by Jim Nelson
Clift told her, “This is important.”
I strode straight at Brill. He straightened up from his busywork with cables and transformers, sensing I was going to get physical again. I held out my palm.
“I want my memex,” I said.
Brill looked to Clift and waited for a nod, which came. He gingerly placed my memex in my hand.
“I don’t want the lady seeing this," I said. "Mainline me.”
Clift smiled appreciatively. “Very good, Mr. Naroy.” He signaled Brill with a soft wave of his hand.
Brill yanked cables and reconfigured transformers. I dragged a study chair from the beech table and set it at the edge of the projector’s circle. Brill unfurled a glowing neon-blue optical cable and married it to my memex. I expected more brutality. His work now was as gentle as a candy striper's.
“I don’t want her seeing this,” I said to Clift.
“Understood,” he said.
“I’m serious,” I said. “Don’t project this. Just me and Agg’s memories. I want to relive this first-hand.”
"You two were friends, after all," Clift said.
Brill threw a switch on the neural splitter. The low hum of power coming up filled the silent room. All went black. Down I fell into the cavernous realm of Agg’s final unguarded memories.
*
—Naroy is one of those guys who does not present well drunk. He’s got a jigsaw face of scars and sags. He told me once he had bad acne when he was a kid. I don’t exactly believe that. He probably did have acne, but that doesn’t explain his washrag of a face. Maybe in some past life he’d been an amateur boxer, who knows. Plastic surgery’s crossed my mind too. Naroy’s a hard read…when he’s sober.
He finishes his first Gibson while we're waiting for our salads to arrive. He follows it with another Gibson while attacking his swordfish steak with fork and knife. The second Gibson loosens something inside him, a ball of loose bile over a bonus check he claims I never paid him. He names the job and the client and the amount he says I owe right down to the penny. He even knows the goddamn date the check was due. It was four years ago. I’m not going to pay him on his say-so, but I learned long ago not to argue details with Naroy. Little things he can’t let go of. Doesn’t matter if they’re real or some misunderstanding he cooked up. They fester in him, irritate him, and he scratches at them and they fester more. He’s a strange duck.
Naroy’s got this fantastic memory—the most precise memory I’ve ever seen, but only about certain things, things that scratch at him. Even with a memex implanted in the back of my skull, my memory can’t beat his. Memexes, they overlook things. They record your own thoughts. If you don’t see something, they don’t see it either. If you see something wrong, the memex records your mistake perfectly. In court, you would think a memex would be the most infallible witness to take the stand, but they’re not. That’s how a defense attorney can get a memex record tossed out, just like defense attorneys used to get breathalyzer results dropped from a DUI case: by attacking the machine’s faults. People ignore basic details all the time. People think they see one thing when they’re looking at another thing. Their memex records the mirage, not the truth. The memex is Plato's cave made real. No invention can rise higher than its creator, and humans are fragile and fallible creatures indeed.
And that’s Naroy in a nutshell. Fragile and fallible. Some details he remembers with eerie perfection. Others he’s completely oblivious to. Sure, he remembers that bonus check I never paid him—I sure as hell don’t—but he can’t recall for the life of him the color of the paint on my office wall or the combination to the petty cash lockbox. He forgets my birthday but remembers the renewal date on my driver’s license for some goddamn reason, because he filled out the form for me once. And he can never remember my middle name. When he was doing the government paperwork, that was important, and every time he had to fill out a form of incorporation or a tax document, he had to ask me my middle name.
Three years he worked for me. He’d take the elevator to the sixth floor one day and the eighth floor the next. He’d step out of the elevator, realize he needed to go to the seventh floor, and take the stairs. But if a client is waiting to talk to me, even if Naroy hadn’t seen that person in two years, he remembered their name, their address, their child’s name, and so on. He told me the number six is indigo and the number eight is bright red. What the hell that means, I don’t know, but he told me his numbers-colors thing Lord knows how many times. Something sticks in his craw and he can’t let it go. If it doesn’t stick in his craw, it’s house dust to him.
