“Boots and all,” says Lorenzo, taking off his sunglasses and setting them down. Red-rimmed eyes, either lack of sleep or something actually wrong.
“Are you okay?” Lion asks.
“I used to think if I died in an evil place, then my soul wouldn’t be able to make it to heaven. But now, fuck, I don’t care where it goes as long as it ain’t here.”
More Apocalypse Now, also Lorenzo’s usual gripe about long tours. And something mildly amphetamine in his voice, so the red eyes—it’s probably just lack of sleep.
“How’s Japan?”
“Been here for three weeks and I honestly can’t tell you. Inscrutable. And lots of tea.”
“But you’re okay? I got your request for contact.”
“Hank’s being stingy with the drink tickets,” says Lorenzo, lighting a cigarette with an ancient brass Zippo. “But what else is new. Other than that, I just wanted to see how you be.”
“Fine,” he robo-answers, then stops himself. “Though that may not be exactly true.”
“You’re in New York?”
Lion nods.
“What’s going on?”
He talks Lorenzo through his day: Robert Walker’s head on the wall, Arctic’s predilection for research, his stolen notebook. Feels good to say it aloud, seems to neutralize the surreality. He finishes with his perplexing dinner plans with Sir Richard.
“Sounds like Japan,” says Lorenzo, but not smiling. “Did you really see a guy’s head on a wall?”
“A photo.”
“That’s a thing? Bad enough that I need Sinder to get a date, now we’re into decapitation.”
“Sinder?’
“Tinder for old farts,” exhaling a thick cloud. “A head on a wall is not something you see every day.”
“No.”
“Think it’s a new kind of subcult? French Revolution revivalists mixed with great white hunters?”
“Doesn’t feel like it.”
Lorenzo thinks about this a moment, “Are you still gonna take the job?”
“I took the job. Now it seems like they want me to take some other job.”
The wind whips between buildings, sending a quiver through the green needles of the mini-fir. Lion hears a momentary hum from the black polymer, like someone choking off a scream.
“I thought all you do is say yes or no.”
“I do,” agrees Lion. “I did, at a meeting this morning. Tried to. But Sir Richard called afterward, and it sounds like they’re still interested.”
“He of the mighty checkbook,” says Lorenzo. “You’re getting paid, right?”
“I am. I definitely am.”
“That’s never a bad thing.”
“Maybe,” he says. “I don’t know about this time.”
“Because they did enough research to find out you smoke pot? Kemosabe, everyone smokes pot.” But watching him carefully.
Lion takes a sip of coffee, catching the reflection of his right eye in the dark liquid. Fractal red lines on his cornea, the temporary tattoo of Ghost Trainwreck. Focuses back on Lorenzo. “You ever heard of an inhalant, a silver powder, like someone scraped a sparkler?”
“Party drug?”
“Possibly,” considering the idea, “but it’s a strange kind of party.”
“What does it do?”
“Not sure, but here’s the thing—it’s got something to do with animals.”
Lorenzo sits up straight. “Animals?”
“That’s what I mean,” says Lion. “Arctic seems to know a little too much about me.”
Lorenzo picks up his sunglasses and twirls them back and forth between his fingers. Mirrored frames catch steampunk on red silk. Bodice-clad woman on the upswing, men with clock parts for eyes on the down.
“Let me ask around,” he says finally.
“I’d appreciate it.”
“No sweat, Kemosabe,” pushing up the brim of his hat.
SWEAT, KEMOSABE, SWEAT
It’s still early, so the Dirty French is only half full. Sir Richard is waiting for him at the left elbow of the bar. Lion expected a suit, something Savile Row in hard-edged navy. He gets early 2000s hip-hop instead. A throwback Ben Wallace jersey in faded Piston cerulean worn over a white T-shirt four sizes too big for him, saggy Sean John jeans tucked into unscuffed Timberlands, and a trucker’s cap in sunshine orange.
