Wakers

by Ron Collins

  She felt a chill.

  The place’s lack of odor added to its edge, and the hard chair they gave her was a weapon all by itself.

  There was no safety here, no place to hide.

  The inspector entered, an easily identifiable autonomic entity constructed of clone material of a masculine form, dressed in regimented blue. It strode briskly to the table to take a seat.

  “May I get you a tea?” the inspector asked.

  “No, thank you.”

  “I need to ask you why you came to San Francisco.”

  “Why do you have to ask that? You already have my submission.”

  “I need to hear it from you, or are you just avoiding the question?”

  “I can’t avoid answering what I’ve already answered,” she said. “Why I am being treated as a prisoner?”

  “This is standard procedure for such an outbreak.”

  “I see.”

  “You are an artist?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is an interesting label.”

  “How so?”

  “There are not a lot of people who claim such.”

  Kinji shrugged. “I can’t help it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Artists don’t decide to be artists. We just are. I can’t help that I see ideas everywhere.”

  The inspector made a dismissive expression that started with his lips and flowed up to his eyes.

  Kinji straightened, this time perhaps with a bit more defiance.

  The inspector’s expression was more grimace than smile.

  “I’m sure we can agree there is no art here, eh, Ms. Kinji Hall.”

  “Quite the contrary.”

  “No?”

  “This inquiry itself, for example,” Kinji said. “There is a simple cycle that some might call a ritual, which is arguably one of the most disciplined of all arts. There is a pulse to it, right? A feel to it? A well-done interrogation builds on itself, doesn’t it? And it grows on its own, I suppose. Doesn’t it? Sometimes winding up in places that are totally different than what had seemed preordained only moments before?”

  Kinji hesitated only a beat.

  “So, yes, inspector, there is a great deal of art here in this room.”

  The inspector seemed to pause.

  “What do you know of Mr. Montgomery’s escape?”

  “Was Mr. Montgomery a prisoner?”

  “How is that an answer?”

  “It could not be an escape unless he were escaping from something. Your question implies he was a prisoner.”

  “He was being held under medical quarantine.”

  “The medical center gave me no reason to believe he was contagious, so I had no cause to consider him dangerous in that way, or even to think he would run away, hence I was not paying attention to him in that fashion.”

  “So, you did not aide him?”

  “No,” she replied.

  She was sure the inspector would already have processed the scan of her experience at the shop. The question at hand was whether she was as correct as she thought she was. If her safe block wasn’t truly safe, she was in trouble. Otherwise, she should be fine.

  “You saw him leave, though.”

  “I saw him step off the platform, and I knew the version of him that sat beside me was the hologram.”

  “And you did nothing to point that out?”

  “I thought he was playing a game. We’ve all done it at some time or another. He was clearly having fun learning how to use projection. I mean, it’s fun to try to pass off your double to your friends. I was surprised no one else noticed.”

  “And you have no idea why he left?”

  She shrugged. “Perhaps he was afraid of you.”

  “He was treated to the most comfortable environment.”

  “Maybe he was just bored.”

  “Did he say anything to you that would make you say that?”

  “It was clear he was anticipating his release, but beyond that I couldn’t say.” She pressed her hands into the armrests of the chair. “I can understand that. I think it’s fair to say we can both agree that freedom is what makes life worth living.”

  “Of course, it is, Ms. Hall,” the inspector said with a more comfortable smile. “And we wouldn’t want to have to take that away from you.”

  The length of silence grew uncomfortable.

  “Do you have any other questions?”

  “Just one.” The inspector leaned over the table.

  Kinji waited.

  “Do you have any idea where Bexie Montgomery is right now?”

  Kinji’s smile was deep and full of relief. For once she could say something with the full force of the truth behind it.

  “No, inspector. I have no idea where Bexie Montgomery went.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Bexie’s heart pounded as he slipped from the platform. He took a step, then hunched to his belly to snake along close to the floor, continuing until he was behind a fully opaque billboard that was rotating ads every few seconds.

  Glancing, he saw his escorts hadn’t responded.

  He felt suddenly exposed, though.

  He’d projected his hologram, of course, and at the same time he’d projected an aura of nothing around himself. Made himself essentially invisible. But it was hard to do, and now that he didn’t have the misdirection of his second around him, he gave it up completely.

  He expected an army of robots to come streaming out of secret openings in the walls at any moment.

  Stop it, he thought. There’s no time for this kind of crap.

  How long did he have before someone — or something — would catch on?

  Kinji would help him, but the time she could give him was short.

  He used a clothes rack and other displays to slip further into the “store.” He’d seen an exit in the back corner. The path there felt every bit a no-man’s land, but with some luck he could make it.

  People strolled past. He saw their shoes and leggings beneath the rack.

  With the Central Inspector’s Office linked into every brain in the world but his, each one of these people was a mobile security camera.

  He needed to alter himself, and he needed to do his best to avoid contact.

  A hat stand stood nearby. He grabbed a wide-brimmed model and pushed it down on his head. Stylish, Montgomery.