The waiter asks what else we might want: espresso, dessert, after-dinner drink. I’m a good read of Naroy—known him for, what, ten years now—and I hear in his voice another Gibson call coming up. I head him off at the pass:
“How about a Blue Pharjé?” I say.
“You read my mind,” Naroy says.
“Two?”
“One,” I tell the waiter and ask for an espresso with a twist.
Naroy thinks he can manage the Pharjé. He thinks he can take careful sips and ride the edge of the knife all the way down to the point. He’s the worst kind of blue drunk: One who thinks he’s in control.
“I like you when you’re like this,” I tell him. “No, I got this one.” I peel off bills from my wad for the waiter to pick up. “Courtesy Aggaroy L-T-D.”
“Is this a working lunch?” Naroy asks me. We’re at the window seat and he’s forgotten it’s ten at night. Blue Pharjé kicks in fast.
His memories slip away like the gentle dusky hours of a Memphis August night. With each sip, the Naroy I like emerges.
“My father was a tow truck driver,” he tells me. “I never worked an honest day of my life using my hands.” He presented his hands to me like a surgeon in the theater awaiting his gloves. “He put food on the table for all three of us driving a truck and crawling under other people's cars.”
It’s a myth that Pharjé obliterates all memories. Every Pharjé junkie perpetuates the myth. No, Pharjé doesn’t erase all memories. It dampens memories, especially strong and violent ones. One urban legend has it that Blue Pharjé was developed for psychological trauma victims before it went commercial. I doubt that’s the case. There’s big money in storing and sharing our memories. There’s big money in forgetting them too, if even for only a few hours. Everyone has a memory they want gone.
“The bed in my college dorm smelled like sourdough bread,” Naroy tells me.
“Some guys get all the luck,” I say, shepherding him to the front door. I make a final wave to the waiter and the bartender. I can feel the grin in my cheeks. This is the Naroy I like being around.
The Palace Hotel is six quick blocks away. Maxfield Parrish’s landscape of the Pied Piper stretches out on the wall behind the bartenders, the top-shelf alcohol underlining the horrific scene above. It’s the kids under the Piper’s spell that are the most disturbing. Happy and eager, climbing the rocks and shinning up a tree, all led by the Devil himself into the desert with his fife and cape. They look like Mennonite youth on their way to the first slaughter.
I have a glass of beer and order another Blue Pharjé for Naroy. He’s riding the edge of the knife all right, and it’s cutting deep. His day-to-day memory has slipped away. Stories of his father and his first job in Sunnyvale quit bubbling to the surface. Now he’s in the present.
“You remember me?” I ask him. “Remember when you used to work for me?”
“Why are we here?”
“I work here,” I say with as straight a face I can manage.
“Oh, you’re in the hotel business?”
“No, I’m in security,” I say.
“You work the door?” Looks me up and down, my tie and jacket and wing-tips. “Oh, you’re the, ah, ‘hotel dick,’ eh?”
“No,” I say with a laugh. “I’m in security. Nexternet security. Like you.”
“I’m not in security.” Dead serious. “I’m a computer programmer.”
“Yo
u were a computer programmer. When I first met you, you were an old-timey code monkey. It was like you’d fallen out of a time machine. The Internet was retired and you thought it was still the big thing. You didn’t know one thing about the neurotransmission protocol or memex programming. You came to me and I taught you Nexternet security.”
“Thank you.” Although for the life of him, he doesn’t remember a thing between us.
“You know why I like our time together?” I say.
“Why?”
“You’re the best drunk I know,” I tell him.
“I’m not drunk.” No alcohol in neuroliqueurs, so I grant him that.
“You know what I mean,” I tell him. “Most drunks get all sad and weepy. Or they turn tough. But you? You just…lie back. Philosophical. Thoughtful.”
“I’ve been accused of being too smart before.”
“I didn’t say you were smart,” I say. “You get philosophical. There’s a difference.”
Raising his Pharjé glass to his lips: “A philosopher is a person who kicks up dust and complains he cannot see.”