Behind the bar, bottles of expensive liquor, and a mirror. Richard spots Lion’s reflection in the glass and spins on his stool to face him. The same face Lion has seen in the tabloids. Sir Richard Receives Secret Technology from Aliens; Sir Richard’s 48 Children by 48 Different Women. White teeth in even rows, eyes too shimmery blue for anyone’s good, and I HAVE ISSUES printed on the brim of the trucker cap.
You can get through this, Lion tells himself.
“You must be Lion,” says Sir Richard, extending a hand.
“I must,” he says, extending a hand.
Firm grip meets firm grip. That ancient signal: Feel the flesh for yourself, I carry no weapons. Lion isn’t so sure.
“Have a seat,” says Richard, tapping the red leather of the stool beside him. Lion cops a squat and bellies up. Bartender in white tux with crimson bow tie wants to know what he wants.
“Ah-ha,” says Richard, high tea accent turning two syllables into four, “the eternal question.”
You can get through this, thinks Lion, then changes his mind and orders a Knob Creek.
“Rocks?” asks the bartender.
“Neat.”
“A purist,” says Richard, plucking his Ben Wallace, the jersey’s fabric stretching out from his chest, fluttering back. “Pardon my peacocking. I caught a ride with Prince Shiz and he insisted on dressing me before I got on his plane.”
Lion blinks.
Half-Louisiana Creole, half Jamaican, Prince Shiz is a Toaster throwback with KRS-1 leanings and Arabian-Zydeco rhythms. A poly-tribe superstar. Preaching, Teaching, and Steaching stayed number one for years; then after Shiz vanished—riding rumors that he went the way of the Tupac—stayed there for longer.
“I thought no one had seen him in years,” says Lion.
“Three years, four months, and twenty-two days.”
“That sounds oddly specific.”
Richard sips champagne from a tall flute, peering at him through expensive stemware, deciding something. Decides.
“It was Arctic technology that helped him disappear.”
“A cloak of invisibility?”
Teeth in rows again. “A new kind of scrubber. AI, of course, and capable of removing any hint of a person from very early in the data chain.”
“How early?”
“The system targets the first echo of binary translation, the ones and zeros that comprise the foundational information. The AI works backward through the code, removing a zero here, a one there.”
“To what end?”
Lion’s drink arrives. Liquid in burnt sienna sloshing in heavy-bottomed glassware. Richard waits until the bartender is out of earshot to begin speaking again.
“Say a photo of Prince Shiz appears. In the original file, the image, once clear, becomes blurry. In any copy, enough corruption that the file is rejected. Essentially, it makes sharing information impossible.”
Lion picks up his glass, trying to figure out if he’s being lied to. Sharing of information being foundational to the internet. Sir Richard not striking him as the kind of man one would want in possession of a technology that can unhinge that foundation. “You’re serious?”
“I’d wager you thought Shiz went the way of Tupac.”
“I also heard he went Rilkean,” watching closely for some kind of reaction, “back before they were even a myth.”
“No,” shaking his head firmly against it, “those rumors aren’t true.”
“Because you know Shiz?”
“Because I started those rumors.” Another sip of champagne, another smile. “Actually, Jenka started them. He’s very good.”
“Why?
”
“What do you know about the Rilkeans?”
“Deep subcult. One of the first poly-tribes. And a lot of whispers: hard-core environmentalists, serious consciousness hackers, bar code tattoos—which, I guess, considering Bo and Penelope, is now confirmed. But why start rumors about Shiz being a Rilkean?”
“Let’s come back to that in a moment. I’d like to ask you something first. You were a journalist?”
Lion tastes his bourbon, midlevel octane burn in his throat as he swallows.
“It was a long time ago.”
“Nabokov said the most interesting part of a writer’s biography is the biography of his style. What was your style?”
Interrogative flattery, designed to slice to the heart of the ego without tripping alarm wires. Lion finds himself unable to resist. “I was a new New Journalist. A revivalist.”
“Exactly,” says Richard, snapping his fingers twice, the same beatnik clap that Jenka had used, “exactly what I thought.”
Why, thinks Lion, why would you think that?
