by Rusty Coats
Welcome to Avalon
It is what you think
Cover by Rusty Coats
Published by Inknbeans Press’
© 2016 Rusty Coats and Inknbeans Press
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Avalon I: Denys al Coda
Avalon II: New Hope
Avalon III: The Mission
Avalon IV: Merlin
Avalon V: Tomorrow Crusade
AVALON VI: Monk
AVALON VII: Dragon’s Lair
AVALON VIII: Murder
AVALON IX: Rhapsody
AVALON X: Echo Wharf
AVALON XI: Suiting Up
AVALON XII: Hardhat
AVALON XIII: Freud’s Bounty
AVALON XIV: Neural Tapeworm
AVALON XV: Mohican
AVALON XVI: Into the Flux
AVALON XVII: Fired
AVALON XVIII: Club Trocadero
AVALON XIX: Digerati Bug Hunt
AVALON XX: Extermination
AVALON XXI: Fugitives
AVALON XXII: Marigolde
AVALON XXIII: Reunion
AVALON XXIV: The Binding
AVALON XXV: The Key
AVALON XXVI: A Memory of the Future
AVALON XXVII: Neuromantics
AVALON XXVIII: Missionaries
AVALON XXIX: Going Home
AVALON XXX: Dragon Fall
AVALON XXXI: Hocus Pocus
AVALON XXXII: City of Light
AVALON I: Denys al Coda
The doorboy's metal-flake eyes scowled at my ROM, then pinched the disc between white-gloved fingers and slotted it, tapping code on her touchpad. I inhaled mist from the Cyn, which wasn't doing much to kill my hangover or pep up my synapses. Not the way to meet a Digerati boss like Jenner Van Meter, but there you are.
When the scanner bleated, the doorboy glanced at the tiny screen: DENYS, JACK; ACCESS CLEAR. She handed back my ROM, disappointed.
"Welcome to the Scopes Building, Mr. Denys." Her voice was as monotonous as her uniform. They all were. A Sons of David church camp stamped out androgynous doorboys with identical blond hair and identical red monkeysuits and identical lessons in smashing your trachea. Everyone needs a calling.
"The elevators are immediately to your right, but you are not permitted to enter without an escort from Mr. Van Meter's office. You should wait in the lobby until such escort arrives. While there, you may want --"
"Say," I said, cutting her off. I dropped the ROM into the stainless-steel palmtop, watched it spin behind the sapphire-glass portal. "You're a doorboy, right?"
"Yes, Mr. Denys. What else --"
"You like your job?"
Her hands folded on the console as if in prayer. "Of course. We all do. Why?"
"Because I'd like to see you do it."
Her scowl became hot enough to melt the steel flecks in her eyes. She waved at the biometric panel and the door slid open. Clean air drifted into the foyer like a salve.
"Maybe when I come back," I said, "I'll tell you what it's like inside."
She glared as I passed, then triggered the console and closed the door on my heel. It bumped me twice, then slammed shut when I was clear.
Outside in the foyer, the doorboy allowed herself a small smile.
Van Meter's guard met me by the nootropic stand in the lobby, where the clerk sold me a pack of Cyns and threw in an extra catalyst because he could tell I needed some charity. The catalyst lit the pill and I inhaled cinnamon mist peppered with vitamins, piracetam and a little speed, chasing some of the bitterness out of my brain.
"Mr. Denys," said a tall Apollo with almond eyes. "My name is Thurgood. I'll escort you upstairs. But first I'm instructed to search you. I'm sure you understand."
I studied him, holding my mist. He wore a double-breasted suit that fit him like molded metal and a small headset to keep him wired to the boss. From the bulge I could tell he packed the stun on his right, which meant he was a Southpaw, which meant Van Meter took no chances. Southpaws were corporate muscle, full of piss and silicon. They took six years to train, and when they said they wanted to frisk you, you said yes.
