by Jim Nelson
I peer up at the ceiling. The downpour outside, it's like the rain has seeped through eight floors of hotel and is falling on me now.
“Mostly I’m sick of this godforsaken city and how thoroughly we screwed it up. Because now it's screwing me up.”
“This is what you’re going to tell me tomorrow morning?”
“No,” I say, still blinking the water away. “You’re not great at this job, but you’re good enough. Clift will hire you and you'll follow that scarred-up turnip you call your nose. It will eventually lead you to a psychiatrist’s office. You’re going to think the stolen data is stored in a wall safe there. In case you don't figure it out, I've even arranged for a courier to deliver you a message. In three days, I'm going to tell you where to find the data brick. Of course, I'll be long gone, so you won't—"
"Is the data there?" he asks. "Is the stolen data in the safe?"
"It is now. Tomorrow morning, I'm going to take it out and hand it over to this hypernovel actor I told you about. In return, he's going to pay me a lot of money. The money he first offered was a joke. He's having more wired up from L.A." I shake my empty glass, debating a refill. "Look, what's important is, this safe has an engram lock. You’re going to try to crack it open.”
“I know how to handle engram locks.”
“Because I taught you how to handle engram locks,” I say, impatient. “Nothing will be inside the safe, though. Me and the data inside will be long gone. But you’re going to try and crack that safe thinking you found the lost data brick.”
“I’m pretty good at dealing with engram locks.”
“I planted a rabbithole in the engram lock.” The starch in my cuffs seals the cotton and prevents it from absorbing the water in the corner of my eyes. The starch in my cuffs won’t sponge up the mucus pooling in the cups of my nostrils. “This rabbithole is damn good. It’s one of the best I’ve ever coded. And if you fall into the rabbithole, it’s going to wreck you.”
“What? Why?”
“Because it turns your own worst memories against you. And you’re chock full of bad memories, Naroy. You fight them each and every day. You can’t let them go. They fill you with dread and hatred and rage. You eat your memories for lunch and they eat you in turn. I know. I know because I worked beside you for two years and I’ve known you for ten and I can tell." It all emerges. "Do you know how many times I found you at your desk muttering to yourself? Griping about something or someone from years past? Some slight they made, some insult that never happened but your little brain cooked up anyway? You’re an angry man. I’ve thought for a long time now your memories would eat you alive. I never thought I would be the one to turn them against you.”
Naroy shakes his head with a stupid, toothy grin. “Come on, pal. You would never do that to me.”
The mucus in my nose smears like egg yolk across my cuff. I blurt, “That’s right, I’m not going to do that to you. That’s what I’m going to tell you tomorrow morning over eggs and coffee.” I make a wet, sticky grin for him, one of those stupid male attempts at hiding emotions. “I’m going to tell you how to sidestep the rabbithole. I’m going to pretend I learned about a new technique for escaping them. Some fatherly advice, a bit of wisdom passed from one old man to another.” I cough into my fist. “It should be enough to keep you from being lost inside the rabbithole permanently. At least I’ll give you a fighting chance. It still might fry your brain. You might make it out.”
Naroy peers into his empty Pharjé flute. “Did you say you work here?”
“Yeah. On the top floor.”
“You’re in the hotel industry?”
Laughing, shaking my head, I flip more cabbage on the bar top. “If you booked passage on the Titanic,” I say, “you’d be treading water asking everyone if they’re cold too.”
“Are you trying to say you’re helping me?”
“Let’s get out of here.”
My car’s parked at the other end of Stevenson Alley. Naroy takes the autotrolleys everywhere. He’s a nut for public transportation. I can’t stand the trains. I’ll drive him home—make sure he gets in his building—and head on home myself. I’ll be meeting him in, what, eight hours now? I’m going to have to pretend we haven’t spoken since dinner.
“I hate that place,” he grouses about the bar hotel.
He’s upright. Pharjé doesn’t make you a stumble-drunk. You don’t lose your balance or grow tunnel vision. It calms the little voice in your head.
“My life ended in that bar," he says.
“Don’t be so dramatic."
The alley is so lush and the night so warm, I can feel the steam coming off the leaves. The vines have completely wrapped the streetlamps here and rendered them useless. Pale-green glows high midair where the streetlights once cast their beams. The light of the Palace Hotel behind us and the neon ahead advertising Second Street’s blue lounges and nightclubs are our only illumination.
“Have you ever walked down the street and had every single person passing you laugh and point?”
“What are you talking about?” I say.
“I was famous once. I was in a movie.”
“Sure,” I say. “You were a big Hollywood star.”
“A hundred million people watched it. All over the world. People remixed it. They cut it up and made music videos with me in it. When Luke Skywalker's hand was cut off, I was Luke Skywalker and it wasn't my hand."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"People laughed at me. I made people laugh. I didn’t want to, but I did. I was the world’s garbage. I couldn’t go anywhere without people laughing at me. People would take my picture with their phones so they could laugh at me online. Tell all their friends and share it online—”
This is the Naroy I don’t care for. This is sober Naroy but with his mouth running instead of clamped shut. This is him at his desk grousing and stewing, but with the volume turned way up.
