by Rusty Coats
"Welcome to Van Meter Enterprises, where we're committed to serving people." Her voice had a silky lilt and when she leaned forward, she exposed more than her pearls. "No one is here to take your call. Would you like to leave a message with me?"
"No."
“That’s too bad,” she pouted. "Are you sure?"
Whiny answering machines with cleavage. Great technology.
"Yes. I want Jenny's personal line. This is Jack Denys.”
Harlow adjusted her curls until the fedora flashed: DENYS, CONFIRMED, then triggered an eight-digit encryption key to keep our conversation cozy.
"When you get done with business,” Harlow said, “see me for a little R-and-R."
I took a hit off the Cyn and smiled. Jenny made a profit everywhere he could, even if it meant turning his answering service into a call girl.
The screen melted and Van Meter appeared, scowling behind his Mensa. At first, I couldn't tell if it was live or a digital avatar. Then he said, "It's three-sixteen in the morning. This had better be worth my time, Jack."
Avatar. Jenny's ROM clone was a tougher Joe than the original.
"It is. I've got your problem in pocket," I said. "As long as your spook makes another appearance, we're in business."
Van Meter's alter-ego processed that, cross-referenced the case history and then constructed a response. The digitized Sysop crossed his arms, still in character.
"When? And how much more will this cost me?"
"Two days, unless he's taken a vow of chastity." The fedora's filament mike fell against my neck. "As for expenses, there's projected costs and real costs, and --"
"I understand. What more do we have to discuss?"
"I need access to your office in Avalon."
"Impossible," he snorted, shaking his helmet of red hair. "No one gets --" He cut himself off, interrupted by another cross-ref prompt. "You're not Jack Denys."
"Come again?"
"Jack Denys doesn't work Avalon." His shoulders bulged confidently. "I don't know who you are, brother."
I gave the clone my eight-digit key again. When that didn't work, I considered hanging up. It was cold. I was wet. And I was arguing with a cartoon. Finally, out of anger, I spouted the replication code for Icarus, a stream of babble. A passing huckster stared at me through the visor, raising a can-opener blade in self-defense.
Finally, the image on my visor smiled. "OK. You're Jack. Or you're someone who's done enough homework to deserve a prize. Why do you need my office?"
"To catch your ghost."
"Full immersion or passive presence?"
"Passive," I said. "Your gossip banks don't lie."
"They never do.” His eyes narrowed. “You have an access site in mind, I trust? A safe one?"
"The old ones work best," I said absently.
Van Meter nodded. "Well then, if that's all you need, I'll say goodbye. I have extreme confidence in you, Jack."
The visor went clear again and Haggletown returned. I started to laugh. The ROM even lied like Van Meter.
I walked back through the Mission toward my apartment. The junkies slept in huddles, gaunt faces poking out from soggy blankets, sexual energy spent. My legs ached and my brainpan sizzled. It had been a long time since I'd pulled an honest day's work, and I'd forgotten what it felt like. Most of the country knew what I meant.
Right now all I wanted was to lie on my Murphy bed and stare at the black blades of the ceiling fan until Van Meter's ghost tripped the wires. Right now I wanted to pretend it was another era, a year when I could soothe myself to sleep with the pulse of a city on its way to work, a time before this ugly silence had settled over the streets. Right now I was no better than Rita, because all I wanted was the past.
"Hometown." That's what Rita called Shiloh Community, an isolated commune so stifling that she'd gone to work for the mafia, babysitting a system blamed for murderous brain damage, hoping to touch a magic Shiloh tried to deny. A Sons of David commune was a bad place for a prodigy, but it was still a place she called "hometown." A place that would welcome her back, a place that still exists.
I envied her that. When Jasper released me I'd walked seventy-four blocks from the Tube station to the old Campus, to Acquisitions & Entry -- a building my dad nicknamed Dewey Decimal -- and saw what the 28th International Amendment had done to my hometown. Its regal Vitrolite face had melted into a lava bib from a flash fire four months after the datacops sealed the Campus with razor wire and its bold statue of Daniel Webster heat-morphed into the shape of an elephant man. I'd stared and smoked and felt the years finally catch me. I had been there for the birth of my hometown, but not its death, and now all that remained were the tombstones.
