by Dan Simmons
It takes only a few seconds to jog up to the Lincoln. Robert’s attention is distracted to the right as a small group of women shout something he has never been able to make out. Glen and the others in the car also swivel their heads to the right. The four women are holding small Brownie cameras and shouting at the passengers in the Lincoln, His glance appraises and dismisses them as no threat within three seconds, but Robert knows each of the women’s faces more intimately than he remembers his dead wife’s. Once, in the mid-nineties, he had seen a bent old woman crossing a street in downtown Los Angeles and knew at once it was the third woman from the right from that curb thirty-two years earlier.
Now…get on the Lincoln’s running board! he commands himself.
Instead he reaches out, taps the spare tire of the blue Lincoln as if in farewell, and drops back to the following car. Ahead, the motorcycles and lead car turn right off Main onto Houston. The blue Lincoln convertible follows a few seconds later, slowing even more than the lead car so as to make the right-angle turn without jostling the four passengers in the back. Robert steps back onto the running board of the chase car.
Look up!
Glancing left, Robert sees that railroad workers are congregated atop an overpass under which the cars will pass in a moment. He curses to himself and thinks sloppy, sloppy. All three cars are making a slow left onto Elm Street now. Robert leans into the open chase car and says, “Railroad bridge…people.” In the front seat, their commander, Emory Roberts, has already seen them and is on the portable radio, Robert waves to a police officer in a yellow rain slicker who is standing on the overpass, gesturing for him to clear the bridge. The officer waves back.
“Shit,” says Robert. Go now! he commands himself.
The blue Lincoln passes directly under a Hertz billboard with a huge clock in it. It is exactly 12:30.
“Not bad,” Bill McIntyre is saying. “Couple of minutes late is all. We’ll have him there in five minutes.”
Robert is watching the railroad overpass. The workers are well back from the edge. The cop in the yellow slicker is standing between them and the railing. Robert relaxes a bit and glances to the right at the large brick building they are passing. Workers on their lunch break wave from the steps and curb.
Please…dear Jesus, please…move now.
Robert looks back at the overpass. The police officer in the slicker is waving, as are the workers. Two men in long raincoats stand on the bridge approach, not waving. Plainclothes detectives or Goldwater men, thinks Robert. Beneath those thoughts, his mind is screaming. Now! Run now!
“Halfback to Base. Five minutes to destination.” Emory Roberts is on the radio to the Mart.
Robert is tired. The night before in Fort Worth he had been up until long after midnight playing poker with Glen, Bill, and several of the others. Today’s heat is oppressive. He shakes his right arm to free his sodden shirt from his arm and back. Robert hears Jack Ready say something from the other side of the chase car and he looks across at him. People are waving and shouting happily beyond the curb there. The grass is much greener here than in Washington.
There is a sound.
Go! There’s still time!
Christ, he hears himself think, one of those goddamn workers has fired off a railroad torpedo.
Robert looks ahead, sees the pink of the woman’s dress, sees Lancer’s arms rise, elbows high, hands at his own throat.
Robert’s feet hit the ground as the echo of the first shot is still bouncing from building to building. He tears across the hot pavement, heart pounding. Behind him, the chase car accelerates and then has to brake hard. Amazingly, incredibly, in the face of all procedure and training, the driver of the Lincoln ahead has slowed the big car. There is another sound. One of the outrider cops glances down at his motorcycle as if it has backfired on him.
Less than three seconds have elapsed when Robert dives for the trunk grip of the Lincoln.
The third shot rings out.
Robert sees and hears the impact. Lancer’s head of healthy chestnut hair seems to dissolve in a mist of pink blood and white brain matter, A piece of the President’s skull, as surprisingly pink as the inside of a watermelon, arches into the air and lands on the trunk of the Lincoln, trapped there by the ornamental spare tire.
Robert’s left hand has seized the metal grip and his left foot is on the step plate when the Lincoln finally accelerates. His foot comes off and he is dragging. Now he is connected to the suddenly speeding vehicle only by the numbed fingers of his left hand. He hears himself think that he will be dragged to death rather than release that grip.
