by Alex P. Berg
As I absorbed my surroundings, I knew I’d found what I searched for while simultaneously having no idea what, exactly, I’d found.
“Paige, can you fill me in on what I’m looking at?”
Sorry, champ, she said. I’m not sure I can add much to what you’ve already surmised. Though I’ll add that whatever you plan on doing here, you need to speed it up. Carl’s on his way out.
“Did he find anything?” I asked as I walked over to the medical equipment.
Nothing quite like this, if that’s what you mean.
I poked at the display on the big, cloud-colored machine, then moved my finger to the multicolored cables.
How’s that method working out for you? asked Paige.
“Don’t knock it,” I said. “Poking things with fingers is a time-honored detective tradition. I’m sure many a case has been solved this way.”
Seriously, Rich. Move it, Paige said. We don’t have much time.
I hopped to the display stations. There weren’t any manual inputs—at least not any I was familiar with. Below the screens, a couple tong-like protrusions stuck out from the work stations, each with an oblong metal loop attached to the end.
Clawsticks, said Paige. Like joysticks, but for use with pincers.
I grabbed one and wiggled it back and forth. The matte dark gray display blossomed to life with a static sun image. A line of text in a language I wasn’t familiar with scrolled across the bottom.
“What does that say?” I asked.
It says to sign in for access, said Paige.
“Well? Can you?”
I heard crickets, then, No. It’s Brain-specific. Or Diraxi mind-specific, most likely.
“Come on. Isn’t there anything you can do?”
I jumped as a booming voice—not Paige’s—filled the void in my head. What are you doing here?
I turned. A Dirax with a pale, blotchy discoloration on the lower left of its jaw filled the doorframe, its eyes and antenna turned directly toward me.
24
I tensed as I spotted the Dirax. My mind raced. Should I play it cool, pretend to be lost, and hope for the best? Rehash the mime routine I’d successfully pulled off downstairs? Or bum rush the tall insectoid, drive a flying heel kick into its solar plexus, and haul tail out of there?
I wet my lips as I stood, words forming on my mouth of their own accord. “I…uh…”
Run! urged Paige.
I took a step forward, ready to follow her advice, but an omnipresent Diraxi voice halted me.
Wait…you are not Royce. The Dirax clacked its pincers, but not menacingly. Almost casually. Oh, by the nine suns of Contega… You are that idiot the others have mentioned. Weed, correct?
In my neck of the woods, calling someone an idiot could be considered fighting words, but rather than crouching, pincers out, as the sash-clad Veesnu priest had while accosting me in the race dome bathroom, this Dirax simply stood there, observing me, its pincer arms hanging loosely at its sides. I took advantage of the opening. I hunched and stepped forward, planting my weight on my left foot and preparing a strike.
You do not understand the magnitude of situation into which you have stumbled, do you? the Dirax’s voice came. You will ruin everything if left unattended. But luck, if such a concept is real, is with you. I retained the closest presence to this room after you sounded the alarm.
The Dirax’s words slowed my attack to an imperceptible crawl. “Wait, what? Alarm?”
The silent alarm present on the workstations. They activate when a foreign mind interfaces with them. They will know it was you. There is no way around it. You must come with me. The others must surely approach now that your friend has completed whatever escapade you tasked him with.
The Dirax turned and walked off down the hall, leaving me standing there, wobbling with my weight on one leg and nothing to kick. The last time I’d followed a Dirax’s instructions to follow along, I’d ended up accosted in a public restroom, but something about this particular Dirax’s request felt different—probably his references to ‘they’ and ‘the others.’
Don’t ask me, said Paige. Last time I told you to trust one of these guys you nearly got a claw to the face.
Time pressured my decision. The Dirax booked it down the hallway, and I followed in kind. We passed several rooms, some containing more banks of workstations and medical equipment, others that radiated warmth and hummed with electricity and the sound of cooling pumps for server arrays.
The blotchy-faced Dirax hooked a right, swiveled through a series of interconnected passages, and popped open the door to a stairwell, all at a speed somewhere between a jog and a canter.