When he finished. we walked toward the elevators and I took in the scenery. It was a rare treat for me to make it downtown, down where the Tube trains ran on time and the Depression was a rumor. The Scopes lobby scoffed at the Depression with high ceilings of fluted steel and walls of neon-lit glass block. Streamlined telepresence booths banked the walls; they reminded me of the old WPA immersion beakers.
No facade was too ornate for the power kept inside the offices of the Scopes Building. Only the real players had digs here. The pretenders ran speakeasies hidden behind medical supply stores, porno shops and church rectories, all of them talking about the Scopes the way triple-A baseball players once talked about The Show.
Thurgood led me to Van Meter's private lift, where a Peruvian elevator boy guarded the castle gates. Thurgood's left hand flashed and the boy nodded, then grinned a set of ruined teeth at me. Just to be a pain, I stepped past the wall-mounted spittoon and flashed the same signal -- a hand-code ordering the kid to gas me if the scanners found a sub-dermal virus -- and the boy's black bangs ruffled on his scarred forehead. Some people collect antiques; I collect code. It's a bad excuse for a hobby.
The boy pulled the doors shut and we shot up the clear shaft like a dart until the surface features disappeared under a sea of polluted air. The boy consulted his aquamarine screen and flashed Thurgood the sign for clean. Thurgood blinked, hands clasped behind his back. The boy spat a husked seed into the spittoon and I stared across the bruised atmosphere as if looking for Christ, thinking.
The last time I worked for Van Meter was before Prohibition, before we declared civil war over the shared hallucination called Avalon, before the United Nations dismantled the most ambitious Project of the century. That was when I was traveling the net, hawking privacy potions like a rainmaker two days ahead of the law. Van Meter was an ambitious code writer who broke out of the WPA trenches to build his own virtual corporation and didn't want snoops peeking through his high-resolution walls, positioning himself for the inevitable land-rush, and that meant plugging into some ruthless encryption. That's why he came to me. It was a challenge. It was also illegal. But so was just about everything that made sense in Avalon.
Now it was almost ten years later and I'd served seven years in Jasper for the mistake of believing everyone needed a little privacy in the promised land. Now it was eight months into my probation and six years into Prohibition. Now the online offices, universities and amusement parks had been converted to brothels and bloodsport arenas, catering to the outlaw elite. Now people like Van Meter -- the code writers who called themselves the Digerati -- were organized into the kind of family that inevitably springs from Prohibition, and they were harvesting Avalon's true crop.
When the elevator stopped, the boy opened the brass doors and flashed a hangman's sign. I fished a Cyn from the pocket of my Tremayne jacket and stepped into Van Meter's court, feeling like a germ that had dodged an army of antibodies.
Which was, after all, why Van Meter wanted to see me.
At forty-seven, Jenner Van Meter still cut a mean cloth, the kind of guy who caught your eye, cleaned it and then baited his hook to catch another. He kept his red hair slicked back in a perfect V, a facial consonant echoed by his beard. With small shoulders and the delicate fingers of a close-
up magician, Van Meter looked polished and brittle, but lethal. Somehow very lethal.
"Still smoking those things, Jack?"
"Still the only way to get a decent breath in this town."
He reached out to shake my hand. "Nice to see you again. It's been a long time."
"Longer for some," I said. Thurgood shut the carbon-steel doors and helped me out of my trenchcoat and I ran out of excuses for not shaking Van Meter's hand.
"I see you're doing well for yourself."
"Not as well as others," he said. "But I get by."
I released his hand and scanned the office. It took up the entire top floor, crowned only by a heli-port and God. Black acrylic walls, marble floors, mercury-silver fixtures, black leather furniture. A telepresence screen on the south wall was his only decoration. His desk was the latest Mensa, all smoked Lucite and chrome, with more computing power than anything in the artillery rooms of the United Nations, which was one of the reasons why no one in the world could stop people like Van Meter.
“Sitting on top of the world is better than getting by."
"You'd be surprised," he said. "I'm not the biggest Sysop on the block and never will be. I've got my own little territory and that makes me happy."
I chuckled, because Van Meter would never be big enough to be magnanimous. "You find religion while I was away? You join the Neuromantics?"
