Racers of the Night: Science Fiction Stories by Brad R. Torgersen

by Brad R Torgersen

  Camarro closed her eyes in the back of the cruiser as it lifted and began banking across the city. Whatever else happened, Nate was alive, and now more than ever, he was the only thing in the universe that she cared about.

  • • •

  The fire crackled warmly in the beach cabin’s stone hearth. There was no safe house on Whidbey Island, but neither Camarro nor Nate figured they needed one. With the condo still being put back together by contractors, and Camarro on paid administrative leave until the investigation could be properly wrapped up, a vacation had sounded like just the thing.

  Nate’s hand was still bandaged and immobile, so Camarro did most of his cutting for him; at dinner. He’d gratefully accepted her assistance, and now they sat on the cabin’s huge couch, looking out the bay window and watching the last of the sunlight leave the sky over the horizon of Admiralty Inlet. Nate was wearing his usual loose-fitting linen pajamas and Camarro had on a long, flowing silk robe with a Hawaiian floral pattern; a gift from Nate’s sister. Lana had sent it to Camarro on Nate and Camarro’s first anniversary. Camarro hadn’t worn it much since then, but tonight, she thought it was just the thing.

  Nate and Camarro hadn’t talked much since leaving town. In the whirlwind since Jaguar’s death, they’d both been stuck at Metro, wagging their tongues out of their mouths answering question after question. Until they were positive that Camarro had been cleared of the murders.

  As to whether or not she’d still have a job when they got back to EvSeaBelTac, she wasn’t exactly sure. She and Martinez would have to hammer that out, assuming he even wanted her back in his department when all was said and done.

  So, Nate had wrapped up the last of his mid-term work for Professor Sanjalee, and the two of them had hopped a sky ferry to the old Ault Field complex that was part of historic Whidbey Naval Air Station. A ground cab had gotten them down the coast to the beaches west of Coupeville, and now they were resting and trying to put the events of the previous few days behind them.

  “I think I feel sorry for her,” Nate said quietly, absently rubbing the bandage on his hurt hand with the palm of his good hand.

  “Me too,” Camarro admitted. “When I fled the Scene I had no idea what kind of loose ends I’d be leaving behind. I certainly never guessed that anyone would actually miss me. Not the simumans anyway. Once I found you, I wanted to get as far away from the past as I possibly could. Start a new life. Get a new job.”

  “Why did you choose to be a cop, anyway? You’ve never explained that to me.”

  Camarro thought about it for a moment.

  “Barney Miller,” she said.

  “What?”

  “At night, back when I was still staying in the U labs, when everyone had gone home, I’d watch television. Most of it was boring and I didn’t understand a lot of it. But I did like Barney Miller.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it.”

  “That’s because you never watch the Wayback Network.”

  “Is Barney Miller a cop show?”

  “Yeah, but not the way you think. It was funny. The people were funny. I used to laugh myself into hysterics.”

  Nate turned and smiled at her, the same smile she’d come to cherish every day.

  “So, is being a cop anything like what you saw on TV?”

  Camarro paused, then said, “No.”

  “I’m sorry for that.”

  “Me too.”

  “You don’t have to keep being a cop if you don’t want to. There are other things to do. People change jobs all the time.”

  “I’ll have to think about that. This thing with Jaguar … it really made me look at myself. What had been happening to me since I left the Scene.”

  “It’s a shame nobody ever picked up on how crazy she got. Until it was too late.”

  “Yes. Yes it is.”

  “Did I tell you that Jeff Maddox tried to wire us some money before we left?”

  “No shit. You didn’t take it, did you?”

  “Of course I took it. The damage to the condo isn’t going to be fixed for free.”

  “I thought that was coming out of the insurance!”

  “Yah, and drive the premium into orbit. Look, he was very nice about it. Called me on the phone and everything. Told me I was a damned lucky guy and that he wanted me to keep making you happy, because he thought you deserved it.”

