All the Retros at the New Cotton Club

by DeAnna Knippling

  “I’m assuming you don’t want anyone to know that I’ve got it.”

  Bingo.

  She’d been keeping an eye out for another black market doctor willing to do underground chip implants—not that she’d known that Bobby would want her to get another one, but because she was almost to the point where she wanted…she craved…something she would never tell Bobby about.

  She’d been looking for a way to have his kid. A retro kid. It was sick and wrong. For a retro kid to grow up without direct contact to the retro world would be like being raised by wolves. The only contact they’d ever have would be with her. And that wasn’t fair. Or good for anybody.

  At least, that’s what she kept telling herself.

  “How do you want to set it up?”

  I know a guy…

  · · ·

  The guy that he knew was the same black market doctor they’d used before, Dr. Wiltsey—Bobby’s idea of a joke. The real deception was happening on the digital level. The doc was told he was implanting her with a chip that would help treat her for depression. It was new technology built on new hardware, which necessitated the implant—and so far, tests were showing that it was better for the treatment to be on a chip separated from her intracranial system. Depression was a powerful disease. It didn’t just screw with your transmitters; it could screw up even implanted, artificial hardware and make it malfunction via feedback loops. It was worse than having a goddamned virus.

  The chip went in and as soon as she came out the movement out of the corners of her eyes stopped—like that. She was cured. Not of depression, but of seeing things. The doc said he wanted her to come in for a checkup in a week to see if her symptoms were affected. He apologized for the inconvenience—the treatment was illegal but he wanted to report on the results anyway. His wife had killed herself years ago because of the disease. He’d had her uploaded onto the illegal retro network, and something surprising had happened—her depression had infected the network.

  The wife had to be quarantined as a static file. Basically, she was for-real dead, at least until they could find a cure.

  The idea scared her. She, Bernice, had been known to get into a black mood a time or two. What if she couldn’t be uploaded when she died? What if she had to be quarantined?

  She asked Dr. Wiltsey about it, and he said it was a possibility. Or she might be partially quarantined, allowed to “live” on the retro servers but kept separated by firewalls. “But it’s research like this that’s our best chance for a solution,” he said. “And besides, if it works out it’ll be worth billions.”

  “And it will save your wife,” she said. “Of course I’ll come in and you can poke me and prod me for a while. I donate millions every year to scientific research, I can donate a couple of hours of my time.”

  Dr. Wiltsey blinked a couple of times. “Thank you, Ms. Stimac.”

  “Call me Bernice, doc.”

  · · ·

  Bobby didn’t appear to her again. She understood why—he’d taken a pretty big risk showing himself earlier, if he was trying to make sure nobody suspected anything—but it started her grieving all over again.

  She hadn’t really grieved when he died. She’d saved most of it up for when his chip was removed.

  This time wasn’t as bad, a couple of weeks of severe blues that never quite turned black, then faded into some dull grays for a month or two, then lightened up and let the sun peek through the clouds a month after that. At first the doc was worried about her, saying that the chip seemed to have caused a major depression, but then as she climbed out of the hole he looked happier and happier with her results.

  She didn’t have the heart to tell him it was all a fake. Cutting herself off champagne had probably had more to do with the results than anything else.

  She’d been waiting for Bobby to come back for long enough. It was time to live.

  · · ·

  “And then I started seeing things out of the corner of my eye again,” the dame said. “Nothing head-on. Nothing I could ever be sure that I had actually seen. And not the same as before. More…solid. At first I got my hopes up. I thought it was Bobby spying on me.”

  Charlie had a breathing space and he took it, loading up the dishwasher with empties and wiping down the bar top. He raised an eyebrow at the dame—want another one?—and she shook her head. The glass was empty; even the ice had been chewed. He pulled a glass from behind the bar, loaded with nothing but ice.

  She gave him a thin, pitiful smile and started crunching the ice.

  “That doesn’t sound like something to get your hopes up about,” he said.

  “It doesn’t, does it? But it wasn’t him. Just more shadows. I set up an appointment with my doc and told him all about it; he said that whatever it was, wasn’t coming from the new chip. He didn’t think it had anything to do with my depression, either.”

  Charlie leaned against the bar, relaxing. Like magic, Dolores appeared with an order for half a dozen different mixed drinks, no virtuals. He pushed off and started mixing. The peak of the night had passed. People were still drinking pretty steadily but it was without the urgency from earlier. The kitchen was almost ready to close down and he sent Mick, the head cook, a message with an order for a ham sandwich on rye with a lot of mustard. It wasn’t fancy fare but he might be able to choke down a bite or two between orders.

  The rendering was still off. Something was up.

  The dame said, “In fact the doc didn’t think there was anything wrong with me at all.”

  She picked up the glass, looked down into it, then picked out another piece of ice with her fingernails. They were painted with black and gold stripes, to match her dress.

  “So what was it following you? The shadow?”

  She shook her head. “That’s skipping too far ahead.”

  · · ·

  The shadow started to appear more often and for longer periods. It would work its way into crowds, it would hide behind things—it knew she was looking for it. If she spotted it, it would try to hide.