I tried to make conversation as we took to the steps. “Hey, do you mind telling me—”
No. Stay quiet. Stay close. Time is short.
We descended to the ground floor and stopped in front of an emergency exit—the old school kind, sporting a push bar and lacking a motion sensor. The Dirax’s antennae flickered, and a lock clacked in its socket. My escort shoved the door open, and, before I could protest, he’d wrapped a spindly arm around me and given me a none-too-gentle nudge toward the exit.
“Hey, wait a second,” I said as I stumbled into an alley behind the Veesnu chapel. “What the hell’s going on here? Who are you? What—”
Be quiet. Leave. And…what is the human expression? Keep your head low. You will be contacted if necessary.
“Hey! I—”
The door slammed in my face, the questions on my tongue left to dry in the balmy Cetie night air.
I rubbed a hand across my face, the tips of my fingers slipping as they passed over the unnaturally smooth surface of the mask. Sweat oozed from my pores and wicked the synthetic material to my face. I loosened the collar of my robe, dug a hand under the edge of the mask, and tugged. It slipped from my head with a slurping pop.
“I don’t suppose you have any theories about what the hell’s going on?” I asked Paige.
Oh, I always have theories, she responded. But none of them have much evidence to support them. Certainly not enough to believe in them beyond a measure of reasonable doubt.
I ran a hand across my sweat-slicked hair before moving it down to my chin, where my fingers met resistance as they passed over the stubby bristles sprouting from the tip of my jaw. In my unplanned morning scramble, I’d forgotten to use the autoshaver. “Perfect. You’re like my own personal attorney.” I sighed. “Where’s Carl?”
He’s biding his time in the same alley we found you earlier in the day—the one behind the falafel and burrito shop. He figured the Diraxi wouldn’t think to look for him there. It would be too obvious of a spot. He’s on his way over now.
I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with air mercifully free of any hints of garbage or urine—or apples and rain, for that matter. I studied the emergency exit—its scratches and gouges, its battered steel and nicked paint—and wondered if I’d exited through it once or twice today. It bothered me that I couldn’t remember any of what happened after I sat down at the Veesnu sermon. How had I made it from this alley to the other? Had the blotchy-faced Dirax played a hand in that as well?
You know, it strikes me that perhaps we should follow the pale-jawed Dirax’s advice, said Paige.
“Specifically?” I asked.
We need to leave. Who knows when someone else is going to drop by here and have a negative reaction to our presence.
I didn’t argue. One alien initiated beating at the hands of exoskeleton-clad cultists per day was enough for me.
25
I sat in a padded, tan-colored booth at Katoh’s, my elbows resting on a polished bamboo table. Carl sat across from me. At my right, miniature plates packed with four to six pieces of norimaki, fukomaki, and temaki snaked around the side of the booth, the spin of the conveyor belt’s wheels inaudible underneath the low roar of the early-evening dinner crowd. I snagged a plate of spicy tuna and another of sea urchin roe, doused them with a pour of the house soy, an
d dove in.
Carl rubbed his hands together and cast hungry eyes my way. When he licked his lips, I broke my dam of silence.
“You want one?” I asked.
Carl hesitated, but only for a moment. “Yes. Screw the catch chamber. I’ll empty it while you sleep tonight.”
“Tuna or roe?”
“Both.”
Carl grabbed a plate and I deposited a pair of the seaweed and rice wrapped delicacies in front of him. He popped the roe boat in his mouth and smiled as he chewed.
“Good, right?” I said.
Carl responded with a mixture of moans and nodding. “Mmm. Yes. Get one of those carp narezushis while you’re at it.” He pointed at the conveyer to a covered bowl with delicate scrollwork on the side.
I grabbed the plate in question. “Wait…is this one of those fermented fish ones? Gross. Keep this one of your side of the table, will you?”
Carl opened the bowl, inhaling the aroma before popping a couple of the foul-smelling rolls into his mouth. His moans became indecent.
I shook my head. “Seriously? You finally decide to eat something and that’s what you go for?”