It doesn’t matter now, he thinks at himself. It doesn’t matter.
Incredibly, the woman in pink is crawling out onto the trunk. Robert thinks that she is trying to reach him, to help him onto the car, but then he realizes with a stab of horror that she is reaching for the segment of skull still lodged at the rear of the trunk. With a superhuman effort he swings his right arm forward and grabs her reaching arm. Her eyes seem to glaze, she pauses…and helps to pull him onto the trunk of the speeding car.
Too late. All too late.
Robert pushes her down into the spattered upholstery, then shoves her to the floor of the open car. He spreadeagles his body across her and the other form in the backseat. His first glance confirms what he knew at the second of the third bullet’s impact.
The car is racing now that it is too late. Motorcycles cut in ahead, their sirens screaming.
Too late.
Robert is sobbing. The wind whips his tears away. All the way to Parkland Hospital he is sobbing.
Carol’s Honda was only half-charged this morning, either because of another brownout during the night or some problem with the car’s batteries. She hoped and prayed that it was a brownout. She could not afford more work on the car.
There was just enough charge to get her to and from work.
The I-5 guideway was jammed to gridlock. As always, Carol had the impulse to pull the Honda into the almost-empty VIP lane and flash by the traffic jam. Only a few Lexuses or Acura Omegas were using the lane, the chauffeurs’ faces stoic, the Japanese faces in the rear seats lowered to paperwork or powerbooks. It would be worth it, she thought, just to get a mile or two at high speed before the freeway cops cut my power and pull me over.
She crept forward with the inching traffic flow, watching her charge gauge drop steadily. She had assumed that the holdup was the usual bridge or lane repair, but when she got to the Santa Monica Freeway exit she saw the Nissan Voltaire van with the CHP vehicles around it. The driver was being lifted out. His eyes were open and he looked to be breathing, but he was limp and unresponsive as they trundled him into the backseat of the patrol car.
Flashback, thought Carol. More and more, people were using it even while they were stuck in traffic. As if reminded of the possibility, she opened her purse and lifted out the twenty-minute vial. If her Honda had fully charged, she could have stopped at her supplier’s on Whittier Boulevard before going to work. As it was, she would have to depend on her stash at work.
Carol was almost thirty minutes late when she pulled into the parking garage beneath the Civic Center complex, but she was still the first of the four court stenographers to arrive. She turned off the motor, considered attaching the charge cable despite the higher rates here, decided to try to get home on the charge she had, opened the car door, and then closed it again.
Her bosses were used to the stenographers being late. Her bosses probably weren’t in yet either. No one arrived on time anymore. She probably had half an hour or forty-five minutes before any real work would be attempted.
Carol lifted the twenty-minute vial, concentrated on summoning a specific memory the way Danny had taught her the first time she had used flashback, and popped the lid. There was the usual sweet smell, the sharp tang, and then she went somewhere else.
Danny comes in from the patio and hugs her from behind as she pours juice at the counter. His hands slip under he
r terrycloth robe. Rich Caribbean light pours through the windows and open door of their bungalow.
“Hey, you’ll make me spill,” says Carol, holding the glass of juice out over the counter.
“I want to make you spill,” Danny murmurs. He is nuzzling her neck.
Carol arches back into his arms. “I read somewhere that men hug women in the kitchen as just another form of male domination,” she says in a husky whisper. “A sort of Pavlovian thing to keep us in the kitchen…”
“Shut up,” he says. He tugs her robe down over her shoulders as he continues nuzzling.
Carol closes her eyes. Her body still carries the memory of last night’s lovemaking. Danny’s hands come around the front of her robe now, untying the belt, opening it.
“You have to meet the buyers in thirty minutes,” Carol says softly, her eyes still closed. She raises a hand to his cheek.
Danny kisses her throat precisely where her pulse throbs. “That gives us a full fifteen minutes,” he whispers, his breath soft against her flesh.
Inside the swirl of sensations, Carol surrenders herself to her own surrender.
