by Paul Neilan
I felt the same way. I was walking into a meeting with Leda Dresden and I had no clue what it was about. The city scrolled by out the window in a rain-streaked blur. I stood from my seat, waited for my stop.
* * *
I rode the trolley up the hill to the Getty. Stood for the body scan before I walked through a student sculpture exhibition of drunk robots and dinosaurs in despair fashioned out of wire underneath two Tesla coils flicking lightning across the ceiling like an apocalypse. I wandered through the rooms, past a baroque painting of a war in heaven, angels and demons brawling in red and black, blood and shadows. Past a feathered serpent, the ancient god of rain, slithering through the clouds. Past the bust of a man straining, tendons leaping from his neck like he was being electrocuted, while beside him a guy in a gilded frame stretched his arms and yawned. The Van Gogh was on the second floor, a crowd of people standing in front of it with their screens out, snapping shots of themselves for Grid.
“He painted it in an asylum, a year before he died,” Leda Dresden said, looking at the irises. The blushing blues and sighing greens. She was in Doc Martens boots and a polka-dot dress with a denim jacket, her hair cut at sharp angles, framing her face. “Now they take pictures of it to post on Grid so they can keep themselves out of one.”
“That’s how it turns,” I said, watching them smile for themselves and their screens. “They let you walk around with your insanity tucked in your pocket nowadays.”
“Wellness is just another name for Compliance,” she said. “So is Optimization. They pull your piece off you at the body scan?”
“I don’t carry anymore,” I said. “I’m out of the business.”
“I heard,” she said. “I didn’t believe it. I still don’t.”
“How about you?” I said. “Still in with Lou Tremaine’s crew?”
“It’s a loose affiliation,” she said. “It has to be, the way things are now.”
We turned away from Irises, towards a Picasso portrait of a white-faced man who looked half mad, long hair hanging off the sides of his otherwise bald head, smiling jagged with a flower in his lapel.
“He could’ve been Van Gogh’s cellmate,” I said.
“There’s crazy plastered all over these walls,” Leda Dresden said. “Condolences on Eddie Lompoc.”
“I don’t need them,” I said. “We worked together. We weren’t tight.”
“You remember Basil Fenton?” she said.
The name sounded familiar. “Fenton,” I said. “Bad with people, good with a knife. What about him?”
“Few months back we pulled a job, went out for a few drinks after,” Leda said. “He starts telling me about a place he knew called the Dunwich Academy. A school for psychopaths. They took troubled kids from all over, highest scores on all the wrong tests, the ones the Rorschach blots were afraid of, tried to steer them away from their unnatural tendencies. The kids wound up learning more from each other than they did from their instructors. By the time they figured it out, it was too late. They shut down the school, sent the kids home, if they had one. Scattered them all over, covered the whole project up. Made it disappear.”
“School for psychopaths?” I said. “Sounds like he was pitching you a series.”
“I thought so too, but he was spooked,” she said. “And Fenton didn’t spook easy. I didn’t think much about it, until three weeks later when they found him with his pants down and a belt around his neck. Same way Eddie Lompoc went.”
“There’ve been others,” I said. “Not just Fenton and Lompoc.”
“I was wondering about that,” she said.
We walked out of the gallery, away from the crowd, through a glass hallway that opened onto a veranda. Rain dripped from the awning above.
“Eddie Lompoc ever mention Dunwich?” she said.
“No,” I said. “He wouldn’t have. He would’ve tried to play an angle on it somehow.”
“It might’ve gotten him killed,” she said. “Fenton was running scared. That wasn’t like him.”
We were standing on a square of concrete painted green, Inspiration Point printed on the floor. We looked out at the city. An incinerator plant was spitting fire into the sky against the low clouds.
“You can’t be out of the game yet, Harrigan,” she said. “It’s just getting started.”
“This view isn’t moving me,” I said, nodding at the words at our feet.