I’ve tuned out his tirade out when he mutters:
“Detachment.” He’s crying now.
I put up an arm and halt him. “What’s that?”
“The movie I was in. Detachment.” He buries his wet face in both hands. “That bar is where my life ended. I went to that damn audition and they took pictures of me being dismembered—”
“Getting your johnson cut off.”
“That’s right.” He’s sobbing.
In the dim neon light, I take his hands from his face to study him up close.
“It is you," I finally realize. "You’ve been changed, but it’s you. I can see it now.”
He’s crying harder now.
“How can you remember it?” I say. “You’ve got three glasses of Pharjé in you.” Shake my head. "You've drunk so much over the years, you can't forget. The blue has seared that memory into you for good.”
He’s overwrought. He's too overwhelmed to answer me. He’s growing immune to the blue. This film must be so damaging to him, so violent, it’s seeping through the dam of neuroblockers he poured into his head tonight. Someday soon, the blue will stop working. It'll only intensify the few memories he can retain. He'll go insane.
“Why’d you do it?” I ask. “Why’d you make that film? You must have known people would laugh at you.”
“I don’t know,” he says wetly. Then, because he does know, “I just wanted to be normal. I thought I could be like everyone else. For once to be accepted. Loved, I think.” He coughs spittle into the steamy dark air. “I didn’t know what the movie was about. They told me I’d be auditioning with a beautiful woman—”
“She was beautiful. She was statuesque. She still is.”
“You’ve seen it?”
“What, the film? Sure I have.”
“You have?”
I grab him by the upper arm. “Let’s get you home. A little beauty sleep will do you a world of good.”
He shakes me off. He twirls me around and shoves my chest. The back of my heels stumble against the curb. It’s all the balance I have in me to re
main upright.
“What does that mean? ‘Beauty sleep?’”
He comes at me in the dark, another hard shove I can’t defend.
“Why the hell would you watch that film?” he screeches. “I thought you were my friend. I don’t want anyone to watch it. Never.”
“Hey, hey. Don’t worry about it.” I need to cool him off. “It’s gone now. No one can watch it.”
The distant light of neon signs captures his face in an umber bath. “Are you sure?”
“Every copy is off the net,” I tell him. "I took care of it."
He’s breathing deeply. He’s out of breath from pushing me around. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” I step away. “Now let’s get out of here.”
I turn into the darkness and start toward my car. Hey, look at me, I helped Naroy after all. I got that movie off the Old Internet. Pin a medal on me.
A moment passes.
I remember exactly what my next move is with the data brick.
I can’t help but laugh.
“What’s funny?”
“You’re not going to be thanking me in three days,” I say. “Sorry, Naroy. You're not going to like this. I’m giving that film to a guy down in Los Angeles. He’s going to make sure every single person on the Nexternet sees it. That’s just the way it is. The money’s that good.”
I heave a sigh, hands deep in my pockets. I’ve planned this all the way out. Can’t lose sight of the prize now.
“Don’t worry,” I assure him as I head to my car. “You look so different now, no one’s going to connect you to that film. Your face is, well—don't worry, no one will make the resemblance. Jesus, you’ve lost, what, sixty pounds? Hell, what does it matter? You won’t even remember me telling you this. Maybe I should've kept my mouth shut after you started thanking me—”
A dull swift shot of pain across the back of my neck—memex readout goes blank—knees on asphalt, asphalt gravel cutting into my palms—black overcast sky ahead—Naroy’s hands on me—my neck— squeezing—smashing—head—his face—his blazing eyes—he is screaming—I hear nothing—his face—death itself.
*
Darkness cradled me. When the mainline withdrew, I was an infant in utero. A deep-sea diver long-trapped in a dark underwater cave who locates a beam of sunlight above. I kicked my way to the surface of the water, and I was freed.
From across the room, Leigh stared at me. The aghast expression on her face told me she’d watched it all. Clift did not honor his end of the bargain. Brill had projected Agg’s final memories for her to witness while I mainlined them.
I yanked the memex from my neck like uprooting a garden weed. The cable detached leaving the plug in the socket. I dug out the memex with my thumbnail. The skin around my memex socket was sensitive and inflamed. I threw the memex aside. It skittered across the floor like a mouse running for its hole.
Clift crossed the room with a long gait. “Every millisecond, our mind is writing a novel no one else will read.” He plucked the tendrils of my memex between two fingers and carried it to me. “A novel brimming with characters and situations and outcomes no one else would recognize.” The memex’s spindly tendrils glistened with residual spinal fluid. “And now, today, we can loan those books out to the world. My, what we've wrought."
On my feet, I rushed Leigh. She gasped and stepped back. I was upon her. I took her by the arms, grabbing her the way Gannon had bruised her.
"You did it," I said. "You deleted that data brick."
"Stop—you're hurting me—"
"Don't deny it. You deleted the brick before Aggaroy took it from the server!"
