Glass Shore

by Stefan Jackson

  “Yes. Each person will process the data differently, in their own time, eventually piecing together what they need from the information. Around kindergarten or so, we have a clear view of one’s aptitude and so fashion Pii programs more suitable to the individual.”

  “Where’d you get those mirrors?” I ask.

  “Off the beaten track,” Geek says. He walks back to his seat. “Got any more hash Liz?”

  “Sure.” She sets out to prepare a bowl.

  “You know, that song from ME? The Mirror is Lovely. Could that be about the program?” Liz asks.

  “In the eye of the reflective surface, I am love. I am strong. I can do anything,” I say flatly. Not attempting Marilyn Elvis’ falsetto and timbre. “Sure as hell sounds like it. Then again it could just be a song about loving yourself too much.”

  “Don’t know the song,” replies Geek. He unfreezes the commercial, returning to the live broadcast from the street outside the Seventeenth Precinct police station.

  “… Richard, we’re working with the understanding that Malcolm Space is considered a prime suspect in Fury Randell’s horrific murder. This is a most disturbing development. We have not received any official word, but trusted sources will not deny it.”

  The broadcast is now a split screen, with the on scene reporter at the right and the studio anchor on the left. The anchor asks, “Winston, have you been given a time, or any indication when the authorities will hold a press conference?”

  “No Richard, nothing of that nature. The situation thus far has been hush-hush.”

  Geek laughs and mutes the broadcast. He stands up. “Nikki, Liz, let me show you how to work this panel.”

  They smoke hash as Geek runs a tutorial on his keypads. The ladies nod as Geek details the buttons and switches. The pair doesn’t ask him to repeat the instructions. One is a hacker and the other is a published programmer. They get it.

  Geek turns to me and says, “Come. Time for an upgrade.”

  We walk to the familiar workbench.

  I lie down.

  Geek checks the connection of my Mjac.

  “See you in a moment,” he says.

  And right before I go silent, deep in the fleeting distance, I hear, giggles and laughter and, “Good night, sweet prince.”

  #

  Standing on the beach looking at suddenly erected mirrored walls and ceiling – Twinkle – inflaming my desire for decadence. I give in to the Afro-Cuban rhythms that are the soundtrack for the now Purple Room. The room is heavy with the scents of jasmine and hash. Liz massages my dick with a warm clear cream. A moment later my mind is white fire and I shake. I stand, wobbly at first, but then I get my feet and face Liz. I dance … we dance to the beat, dance back toward the wall mirror. Twinkle. I pin her against the cold glass. Twinkle. I grab her thighs and lift her off the floor. I stare into her brown eyes and find her pillow-soft lips. A hard kiss, a soft kiss. She bites my lower lip. I press into her flesh. Press, kiss and hold. Her thick red hair is all in my face and her breathing is shallow. I feel her nails in my flesh. I peel her off the mirror and toss her onto the bed. I rush her. Fall upon her like a predator. No grace, no style, no art. She smells of cinnamon. She pulls my hair. My flesh begins to itch and I’m nude beneath a hot sun. My skin reddens and blisters develop. Wisps of smoke trail from the ends of my hair. Shock as I smell my hair and flesh burning. I drop to my knees, suffocating as heat takes all of the air. I watch and feel my pinky nail violently curl and explode from the swollen digit. Like a popcorn kernel ejected from the popper. I want to yell but fused lips trap my screams. My body collapses. I lie quivering voiding my bowels. Unbearable pain

  “What can we do you for?” asks the thin man who reeks of garlic.

  I pull my hand out of my pocket and display a large, solid gold coin. It’s old and dull in color, inscribed in Latin and engraved with the face of a Roman emperor. I put it on the table. “Grothman sent me. He wants to talk to DeMillo about a deal.”

  “Right,” replies Garlic. He picks up the coin and studies it. “This is beautiful.” he says with awe. Even simpletons appreciate good work, I muse. “You wait right here.” He stands quickly. Walks over to the near wooden door and raps on it with urgency.

  “What!” a voice roars from behind the door.

  “Serious business,” states Garlic.