“I don’t know,” Leda Dresden said, watching the flames lick the horizon. “Burning it down doesn’t seem like a bad idea.”
* * *
I spent some time in the weeds after I split with Clyde and Evie. It was hard enough finding work when you were connected. Outside of a crew you had two options. You could plug into Grid like the rest of them, run up your credits in the simulations, give Zodiac a look at what you could do, all you were good for, how they could use you. A running audition for a ring. Or you could take the off-Grid scraps. Tracking jobs mostly, trailing runaways and deadbeats, stragglers who owed the wrong people and couldn’t pay. But everybody does, one way or another.
It was a dirty business. There’s no other kind. I got a call from Richie Vallejo, a stringer out of Koreatown.
“Still chasing the ring, Richie?” I said.
“Still chasing your tail, Harrigan?” he said. “I’ve got a job for you, if you’re interested.”
“I don’t take Zodiac action,” I said.
It was the only way to stay uncompromised. Once they got their hooks in they never let you go.
“This is off book. Unsanctioned,” he said. “They’ve got nothing to do with it.”
It had been a lean few weeks. I was down to my last bottle of bubbles.
“What’s the name?” I said.
Julian French. He’d skipped out on his old man, a jeweler in the district, taken some merchandise with him. The guy just wanted his boy to come home. Wouldn’t mind the rocks back either, from the sound of it.
“What else?” I said.
“What do you mean?” Richie Vallejo said.
“There’s always something else,” I said.
“Kid’s a junkie,” he said. “Needles, pills. Whatever he can get his hands on. The old man wants to keep the law out of it. I’d handle it myself, but—”
“You can’t find him,” I said. “You already tried.”
“That’s where you come in, Harrigan,” Richie Vallejo said. “I can get you half up front. How about it?”
I plugged in, kept it anonymous, masking the screen location. Skimmed the feeds like I was picking stray leaves off a pool’s smooth surface, never leaving a ripple. Julian French was all over Grid. He was an influencer, junior level, but he had a following. He’d been silent for a few days. They hadn’t noticed yet, but they would.
I worked the streets, followed the shadows, traced him to a Skid Row squat where I found him shivering in front of a busted screen hung crooked on the wall, broken glass littering the floor. He had a long shard of it pressed against his wrist.
“Who are you?” he said, his eyes rimmed red and tormented.
“Harrigan,” I said. “Your father’s looking for you, Julian. He wants you to come home.”
“No he doesn’t,” he said. “He doesn’t care. Neither do they.” He jerked his head to the screen on the wall. “Why do they have to look at me? Why can’t they just let me be?”
He closed his eyes like a kid who pretends he’s invisible. Who pretends the monsters aren’t there. I took a few steps into the room, glass crunching under my boots. His eyes snapped open at the sound.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Julian French said.
I didn’t either. Tailing desperate people, finding them at their worst, broken down, in pieces, with nothing more to give. Taking it from them anyway. They ran for a reason. I never wanted to hear what it was. That’s why I didn’t carry anymore. Putting someone down was sometimes easier than sending them back where they didn’t belong. A measure of mercy, creeping in. I wou
ldn’t give myself the option.
“Come on,” I said. “I’ll take you home.”
“I don’t have a home,” he said. “It’s all on Grid. Four sims a day, more on the weekends. My father’s a sponsor. He won’t let me leave. It all belongs to them.”
“Who?” I said, watching the glass against his wrist.
“Zodiac,” he said.
“He’s right about that one, Harrigan,” Richie Vallejo said from the doorway, a toothpick in his mouth, a gun in his hand. “You’ve got an agreement, Julian. Everything you do, you do on Grid. That includes slitting your wrists. You’re not allowed to get shy on us. Not now. You’ve got to give the people what they want.”
“What is this, Richie?” I said. “You said it was off book. Unsanctioned.”
