by Tim Scott
“Yeah,” I said as he vanished back into the crowd. “I’ll try.” Then I wove my way on to the exit.
“An infusion for people who need a pick-me-up,” called a girl wrapped in outlandish dress, carrying a tray of thimble-sized glasses filled with liquid near the exit. She smiled and pulled a weird angular shape with her body as I approached, and I sensed she was one of those girls who thought she was being alluring and coy when actually she was just being really fucking scary. “Would you like to try it?”
“Thanks, but I have my own personal recipe for that,” I said, trying not to get freaked out by her expression, which was moving so fast that my eyes were struggling to keep up. “It’s called a mojito.”
PART TWO
chapter
THIRTY-FIVE
It’s caught what?”
Mendes stared at Kahill. His collar was open and his tie had been loosened. There was a weary, unkempt edge to his words, where tiredness had slackened off his pronunciation.
“I know it seems crazy, but this is all we get from it at the moment.” Kahill proffered a sheet.
“What does it say?” said Mendes.
“It’s requesting an abacus to do some adding up. And before that it was asking us if we can remember how to do long division.”
“But still. An irony virus?”
“The sensors are very sensitive. They are far more advanced than anything that has ever been used before.”
Mendes threw his hands up in a gesture that he regretted almost immediately. It reminded him too clearly of a dance move he had had to make when he had been in a musical in first grade.
“My brief was: babysit this project for a month. If I ring them up and tell them that one of the most sophisticated computers on the western seaboard is asking us how to do long division, I’ll be the laughingstock of the whole department. We have to keep this quiet, you understand? Destroy all documents relating to this. I have to get back to Washington with my career intact.”
“I’ll try, sir. Really. We have the top people in every single field of computer—”
“I know who we have. Get out there and sort it out.”
Kahill nodded and headed out. “Oh, and if we need to destroy documents, we’ll need maintenance. The paper shredder is broken,” he said, stopping at the door. “It just scrunches up the sheets and throws them across the room.”
“Scrunches them up?”
“Yes. It takes each sheet, scrunches it up, and throws it across the room.”
“Kahill, it’s not broken. Haven’t you figured that out? On security setting one, it crumples the paper into a ball and throws it roughly at the trash. On setting two, they all go in the trash. It needs to be on setting four or five to shred documents. It’s a document destroyer, not just a paper shredder.”
“Ah, that explains it. I hadn’t realized that was the problem. Clever. Very clever.”
Kahill left.
Mendes took a long breath and sat down. If they couldn’t work the document destroyer, how were they going to sort out the computer?
Was this just chance, or was someone targeting his operation? Was he the victim of some interdepartmental mud slinging by a face back in D.C. who held a grudge and wanted to end his career?
chapter
THIRTY-SIX
An abandoned drongle.
It was slewed up on the sidewalk in a backstreet, looking like some kids had disabled it and dragged it there.
“Today is your lucky day for buying osprey housing,” it said as I caught one of the wheels. Blue lights flickered inside it, and then died again.
The alley was cold. I passed a stack of pallets and crates and took a look back. No one was following. Broken windows and cracked walls rose above me.
Then I heard a hiss. The drongle was now glowing blue. I watched as the blue grew in intensity, sending an ethereal glaze over the walls. Then it became brilliant white. I shielded my eyes.
The blast threw me back and into a pile of trash.
Pieces of drongle rained down, in masses of white sparks and a deluge of smoking, blackened metal. I waited until the noise of the blast and the aftershocks stopped. Then I raised my head.
The drongle remained slumped.
“Your lucky cutlery today is a spoon,” said a voice among the flames. “No, wait! It’s the little cake fork that only has two prongs and a flat bit.” Another smaller explosion blew the dredges of life from it.
A furball of wires flopped out, and a stream of gungy blue foam trickled slowly down the alley.
I finally got to my feet.
The explosion was due to bad maintenance.
A handful of the drongles in any given city were feral. They cruised around with no one in them, having forgotten what they were supposed to be doing, until they either broke down or blew up.
It occurred to me there were probably a handful of people doing much the same thing, and I wondered if, right now, I wasn’t one of them.
I ignored the thought as I headed down the main street and took out the card the girl had given me. She had written the name of a place called the Chewy Flamingo on it. The address was only a couple of blocks away.
After a little searching, I found it. Outside was a sign that proclaimed: “We are open twenty-five hours every day and a bit.” A blue neon sign struggled to compete with the sunshine as it pointed down a dark corridor.
I squinted into the gloom and walked in. I heard a drongle pull up outside and I could just make out the harmonized singing. “New Seattle Health and Safety. Stay safe—watch out—stay safe—watch out. Stay safe—watch out for that—” Then there was the gurgling cry of: “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!” And then a crash.
“New Seattle Health and Safety,” said the voice, “asks you to stay safe and not die for no reason. What’s the point? Right?”
For a moment I felt my anger rise. Why did they have to keep on with that slogan? I closed my eyes and saw the unsleeping hang of Abigail’s head. And felt the sensation of the cold touch of her dying lips.