That sends me over the edge in laughter. The bartender asks if he can bring another round. I wave him away from my beer and tap Naroy’s empty Pharjé flute.
“Thank you.” Naroy speaks confidentially to me. “I hate this place, you know.”
“It’s nice here,” I say. “I’m just glad I got to bring you here for once. You always want to go to one of those godawful blue lounges." They all stink of patchouli and body spray.
“Something happened to me a long time ago.” He thumps the bar top three times with a spiny index finger. “Right in this place, in that seat right there.” He points dramatically to the stool at the end of the bar. “A woman—this girl, really—she approached me—she promised me—something bad started here a long time ago.”
“Forget about that.” Mental note: Don’t bring Naroy to the Pied Piper again. “I want to ask you a question.”
“This place was the beginning of the end,” he says, growing louder. “Why did I say yes? Why did I say yes to her?” He slaps the side of his head. “I knew it was too good to be true.” He slaps himself again. “Why? Why, for crissakes, why did I do it?”
Yank his hand away from him. Bartender is pistoning a swivel stick in a cocktail shaker of bourbon and sweet vermouth and crushed ice. He gives me an intense glare, warning he’ll cut us off if we don’t cool it. I lean hard on Naroy and whisper we’ll both get the boot if he keeps it up. He swears in my earhole he’ll stop. His breath is garlic bread and Gibson gin and the sickly-sweet spearmint of Pharjé. This is the Naroy I don’t care much for.
“Are you wearing your memex? Here.”
I push up from my barstool and go around behind him. I brush aside his hair, and sure enough, his memex jack is empty. He pats around his shirt and jacket and locates the pocket holding his memex. It’s curled up like a dead potato bug.
“Don’t wear it,” I tell him.
“Why?”
“Never mind why,” I say.
“I never wear it when I’m drinking the blue. Bad form.”
“Good, because this conversation is strictly off the record.”
His third Blue Pharjé of the night arrives. The bartender offers me dubious eyebrows serving it. Naroy tilts his head back for a long drink, almost half of the flute’s syrup, and swallows with some determination.
“I hate this place.”
“You have a lunch appointment,” I tell him. “You’re going out to Alcatraz tomorrow. Do you remember that?”
Instinctively, he touches the back of his neck. Naroy’s such a goddamn Pharjé junkie, he can’t even remember he’s not wearing his memex.
“I don’t have my calendar handy.” How many times I told him not to store business in his memex. He never listens to me.
“Take my word for it,” I say. “You’re meeting Dr. Elgin Clift tomorrow for a 12:30 lunch on the island. I know. I arranged it.”
“You did?”
“Clift probably didn’t mention it, but I recommended you for the job.”
With a smile I do not deserve, Naroy slaps me once on the back. “You’re the best.”
“I told Clift I’ve got too much work and backed out of the contract," I tell him. "You’re taking over the investigation.”
Bug-eyed, Naroy takes a deep breath and straightens his back, a vain attempt to return to professionalism. “Just send me over your files so I can pick up where you left off.”
“That’s not how this one works. You’ve got to start from the beginning. That’s the whole point. It’s going to take you a few days to pick up my trail. That’s the time I need.”
“Your trail?”
“You have another appointment tomorrow,” I continue. “In the morning, you’re going to meet me here for breakfast. You remember me making that appointment with you?”
“Another appointment? What’s the first?”
“The first is with Clift out at Alcatraz,” I snap. “The second is breakfast with me. I mean—breakfast is first, tomorrow morning, and lunch is second. Dammit—now you’ve got me in circles. I need you to pay attention. This is important.”
Befuddled. “What for?”
I have to I remind myself this is why I like being around Naroy, this Naroy, Blue Pharjé Naroy, not the hangdog sober Naroy who can’t let go of his past. Every man should have one friend he can speak directly to. Every man should have one outlet to spill his guts. One person he can be completely honest with, even if means buying him three or four trendy overpriced drinks to do it.