“I say a lot of things,” Richie Vallejo said. “Right now I’m saying the Zodiac boys are on their way. Libra division handles Grid talent. They’re grooming Julian here for another sim series, prime time. Too late to back out now. But that’s not your problem. You can beat it, Harrigan. Unless you want your name in the report.”
He looked at me, rolled the toothpick to the other side of his mouth.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” he said. “I knew I could count on you, leaving me all the credit upstairs. But hey, don’t say I never gave you nothing.”
He tossed a stack of bills in my direction. I caught the money with my outstretched hand, reached for my gun with the other. It was automatic. Instinct. I remembered too late I wasn’t wearing one.
“Old habits die hard, Harrigan,” Richie Vallejo said. “Even when you’re the one who killed them. Now if you don’t mind.”
He stepped around me, keeping the gun close, kicking a narrow path through the glass.
“And you, cut the dramatics,” he said to Julian French. “Kids these days. They can’t even off themselves without an audience.”
I looked at Julian French on the floor, the glass pricking his skin without going any deeper. He had his eyes closed again.
“It’s the wrong move, Richie,” I said. “You’re burning bridges.”
“Bridges?” he said, rolling his toothpick. “You’re nowhere, Harrigan. Headed there fast. Who needs bridges when you’re on the way up?”
I heard the sirens as I went to the door. Stuffed the money in my pocket as I closed it behind me.
Two weeks later Julian French streamed his suicide on Grid, overdosing for his followers. He became another martyr for Wellness intervention and screening, the poster boy for isolation, splayed out on every screen. There was an important conversation about the perils of celebrity and addiction, vows for more understanding all around. His memorial simulation was a Grid-wide spectacle. His father sold custom-made pendants, Julian’s image intertwined with the Libra sign. He would never be forgotten. Until he instantly was. Replaced by someone’s else’s face on Grid. The world kept churning, same as it always did.
The money didn’t last. It never does. I didn’t take another job until Stan Volga came tumbling down the steps and landed at my door.
* * *
“Loneliness is tough, man. Everybody struggles with it. Everybody,” Charlie Horse said, one hand on the microphone as he looked out from the stage. “And I know it’s cool to say Whatever, nothing matters, everyone dies alone, but I don’t think that’s true. In fact I know it’s not true. Not for you. Or you or you.”
He pointed at me last, let his smile linger. I was sitting in his chair.
“I’ll go one step further. Nobody in this room is gonna die alone. I guarantee it. Isn’t that comforting? All of you dying together, all at once, watching each other go? Isn’t it? Yeah, it isn’t. But at least this way you get to be a part of something bigger. A massive fireball that will engulf the entire building and take the whole block and then—I don’t want to spoil the surprise. Just make sure you don’t blink. Because I’ll tell you something, and this is the God’s honest truth. Whoever’s sitting beside you, whether you know them or not, the look on their face when it happens is gonna be the funniest fucking thing you’ll ever see in your life. Trust me. Or don’t. You’ll find out for yourself soon enough.”
He clapped into the microphone, thunder echoing. Let the silence overtake it before he stepped offstage.
“Harrigan,” he said, sitting across the table from me. “You’re like a bad penny. Completely fucking worthless. Where the fuck is my Danish?”
I looked at him.
“What,” Charlie Horse said. “You don’t like me calling her that? I’ve called her much worse. Done much worse. You can believe that, my friend.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I said.
“Look at that face,” he said. “Harrigan, you big softie. You’re worse than my fucking wife, getting so emotional, and I’m not even married. But I still hate that bitch with all my heart. You can believe that too.”
I saw Sidowsky come in the door. I stood from the table.
“See you around, Charlie,” I said.
“That’s right you’ll see me around, Harrigan. Around midnight in your little shit box apartment! One forty-four Western number B! Putting a bullet in your fucking head while you sleep!” he said to my back.
I went to the bar.
“Is that Charlie Horse?” Sidowsky said as he sat down beside me.
“It is,” I said.
“Son of a bitch,” he said. “My life just keeps getting worse.”
