by eden Hudson
Inside, my flame kigao watched me, molten lava eyes asking me if I really wanted to go down this road. The electricity going out was one thing, but this…this was something I couldn’t come back from.
“Additionally, I didn’t want you to die without ever having played Tsunami Tsity,” I said.
“I’m going to when we get back,” Carina said. “I said I would.”
My body felt too hot. Another degree or two and my wetsuit would steam itself dry.
“First thing,” I said.
She nodded. “First thing.”
“Good deal. You do that while I find the cure for PCM. Then we’ll compare notes.”
SIXTEEN
We made it back to the Upper Swamps late the next morning. I used my connections at the symbio rhizome to get us a place to shower and sleep. Burrows Short Day was only too happy to have us when I told him we wanted to hear another one of his flet hard sales as soon as we woke up.
When we lay down, I set the vibrating alarm on my wristpiece. We got up an hour before anybody was due to escort us to the big guy, and using the layout burned into my brain, I escorted us out.
SEVENTEEN
It took almost four days for the archeo-technomancer to recover the information from the library computers. I know because I checked my countdown app every time I checked my messages and didn’t have one from him. Even the updates from Carina about tracking down an original Tsunami Tsity download came as a little bit of a letdown right then. Don’t get me wrong, I was excited for her to play, but I was also on a literal deadline with nothing to do but wait for this goon to contact me.
When the archeo-technomancer finally called me in to transfer the recovered information to my wristpiece, the file was disturbingly small.
My pulse pounded in my temples. “That’s not even a full petabyte. There can’t be more than eight or nine hundred thousand books on there. Are you sure you got it all?”
“I salvaged everything there was to salvage,” he said. “Seawater is not kind, my man, and magic doesn’t work miracles.”
I considered taking back my payment and pinning his vocal cords before I left, but a technomancer is nobody you want to double-cross. Not if you want to keep your money, property, privacy, and identity intact.
“Fine,” I said. “Is there any information left on the computers?”
He shook his head. “I transferred everything even resembling a sentence. There’s nothing readable left, just frags and gibberish.”
“All right, I’ll take them with me.”
On the way back to my loft, I stopped off at an artisanal messenger to get the computers giftwrapped.
“When’s the soonest you can have these delivered?” I asked as the attendant finished tying the last bow.
“We hand-deliver every package as soon as it’s wrapped,” she said. “All I need is the recipient’s name and address.”
“These are going to the Head Scribe at the Guild building,” I said, pulling up his name and office number on my wristpiece.
“Lovely.” The attendant scanned the tag and entered the information, then looked up at me. “Would you like to send a greeting holo? All of our hand-designed e-stationeries are half off this week.”
“With a deal like that, who wouldn’t?” I said. “Give me the most professional one you’ve got and make it say, ‘Fuck you and fuck your family.’ He’ll know what it means.”
EIGHTEEN
My wristpiece beeped a notification, and I bolted up in bed. The world tipped precariously backward, then rocked back down with a bang, slamming my gut into the butcher block of my kitchen’s island and knocking over a mug of cold Old Castle ebony roast. I wasn’t in bed at all.
I jumped to my feet and grabbed a dishrag to wipe the coffee up before it stained the butcher block. What was left of a double chocolate caramel crunch bar I’d been eating escaped the flood, but the pile of empty wrappers lying nearby was soaked. They streaked cold coffee across the counter and dripped on the floor as I scooped them into the trash.
For the last couple of days I’d been reading nonstop—except for the occasional PCM attack. Eventually I’d had to start pacing while I read to stay awake. At some point, I must’ve decided to sit down for a second and then zonked out. Small as a file containing a library’s worth of First Earth texts might be, sifting through every single book on it for clues to a potentially mythical garden was hard slogging.
I needed to hire somebody to build me a crawler that could read First Earth characters. That would cut my work down to coming up with key words and phrases, and checking the texts that those searches returned. It was possible to miss something subtle if the terms I used were too blunt, but my odds were better up that creek than sticking with trying to read it all myself.
My wristpiece beeped a reminder notification. I scrubbed the blur out of my vision and checked my messages.
Six unread. Two were from Carina. I opened them first.
CX 11:16:19 Nick got the console working.
CX 11:19:16 Tsunami Tsity time. Wish me luck.
I grinned and replied.
JVZ 11:19:16 Your job is to cry when it gets too beautiful.
After I sent it, I stared at the timestamps, trying to get the identical numbers to make sense. When they didn’t, I reread the messages.
Carina’s were from twenty-four hours ago. I hadn’t heard them come in. She would be pretty well immersed in Tsunami Tsity by now. I hoped Nick’s console wasn’t set to populate your message list while you played. That could ruin her whole experience.
But I also sort of hoped she got my message.
The other four messages were from Nick. Probably thank-yous for getting his future wife into VR and admissions of how much better of a man I was than him.
I opened them. The first three were from the same day Carina had started playing.
NB 12:01:46 We need to talk. Can we meet at the diner?
NB 16:58:07 It’s nothing violent. I need to get your opinion on something.
NB 21:00:59 It’s urgent. I need to talk to you while Carina’s playing.
The last had come in today. It was the notification that had woken me up.
NB 11:17:12 I need to hire you.
Books, Mailing List, and Reviews
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About the Author
I am invincible. I am a mutant. I have 3 hearts and was born with no eyes. I had eyes implanted later. I didn’t have hands, either, just stumps. When my eyes were implanted they asked if I would like hands as well and I said, “Yes, I’ll take those,” and pointed with my stump. But sometimes I'm a hellbender peeking out from under a rock. When it rains, I live in a music box.
But I’m also a tattoo-addict, coffee-junkie, drummer, and aspiring skateboarder. I love you. Let’s be friends.
Hang out with me on Goodreads
Drop me a line: [email protected]
Take a look behind the curtain: WhiteTrashCappuccino.com
Dedication
Actually, this one was for me.
Acknowledgements
Thank you for reading. Yes, you specifically. I love you. That’s why I’m maintaining this intensely uncomfortable eye contact while breathing so heavily. Do you think I’d do this sort of thing for just anybody?
All completely normal, non-creepy shows of appreciation aside, you should know that everything you liked about this book exists because of a few very special muties, one-pluses, and remnants from across the pre-Revived Earth. Let’s
single them out together.
God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, who rescue me when I’ve cursed myself.
The Op boys and girl—Beautiful Voice Greene, Beautiful Eyes Khuri, and Beautiful Mind Stedman.
Toria Brodragon—the best wordcountability buddy ever.
James Hunter—a fisher of men and a gambler of books.
Tim McBain—an inspirational battler against the weirds.
My Joshua—my favorite statistical anomaly, comedic straight man, and moral compass.
And Casey. At least we have hot spouses.
Copyright
Beautiful Corpse: A Jubal Van Zandt Novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by eden Hudson and Shadow Alley Press, Inc.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, email the publisher, subject line “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the email address below.
[email protected]