“I read you. The Rod of Correction piece. All that excitement in Jamaica.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“But I’m a fan of the genre. I make all my employees read Slouching Towards Bethlehem. So we have a connection, you and I.”
He’s a carnivore, thinks Lion, always remember he’s a carnivore.
“Why that style?” asks Richard. “What was the attraction?”
“It’s an approach to truth.”
“Tell me.”
“Journalism is supposed to be about hunting the truth. Objective truth. But coming out of the 1950s, there was a growing mistrust of this idea, especially among journalists.”
“So Chomsky was right?”
“Not like that. No corporate overlords. Nothing that complicated.”
“So what, then?”
“You call it the failure of language,” says Lion, “which it sort of is. A winnowing of meaning. Reporter goes out and reports the facts. Then writes them up, choosing idea one and two, discarding three and four. Quote A over quote B. No malice, simply the process. Then editors make other choices. Discard this plotline, explore that tangent. Copy editors, managing editors, editor in chief. No one wants distortion, but choosing itself is the distortion. It creates a version of the truth, but it’s definitely not objective.”
“It’s a story,” says Richard, polishing off the final swallow of champagne, waving at the bartender for another glass.
“Yeah,” says Lion. “So New Journalists fought back by inserting themselves into the story. They let you behind the curtain, replacing false objectivity with extreme subjectivity. You can get to know the storyteller and understand the why behind their choices.”
“Thompson’s paranoia in Vegas,” says Richard. “Didion’s detachment in San Francisco. You’re saying this is a more honest form of storytelling?”
Lion nods. “An approach to the truth.”
“Fantastic,” snapping fingers again, once with the left hand, twice with the right. “Let’s eat.”
And no sooner does he say it, food starts arriving. Crimson bow tie setting down plates, covering the bar in cow parts and crustacean remains and something that might be asparagus. Richard diving in, scooping food into maw, masticating for all he’s worth, swallow and repeat.
Lion tries the asparagus.
Richard swallows again. “I’d like you to go out to the crime scene.”
“Pardon?”
“Walker’s home. I’ve had it preserved as it was found. I’d like you to go there and see if it changes your mind.”
Lion wonders what it takes to have a crime scene preserved, then wonders how he would feel seeing that decapitated head up close. Doesn’t like either wondering one bit.
“I don’t do crime.”
“I know,” nodding enthusiastically, “but go anyway.”
How often do people turn down Sir Richard? A churn in his stomach. Not very often. Lion opts for the dodge. “Why did you have Jenka start rumors about Shiz being a Rilkean?”
Richard takes his trucker hat off and sets it on the bar. His shaggy black mane tumbles down to his shoulders and I HAVE ISSUES stares Lion in the face.
“Do you know what Arctic does?”
“Product development.” Thinks about those Shiz rumors. “And guerrilla marketing.”
The light in Richard’s eyes seems to flatten. Some kind of line has been crossed. “Products are for the dead,” he says, like he wants to spit. “Kodak did products. AOL did bloody products. They’re a relic of the last century, a nostalgia. Products are a finite game. Arctic is always, always interested in the infinite game.”
“Richard,” carefully, “what infinite game?”
“Buckminster Fuller said don’t try to change human behavior. It’s a waste of time. Evolution doesn’t mess around; the patterns are too deep. Fuller said go after the tools. Better tools lead to better people. Arctic doesn’t develop products. We may cultivate them, occasionally, in our own particular way, but our business is change. Significant change.”
Lion’s gut broadcasts another warning, coming in Funktion-One loud and Harman Kardon clear.
“And the Rilkeans?”
“They might have a tool I was interested in cultivating.”
“Might?”
“It was a hunch. I was trying to confirm it, but there was an issue.”
“No one had ever seen a Rilkean.”
“Not back then. And no web presence. I had Jenka go deep. No dark web presence.”
Now he gets the purpose of the rumors. “You were trying to smoke them out.”
Richard nods. “Shiz was the honey pot. I figured if the Rilkeans got a sudden rush of publicity it might stir things up. Might make them, even momentarily, visible.” Lifts his fresh flute to his lips and takes a large gulp of champagne. “So now you know—will you visit the crime scene?”