  “Bring it on.” the voice commands.

  Garlic steps into the room. A moment later, he opens the door and waves me in. I walk in and see DeMillo sitting in a thick leather chair. He wears a simple black suit. A plain gold ring adorns his right ring finger. His nails are smartly manicured. Small, round glasses soften a wizened face. He smokes a thin cigar and holds the gold coin like he owns it.

  “How many are there?” DeMillo asks as he looks into my eyes.

  “Thirteen, including that one.” I reply.

  “What’s the offer?” Those are DeMillo’s last words. I’m not there to make a deal. I am there to settle a debt. I pull my guns out. I fire each gun once. Sinking bullets in DeMillo and Garlic’s foreheads. I turn to the door and wait. The rest of the muscle surges into the room. I fire four times, shooting the last guy twice. Silence. No dying gestures or words. I walk over to DeMillo. The dead man has fallen sloppily into his comfortable chair, blood streams from the hole in his head. Blood. My blood. Not bad. I can deal with it. Just wish I could breathe better. I take a long slow pull, suck in all the air I can. A pair of trackers race past me. Single tracker is two meters on my left. It senses something amiss. Probably smells the blood. It’s scanning for me. I’m well-concealed even for a tracker’s heightened senses. Yet there are many trackers and they won’t leave this sector soon for I’m not the only one they seek. I’m just the one with the answers. My arm is starting to annoy me. How much blood have I lost? Six girls and two boys. Eight volleyball players. Eight basketball players. One marathon man. One ballerina. One psychologist. One pediatrician. Two singers. One lawyer.

  One more lap around the track as Dionne Warwick asks if I know the way to San José. “La-la-lala, la-la-la-la….”

  33

  Dream crash is a sudden snap from a languid, romantic discovery to a bright and brazen exposure. I scan the room. So is this real? Looks real. Three perfect nude bodies just out of arm’s reach. And I can smell them, like the electric scent of near rain. I hear the Belgian duo called The Glimmers warp a disco throb, the bass kicks like a little frog in my chest.

  This is real.

  I watch Nikki slowly swallow Geek whole. The girl has no gag reflex. She twists her head from side to side, mocking a corkscrew turn. Geek tenses up and shudders. Nikki lazily pulls back, releasing the tension on his member.

  “Damn girl,” Geek hisses with a smile.

  Liz takes her turn on Geek. She can throat dance too.

  My dick is hard and I move in to taste the action – yet I’m stuck in place. I’m still in stasis!

  This is real and I’m only a voyeur. Geek is just streaming the live sex show to me, no doubt courtesy of his tiny invisible floating camera.

  What a greedy bastard. This . . . this is hell!

  Nikki turns her attention to Liz. She flicks her tongue over Liz’s nipple. Liz caresses Nikki’s head, drawing her in and never letting Geek’s cock feel lonely.

  Nikki slides from erect nipple to harder flesh, sharing Geek with Liz.

  I can’t even masturbate right now. This is wrong. I thought these people were my friends.

  I watch Geek enter Nikki as Liz pleasures herself.

  I feel the heat, hear the passion and smell the slapping flesh. I feel the energy. I’m in sync with their beat. Geek is pumping a marathon atop Nikki.

  Stunning heat in my groin as Geek uploads into Nikki – I shudder and jerk and ejaculate. Hands free. Never did that before.

  Now it’s black and silent.

  In life, you have to do a lot of things you don’t fuckin’ want to do. Many times, that’s what the fuck life is: one vile fucking task aft
er another. But don’t get aggravated. Then the enemy has you by the short hair.

  –Al Swearengen. Deadwood

  34

  I awake.

  I sit up and locate Geek. He and Liz sit at the workstation, smoking cigarettes. Liz sits on a stool at his left, phone in her right hand, her thumb taps out a tattoo on the tiny keypad.

  “The dreams are getting stranger,” I say.

  Geek pokes his head from around Liz’s hip and asks, “How so?”

  “Weird stuff like ghosts and being hunted,” I reply, now realizing, “It’s hard to recall the dreams.”