Under the high span of the railroad bridge, just below where the concrete trusses arced together like the buttresses of some Gothic cathedral, Coyne handed Val the .32-caliber semiautomatic pistol. Gene D. and Sully whistled and made other approving noises.
“This is the tool,” said Coyne. “You got to make the rest happen.”
“Make the rest happen,” echoed Gene D.
“This is just the tool, Fool,” said Sully.
“Go ahead. Check it out.” Coyne’s dark eyes were bright. All three of the boys were white, dressed in the torn T-shirts and tattered jeans of the middle class. Their fuzzy-logic sneakers were not new enough or expensive enough or smart enough to show that the boys were members of any ghetto gang.
Val’s hands shook only slightly as he turned the pistol over in his hands and racked the slide. A bullet lay snug in the chamber. Val let the slide slam home and held the cocked weapon with his finger on the trigger guard.
“It doesn’t matter who,” whispered Coyne.
“Don’t matter at all,” giggled Sully.
“Better not to know,” agreed Gene D.
“But you’ve gotta do the trash to enjoy the flash,” said Coyne. “You gotta pay your dues, babechik.”
“Dues get paid, then you get frayed,” laughed Sully.
Val looked at his friends and then slid the pistol into his belt, tugging his T-shirt over it.
Gene D. high-fived him and pounded out a rioter’s dap on Val’s head. “Better check that safety, Babe. Don’t want to blow your business off before you do the deed.”
Red-faced, Val pulled the pistol out, clicked on the safety, and slid it back in his belt.
“Today’s the day!” Sully screamed at the sky and slid down the long concrete embankment on his back. The echo of his shout bounced back from concrete walls and girders.
Before they slid down to join him, Gene D. and Coyne slapped Val on the back. “Next time you flash, boy, you’ll be the Flashman.”
Screaming until their echoes overlapped with realtime shouts, the three boys slid down the slippery slope.
Robert lived with his daughter but also had a secret address. Just six blocks from their modest suburban home, set along an old surface street that was rarely used since the Infrastructure Crash, was a cheap VR motel that catered to New Okies and illegal immigrants. Robert kept a room there. It was close to his flashback supplier and for some reason he felt less guilty about replaying there.
Besides, the motel had keyed its telem to nostalgia options for its old-fart patrons and when Robert used the VR peepers—which was rarely now—he called up his room in early-sixties’ decor. Somehow it helped the transition.
Robert used the last of his Social Security card balance to score a dozen fifteen-minute vials at the usual dollar-a-minute rate. There were deals on every block between his house and the VR flop. Robert slipped the two bubble-wrap sixpacs in his pocket and moved on to the motel in his old man’s shuffle.
Today he keyed the peepers. The room was a set designer’s image of I960 Holiday Inn elegant. A kidney-shaped coffee table sat in front of a low-slung Scandinavian couch; pole lamps and starburst light fixtures spilled light; black-velvet paintings of doe-eyed children and photos of Elvis decorated the walls. Copies of Life magazine and the Saturday Evening Post were fanned on the coffee table. The view out the picture window was of a park with steel and glass skyscrapers rising above the trees. Huge Detroit-built cars were visible on a highway, their I-C engines rumbling along with a nostalgic background roar. Everything was new and clean and plastic. Only the powerful smell of rotting garbage seemed incongruous.
Robert snorted and removed the peepers. The room was bare cinderblock, empty except for the cot he was lying on and the crude wireform constructs taking up space where the table and couch should be. There was no window. The garbage smell seeped in through the ventilator and under the scarred door.
He set the headset back in place and cracked the bubblewrap. Looking out the window at the Dodges and Fords and late-fifties Chevies driving past, he called back the hot Dallas day and the heat of the car metal under his hands until he was sure that the right memory synapses were firing.
Robert lifted the fifteen-minute vial to his nose and popped the top.
Carol was scheduled to record a deposition in the district attorney’s offices at 10 A.M. but the Assistant D.A. who was handling the deposition was in his cubicle flashing on a favorite fishing trip until 10:20, the elderly witness was half-an-hour late, the associate from the defense attorney’s office didn’t show at all, the video technician had another appointment at 11:00, and the paramedic whom the law required to administer the flashback called to say that he was stuck in traffic. The witness ended up being dismissed and Carol stowed her datawriter keyboard.