  “I find it hard to believe that those words came out of that man’s mouth.”

  “Me too. But then, I suspect we’re not the only ones who have had our reality turned upset down by this whole thing. Anyway, he said the money was strings-free. Even signed a release to that effect. Said it was the least he could do, and hung up.”

  “I’ll be damned …”

  “Yeah, something, eh?”

  Camarro thought long and hard about what Nate had just told her. Was it really possible for humans to change? Even the ones who seemed beyond changing?

  The fire had died to a flicker, and orange light cast broad shadows across the cabin. Camarro stared into the hot coals for many minutes, then closed her eyes and prepared. She’d been thinking about this ever since she’d seen Nate alive and well at the Spiked Collar, and she’d not been sure how to approach it, other than to wait for the right opportunity to present itself.

  Deftly, she got her knees under her and flipped a leg across Nate’s thighs, then sat down straddling his waist.

  “Whoa,” Nate said in surprise, partially sitting up.

  She pressed her hands into his beefy chest and pushed him back onto the couch, running her fingers across his prominent pectoral muscles—not as solid nor durable as simuman, but for her, it was more than enough.

  Camarro felt the dam between the past and the present begin to tremble, and she mentally shouted down the demons that had begun to rise.

  Go away! This is mine! Not yours! I claim this!

  Gently, she reached down and pulled the sash to her robe open, the vee at her neck parting until her significant cleavage gleamed in the dying firelight.

  “Cam, I … I mean, are you sure? What about—”

  She silenced him with a finger on his lips.

  She guided his good hand up to her chest, encouraging his warm palm across her bare, simuman flesh. The robe began to slip off her shoulders. Then it fell away entirely.

  Nate’s hand no longer needed encouraging. Nor did much else that belonged to him.

  Mine! Camarro shouted mentally again, as Nate’s mouth rose to meet hers. He was gentle, yet urgent. She welcomed his passion. It helped her stay focused on the task at hand. She had to overcome the old memories. She would be their prisoner no longer. She was a free agent, with the will to choose. Her past would not own her.

  “I love you … I love you …” Nate breathed repetitively into her ear, his good hand caressing her back.

  “I love you too,” Camarro sighed, holding his body to hers.

  As if on command, she felt brand new cyber-neural pathways forming—like rays of sunlight, breaking through the clouds in the wake of a prolonged thunderstorm.

  Now, in Nate’s muscular arms, nothing seemed impossible.

  Not anymore.

  And as the night progressed, Camarro’s demons eventually grew weary, then few, then silent.

  “Blood and Mirrors” is what happens when my imagination blends the movie Blade Runner with the television shows The Wire and CSI. It’s also about as risqué in theme and content as I dare get. But when a story plot seizes my attention and won’t go away, I tend to follow it to its conclusion. Even if the pathway takes me into territory I am not terrifically comfortable with. “Blood and Mirrors” is sexy, as well as sexual. But I hope it’s clear by the end that Camarro’s life on the Scene was a life of slavery. Far from glorifying that life, I wanted this story to be much more than just a steamy murder mystery—I wanted it to be about a woman overcoming her horrible, artificial past, for the sake of a loving, entirely human future.

  In other words,
“Blood and Mirrors” is something of a variation on Pinocchio’s tale. Which is one of those timeless tropes I think can be endlessly fascinating for both writers and readers alike.

  As for the technical aspects of the story, this kind of stuff may not be as futuristic as it sounds. There are already companies which make significant money building “almost as good as human” life-size sex dolls. Since people are as imaginative as they are perverse, it’s probably only a matter of time before—in the event that artificial intelligence programming becomes cost-effective—someone attempts to build a robot like Jaguar, or Camarro, or Lotus, and so forth.