“I hate when people say we’re all God’s children,” the Rev said into the microphone. “It’s so condescending. I’m a grown man. I can think for myself. I don’t want to be God’s child. I want to be God’s grandchild. His first and only grandchild. Kids get tough love and discipline, the My house My rules speech. You know what grandkids get? Whatever they want, whenever they fucking want it. Yeah I only saw one set of footprints in the sand too. Me and my Pop Pop flew over the beach this morning in a spaceship on our way to go fight some dinosaurs. I waved at you as we passed, but you were too busy looking back and bitching about everything. You see, it’s not that God doesn’t hear your prayers. He does. He’s just too busy playing with me right now to answer them. Go figure some shit out on your own for once. Give the guy a break. Nobody’s ever seen Him this happy before.”
The Rev stepped offstage, headed for a table in the corner.
Sidowsky shook the ice in his glass, already tapping for a refill.
“Nobody talks about Schrödinger’s parents,” the red-haired girl said into the microphone.
Father: What the fuck are we gonna do with this kid?
Mother: Dolph—
Father: I mean it, Georgy. Who brings a dead cat in for show and tell? The first week of school? Did you know about this?
Mother: Me? No! What kind of question is that?
Father: Because you don’t live something like this down, Georgy. I don’t care if it’s kindergarten, these kids remember. So do their parents. And the teacher, Jesus Christ. Tricking her into opening the box for him? What the fuck—
Mother: He didn’t trick her. He asked if she’d help him with the lid. There’s a difference between—
Father: Are we raising a fucking psychopath here?
Mother: No Dolph, he just—
Father: I’m being serious, Georgy. What the fuck are we gonna do?
Mother: He said the cat wasn’t dead until she opened the box.
Father: What? Who?
Mother: The teacher.
Father: What’s that supposed to mean?
Mother: He said it was up to her. Once she decided—
Father: She decided? Decided what? To scream bloody murder while a classroom full of five-year-olds pissed their pants? Is that what you mean by—wait a second. Hold on here. Are you saying this is my fault?
Mother: If you’d just talk to him, Dolph. Ask him about it. Try to understand. He really just wants to—
Father: All right. OK. So I leave work, in the middle of the day, because our son brings a box of roadkill
in to share with the world, and somehow I’m the asshole? This is typical. So fucking typical—
Mother: You’re the one who tried to blame me!
Father: Every time, Georgy! You do this every time!
The red-haired girl stepped offstage, headed for a table in the corner.
“Who’s she?” Sidowsky said.
“Schrödinger’s daughter,” I said.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” he said, shaking his glass again.
CMB Roach leaned into the microphone, his thick eyebrows already running.
CMB…takin you on a journey…
On one…on two…on
Dip it like ya gettin au jus girl
You my pearl
Them soft curves
In this hard world
So imma take ya out to dinner
And then eat all ya food
Tell the maitre d’ go fuck hisself
When he say I bein rude
Then imma make you wear a burka
Even though you ain’t Islamic
Introduce you to my family
As a prophet of Muhammad
Is for ya own good
Everybody wear the hood
Pull it down
To the ground
And then we top it
CMB Roach stepped offstage—eyebrows in streaks, bobbing and weaving—headed for a table in the corner.
“What was that all about?” Sidowsky said.
“That was CMB Roach,” I said. “I’ll introduce you.”
We went around the bar, towards the table in the corner where they were sitting. Charlie Horse watched us go.
“I know you,” the red-haired girl said. “You weren’t Eddie’s friend.”
“This is Sidowsky,” I said.
“Detective Sidowsky,” he said, annoyed. “Mind if we sit with you for a bit?”
We took chairs. Sidowsky beside the red-haired girl, me next to the Rev. CMB Roach, eyebrows smeared like a bomb had exploded in his face, glared at me.
“We’re sharing our favorite Eddie Lompoc memories,” the red-haired girl said. “Nobody has any.”