  Picking a moment, he walked briskly until he came to a nook that housed a small apothecary whose owner was engaged in schooling a customer on chemical compositions. He juked left, then right, then nearly ran into a man who had left a pastry dispensary. He ducked his head, and apologized, moving immediately on and brushing sugary residue from his shoulder.

  A man’s coat lay over a seat. Dark leather with a tint toward indigo.

  He shouldered it on as he continued toward a rear exit.

  The coat was light despite its materials, with a serrated collar.

  He found a pair of sunglasses in one pocket, and put them on as he walked, hoping his movement was calm and easy.

  Probably didn’t make a difference, but he would do anything that might put any computer mapping algorithms off. The glasses darkened his view, which he wasn’t sure he liked, but if it made him more difficult for face assessors to identify, then it would be worth it.

  Bexie gathered up his wits and collected the shell of confidence that had served him so well for so many years.

  Just like pulling down a major deal, he told himself.

  Focus.

  Stick to what’s important now.

  He merged into the press of people, taking only one glance behind to check for tails but finding none.

  The exit was so close.

  Each step came with agonizing slowness.

  He really wanted to run.

  The door.

  There.

  He pushed, hoping it wasn’t locked.

  Then he was outside in the sunshine of late afternoon, into the breeze that smelled of concrete and of salt.<
br />
  And into a stream of humanity. Jesus. He’d seen it from his room above the skyline, and he’d understood that these people were not workers, that a hundred percent of their day was spent in some form of leisure activity, socializing, or entertainment. But seeing it from a couple hundred meters away and being there were two different things.

  The city was packed.

  He pulled the brim of his hat down against the sunshine, and turned right without hesitation, slipped behind a row of trams, then took another right and walked through a wide plaza — an open patch of sidewalk lined with food stations of all types.

  Keeping his head down, he kept moving.

  Ahead of him, a woman spoke about her boyfriend and another responded with pithy advice about keeping a dog.

  Two men and a woman argued about a geo-play, which Bexie didn’t fully understand but realized had something to do with the players being in remotely separate locations, but still playing off each other.

  Voices jumbled. The sound of footsteps rumbled.

  He focused on those, tried to decide if he heard footsteps behind him or ahead for that matter. A man walking beside him seemed to be studying Bexie’s face. Bexie turned to look the other way, seeing a sequence of cameras and sensors lining the streets.

  Christ, he thought.

  He thought about eating but wondered if the Central Inspector’s Office would have them wired. Would a Chicago dog be the bane of his existence?

  A tram was waiting at the next station — the car painted red and advertised as an “old San Francisco Trolly!” It was a little larger than an old-style bus but open to the air and ringed with rails to keep riders — who were already crammed in — from falling out.

  He needed distance, and he needed it now. Could he just step on?

  Bexie grabbed a rail and swung onto the platform just as it lurched away.

  A woman elbowed him for space. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Sorry,” he muttered as he edged away, gripping the rail for dear life.

  One of the learning modules had explained the use of high-temperature superconductors in creating this smooth ride, but he was still unprepared for the sensation of gliding through the air without any sound other than the conversations of fellow riders. He felt the heat of their bodies, and the pressure of their closeness.

  The buzz and the feeling of motion combined to calm him down.

  Raising the brim of his hat, he glanced up the road.

  With his memory of San Francisco over three hundred years behind him, his concept of the city’s layout was useless. But he was pretty sure he was in the southern regions of what he knew as Bernal Heights.

  He needed a next step. A place to run.

  As the tram glided over the street, Bexie saw a furious stream of construction happening everywhere.

  Automated cranes, and crushing machines, and tumblers mixing material, and bot units scaling the sides of buildings to lay beams in their cross-slots a couple hundred meters in the air.

  The image reminded him of grainy black-and-white photos taken in the days of the first industrial revolution of men sitting on these beams hovering above the surface of the earth hundreds of meters below, eating their lunches as if it were nothing.

  He wondered what those men would say if they could see this.

  A buzz seemed to come over the tram.

  People scanned the area.

  “Is he running?” a woman said.

  In the distance he thought he saw a collection of security bots gathering.

  A woman shouldered into him.

  “Hey!” She turned, grabbed a fistful of his collar and nearly lifted him up to his toes. “What are you doing there, shoving up against me?”

  Bexie glanced at the woman standing beside her.

  “And now you’re looking at my girl, too?”

  “I’m sorry, miss.”

  The woman stared at him, her eyes constricting to a pair of points. He could almost hear the click of a camera and sense the packets of information coalescing inside the woman’s head and racing up to where the CIO would put it all together.

  He panicked, then.

  Without thinking, Bexie grabbed a rail and leaped over it.

  The tram was still traveling, and he tumbled to the ground, rolling to break his fall.

  Scrambling, he got up and ran.

  He had to find a place. Needed a haven to work from.

  He ran at a full sprint, which was not something his body was prepared for. His legs felt doughy, and his chest burned.