“I’m not in the habit of setting up my friends for a fall,” I tell him. “I’m not. I’m really not that kind of guy. But goddamn if you haven’t been an anchor around my neck for ten years now.”
He shakes his head, unhurt. “I don’t follow.”
“When you left me, you were just a whelp thinking you were the big dog of San Francisco.”
“I’m not young,” he says. “How old are you? You could be my brother.”
“I’ve been doing Nexternet security since it was in the experimental phase,” I remind him. “You blew into my office with zero experience under your belt. You started on the ground floor and I brought you up. You thought two years under my wing was enough. I told you you weren’t ready to go solo, but you ignored that solid piece of free advice. Then what happened? For the first three years, you were begging me like a dog at the supper table for scraps. ‘Any spare work for me? Any clients you can send my way?’ Hell, I was sending you solid work, work I could have used, to help you out. You screwed up a bunch of that work too. Those clients came back to me feeling jacked. I had to bust ass to get them out of the messes you landed them in. You didn’t listen to me. You never listen to me.”
The cobwebs are clearing. “What are you trying to say?”
“Now you’re going to get me out of a mess I’ve gotten myself into. You’re going to run interference for me. You’re going to be hired tomorrow by Elgin Clift. He wants you to search for some data missing from the Old Internet preserve he runs out on his island. You need to take the job. If you don’t, I’m afraid he’ll go to the Federal data security boys. If they get involved, we’re all done for.”
“Us? We? Who's 'we'?”
“Oh, it's this guy I work for and his hottie girlfriend. I'm also working with this second-rate hypernovel actor playing secret agent for his uncle. I don't owe any of them anything, truth be told. But if the Feds get to them, they’ve got no reason not to squeal on me, and then it becomes my problem.” I clap Naroy on the shoulder. “Never mind. I’m just feeling sorry for the situation I put myself into. You’ll never know about any of this.”
“Did you say I’m going to see you tomorrow morning?” He's still catching up.
“I’m going to give you a hint over breakfast,” I tell him. “Some advice about the job Clift is hiring you for. But I need you to be stone-cold sober when I tell it to you. If I tell you now, you’ll never rem
ember it. It’ll be lost.”
“What is it?”
My beer is a puddle at the bottom of the lager glass, dry foam clinging to the walls like Spanish lace. "There's no reason to talk about it now."
“Then there’s no reason not to.” He thumps his fingernail on the drained glass before him. The empty flute makes a pitch-perfect ping. “I know what Pharjé does to me. I know I’m going to completely forget all of this in a few hours. So tell me now. Hell—” He slaps my back. “Consider this practice for tomorrow morning. It sounds serious, so here’s a chance to get it wrong before you get it right. We all need that kind of practice. We all should live two lives. One to get all the mistakes out of the way. A second to make things right.”
Naroy can turn philosophical on a dime. This is the Naroy I like, the Blue Pharjé Naroy I’m going to miss. I discover my eyes watering up. I blink the water away and I blink some more because the water keeps coming.
“The Old Internet Preservation Commission is going to hire you tomorrow,” I tell him. “It’s going to take you a long time to catch up to me, but it’s me you’ll be looking for. You won't even know you're looking for me. I’m the one who engineered stealing their data. And I’m going to sell that data for a lot of money. You’ll figure it out eventually. By then, it should be too late. I already have the money and my bags are packed. When you catch up with me, I’ll be in South America living the good life.”
I stop Naroy before he utters another inane question.
“I’ve had enough of this garbage-man job.” The words slip out easy now. “I’ve had enough of the trash it attracts. People who want me to clean up their messes. Snooping on other people’s unguarded thoughts. Breaking into their retention servers and living other people’s lives. Smelling their shit and shaving their armpits and washing their scrotums.” My fists ball on the bar top before me. “Do you know how many times I’ve felt a man smack his wife in the jaw? Mainlined some sicko groping his stepdaughter when the mom isn't around? I relived four months of an executive poisoning her husband so she could run off with the hunky marketing guy in cubicle 3C. Mostly—”