Carl swallowed before answering. “I understand your trepidation. Your biology is attuned to certain smells you associate with decay. It’s a survival mechanism to keep you from eating spoiled food. But, boy, are you missing out! The fermentation adds incredible layers of flavor and texture to the dish. The chemical detectors in my mouth just went into overdrive to keep up.”
I snorted. “Yeah, mine don’t do that. And I wouldn’t be caught dead eating those things—no pun intended.”
Carl smiled as he wolfed down another bite. “Guess you’re right. We each have abilities the other could conceivably be envious of. I’m not sure I’m entirely ready to put the enjoyment of fermented sushi on par with fully-realized free will, but it’s a start.”
“Cheers to that.” I held up a cup of sake.
Carl clinked me with a spare chopstick, and we ate in silence. Carl stopped after his lone platter of stinky fish rolls, but I kept going. I polished off an additional three plates before my partner interrupted.
“So…care to bounce ideas off one another?”
“I’m not sure there’s much to talk about,” I said. “We’re at a dead end.”
After ditching my blisteringly-hot robe and mask combination, I’d caught a cab with Carl out of Knottington to the tube station, whereupon I’d had Paige give Valerie a few more Brain calls only to be rejected repeatedly. After arriving in Cozy Harbor, we’d booked it to Valerie’s apartment, where I found that her front door had been fixed. Whether or not Valerie was home, I couldn’t tell, but repeated chime activations, knocks, and calls for her by name didn’t rouse her, though they did rouse some neighbors and bring me various threats of violence and police action. From there, we’d headed to Val’s bakery, but similar actions there brought similar results. In a fit of inspiration, I’d tried the pass code from the morning on the door, but it no longer worked. Hungry, thirsty, and depressed, I’d settled on Katoh’s for some solid and liquid pick-me-ups.
“We’re not at a dead end,” said Carl. “The information you gathered at the Veesnu chapel could prove incredibly useful.”
“How so?” I asked. “All I discovered was that, in all likelihood, both me and Professor Castaneva from the Cetie U biology department are right. Her, in that Veesnu is a combination religion and science, one that involves the use of complicated, home-brewed medical equipment, and me, in that those Veesnu headcases are brainwashing their disciples. Literally. I can’t imagine what else those resonance scanners and holoprojector arrays are for.”
“To be fair, we’re not sure what any of that equipment is for,” said Carl. “I’ll have to go through your feed later tonight with Paige to see if we can glean any additional clues from what you saw and heard. But it’s useful information, even if you weren’t able to access any Diraxi data from the displays.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, Carl. What if I’m right? What if the Diraxi are brainwashing religious ‘pilgrims’ and Valerie is one of them. It may be immoral, but is it illegal? Valerie accepted Veesnu of her own free will, as far as we know. Why should we interfere?”
“Because she came to us for assistance,” said Carl. “As you put it earlier, if she’s suffering from mental foul play, some part of her is still lucid enough to seek help. And we agreed to provide it to her. Besides, even if what the Veesnu believers are doing is legal—something we’re not sure of, by any means—breaking into Miss Meeks’ apartment isn’t. Neither is attacking you at the race dome. And let’s not forget someone trespassed in your office—possibly the Diraxi. Those are all criminal offenses.”
I shrugged and played with the last of my sushi rolls.
“Come on,” said Carl. “What about your sermon-inspired blackout? Or the mysterious Dirax at the chapel who helped you escape? None of that interests you?”
I looked up at my pal. Apparently, he took the look on my face as an answer.
“Oh, I see,” said Carl. “You’re down in the dumps because Miss Meeks won’t answer your calls.”
“Yes, Carl, I am,” I said. “I’ll admit it. I’m worried about Valerie. But there’s nothing I can do. She won’t answer my Brain pings. She hasn’t posted to her social media profiles in weeks. We can’t find her. I don’t know what else to try. And the stuff you mentioned? The break-ins, the blotchy faced Dirax? Yeah, they interest me. But it’s been a long day. I’m tired. Right now, I just want to pop a few more Buzzkills and painkillers and go to bed.”