  Breathing came as a struggle, but he found an alleyway and ducked into it.

  It was long and narrow.

  But mostly, it was occupied.

  Panting, Bexie skidded to a halt.

  The man was big and angular, leaning against the wall a few paces down. Bexie put his hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. Footsteps came from behind in precise echoes against the sidewalks in a pattern like machine-gun fire.

  The man’s eyes were brown and surrounded by skin that was smooth and perfect. His lips raised in an expression that was a near perfect rendition of a smile.

  Robot, Bexie thought. The man was a robot.

  CHAPTER 21

  The flier left within ten minutes of its scheduled time.

  Kinji sat back on her seat and sipped on a drink bag. It was a cabernet, late vintage. Nothing remarkable, but interesting enough to go with the crisp wheat bread and vegetable dip she’d ordered preflight. It wasn’t, however, interesting enough to keep her mind away from Bexie Montgomery.

  She requested an aspirin tab to squelch the headache that had been building for the past hour and tried unsuccessfully to avoid thinking about him.

  He was a man with the soul of an artist, a man who took chances, a man who lived so much in the moment that he hadn’t given a second thought to trying to run away from the Central Inspector.

  Incredible.

  Witnessing that alone was worth the time it took to come to San Francisco.

  Had he succeeded in getting away?

  Had she been right to give him a link to the safety of a True Zone?

  Would he use it well?

  On the one hand, he’d been so firm about his belief in old-style capitalism, but on the other hand, he had a power about him — an aura that said he needed to be free to create in ways that others didn’t.

  Artists helped artists.

  That’s just how it was.

  She hoped she hadn’t completely fucked everything up in one irrational moment of inspiration. Wouldn’t be the first time, of course, but you don’t mess with the Central Inspector’s Office if you could help it. This could be a big deal. If Bexie Montgomery screwed this up, he could screw it up for a lot of people, but that was the thing about True Space. The only way to grow it was to add people, but everyone who was added was another pressure point.

  All Kinji knew for sure was that Bexie Montgomery was deeply interesting in a hundred different ways, not the least of which being his supple nineteen-year-old body, complete with a beautiful face, brown skin, and eyes as bright as a galaxy.

  What was the rule of thumb in this kind of case?

  Was Bexie Montgomery nineteen years old as his new body was, or was he a forty-something as his restored mind and experiences were? Or how about three hundred fifty, if you count from his actual birthdate?

  Waker politics was going to get complicated.

  The flier began to move, so to get her mind off the whole affair, she reached out her com node.

  “Hey, girl,” she said as Tania’s essence flooded an area of her Think Space. “What are you doing?” An image of Tania bounced in a nook of her optic processing.

  “Getting my run on.”

  “You’re so ridiculous.”

  “Gotta take care of the carbs, you know?”

  “Yes,” Kinji said, staring down at her waistline. She was getting to that age where she would need to either get more active or take metabo
lism supplements. “I know what you mean.” Supplements kept the weight down, but exercise kept the muscles toned.

  “I was beginning to think you were skipping out on me,” Tania said.

  “I wouldn’t do that, and you know it.”

  “I do not know that at all. You dumped me for that guy back when we were in Ethiopia.”

  “Please. Just had a little delay.”

  “You know I’m just joking, right, babe?”

  Kinji settled back in her seat and sipped her wine. “It’s all right,” she said with a smile. “He was worth it.”

  Her words gave her another flash of Bexie. She remembered the man’s fingers, the sound of his voice, and the shape of his shoulders. He smelled of coffee.

  “Thhpth.”

  “Can’t wait to get in.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m just tired.”

  “Well,” Tania said. “We’ll see what we can think of to get you revved back up.”

  “Sounds good,” Kinji replied. “I’ll be in Acapulco in a half hour.”

  “I’ll be there. Kisses!”

  “Kisses.”

  Kinji broke the line. It would be good to see Tania again. They hadn’t been together for over three months now, and just the idea of seeing her made Kinji’s entire body vibrate.

  Yes, it would be good to see Tania again.

  After the flier arrived and Kinji routed what little luggage she had to Tania’s place, she headed to Hubbell’s, a small club that was overcrowded and loud, but was one of Tania’s favorite haunts. The music hit her with a wall of heat. Electrified Punk-Tech. A set of classical instruments and synthesizers that had been mixed and matched to give it a discothèque vibe. Easy to dance to, even before you were amped.

  She slipped into the crowd, ordered a jinked shooter, and, after a moment’s scan, found Tania on the dance floor.

  She was silver blonde tonight, with purple and blue streaks fluorescing down her bangs and through the shock that fell over her shoulder. Tania was natural dancer, tall and graceful, even in this strange, free-form thing that was only half choreographed.

  Yes, whatever you thought about Tania Brae — the woman could dance.

  But Kinji didn’t come here to watch.

  Kinji tossed back the drink and felt the alcohol burn to her belly. The amphetamine chaser she grabbed at the bar rode the wire faster, and she already felt her skin tingling.