evaporated.
He pulsed through several more replay cycles like this, each time enjoying the sensation of fierce concentration as it washed over him again and again. Seth paused only once to fab some stimulants and gulp some water. He did not want to let this go, not yet.
He felt like he was glowing, the brightness of his spirit at last illuminating the dim recesses of his mind, bringing forth his best self into the light.
Time passed; he didn’t know how much, he didn’t care. He folded his rig, donned a new pair of goggles, and watched his apartment shimmer away into a VR environment. Seth ground through a programming sequence almost effortlessly, feeding the elements of his novel into the device, and saw his work extrapolated into life in his living room: as yet crude, primitive, but there, the ghosts in his head made real.
He talked to his protagonist, listened to his villain, and walked through his world. Seth tweaked, sculpted, and choreographed. He made them all interview him, probing his subconscious, astonishing himself by finding answers he didn’t know he had.
Then he dumped the sessions into transcript, projected the text on to his virtual walls, grabbing words, sentences, paragraphs with his hands, moving them, shaping them, saving gems, throwing away tailings.
He was a conductor and this was his symphony. Keeping time with the steady flick, flick, flick to reset his implant.
And then at some point, he swayed, staggered, and crumpled into a heap on the floor, breathing hard.
A voice, incessant. He struggled to pinpoint it.
“Seth? Seth?” It was Tasha’s voice.
“Seth? I am detecting abnormal levels of cortisol, DHEA, adrenaline, noradrenaline, dopamine, and aldosterone. You have had an abnormal heart rate for three consecutive hours, and your sleep log indicates little sleep overall for the last several days, and very little REM sleep in particular.”
He could hear her. He knew she was saying something important. But he couldn’t work up enough energy to puzzle it out. His arms and legs felt leaden.
“Your food and drink consumption is down, and you have not queried me for information at your usual rate,” Tasha said.
It was silent in the apartment for a while.
“Seth, please respond,” Tasha said.
Seth curled into a ball. He was so tired. He didn’t want to sleep. Everything felt jagged, jittery and strange things floated in his field of vision.
“Seth, as per my manufacturer’s presets, I’m initiating Mental Health Protocol I,” Tasha said.
After a few minutes, an enticing aroma reached his nose. He could smell his favourite tea. It was quite a while before he found enough willpower to go to his kitchen. He found a cup and filled it with the liquid in the fabber. He couldn’t remember having asked Tasha for it.
It tasted very good. In fact, it was the best cup of tea he had enjoyed for a long time. He drank it all and had another. Suddenly, he felt all loose-limbed and wobbly. Pleasantly sleepy. He only just made it to his bed in time. He fell into a dreamless slumber.
~
When he awoke, he was famished. Tasha printed him a big breakfast without him even having to ask. It was delicious.
It wasn’t until he’d checked the news that he realised he’d slept for almost twenty-four hours. He checked Tasha’s logs. She’d put a mild sedative in his tea to help him sleep, and this morning’s meal had been supplemented to help prevent symptoms of depression. Seth realised she had music playing — a cheerful, but not overbearing instrumental piece.
After a hot shower, he sat back at his workstation and stared, goggle-eyed at what he’d done. There, right there, was three-quarters of his novel, complete, and dozens of ideas for additional books. It was all still rough, to be sure, but it was more progress in the space of several days than he’d made for months. Seth checked the logs, not trusting his memory. Yes! There, in the VR sessions, was also a rough draft of his book, a multimedia tie-in already half complete.
Seth ran a triple backup protocol, pushed himself away from his station, and let out a long yowl of triumph, punching the air.
“Initiating Mental Health Protocol II,” Tasha immediately responded.
Seth laughed. “Good grief, no, no, cancel that. I’m fine. Just very happy.”
“Are you certain? My logs indicate a period of intense, silent activity, followed by severe agitation. These are outside your normal operating parameters.”
“Very sure! I’ve honestly never felt better.” Well, that wasn’t quite true. He ached all over, still awash in the aftermath of muscle overuse. Seth stood up to do lots of slow arm and leg stretches.
Far from feeling drained, though, he was ecstatic. His brain still felt almost warm, as if he had just solved a challenging puzzle in a short amount of time.