I shook the feeling away and followed the blue thin neon lights until I came to three bouncers in overly sharp suits with blotchy red necks as thick as salad bowls.
“And where do you think you’re going, sir?” said a bald bouncer, turning his head toward me by swiveling at the waist.
“For a drink.”
He laughed, and he was joined by the bouncer on the left, who hopped from one foot to the other.
The remaining bouncer said: “Just let him in.”
“With an attitude like that?” Sweat glistened on his pate, and he looked pale. “Not a cock-sucking chance.”
“Let him in,” said the one on the right. He had a scar on his cheek like a crawling lizard. “Look at him; he’s a suit. Let him in. You can’t keep doing this. You’ll have a hernia.”
“We have a job to do. There’s no way he’s coming in here behaving like that.” The one on the left took this as a cue to laugh again and hop from one foot to the other. Then he stopped abruptly as the bald bouncer took a step closer to me. His eyes were so deeply set that I couldn’t be sure they were actually there. He lowered his voice. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think I’ve heard you offer to punch me yet.”
“No.”
“Don’t do this,” said the one with the crawling-lizard scar. “So, you’re threatening not to punch me? Is that right?” said the bald one.
“Clearly.”
“Right. Let’s chuck him out,” said the bald one.
“Wait!” I said, as I felt a hand grab at my suit. “What is the problem? I want a drink, that’s all.”
“The problem is, you need to punch me.” The bald one smiled.
“He’s in a strange mood,” said Scar-Face. “He’s got a fever.”
“Management policy,” said the bald-headed one.
“It’s not management policy,” said Scar-Face. “You’re acting weird.”
“Yeah, and who’s in charge here?” The lead bounce
r turned and took another step toward me. I could smell shaving cream on his face. “So, are you going to punch me or not? It’s your call.” He continued to stare at me, his shaven head glistening in the blue half-light. “Or do we have to do this the hard way?”
“I just want a coffee,” I said.
“Management policy,” he whispered.
“Right.” I looked into his eyes, then thumped him in the stomach as hard as I could. My fist felt like it had hit a brick wall, and the bouncer doubled up, almost going down on his knees. “How was that?” I said.
“Thank you, sir,” he coughed. “That’s very kind of you. Please go through.”
“It’s unhappy hour at the moment. All drinks are twice the normal price,” said the bouncer who had been hopping about, and I saw he had missing teeth as he held the door open with a massive smile. “Stay safe. We all owe it to Mother New Seattle.”
“You see?” said Scar-Face, bending down to his buddy. “Now look at the mess you’re in. What was the point?”
Maybe he thought that kind of door policy would attract a lot of students once word got out. I sensed he was right.
Inside, sharp pools of light fell through the darkness. I came to an atrium where huge flowing banners hung down, gently wafting on a breeze that must have been made by a wind machine. It ruffled the material and blew hazy, whisping threads of dry ice around the bar.
I craned my neck to read the words on one: “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
Maybe it was a rant against the ambient lighting that made it hard to see anything at all, but all it brought to mind were the bad memories of Abigail—the ones of her dying.
I walked on through the gloom of the atrium. There was a scattered clientele, strewn in clumps. But their unwashed appearances were at odds with the faded, hanging quotes. It was as though the giant words had been exposed to so much lowlife that they had lost the power to impose any meaning.
I headed on past wide sofas and battered tables to the bar. A man in a thick green shirt, sitting on a stool, watched me approach. He made a guttural sound as I got near as if he was trying to plagiarize an owl.
I made a point of not making eye contact, because he seemed to be one of those people with a lively insecurity. Always wanting a fix of recognition. When it came, he would feel contented for a while. And when it didn’t, he’d start to get edgy, and I didn’t have the patience for him right now,
As I got closer, he shuffled his overlarge stomach back around and his head followed on a slight delay, as though it was fixed with lame elastic.
Memories of too many nights spent in seedy places that smelled of this same sticky mixture of alcohol and faded chatter came at me thick and fast, and I did my best to bat them away.
Finally I got the attention of the bar girl and ordered.
“Would you like some wonker with that?” she said, unscrewing the coffee holders from the espresso machine and whacking the dead coffee sediment into a bin. “It’s like water—”
“But not as good. I’ve heard. No thanks,” I said.
I became aware that the overweight guy with the green shirt was staring my way. I had spent my fair share of time in lost conversations with people like him, and however sad his story, I didn’t feel like getting dragged down into the remnants of his life right now. But I felt a certain sense of empathy, seeing him washed up in a bar, midmorning, wearing a checked wooly shirt.
His life and mine were too close for comfort.
“Can I ask you something?” I said as I waited.
“Sure.”
“What am I doing here?”
“Buying a coffee you mean?”
“No, I mean, what am I doing in New Seattle?”
“Are you on vacation?”
“No. What do you see in my eyes?”
“Oh. You’re a Scorpio?”
The bar girl served me my coffee, and I used the moment to nod to the guy and find a table tucked away in a corner and sit down.
The aroma of the coffee caught at the base of my throat.