  It wasn’t a regular blocked person. Blocked people looked like walking TV static patterns, not shadows, and they didn’t float through pedestrians and parked cars.

  Whoever or whatever it was, it never tried to communicate with her, either to threaten her or ask for her help. It never got closer to her than ten feet or so. Sometimes she could shake it by getting into a random cab and turning off her network—but it always found her again as soon as she turned her network on again.

  She sent a couple of worried messages to Bobby, the first she’d ever sent him. She knew him; until she was uploaded onto the network he would be a stranger to her—he was living his other life now. But this was important. Someone might be trying to get at his chip.

  I’m being followed.

  She received a name and an address on a retro card via an anonymous message. She couldn’t read the blurred letters. If it gets bad, the info will become clear. Don’t let anyone take the chip. Love, Bobby.

  He didn’t have to tell her not to contact him again.

  Then one day the skin over the new chip started to itch. The chip underneath was warm to the touch and the skin was tender and sore.

  “Are you trying to tell me something, Bobby?” she asked it, leaning forward over the ivory pedestal sink in the master bathroom. She’d folded her ear over and was looking at the little knot of scar tissue there. It was a white lump surrounded by reddened skin.

  Bobby didn’t answer.

  It had been a long day. She’d had a board meeting all afternoon for a pediatric brain tumor society and, during dull moments, had ordered all kinds of clothing online. Shopping. She should have thought of it before. The meeting had stretched all day long but she had come home to a veritable snowdrift of red and white Macy’s bags just inside the front door.

  Now she was trying on her new clothes. The dark shadow had peeped on her all day until she’d come home—then had stopped at the sidewalk of the house acros
s the street and taken up watch there.

  Which was almost as unnerving as having it follow her into the house.

  “I really just want to scratch this thing until it pops out of the skin,” she told her reflection. She dragged her fingernails across it—she’d just had them done today, a French manicure. She grimaced and forced herself to put her hands down.

  She looked like a pretty young woman in her early twenties. She had diamond studs in her ears and her hair in a Marcel wave. She was trying on a black and gold striped flapper dress. Now that the retro clubs were becoming more known, designers were targeting the market. Some less discreetly than others.

  Softly, the the front door opened downstairs.

  Bobby?

  She wasn’t living the kind of life at the moment where anyone but the maids had keys to the front door. And it wasn’t their day to dust.

  She tiptoed into the bedroom and slid open the drawer with the gun in it, then opened a connection to emergency services.

  Emergency Services. How can I help you?

  Bernice muttered, “Hello…I think I may have a home intruder downstairs.”

  The operator asked her to confirm her information and she did so. A police officer is on the way. Please stay calm and leave the line open. We need permission to access your household security system so I can send the relevant details to the officer.

  Bernice switched the house systems over to emergency—intruder mode. The house asked her to confirm that she had already called emergency services and she did so; then it opened access to the operator.

  All the lights went off.

  Bernice cut the connection to emergency services without a second thought. The operator had to be a fake.

  She froze for a few seconds, waiting for her eyes to adjust. The orange glow of streetlights came in through the window along the street. She picked her way across the room, slipping on the blue coat and picking up a pair of new shoes. She tucked the revolver into a pocket.

  Someone was climbing the stairs. She tiptoed over to the window and looked down: there was a car parked along the street. The streetlight reflected off the front windshield. It was an electric car and she couldn’t tell if the engine was running or if the car still held a driver.

  At least with the connection cut they couldn’t watch her from her own security cameras.

  She retreated swiftly from the window into the walk-in closet. There was a small panel between the backs of the two bedroom closets, almost as though someone had planned for some hanky-panky.

  She ducked through an armful of coats. The panel was already open; she must have forgotten to shut it the last time she’d shown it to someone. She slipped into the spare bedroom, the door of which was thankfully closed.

  The spare bedroom faced the back of the house—and the black, wrought-iron fire escape original to the house. She slid open a window and looked out. The last ten feet or so would be a straight drop onto the grass. She slipped her feet into her new shoes and hoped they wouldn’t raise blisters.

  She called up the retro card, called a taxi using a neighbor’s unprotected wireless network, and gave the driver a nearby address.

  · · ·

  “So you were followed?”

  The dame shrugged, the Marcel wave moving slightly against her head. The grain of her hair almost matched the swirling wood of the bar. She finished crunching the last piece of ice. Charlie shoved the last bite of his ham sandwich into his mouth and scanned over the room.

  Dolores, despite being the biggest bitch of the bunch, was still working her tail off like a trooper. Yvette was AWOL, probably having a quiet joint out back with the dishwashers, and Marie had retreated to the back of the room.

  She was watching him. Her mascara was smeared. Not tear streaks but like she’d reapplied it with a heavy hand. Almost raccoon eyes.

  “Why did you come here?” he asked finally.

  “It was the address on the card. What else was I going to do, call the cops?”

  She flashed him another dimple.

  “Why tell me?”

  “You have a friendly face.”

  “What are you going to do next?”