Now I walked through the rain and the past flashed across my retinas, ghosts too stubborn to let go. Of the morning in Idaho my mother checked her electronic mail, a day before our lease ran out, and found this one: World Progress Administration, Announcement of Hire.
Of the first days on Campus, dorm assignments, meeting our housemate Monk, school registration for Gretchen and me, Campus tours and Project contracts.
Of opening day, with President Geddes and United Nations Premier Illona beaming that soon a digital city would unify a world bent on Balkanization and salve the wounds of Chinese secessionism and Arab-Israeli war. And of the spirit that flowed for the first time since the mushroom clouds erupted over Guandong and Hunan, Damascus and Tel Aviv, a tenuous and fragile glimmer called Hope.
Of Construction's first year. Of the programmers and designers who fueled all-night binges with enough Snap to break the tachometer cables on their hearts. Of my mother, cursing Cassady and their attempt to upload consciousness. Of my father negotiating with Tunisia for the Shroud of Turin, or Mexico for Mayan templates -- all of them to be blueprinted, digitized and shipped to the labyrinths of the Library. Of discovering encryption and feeling as if I'd finally found religion.
Of Avalon’s first days of existence in the Campus sensorium, when programmers wore helmets so heavy they were bolted to collarplates to keep from breaking their necks. Of the day Merlin came online and the world tuned in to see Geddes and Illona cut the tape, their virtual bodies standing on an obsidian plain as wide as imagination. Of Jann Turnquist skyscrapers and the Library’s first wing. Of the first sexual hack, created for laughs by the pranksters in Recreation & Revival, a hooker named Buffi who offered crude direct-point stimulation and prophesied the ruin of the city.
And of the "programmer's disease" that swept through the R&R dorm, killing with eerie punctuality. My parents heard rumors about Buffi and the digitized whores that followed, but it wasn't fiction for Campus brats who spent our nights sneaking into Avalon. We knew what was happening because we’d seen it -- seen lovers embrace online as they shuddered in data suits, seen the oldest profession become the newest narcotic. Then the coders stopped working and started dying, their virtual bodies turned to binary stone. Four days after U.N. Judge Charles W. Mayhew sentenced me to ten years in Jasper, the Avalon Commission -- headed by Cassady and funded by the Neuromantics -- published its report linking the deaths to Avalon. It took another week before Septal Decay Syndrome and Chronic Neurotransmitter Imbalance entered the global lexicon, and by that time, I was told, you could hear Judgment Day stomping toward Campus and swinging a mace called Wrecking Ball. Just like that, it was over.
More than sixty thousand programmers lost their jobs that day, along with eighty thousand bluecollars who had been installing suit-booths in shopping malls, city parks and schools. The original tenor of the amendment was that the U.N. would resurrect Construction after cures for SDS and CNI were found, but that possibility grew less likely every day. The world had become used to Prohibition and had resumed the chore of facing life without a promised land. Now only a few people gave two bits about Avalon -- those who owned it, were addicted to it, wanted it destroyed, or once called it "hometown" and wished they could let it go.
From Hiller Street I saw the copter lights an
d heard the sirens screaming and knew the law had finally sniffed out Bobby McDonald's speakeasy.
Six copters hovered over the building that held a flophouse and McDonald's pharmacy, where Bobby spent half his time dispensing detox bracelets and the other half creating a need for the jewelry. I usually went there for a shoeshine on Mondays, a habit I picked up in Jasper to keep track of the time. I rarely saw Bobby's customers; he kept his business discreet. Customers paid with ROM cards and slipped inside a photo booth, disappearing through a sliding door. Afterward, they bought a pack of gum.
The halogens cut scars in the night and showed a small platoon of datacops standing outside the pharmacy. McDonald and eight customers were kissing pavement, their wrists and ankles bound. McDonald's bald head reflected the glare of his bad luck.