  Geek says, “Nothing strange about that. You are being hunted. And I’ve killed you twice in the last, what, six or seven hours; so you’re a ghost. Just your subconscious mind doing its thing.”

  I want to talk about their sex play while I was locked down, but I keep my mouth shut. I’d just wind up sounding like a hurt child. And I imagine that Geek didn’t tell the girls they were streaming live to my mind. Yet I doubt either lady would mind.

  I rise and sit upright on the workbench. “Can I pull the plug?” I ask.

  “Hold on.” I see Geek’s fingers dance over the keypads.

  I look over to Nikki. She sits on a rattan chair by the servers. She works on her laptop, smokes a cigarette.

  “Okay, you’re clear,” Geek says.

  I remove the plug from my Mjac. I’m back in the world and all is well.

  I stand and walk over to the mirror. I look the same. I turn to Geek and ask, “So, where’s my wand? How do I make this work?”

  “Think about it,” is his reply.

  I stare at Geek, dumb written all over my face. I exhale. Think about it. So I think blond hair. My hair fades to lighter shades until I settle for the color of summertime hay.

  “This is cool.” I turn toward Geek and find Liz and Nikki watching me as well.

  “You can do more than your hair,” he says.

  I think about my skin and my flesh lightens. Then darkens.

  I change my eye color.

  This is insane. I can see how this could get addictive.

  “Thorosen doesn’t exist,” Nikki states.

  I look over to her and say. “He was listed as the special consultant to President Cresthaven. What do you mean he doesn’t exist?”

  I remember my original form and so I become that once again. That leads me to reason. I think about Geek.

  I now look like Geek.

  “I wondered how long it would take you to get there,” Geek says.

  “That’s not good,” Nikki says. “Precise impersonations. You can already blend into the shadows and you’re a blur to monitors.”

  As she talks, I become her, sans breasts and I still have my cock. Which is the most important thing. Don’t want to go messing around with that.

  “Now that’s screwed up,” Nikki says with a laugh.

  Liz and Geek laugh too.

  “More elasticity of the skin and hair management. All I had to do was install two chips,” Geek says, as he looks me over. He’s very happy with his work. As well he should be. I kick ass. I’m Superbad.

  I become me again. I step away from the mirror and walk over to Nikki.

  I stand behind her and read the monitor of her laptop. From the page’s background, soft pink with a black imprint of the bust of Venus, I know she’s at her website called Venus Imperfect, working her blog.

  Text along the left column of her webpage reads: There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth, the persistent refusal to analyze the causes of happenings. – Dorothy Thompson.

  Text along the right column of her webpage reads: The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off. – Gloria Steinem.

  “Idiots!” With a cigarette between her fingertips, Nikki points to the webpage. She smokes her cigarette.

  “So far, all the hits about the Jump One flight transcipt concern the UFO. Some people believe the UFO was a returning contingent of the alien race that spawned humans. Can you believe this?”

  I say, “Did you expect a more intelligent level of conversation? C’mon, you’re a big girl. You know better than that.”

  “Still sucks to see it in play,” she replies.

  “There are other voices, Nikki. Look here,” Geek says and points to a page above his workstation.

  “This discussion is about the pilot’s actions. This guy sees Lieutenant Colonel Adam Rose as a man caught in a difficult situation. Rose had to follow the order to fire, plus no one knew if the alien spacecraft was friendly or hostile. Reasoning also that if Jump One had not engaged the alien spacecraft and allowed it to continue on its path, perhaps more devastation would have ensued, more lives lost, and everyone would have asked why the government didn’t protect Americans from such an attack.”

  “True enough. I’m still mad at them for allowing terrorists to blow everything up,” Liz says and holds up her hands. “I know the truth now but until today, I believed the terrorists story and I was – am – still bugged by it.

  “The government is responsible. That’s the only real truth.”

  Silent nods.

  “What is the word on the Security Council clip?” I ask.

  “Go to padotgov,” Nikki says. “There is a live feed from the Senate floor. It’s pretty boring. They all agree that the Jump One flight document is a forgery. The Security Council clip is doctored. And Bradshaw’s journal entry is also crap.”

  “Well, that’s what we expected,” I state.