In the early days of em-tracking, not long after the talent was first identified, there was talk of a felt-sense of the future that rises up so quickly that it completely blots out the present. Like an emotional time machine, past the event horizon, through the wormhole and gone. Not having had this experience, Lion assumed he might be immune. Now, he’s not so sure.
“I’ll sleep on it.”
“I’ll have Bo meet you here at nine o’clock. You’ll be back before dinner. Or you can spend the night in Montauk.”
And that tug again. Gravity. Pulling him in an unfamiliar direction. Also the sight of a carnivore winking and smiling at him.
So many teeth. So much gravity.
IN THAT SLEEP OF DEATH
Lion dreams of William James. A simulacrum of sorts. Photos he’s seen becoming animate, approaching. James in the Amazon, wearing cream-colored trousers, a dark wool waistcoat with cocobolo buttons and jacket to match. Oval sunglasses, gambler’s top hat, paintbrush mustache, the works. The later James, Bandholz beard flecked with gray and houndstooth coat, lecturing at Harvard. James at a small table in the dining car, penning a letter to brother Henry while riding the midnight train to Edinburgh.
Dreams he’s had before.
When Lion volunteered for the UCLA study, one of the first to use fMRI to examine em-trackers, they’d assigned him a therapist. Something about coordinating psychological profile with neuro-anatomical function. Fetu. Samoan, tribal tats, bald head, big laugh. He’d told Fetu about the dreams.
Fetu had called James his “secure base.” Out of Bowlby’s attachment theory. A safe haven, a place to return to in times of uncertainty. Fetu had a few variations on a theory.
Perhaps Lion felt a kinship with James. He’d read him first in college, before his major switched from psychology to pharmacology to history of science to journalism. James and his pioneering pragmatism, his multidisciplinary approach, his vastly open mind.
All of it left an impression.
Or a more subtle variation: Fetu called it his last truly happy period. Whe
re he was just before he dipped too far into the history of science and discovered what scientists not named William James did to animals. Before he met the Animal Liberation Front. Before the arrests.
What does it matter now.
He shakes off the dream and sits up in bed. Blackout curtains still doing their job and what time is it?
His cell phone is on the nightstand, sitting atop the package Penelope dropped off, not charging, not happy.
Angry red battery bar and no clock available.
Not bothering to flip on a light, Lion grabs his phone and barefoots across the room to find his charger. On the table beside the coffeemaker, sharing the outlet. Pawing around in the darkness for the cord. A satisfying click as prong meets sleeve, the haptic marriage that means power to come.
Needing juice of his own, he grabs a coffee pod out of the wooden tray and slots it into the machine, the chrome arm, the full ritual. He decides to hold off on the shower. A break in routine and necessary, because, while he slept on it, he still doesn’t have an answer for Arctic.
But he has a plan.
Lion dresses quickly, adding a few extra layers against the cold, then walks out to the terrace. The cup steaming in his hand and the city in stealth mode, before the waking, the traffic. When you can still see the skyline as imagination rendered visible, something someone thought up.
A lot of someones.
Lion tastes the coffee while tracking the red flash of taillights in the distance. A small sip. He wants the caffeine to prime focus but is trying to hold on to his alpha brain wave status for a little while longer. Beta waves are fast waves, the signature of a brain fully awake. Alpha is a few cycles per second slower, or where the brain hovers first thing in the morning. Also the gateway to the unconscious, if his old Psych 101 textbook is still to be trusted.
One more swallow, then he sets the cup on the table and sits down on the ground. A slight rearrangement of garments, feet in a half lotus, hands on his knees, eyes settle closed.
Slow and steady breaths.
Five seconds in and ten seconds out, five rounds. Six seconds in and twelve seconds out, five rounds. Working his way up to ten and twenty, following this with a long breath hold. As he closes in on ninety seconds, a total fuzz-out, graying of vision, detachment from emotions, no thought, no self, a clean wipe of the slate.
Last Tango in Cyberspace Page 5