A jazz band was playing somewhere. I couldn’t see it, but in any given jazz trio, one person will always be wearing a trilby hat jauntily on the back of his head and I had no doubt this would be the case here. Why do they do that? Please someone stop them. It’s annoying.
I took a sip of coffee, sat back, and stared at the words laid out stylishly on a banner stretched up to my left: “Is all that we see or seem, but a dream within a dream?” And, for a moment, I was mugged by the dream I’d had of New Seattle, but the substance of it hung at the edge of my consciousness. And although I tried to pull at its threads, all I got was a general feeling of walking through the buildings and the place being empty of people. I took out my head hack photos and shuffled through them until I found the one of Abigail and placed it on the table.
That’s when Nena sat down next to me, her familiar brown eyes glistening in the half-light. “Is that the woman who left you?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t you find the past is a dull place to live, Huck? The same things happen all the time there.”
“How can you see through me like this?”
“I just can. Chloe said you have the fridges? Do you have the small one? The Tiny Eiger?”
“Yeah. I have them all.”
“And they’re safe?”
“The cops have just taken my friend Gabe and they’ll head hack him. They may easily get a lead. They may send a Fridge Detail, so they need to be moved.”
“Where are they?”
“They’re in his apartment.” I looked at her. She was wearing dark trousers, a plain sweater, and she had pinned her hair back. “I can help you with this,” I added.
“You think?”
“Yeah.”
She measured me for a long moment—I wondered what she thought she was seeing.
“What’s the address?” she said.
I looked at her with her fierce brown eyes, and her long hair in straggling curls.
“I’m coming with you,” I said.
“No.”
“You need my protection.”
She shook her head. There was a pause large enough to issue its own currency, and I suddenly realized the jazz trio had stopped playing midline, as though someone had given them a strong sedative—which in normal circumstances would have had my wholehearted support, but an unnatural quiet ran around the gloom.
My coffee cup, which was sitting happily on the table in front of me, suddenly exploded in a blather of china and liquid. A hissing canister of smoke landed on the carpet, spewing a rabid, choking cloud.
The smoke was a thick, dark red.
chapter
THIRTY-SEVEN
Canisters came out of the gloom, one after the other, landing with a gentle thud and filling the bar with acrid smoke that sat at the back of the throat.
It tasted of a sickly, delicious suffocation, and a part of me wanted to breathe it in until I entered a dreamy state of unconscious. I began coughing. Figures appeared, in featureless black helmets. I had about a quarter of a second to do something, but I spent it going “oh.”
The next moment, I was crushed by a scrum of bodies. About five people pinned me down, then another figure bent over to take the gun from my pocket. He grabbed my shoulder and fiddled around, trying to find the feed in the back of my neck. The smoke had begun to coalesce on his suit, and one sad, red tear ran down the visor of his helmet.
The plug felt insanely cold as he rammed it in, and for a moment I became overly aware of the shape of my skull.
His muffled voice seeped through the helmet as he talked on his radio, but I couldn’t make out actual words. Sniping red beams of laser sights tangled in the smoke as more and more figures gathered around, looming over me. The one with the Handheld Feed Reader scrolled through my details, and I noticed he had a red plume of feathers wagging on top of his helmet. It must have been there as some mark of rank, but it accentuated his head movements
so that he seemed like some highly excitable chicken.
I heard a snatch of Motown come from the Handheld Feed Reader, and I guessed he was playing my mood. It seemed upbeat. I would have expected my mood to be more akin to heavy metal.
Another member of the detail descended hand over hand through the smoke, down the banner. Perhaps he was unaware the frenzy was over. When he was halfway down, the rivets gave up in an excited frenzy and a rip galloped through the material, slicing the whole thing apart. He fell, crashing heavily into a ring of Security and reducing them to a clumsy pile of shields, guns, and bodies.
The group got back on their feet as more red rivulets of coalesced smoke dripped down, so that it looked like they were all trickling thin lines of blood, and for the first time I saw Nena pinned down a little way away. She had obviously made a run for the door.
Finally the guy with the plume unplugged his handheld from my neck and called over two others. They dragged me off by my feet through the crowd, and someone dropped his riot shield with a clatter.
He picked it up, then took off his helmet to reveal a face dripping with sweat.
“It’s new! You’ve put a ding in it,” I heard him cry as I was pulled toward the main doors, my head thumping across the floor. “Hey! You hear?”
Someone had alerted this unit—probably the same people who had been at the Halcyon. Maybe they had been on my tail all along.
The corridor was packed with enough high-tech paraphernalia and personnel to invade Switzerland. Tired eyes stared below, propped up helmets, their faces pouring with red-tainted sweat. They looked like a deflated and defeated army.
“Hold it! What’s this?”
The two guys dragging me were stopped in their tracks by a man holding his helmet under his arm. It had a massive, sprouting, red and white plume.
“Removing the insurgent, sir.” The man’s glum expression mirrored his speech. It was as if he had a speed alarm in his head, and if any of his sentences rose above lugubrious, the thing would shut off his brain.