"God, no. Merely satisfied with my good fortune."
"I'm sure you are."
"For a colossal failure, Avalon's been very good to a lot of people."
"And very bad to a lot of others."
"True. Yourself included."
I walked to the window and stared at the burnt horizon. Outside, the sun went into the ocean, the first real sunset I'd seen since Avalon's groundbreaking days, when I'd stay up with my parents in our WPA high-rise, watching through homemade goggles while they built the first crude aisles of the Library. Sunsets were brilliant then.
"It only sent me to jail," I said. "I got off easy."
"You're too bitter."
"Keep patronizing me and find out how bitter."
"Thurgood wouldn't like that."
"He'd get over it."
"Maybe. But you wouldn't."
Van Meter stroked his hair with the soft part of his palm. When the hammer fell on Avalon, a lot of talented people had a difficult choice to make. You either cut your losses while a worm called Wrecking Ball tore through the virtual city or you crossed over. Van Meter didn't start out Digerati, but that's what an act of International Congress made him. He tried to live up to his press, but the suit fit him a little loose in the inseam.
He offered a seat. I hung my fedora on my shoe while he sloshed Ephedria into a glass. "What have you been doing lately, Jack?"
"Repaying my debt to society. I have a place near the old Campus, with a Murphy bed and Mensa, where I keep some ciphers from the good old days."
"The Mission District? I thought that place was for junkies, orphans and sentimental fools. Which are you, Jack?"
"You should stop by and figure it out for yourself."
"Some other time." He handed me a glass of amber liquor. "According to your parole officer, you're coding genealogical records for the Smithsonian. But I know you too well to believe you're looking backward at history. Indulge me."
I stared at the filament wires in my hat, at the places where they disappeared into a fraying sweatband, and said, "I'm still selling protection, if that's what you're asking."
"Then here’s to the last private eye," he said, lifting his glass.
"Not the last." I slugged back the Ephedria and swished it around my mouth. Not bad, if you like the taste of brass. "But it's definitely not a growth market."
"It'll come back around. We're dealing with frontier mentality. Everything's fluid. We have to establish order before we loosen up."
I sipped Ephedria and said nothing. When people enjoy the sound of their own voice, it's best to let them hear it.
He traced the sweat on his glass. "I still hear good things about your keys, Jack. Eight years out of circulation and you've still got the touch."
"So they say."
"Who's 'They' these days?"
"Private enterprise."
"On which side?"
"I never paid much attention."
He laughed. "Isn't that violating your parole?"
"Everything violates my parole."
"And that doesn't bother you?"
"Breaking the law?"
"Yes."
"Sure, Jenny. I’m losing sleep. You?"
"We're not talking about me. We're talking about you."
"I didn't know my life was so interesting."
"It's not." His face was as hard and pale as bone. "I just want to know why you're lying. You haven't been to Avalon since they sent you to Jasper and you haven't sold a code since you sent Icarus out on the networks eight years ago. So stop yanking my chain and tell me why you haven't returned to the only city where you belong."
My foot stopped bouncing the fedora. "I wouldn't want to bore you, Jenny."
He leaned forward, red hair glistening. "Now, Jack."
I finished the Ephedria and wiped my lips. "It’s lost its magic."
"Don't tell me you've fallen for the propaganda. You’re afraid of the programmer’s disease?" His voice squeaked like a nail pulling from green wood. "Now I’ve heard it all."
I stood up and turned to leave. "Thanks for the drink, Jenny, but I've got a long elevator ride. Tell Thurgood he was great company."
Van Meter sank lower in his chair. "Sit down, Jack. I didn't drag you out of retirement to fish for family secrets. You've been out of jail eight months and I haven't heard a peep, so I thought I'd check your loyalties. If you're into the Neuromantics or the Sons of David, I need to know before I offer you a job."
I stopped. Somehow I knew I'd stop.
"What kind of job?"
"Spook job," he said. "I've got a ghost haunting my house and he's become an expensive pest. Up your alley. Or used to be."