  “You tell me, Charlie. You tell me. I can’t turn on my network or the bad guys will be able to find me. And dollars to donuts they’re on my trail as it is. I’ve been here one too many times for them not to check it out. Just in case. I can’t go to the cops and I can’t contact Bobby without turning on my network connection. I don’t know what else to do.”

  “So you’re asking me?”

  “Why not?”

  By then he had caught on to the way that this dame saw the world. Either she didn’t know or she wasn’t ready to admit it to herself.

  He said, “What do you think is in the chip? Have you tried to find out?”

  She grimaced. “I’m no hacker. For all I know, trying to find out might cause it to self-destruct. That might even be why it was itching. The itching stopped since I disconnected the network. I think someone was trying to hack it.”

  Charlie gave the situation some thought. Not just the dame’s story but the whole night. “The only advice I got for you is to drink another drink, listen to the music, and maybe dance the Charleston when they push back the tables.”

  “I can’t pay for it. Not without getting on the network.”

  “Like I said, that’s my advice.”

  She flashed her dimple. “Then give me another drink. Another gin rickey, and use the modern gin, not that bootlegger crap.”

  He mixed it as specified and she sipped at it.

  Miss Alice and the rest of the band were setting up on stage. The drummer was rattling his traps and the saxophone was trying to tune to the piano—a heroic effort. Finally everything was ready and Alice gave the xylophone player a nod. Behind the tiny percussionist was an enormous gong: she picked up a mallet and drove it onto the huge brass plate.

  As soon as the gong rang a dozen busboys leapt from behind the columns and folded the tables in the center of the room, lifting them overhead and making them disappear. The bottoms of the tables all had heavy plastic bags underneath; the leftover dishes and napkins and silverware slid inside with a rattle. The guests were used to it and rescued their drinks before they were snatched away.

  The chairs were pushed back from the center of the room, the mortal guests doing most of the work. The gold-sequined waitresses came in with big push brooms and swept the floor.

  And then the room went dark.

  A spotlight irised open, focusing on Miss Alice.

  She wore a purple sequined dress and a silver feather boa that sparkled against her skin. She had waved purple hair and diamond earrings, and long white gloves that went almost to the shoulder. She was a retro but you’d never know it, not even under a spotlight.

  She inhaled, clasped her big silver microphone with both gloves, and started to croon.

  The dame twisted around on her bar stool and watched the show. About a hundred guests got up from their seats and started to dance. The look on the dame’s face was classic. She was missing her Bobby. He could tell.

  A small red icon appeared on Charlie’s retinal display. Another alert. He opened it.

  Warning, intrusion into guest areas by several non-state agents. Do not evacuate at this time. Agents are armed with guns and knives and have injured several people upstairs. Agents include two mortals and one or more retros, were heard asking whether the front door guards had seen a woman in a black and gold dress. Report suspicious activity/persons immediately.

  Charlie flagged the dame. She acquired a red halo that only he and the other staff could see.

  A second later, Yvette came up to the bar with an order for a sidecar, an Old Fashioned, and a Hanky Panky. Dolores arrived a second later, sarcastically mentioning that if Charlie could mix up a pair of French 75s for her guests, that would be nice. Marie, her mascara now truly smeared, asked him if he’d ever made that G&T she’d ordered half an hour ago—which she hadn
’t.

  He groused and started making the sidecar. It was just a show: the girls were waiting for orders.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw a shadow. And flagged it. It moved through the crowd, ignored by all of the guests—mortal and retro both.

  The dame stiffened. “I didn’t…my network…how…”

  Charlie said, “I see it, miss. Act natural.”

  She didn’t quite relax.

  Out in the darkness, two other shapes popped up red as they were tagged by other staff members. The busboys began to move in, slim and short and easy to overlook—until they had your arms twisted behind your back and a stun gun at the base of your spine.

  The shadow ducked behind a column and disappeared from view.

  Another alert popped up. This one said, All outgoing network connections blocked. Beware hacking and viral activity.

  Miss Alice kept singing as the jaws of the trap closed in. The shadow and the two goons crept toward the dame. It was almost comic, the way they tried to sneak up on her. All four of them were flagged bright red.

  A countdown timer appeared, twelve seconds and decreasing. Prepare for acquisition and suppression of main targets. The girls stepped in close around the dame, trying to look casual instead of deadly.

  Ten…nine…eight…seven…six…five…four…three…two…

  The lights went out and Miss Alice disappeared. The sounds of scuffle filled the room. A gasp. A woman’s scream, quickly smothered. A grunt of effort. The sound of shattering glass.

  “What are you doing?” someone said.

  Charlie turned to face the noise and requisitioned use of one of the night-vision cameras in the main hall. The world turned green and he saw a woman holding something with a long barrel leaning over the balcony, pointing the end toward the dame.

  “Get down!”

  In a second he was over the bar and standing in front of the dame. She dove to the floor.

  A shot rang out, he felt a streak of what felt like fire run through his shoulder, and the wood of the bar crunched.

  The shot hadn’t come from the direction he’d expected it to come from.

  Gritting his teeth, he sent a top-priority message back to the system. False information reported to cameras. Suspected virus. Also send medic, I’m hit.