Carl grimaced.
“What?” I asked.
“The Buzzkills and painkillers? We left them at your office.”
I frowned and shook my head. “We’ll stop there on our way home.”
Paige paid as I got up to go. After leaving Katoh’s, Carl and I caught a cab and headed back to my office, which wasn’t as huge a burden as I’d made it out to be. The building wasn’t more than a few minutes drive from my apartment.
The entire ride, thoughts of Valerie accosted me. I’d been honest to Carl—to a degree. I was worried about her, but more so than I let on, and on multiple levels. What if the Diraxi meant her bodily harm? She’d implied as much in our last conversation, and if the Veesnu chaplain had tried to injure me, why not her? Surely she knew more about whatever was going on behind the closed Veesnu church doors than I did. If they suspected her of spreading information…
I also fretted over the emotional and mental damage the Diraxi might be inflicting upon her—not only the deleterious effects on her memory, but her overall ability to think, reason, and process information.
The thing that stuck in my craw—the biggest piece I’d omitted from my conversation with Carl—was the effect of Valerie’s brainwashing on me. Despite my best efforts, I’d fallen for her. I knew that. What could I say? It was more than her physical beauty. She’d paid attention, spoken kindly, and shared a shy smile with me. But—and this was the part that scared me—what if the Valerie I’d come to know was instead a repressed part of her, a personality existing only in a corner of her mind, hidden behind a Veesnu-induced blockade? What if the real Valerie didn’t care for me at all? By curing her of whatever malaise the Diraxi had cast upon her…would she forget me entirely?
We reached my office building. I entered and sent for the lift, my thoughts still running roughshod over my senses.
A trill brought me out of my reverie. “Paige…is that Val?”
My digital lady friend had ridden shotgun with me throughout my mental excursion. She said, in almost a sad voice, Sorry, pal. It’s another GenBorn number.
I sighed. “Seriously? They already called about my appointment earlier today. Decline it.”
The lift arrived and Carl and I entered. As the elevator accelerated upward, my Brain trilled once more.
GenBorn again, said Paige, anticipating my question. It’s not the same number that called this morning, if you’
re curious.
“Fine, put them through,” I said angrily.
I anticipated the onset of the call and launched into a tirade as soon as it connected. “Yes, GenBorn? I’d like to talk to a manager please. I want to change my communication preferences so that—”
The voice on the other end of the line wasn’t the kind, secretarial voice that had dialed me in the morning. Instead, it was rough, masculine, and direct. “Don’t enter your office.”
The lift dinged and the door opened.
“Um…what?” I said.
“Do not enter your office,” said the voice. “It’s not safe.”
Carl stepped into the hallway, curiosity plain on his face. He gave me a silent head nod as if to say, What’s up?
I followed him into the hall so the lift wouldn’t close on me. “What do you mean? Who is this?”
Silence reigned, followed by the familiar, bubbly voice of Paige. He hung up.
“Who was it?” I asked.
Not sure, said Paige. Like I said, it was a GenBorn corporate number. It’s not assigned to any one individual.
Paige had filled Carl in. “Why didn’t he want you to enter the office?”
Before I could answer that I didn’t know, the office exploded.
26
I found myself staring at the ceiling, hot and wet, as fine droplets pelted me in the face. A red light flashed intermittently—the fire alarm if I wasn’t mistaken—but the alarm’s distinctive, pulsing blare didn’t accompany it. Instead, the roaring of a thousand oceans filled my ears, waves crashing on windswept shores and breakers impacting stone.
Orange and yellow tongues licked the corners of my vision. I tried to shift to view them more clearly, but my neck declined to cooperate, instead rebuking me with a sharp, stinging pain.
Over the oceanic roar, I could make out a voice. A familiar one. Paige’s. She was saying something over and over. A name. My name. Rich. She seemed upset, or perhaps concerned. I couldn’t grasp why. The water was fine, and warm. Oh, so warm—like a sauna.