I let the sarcasm slide. "I'm still listening."
"And I'm still waiting to hear your loyalties."
I stared evenly. "My IQ is too short for the Neuromantics and my past has too many microprocessors for the Sons of David. Besides, you'd know if I had any loyalties, the same way you know I haven't run code since Uncle Sam cuffed me for treason."
He patted his Mensa and said: "Fair enough."
My hand closed around the palmtop in my pocket to keep my fingers from fidgeting. "And the ghost?"
"A genuine spook, Jack. My boys can't sniff him out."
"Your boys are clumsy."
"Maybe. But this guy isn't. He comes, he goes. Not a crumb, not a footprint. Invisible. And smooth. Very smooth."
I reached for the snifter. "Tell me about him."
Van Meter gritted his teeth. "First of all, I don't know it's a he. Second of all, I don't know anything. All I've got for proof is sixteen clicks of this spook at Delilah's, sharing the stage with some of my talent. Magdi." He gave me a menacing grin. "Can't say that I blame him. This gal is a firecracker. Off-line, she's a nurse at a work-camp in Bakersfield. Online, she smokes like an oil field in Jordan. You'd like her."
"I doubt it," I said. "So this guy's a shifter?"
"No. I see right through shape-shifters. Their encryption is top-heavy, never fools the scanners. This guy's invisible."
"Impossible. Everything in Avalon is data --"
"And all data leaves a trail." He shook his head. "Not this guy, Jack."
I stared at Van Meter, measuring his delivery. Shifters were routine in Avalon, a hazard in a city where you could change identity as simply as secretaries once changed fonts; in Avalon, men were women, women were men, gender was laughably antique. The Digerati didn't mind when people wore other genders as costumes. It was part of the attraction, the mystique. Spooks were different. They ran silent under bulletproof encryption, terrorized the digital
pleasure domes and bilked the Digerati out of millions. And unlike the people who flew on Icarus -- a program that became obsolete while I was playing prison Solitaire in the eastern Sierra -- modern spooks did not exist. They were myths, urban legends that grew around Prohibition's fence. No one on record had run silent in Avalon since the Digerati took control. So Van Meter's sales pitch didn't wash.
"Then how'd you see him at Delilah's?"
"Because he rubbed my nose in it," he said. "The guy wants to take me down."
"You're too big for that," I said offhandedly. "What about Merlin?"
"No records in Merlin or any of the lower operating systems. No point of entry, no departure. He comes from nowhere, says what he wants to say and disappears."
"Say? You've talked to him?"
Van Meter keyed the Mensa. A thick hum resonated from its dark walls. "Patch in. I'll play you a tape."
I shook my head. "Not a chance."
"What?"
"I told you. I don't do immersion."
He smiled and pulled a small ROM from his breast pocket. "It's a postcard, not a swim. Scout's honor."
He was no scout, but he had me curious enough to see a ghost worth bringing me downtown, so I folded down the fedora's visor. I stared at Van Meter, his body warped by a tear in the visor, as he placed a pair of platinum-tipped Bono specs over his eyes, adjusted the earfoil and tapped the Mensa pad. My visor squelched, hissed static and came alive, filling my optic nerves with the panoramic view of Delilah's.
It was as close to Avalon as I'd been in almost ten years.
Delilah's was a sex-show lounge built on the grounds of the Avalon Opera House, a legacy still visible in the corners of the stage, where holographic portraits from Peri's "Dafne" peeked out above Van Meter’s oiled nudes. The orchestra pit -- which, like the seats and lighting, had been cosmetic additions to lend a sense of reality -- had been filled during the redesign. The walls were glossed with action shots from previous shows and the clientele given coaster tables to hide their laps. The tear in my visor cut a jag across the stage, where a raven-haired woman was bent over a milk stool and screaming like a locomotive, red lips choo-chooing to her adoring audience while a farm boy in high-res overalls pistoned up her back door. The angle of the postcard brought us close enough to see the veins in the farm boy's equipment and the muscle tone of Magdi's back.