  “Yeah…” Nikki nods with her reply.

  Silence. We all read various web posts. Geek has one up from a guy who claims that the Pii program is modeled after the Kinjo Glimmer. The KG was tested and rejected back in twenty forty-seven. The only test subjects for KG were the submarine crew of the USS Marshall. The Marshall ran aground in a small atoll in Indonesia in twenty fifty-one. No one has seen the recovered logs but this writer states that Senior Lieutenant Ellis Hauk went nuts due to the program and killed thirty-three men before running the boat ashore. The USS Marshall was a weapon. Pure muscle wrapped in sheer stealth. The best and last of her class. She was one hundred and seven meters long and ten point five meters in diameter, weighed 6,032 metric tons. She carried 24 Trident 2D5 missiles, along with an assortment of vicious conventional missiles and mines. She had a crew of 10 officers and 110 enlisted men.

  The US recovered the Marshall but all her crew was lost. Two Tridents and a great deal of conventional weaponry had been removed. So began another war.

  “That’s it, I’m done. To hell with these people. You know what the new one is? People are posting that the UFO Jump One destroyed may have held their abducted loved ones. Yeah, I’m done.” Nikki closes her laptop. She sits in her chair and smokes.

  Geek bursts out laughing. He keeps laughing until the laugh turns into a hacking cough.

  “Nice to know my distress brings you such comic relief,” Nikki says as she smiles at Geek.

  “Oh Jesus….” Geek says with a weak, scratchy voice. He rights himself in his chair and wipes the water from his eyes.

  “So what are we eating?” I ask the group. It’s been quite a while since I’ve had a meal.

  “I know a good Thai place,” states Geek.

  “I second the vote for Thai,” Nikki says.

  “Thai is good with me,” says Liz.

  “Let’s do it,” I say.

  Geek taps his keypad then says, “Back to Manhattan. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “Where are we now?” I ask.

  “Lake George,” Liz states.

  I nod. “So show me the clothes,” I say. “We have fifteen minutes to dress for dinner.”

  “Oh, cool,” Liz says as she hops off the stool. She walks over the mound of bags against the wall. Nikki meets her there.

  Geek and I ease over to the girls.

  Liz spins to me, offering a yellow button down shirt. Long sleeve. Light cotton blend. I take it from
her.

  I check the collar tag, Carl Close. “I like it.”

  “Cool,” Liz says. She holds out the pants. Flat black, the fabric looks and feels like leather but it’s not.

  I nod approval and take the pants from her. “Did you get shoes?”

  “You prissy little bitch,” Nikki says.

  “What, I don’t deserve new shoes?”

  “Relax, we got shoes,” Liz states with fun in her voice.

  I sense that she and Nikki had a good laugh expecting this very conversation and moment.

  “Love you both,” I say.

  The girls laugh.

  Nikki hands me the shoebox.

  Liz sets a clear bag atop the shoebox. I see socks and underwear in the bag.

  “Bless you child. May good fortune smile upon you for the whole of your life.”

  Liz chuckles “Go get dressed.”

  “Yes ma’am.” With bounty in hand, I leave the main cabin. I take a right, and head for Geek’s room.

  #

  I strip down, tossing my soiled clothes into the corner by the closet.

  I turn out my pockets, dumping everything onto the dresser.

  I dress slowly and with a sense of purpose. Clean underwear and socks make all the difference in the world. The pants are utilitarian, department store stock, but look sharp and fit very well with good flex. The shirt is spot-on. The shoes are low cut, black leather loafers from Mikal Pip, and are exceptionally comfortable. It is so sweet when your lovers buy you clothes. They know how to fit you and what suits you. They know what works.

  I grab the Bolt and gloves and walk out of Geek’s room feeling fresh. And I know I look good.

  I’m the last one to return to the main cabin. I spin for my audience.

  “Very nice,” says Liz. Nikki nods approval.

  “You girls look edible,” I state the obvious.

  Liz wears a plain white tee shirt, dark blue leather jacket and dark denim pants. Her stiletto heel cowboy boots are white. She’s still rocking the Asian look.