He allowed himself a minute or two of self-congratulation. After getting his implant, he’d spent several fruitless days trying to record his brain during a good writing session. The self-monitoring had rendered him unable to write anything at all. Then he’d had a brilliant idea.
After Tasha had assured him it would be safe to do so, he had recorded his brain while he was in the shower. Twenty minutes of his favourite meditative activity, where some of his best ideas had come to him. And it had worked.
No more stress over the best use of time. No more teeth grinding when his family demanded time from the unmarried guy with no kids. From now on, it didn’t matter how long he had available to write, it would now all be optimal.
Seth headed for the kitchen, his stomach growling again. He was tempted to have Tasha print him up two meals at once. Maybe he’d have one now, go out for a jog, and come back for another meal.
He picked something that looked inviting from the fabber menu and stretched again. His mind was racing with the possibilities. At this rate, he’d finish his book by month’s end. He wondered whether he shouldn’t set aside the draft, start a new book, and then return to the original with fresh eyes. He thought about being able to take weekends off writing, to stay fresh, without feeling guilty about not trying to squeeze out another five hundred hard-won words.
The aroma of his meal, a fresh pizza just like his mother used to print, floated up to his nose. Seth thought about using the same recording for learning book marketing. He hoped to hand the legwork over to Tasha once he’d figured it all out, but there was a lot to learn first. Dreams of selling more than a handful of books danced through his head.
He reached into the cupboard for some utensils, and just then, his wristband beeped. It was his employer. He happily wondered if they had a new Farming assignment for him. Seth felt like he had the energy for anything.
Then he read the message and dropped his fork with a clatter. He had just lost his job.
HAROON
It was late June. It had been baking hot for three days, with so much humidity that stepping outside felt like walking into a thermal therapy bath. And suddenly the room felt just as stifling.
“What do you mean, you’re pregnant?” Haroon blinked stupidly.
Saba just looked at him from her seat at his kitchen table, her eyes suddenly wet with unshed tears.
“How can you possibly be pregnant? You told me you had the birth control implant!”
“I did,” she said, looking away. “I turned it off.”
“You… shut it off?” Haroon couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “What? Why?”
They had been dating for nearly three months now. Pretty, smart, and even more well-read than he was, she’d had ambitions to become a nurse, and maybe a doctor after that.
“I thought you loved me,” Saba said, crying now.
“I… do. At least, I think I do,” Haroon said. “I don’t know. I’m eighteen! You’re e
ighteen! We don’t know anything about anything! Nobody gets pregnant that early. What on earth were you thinking?”
She sniffled for a long time and then said. “I won’t go back. I can’t. I thought you’d be happy.”
Haroon rubbed his face in agitation. He thought about his RCMP application and how it would look if he withdrew it now. The plans for going to Japan together he and Yoshi had been tossing around. His father and his background, and the fact he didn’t know his mother and wasn’t sure what kind of person he was, much less what type of person he’d produce in a child. They didn’t have the money for genetic enhancement. Was screening covered in their healthcare coverage? His fists clenched and unclenched.
He wanted to scream and rage that he’d only just gotten free.
Haroon sat across from her, trembling. He couldn’t quite make himself take her hand in his, but after a while, he said, “Help me understand.”
Saba nodded and wiped her nose. “It’s Pakistan. It’s always Pakistan for him. I can’t understand why he bothered leaving. He should have stayed there.” She pressed her fists into her eyes. “He thinks war is coming again. He wants to go back to fight, and we would have to go back with him. My mother won’t say no to him.” She paused. “I-I think she’s afraid to.”
Haroon thought of her father, a man even grimmer and more brutal than his own. They’d met only once so far. A veteran of the last India-Pakistan conflict, he’d fled the country when he thought he’d be swept up in the UN peacekeeping missions and forced to pay reparations. Saba didn’t talk about it much, but there were hints he might be guilty of war crimes, too.
“So, you thought if you were pregnant, he’d want to leave you here,” Haroon said.
“Yes… especially if he thinks it could be a boy. And maybe my mother and sisters, too. If I said I didn’t know how to have a baby or look after it… which I don’t.”
“How… how far along are you? Are you sure?”
“Eleven weeks,” she whispered miserably.
Echoes of Another Page 18