The datacops hauled out hand trucks of familiar equipment: A midsized Mensa, a clutch of well-used polystyrene scuba suits, a contraband box of Turkish goggles, a cooler of Snap. Walking past, I heard them give McDonald the routine.
"What pipe did you use?"
"Why you wanna make this so hard on yourself?"
"Which Digerati is your guardian angel?"
Bobby was doing his job by keeping his mouth shut. He knew the score. The cops could rough you up and the judge could staple a few years to your sentence, but the Digerati could turn you into deli meat if you sang. The Sysops may have been high-tech hermits, but as organized criminals they kept a network of Neanderthals in the work camps of Manzanar, Bodie and Jasper. If McDonald was smart, he'd hand them one of his customers as a patsy and live to see parole.
As I passed the crowd, keeping my head down and showing the datacops the wet brim of my fedora, I saw another man, camouflaged by the darkness. He wore a black overcoat with silver collars, standing over McDonald and his customers, staring into the copter lights. He had pale granite cheekbones and ivory hair cut down to thistle. As he turned I could see a red scar on the back of his neck, an ugly blotch covering what must have been the bar code given to newly initiated Southpaws, a tattoo few lived to remove. I glanced past his collar and saw the trademark black jumpsuit beneath his coat. When he turned, I saw the insignia on his overcoat -- a globe of chrome continents and lapis lazuli seas, its axis pierced by a sputtering Tesla coil. Neuromantic.
He gave me a hard, calculating stare. I gave it back.
"What's your cipher, McDonald?" the Neuromantic asked the pharmacist, but his eyes stayed on me. "Your customers fly on Icarus, maybe?"
McDonald said nothing.
As a datacop asked about uplink codes, the Neuromantic pulled a stun from his coat and wordlessly pumped six hundred thousand volts into the bald pharmacist. McDonald let out a mammal scream and the Neuromantic kept the trigger down until the screaming stopped, staring into my eyes as McDonald sizzled against the asphalt.
"Jesus, Janak, did you have to do that?" the datacop asked as the smoke curled off Bobby's skin. "Now we'll never get anything out of him."
"You’re right," the Neuromantic said, holstering his heater. "But now he is incapable of talking. Before, he was merely unwilling. This way is preferable."
"How do you figure?"
"This way, it's my choice."
I'd seen enough. My shoe leather scuffed sidewalk grit toward Young Street and I tried to exhale the odor of burnt pork. I got as far as the alley, where a boil of junkies slept off their fix, copper bracelets from New Hope winking off their wrists.
The Neuromantic trotted up beside me and grabbed my arm just above the elbow with a grip as sharp as ice tongs. "A little late for a stroll, isn't it, soldier?"
I gave my arm a jerk, but he held tight, so I let him hold it. "You enforcing curfew, or just out for target practice?"
His mouth warmed into a grin, but his eyes stayed cool. "Kidder, huh? Don't bother. I've got two boys destroying what's left of this peddler's poker room. They do what I say. And they don't like kidders."
I nodded at McDonald. "You don't appear to need them."
"Maybe I like an audience."
I fetched my cigarette case with my free hand. "Not your style."
He watched me touch the catalyst to the cinnamon stick, stared at the chemical reaction as I inhaled. He said, "Maybe you'd like to tell me my style."
I exhaled through my nose, holding the taste in my teeth. "Trained around ought-seven, I'd guess. Second generation, Yukon Station, before they ironed out the bugs. Fluent in six languages, survival rating of plus-seventeen, Tae Kwon Do, Kempo, poisons, social engineering, half a dozen other hobbies. You're a Southpaw, or used to be, and Southpaws don't like audiences. Audiences are witnesses."
He released my arm. "Not bad. But as you can tell," he said, tapping the scar on his neck, "I'm not in the organization anymore."
"Their decision or yours?"
He grinned. "A bit of both. I had an epiphany that humanity would be better served if I did something more ambitious than guarding diplomats and tycoons. The Southpaw Organization was naturally disappointed." He caressed a soft pink puncture wound on his right temple. "It was a difficult separation."
"I'm all torn up inside."
"I can arrange that."
"I'm sure. You seem to have the cops in your pocket."