  Think not? Too weird? Okay. Imagine if you will, a lover who comes from the factory built to satisfy your every taste and whim, and who is capable of mimicking all the standard human emotions and behaviors, including lust, desire, physical joy, et cetera. This lover feels human, smells human, acts human, and (s)he never complains, never gets tired, never has erectile dysfunction, never has PMS, never prematurely ejaculates, says everything you want him/her to say, and will do whatever it takes (all night long) to ensure that you are absolutely as sexually satisfied as you want to be. Period.

  Such a creation would command top dollar, from those men and women willing to pay.

  Of course, what happens if such a creation becomes self-aware? Able to recognize what it is? Who it is? Make choices, other than what it’s been programmed for? What happens when the law of the land—concerning property rights—collides with the law of the land concerning individual freedom?

  I have sometimes heard critics of Star Trek: The Next Generation complain that there is no reason why an artificial intelligence designer should bother putting an artificial mind into a human replica body, such as that of Commander Data. Much easier to just leave the brain in a box. Talk to it like HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

  My thought is: the exclusive market for robotic lovers probably could (and will?) create exactly the need for an AI in simulated human form; as unwholesome as that application might seem.

  ESBT is, of course, based on my familiarity with the Puget Sound, from having lived there over many years. It’s a great place to stage a noir detective story, with all the rain between October and June. It’s also got a strong technological base, and a strong “counterculture” underground that might manifest something akin to the Scene. With all the many urban and suburban areas growing together over future decades, what are presently separate metropolitan districts might just gel to form a giant super-city. Which also lends itself well to noir detective stories: the lawlessness, the cultural underworld, the rich who believe themselves above the rules as they apply to little people, and the poor cops tasked with plugging their fingers into the dike against the potential flood of crime and vice.

  It’s probable I will return to this world in the future. Camarro Jones will have more cases to solve.

  ***

  Mentors: Kevin J. Anderson & Rebecca Moesta

  I first met Kevin and Rebecca when I was a brand new winner attending the Writers of the Future gala and workshop in Los Angeles, in 2010. I knew them both by reputation—Kevin obviously needs no introduction, his name is practically stamped in stone on the bestseller list—but L.A. was my first chance to see them up close and in person.

  I thought them electric: the kind of couple who are synergistic and dynamic in their enthusiasm for their mutual love, which is writing stories. I didn’t set out to become one of their students, but by the time the workshop week had ended—and Kevin and I had had a chance to stay up late and talk about the future, over drinks at the Roosevelt Hotel’s outdoor lounge—I felt that perhaps a connection had been established. Kevin is practically hyperactive about helping new authors. The man eats and breaths writing (and the business of same) all day every day. I decided that I not only liked the guy, but that he was somebody who (along with Mike Resnick, who I’d also met for the first time) could probably help me as I worked to grow my career; beyond the initial hoopla of winning the Contest in its 26th year.

  I was right. A few months later I was able to attend Kevin’s wonderful Superstars Writing Seminar: a three-day event that recaptured not only the talks Kevin and Rebecca had given at Writers of the Future, but a whole raft of experienced advice from the likes of Dave Wolverton, Eric Flint, Brandon Sanderson, and also some guest lecturers like bestselling Dragonlance author Tracy Hickman. My fellow Writers of the Future winner Laurie Tom and I were there at the Salt Lake City Red Lion (in January 2011, with the inversion in full force) to soak up as much career-altering information as we could get. To include more after-hour chatter with Kevin, Rebecca, and the other lecturers.

  I’ve noticed something about the Writers of the Future judges (most of the Superstars lecturers have been Contest judges for years) and it’s that they love seeing new authors put their (the judges’) advice into practice; and succeed. By the time 2012 rolled around, Kevin had me back to Superstars as a helper and alumnus of the seminar; me being the 2012 triple nominee for the Hugo, Nebula, and Campbell awards. I was selling a lot of short fiction by then, and doing well with several editors and markets. I was also poised to put my foot in with a first novel, and when—in 2013—I sent that first novel off to Toni Weisskopf at Baen Books, Kevin was there to be my counselor on the affair.