“Fuck it,” said Dale Fritch, the young Assistant D.A., “the old lady wouldn’t agree to flashback anyway. The whole thing is fucked.”
Carol nodded. A witness who wouldn’t agree to being questioned immediately after flashback was either lying or some sort of religious fanatic. The elderly black woman whom they’d been trying to get a deposition from was no religious fanatic. Even though flashback depos had no legal weight, no jury would believe testimony where the witness refused to replay the event before testifying. Video-recorded flashback depositions had almost replaced live testimony in criminal trials.
“If I call her to testify live, they’ll know she’s lying,” said Dale Fritch as they paused by the coffee machine. “Flash may be habit-forming and hurting our productivity, but we know that it doesn’t lie.”
Carol took the offered cup of coffee, poured sugar in it, and said, “Sometimes it does.”
Fritch raised an eyebrow.
Carol explained about her father’s flashbacks.
“Christ, your dad was JFK’s secret service guy? That’s sort of neat.”
Carol sipped the hot coffee and shook her head. “No, he wasn’t. That’s the weird part. The agent who jumped on the back of Kennedy’s car fifty years ago was named Clint Hill. He was thirty-something when the president was shot. My dad was an insurance adjustor until he retired. He was still in high school when Kennedy was shot.”
Dale Fritch frowned. “But flashback only lets you relive your own memories…”
Carol gripped her coffee cup. “Yeah. Unless you’re crazy or suffering from Alzheimer’s. Or both.”
The Assistant D.A. nodded and sucked on the coffee stirrer. “I’d heard about schizos having false flashbacks, but…” He looked up suddenly. “Hey, uh… Carol… I’m sorry…”
Carol tried a smile. “It’s all right. The Medicaid specialists don’t think that Dad’s schizophrenic, but he hasn’t responded to the Alzheimer’s medication…”
“How old is he?” asked Fritch, glancing at his watch.
“Just turned seventy,” said Caro
l. “Anyway, they don’t know why he’s having these false flashbacks. All they can do is to advise him not to take the drug.”
Fritch smiled. “And does he follow their advice?”
Carol tossed her empty cup away. “Dad’s convinced that everything in the country’s so shitty today because he didn’t get between John Kennedy and the bullet fast enough. He figures that if he just gets there a little sooner, Kennedy will survive November twenty-second and history will retrofit itself.”
The Assistant D.A. stood and smoothed his tie. “Well, he’s right about one thing,” he said, tossing his own cup in the recycling bin. “The country’s in shitty shape.”
Val stood opposite his high school and considered going in to blow away Mr. Loehr, his history teacher. The reasons he did not were clear: 1) the school had metal detectors at all the entrances and rent-a-cops in the halls and 2) even if he got in and did it, they’d catch him. What fun would it be flashing on this trashing if he had to do it in a Russian gulag? Val had never lived in an age where excess American prisoners weren’t shipped to the Russian Republic, so the chance of serving time in a Siberian gulag did not seem strange to him. Once, when his grandfather had mentioned that it had not always been that way, Val had sneered and said, “Shit, what else other than prison space did we ever think the Russies had to sell?” His grandfather had not answered.
Now Val adjusted the .32 in his waistband and slouched away from the school, heading toward the shopping strip above the Interstate. The trick was to choose someone at random, do them, drop the gun somewhere it wouldn’t be found, and get the hell out of the area. He’d be watching ITV when the evening news told about another senseless killing which the police suspected was flashback-related.
Val keyed his shades to provide nude realtime overlays of all the women he saw as he picked up his pace toward the shopping strip.
Carol is waiting for her high school date to pick her up. She checks her frilly Madonna-blouse to make sure that her antiperspirant is working and then stands on the corner, shifting from foot to foot and watching the traffic. She sees Ned’s almost-new ’93 Camaro come slashing through traffic and screech to a stop, and then she is squeezing into the backseat with Kathi.