She struggled to free herself. My fingertips were talons digging into the flesh of her arms.
"All right!" she shouted, eyes blazing and red. "That film is awful and hurtful and disgusting!" Spittle flew from her lip. "When Mr. Aggaroy told me his idea, I knew something would go wrong." She could not break free of me. "I knew the film would hurt people. Good people!"
"Did Gannon ever know?"
"Gannon stole the brick to prove he was his own man," she said. "He was always upset about living in his father's shadow. And he knew people thought he was no more than his mother's son."
"So you were thinking of Faye Justin when you deleted the brick," I said.
"And the director! And her family!" Heaving, she swallowed and calmed herself. "No one should have to pay that kind of price for a mistake of youth." She looked to Clift. "I'm so sorry what I did. Can you forgive me?"
I shook her. "And what about me?"
I must have been as wild-eyed as a madman. Repulsed, she shook her head and wrestled to shake me off.
The blood drained from me. I felt faint. I pushed her away.
“Run,” I told her. "Get off this island. Run and don't look back.”
She stumbled backwards, almost losing her balance.
"All this death," she said, "over an empty cold brick."
Ignoring Clift’s commanding voice, she scurried from the room, her soft-soled shoes scuttling on the concrete hallway. Clift leaned on the door frame and pleaded her name. In the distance, a series of heavy steel doors began creaking open and slamming shut, each slam further and fainter than the last.
The police boat reached the dock. Talley Whitcomb stood on the foredeck with the wind snapping her topcoat. Arms on her hips and legs spread, she stared up at the window defiantly. She'd put it all together. Somehow she knew where to look. Somehow she found me.
Resigned to losing Leigh, Clift wearily fell into an easy chair. “Any other unfounded accusations you’d care to make, Mr. Naroy?”
At the bar, I uncorked the Blue Pharjé. I poured the syrup into an Old Fashioned glass. I filled it to the lip. At the raging hearth, the two gray beards snored and slumbered.
“That won’t help you now, Mr. Naroy.”
Down at the dock, a scene unfolded. Uniformed police emerged from the boats. They argued with the stevedores and dockworkers trying to hold them up at the dock. Talley held high a sheet of paper mouthing demanding language.
“It’s unfortunate for you, Mr. Naroy. All the progress we’ve made in California banning tobacco, plastics, synthetics, and so forth—all that progress, yet we felt the need to bring back capital punishment.”
Leigh arrived at the foot of the hill running and slipping about. The brown mud was spattered her thin pants legs. Her hair was plastered in disarray from the rain. The dockworkers swung around, confused. One of the cops threw a blanket over her shoulders. They led her up the gangplank and down to the warm hold of the police boat.
"Since you've reported me to the police, you'll understand if I cooperate with them fully," Clift said. "I have plenty to tell as well."
Only at that moment did I realize Brill was not with us. On the far side of the window, a powerboat emerged from a second smaller dock on the other side of the island. Brill at the wheel accelerated while a second man in a chef's houndstooth smock and white linen pants crouched beside him. A whistle trilled from the dock. The second police cruiser, undocked, spun about on its hind legs and began to chase. The helicopter fanned overhead in pursuit.
“Why 'Legion,' Mr. Naroy? Is it a family name?”
The second cruiser bore down on the powerboat's portside. Brill, one hand on the wheel, raised a revolver and leveled it. A shot cracked out. A cloud of red exploded in the front seat of the powerboat. It painted the windshield pink. Thierry leapt from the boat and into the frigid roiling bay waters. Brill slumped against the steering wheel, head on the dash. The powerboat slowed to a crawl.
“There’s Hell to pay.”
Whitcomb, wet, sneering, had watched the exchange of gunfire from the dock. She peered once more up to the window I stood at. She could see me. She could see through me and she could see all my guilt. With a defiant and determined gait, she began the long march up the hill to the prison house.
As though eating ice cream with one hand, I scooped the blue syrup from the Old F
ashioned glass and shoved my coated fingers into the back of my mouth. Salty spearmint flooded my taste buds. Syrup ran from the corners of my mouth. My cheeks puckered. My gums grew numb. After scraping all the blue from the sides of the glass, I threw back my head and let the last of the syrup fall down my throat. I ate enough of the blue to suppress two lifetimes of memories. I threw aside the glass. It smashed hollow against the concrete wall.
Milky blue waves hurtled themselves against the crown of rocks ringing the base of the island. The waves threw themselves at it harder and harder until the blue wash reached the dock. Whitewater submerged the field of stevedore hats and police uniforms. The blue waves crashed higher and higher, climbing the rocks until they lapped the foot of the prison house. A moment was all it took for a swell of blue to wash across the picture window. The soapy blue tide rose until I was trapped inside an immense blue aquarium. A blink and the glass shattered. The blue wash was on me like an uncaged animal. All went blue, and then all was forgotten.
Jim Nelson's novels include Bridge Daughter (Kindle Press, 2016), Hagar's Mother, and Stranger Son. He divides his time between San Francisco and Tokyo.
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