  So I think it’s safe to say that Kevin’s got his fingerprints all over my career to date. And I am quite proud of that. The man is a testament to the power of creative work ethic. I am not sure I know anyone who works harder than Kevin, to do what he does. And given the fact I know men like Mike, and also Larry Correia, that’s really saying something. Because in a pool of working professionals of that caliber, Kevin is the working professional’s working professional.

  Moreover, Rebecca is Kevin’s other half. They are a true team. Practically finishing each others’ thoughts and sentences sometimes. In many respects, they remind me of my wife Annie and I. And while Annie is not a writer, she is absolutely my business partner and we have always worked very closely with each other at every step, in our marriage. The way Kevin and Rebecca mesh is therefore similar to the way Annie and I mesh, and it was like peas and carrots—putting Annie into the mix in 2013, when she went with me to Superstars, where I was again helping out as an alumnus.

  That’s when Kevin and Rebecca invited me to get in on the ground floor of their growing WordFire Press enterprise—which I did, with my first short fiction collection, Lights in the Deep. I took it as a sign that they considered me (and Annie by extension) to be one of the “good ones” who was doing what it took to make a long-lived career for himself. They didn’t have to bring me aboard. They had (at that time) and continue to have many top-drawer authors approaching them. A relatively new guy like me? I think it showed faith on their part—that Brad R. Torgersen was going to be a name that would stick in this field.

  When somebody puts his or her faith in me, I want very much for that faith to be (in the final analysis) well-placed. Rebecca and Kevin both have put me forward as someone they are proud to be associated with; as a junior author rapidly coming up in the business. That means a great deal to me, and I am both proud and thankful to have been able to work with them these past five years. There are a lot of new faces passing through Writers of the Future every year, and the odds are long that any of us will go on to bigger and better things.

  I was determined (in 2010) to be one of the exceptions. And once it became apparent that I was not only working to make it happen, but able to digest and apply advice from my seniors, Kevin and Rebecca decided that I was worth investing more time and attention in. To the point that (now, in 2014) both Kevin and Rebecca have become, not just two of my most important instructors, but also two of my most important friends in the biz.

  Lovely people. And a lovely couple.

  I raise a glass to their eternal energy.

  ***

  The Shadows of Titan

  (with Carter Reid)

  The sky was dim. Dimmer even than the P
uget Sound’s on a rainy winter day. And there were no clouds. Just a persistent, dirty-yellow haze. As if the smog over Mexico City had thickened and dropped to ground level—only I was reasonably certain it had never drizzled liquid methane in Mexico’s Federal District.

  The Celsius reading in my helmet’s field-of-view display said it was a crisp 179 degrees below zero. I could faintly hear the susurrations of my coldsuit’s circulation system as it piped reheated antifreeze throughout. The battery had been rated at twelve hours during coldsuit testing in Antarctica, where things only got to about 80 below. Judging by how rapidly the charge bar in my FOV was presently dropping, I guessed we each had about four hours before we had to get back to the Gossamer’s descent module; for a battery swap, and a break.

  Which was fine by me. Titan kind of gave me the creeps.

  “What do you make of it?” asked a voice in my ears.

  Captain Bednar, playing it cool.

  “No idea, ma’am,” I said honestly.

  Clad in a coldsuit built for a woman’s physique, Bednar’s arm was pointing at the four-story-tall pyramid that thrust out of the heaped ice of Titan’s surface. We’d seen the artifact—on accident—as we’d come in to land. It didn’t show up on Doppler, nor infrared. And it had been too small to be seen from orbit. Only a chance look out a porthole had done the trick. We’d have missed it otherwise.

  It had taken us ten minutes in a rover to get here from the designated landing coordinates. That the pyramid was not a natural landform had long since become obvious. Its sides were smooth and black like obsidian, and the drops of methane that precipitated out of the nitrogen atmosphere immediately ran down the pyramid’s sides—like it was coated in non-stick Teflon.