"We're all on the same side."
"Police states are like that."
The Neuromantic shrugged and held out his hand. "Wells Janak."
I let it hang there. At this point in my life, there are few things I can be picky about. Who I shake hands with is one of them.
Finally, he got the hint and poked his hand into the pocket of his coat. "I usually avoid this part of town. Too depressing. But since McDonald's speakeasy had mysteriously escaped investigation, I decided it was time for a field trip."
"Since when do feds need coaching from Neuromantics?"
"Since we began to doubt their tenacity."
"If hitting small operators is your acid test, I'd say the ante is pretty low."
His eyebrows came up. "Oh?"
"McDonald is just looking to make ends meet. He's not getting rich off Avalon."
"Not like the Digerati, true," he said. He stared down the alley, caught a glimpse of the addicts and looked away, disgusted. "But we've found the best tactic is to destroy street suppliers. That way, the effects trickle up."
I laughed. "Effects never trickle up. Demand fuels supply. Always has, always will. Or did you miss that day in brainwashing school?"
“Brainwashing?"
The copter hauled away McDonald's wares, disappearing in the night. "When you joined the Neuromantics."
His pale eyes flashed. "You listen to too many rumors. Our species is in a time of transition, a transition that always accompanies periods of immigration. Those who light out for a New Frontier are incompatible with those who stay behind. Witness the American colonists and their European peers. Or the Vikings and their Scandinavian homefires. All Neuromantics possess this adventurous streak, this need of conquest and discovery, even if the object of our desire is not a continent, but a genetic destiny.”
“One big happy family.”
"We're banding together to save a larger family from itself. Look at the challenges we face. Global depression, nuclear wastelands, sheer barbarism. The world will revert to a new Dark Age within this century unless drastic steps are taken."
"And Fate chose your fraternity to carry the ball."
"Fate has nothing to do with it. The Neuromantics have the desire to improve civilization and the intelligence to make it happen." He shook his head. "I'm at a loss as to why you despise us. Our irrigation projects in the Midwest sutured a hemorrhaging agricultural economy and kept the plains from literally blowing away. Our hydrogen-cell patents made these copters possible and our wind farms power these street lamps. Our agenda is to move our species forward. What is so distasteful about that?"
I cocked a thumb at Bobby's body. "Maybe I just don't like your manners."
He stared at the speakeasy. "This," he hissed. "T
his is a plague. If allowed to proliferate, immersion technologies will unravel mankind's consciousness. The lab rat, given access to direct pleasure-center stimulation, will stimulate himself to death. SDS and CNI are only the beginning. Here there be dragons, soldier."
"Preach, brother, preach."
"Are you mocking me?"
"What gave me away?"
"Of course I expected that from you." He stepped back and opened his arms, as if he were a carnival barker. "Ladies and gentlemen, I present Johnathan W. Denys, alias Jack, alias Daeedalus, son of Taylor and Ramona Denys, arcitects of the failed Avalon Library. Author of the encryption program 'Icarus,' written when he was eighteen -- an act of treason. Sentenced to ten years at the hot, desert work-camp of Jasper, he was paroled after six. His parents committed suicide, devastated that Wrecking Ball had destroyed their life’s work. Now he codes genetic data for the Smithsonian, living in a dingy apartment near Campus and now, low on money, he's working for the Digerati."
His words cut with a surgeon’s accuracy. I let the wounds breathe a little, then said, "You've done your homework. But your accuracy isn’t up to Party standards."
He bowed sarcastically. "By all means, correct me."
"Jasper was a high-desert camp and rarely hot. I was paroled after seven years. Wrecking Ball only destroyed sixty-eight percent of the treasury my parents assembled. I keep my apartment clean and if I needed money, I'd work for the Neuromantics."
His fists tightened. "Watch it."
"Without Prohibition, the Neuromantics would be a sideline cult and Nathan Zamora would be selling vacuum cleaners door to door. You need Prohibition the way Catholics need guilt. Everything else is just mouthwash."
Janak spoke slowly. "A man who talks like that doesn't think much of his future."
I blinked and looked away. "What future?"
