by Eden Sharp
‘I need to talk to you,’ I said. I’m at Tricolore on Union Street. Come meet me for lunch.
He sounded reluctant at first, like I’d asked him out on a date, but he agreed to come, all by himself, on the promise of a critical update and all inside of twenty minutes.
When Douglas walked in he looked comfortable in the surroundings and upon a careful sweep of the place soon spotted me and headed over. When he arrived at the table though he uttered a nervous greeting like he was about to get caught by his wife having an illicit liaison in an average eaterie in the middle of a working day. I didn’t bother to suggest a drink. He was far too much of a blue flamer for that, if he even drank at all.
‘I’m giving you a heads up before your SAC calls you to say the Director’s been on the phone,’ I said. ‘Call it goodwill after Tuesday. But we need to be working together.’
‘I’m listening,’ he said. Time for him to see I was in a power position after all.
‘I’ve called you guys in to an op tomorrow night,’ I said. ‘I’m currently undercover as Lau’s girlfriend and as such have to accompany him to a reception where it will be announced his firm is merging with a larger one. We need your team to be there because we have intel that a hacking attempt will be made during the event. I’m telling you this as a professional courtesy and also to forewarn you that there are other subjects in play, outside of your remit, which means my cover needs to remain intact.’
I watched him go through the machinations. He probably hated the inter-agency hierarchy but knew if this was top down he’d have to be down also. In addition it would hopefully give him some kind of insight to my level of access to the powers that be and might afford me a little more respect and a little less scrutiny.
‘I’ll await the call,’ he said. ‘I appreciate the information.’ As much as he appreciated it, he didn’t appear to like it.
‘You still convinced I’m some kiddie hacker called Ghosthex?’ I asked.
‘Ghosthex was online during our last meeting,’ Douglas said. Looked like he was buying everything I was selling.
I had the waitress call me a cab and gave her an extra-large tip. The place hadn’t been busy but with two potential diners swinging for only one glass of wine and with me asking for favors she would have felt stiffed otherwise.
Dinah Washington had once sang about what a difference a day made. I hoped the next twenty-four hours would be as positive. Who knew how different tomorrow would be for me after the reception?
I instructed the driver to take me to Saul’s place in Mission Bay. I was going to have to spell it out that the march needed to be brought forward to get full support and that as organizer he would have to convince those in the other groups. The driver dropped me a couple of streets away from their building and I paid him to wait.
40
Saul gave me his assurances that he would do his best and I took extreme precautions to ensure I wasn’t being followed by changing my transport three times between taxi, tram and foot before hitting one of the less touristy parts of town.
Despite what I knew they offered, through the door Blue Black’s initially looked like a jewelry or gift store. An old-fashioned wooden-topped glass display case acted as a counter and was filled with silver and semi-precious pendants, bangles and rings. Additional display items in the form of skulls and religious icons of oriental origin adorned each shelf. A giant Buddha head sat on the floor next to a potted rubber tree plant and the orange walls held a variety of esoteric art lit by paper star lanterns.
A guy appeared from out back and asked if he could be of help. Around his mid to late fifties, he wore faded black jeans and a biker T-shirt. What struck me most was the nakedness of his skin. Not only was he bald apart from a white mustache, I couldn’t see one blemish on his bare arms, no apparent tattoos. Hardly an advert for the place. Aside from a framed picture of a stylized representation of the inner musculature and vascular system of the human torso drawn in the form of a T-shirt design, there was no clue as to the kind of tattoos they produced or anything else on offer.
He checked me out briefly and decided I wasn’t in to buy from the counter. He motioned to a leather covered chest seat in the corner. I followed him over and we sat.
‘What kind of thing are you looking for?’ he asked.
‘Implants,’ I said.
‘You got tats?’
‘No.’
‘Piercings?’
‘Just the regular. One in each ear,’ I said. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d worn earrings. Probably not since my teens. Fighting tended to make them a liability and I couldn’t be bothered anyhow.
‘Implants are quite a step,’ he said.
‘Can you do it or not?’ I asked.
‘Sure, not a problem. You wanna tell me how long you been planning this?’
‘A while now,’ I said. Not strictly true but I figured it would help me pass whatever kind of audition this was. If not, I’d go somewhere else but I got the impression from his caution he was feeling me out for a health inspector, reporter or similar, someone that was anti-body modification, and wanted to make sure I wasn’t just snooping around.
‘What did you have in mind?’ he asked.
‘You don’t appear to have any tattoos,’ I said.
‘No. Did in my younger days. Got ‘em removed. Got my cock pierced instead,’ he said.
‘So…you gonna let me through so I can go get what I want or are we going to sit here and have iced tea and cookies?’He smiled, part lazy, part wary, part amused.
‘Let’s go,’ he said.
Deeper into the store it started to look like it more accurately represented its trade. Hindu and cherub statues were draped in cock rings and leatherwork, and studded with lethal-looking spikes. A couple of black mannequins, painted to look like they were blood-spattered, displayed emo-punk T-shirts, and were set against dark purple flocked wallpaper and Gothic-style mirrors. A glass cabinet contained ceramics and metalwork for all manner of piercing fetishes. The proprietor held open the door and we stepped through into a corridor leading to the back rooms.
The first door on the right was ajar and an androgynous kid in a beanie, with tattooed sleeves and possibly an eyeball tattoo bent over a young woman’s abdomen midway through piercing her navel. It kind of seemed a little pedestrian. The next two doors were closed but the motor sounds reminded me of the dentist so I figured people were getting inked.
The door at the end opened and a black girl stepped out. She was young and pretty with two studs through her right eyebrow, a ring through her septum and three rings through her lower lip as well as a large tattoo of the top of a heavily-patterned crucifix visible above the neckline of her shirt. I was ushered in.
The interior of the room was like a cross between a medical facility and a head shop. Stainless steel sterilizing equipment sat atop a clean white counter top. A couple of steel trays held clinical instruments and a sheaf of forms with a pen. The opposite wall had a gohonzon cabinet with a Kali statue and waving lucky fortune cat on it along with another glass case holding various pieces of dangerous looking metal all mixed up with Tibetan finger bells and decorated hash pipes. Like bets had been hedged about giving respect to an assortment of belief systems. A couch with a small metal ancillary table took up the middle.
The proprietor introduced me to a guy called Kent and left. Kent had a benevolent face despite what I imagined middle America might believe if they met him on the street. The sides of his bald head were tattooed with crisscross lines, his eyebrows shaved and replaced with inked triangles, his earlobes had one-inch diameter holes sporting knuckle dusters for earrings and his neck was one brightly-colored tube of neon ink. Despite the two small studs at the corners of his nose where they met his eyes and the much larger spikes protruding from his forehead like metal horns, his eyes held a compassionate gaze which put me more in mind of a contemplative yogi than someone who plied his trade with sharp metal. I liked him.
He smiled. ‘You have something in mind or would you like to go through the books?’ he asked.
‘I’d like an implant Kent,’ I said. ‘I’m Angela.’
‘Sure. I’ll show you the popular, regular stuff,’ he said. He produced a plastic-lined book the size of a large binder and I sat on the couch to take a look.
The range of body adornment that people went for was amazing and perhaps spoke of an innate search for a tribal identity. The shapes people had injected under their skin in the form of saline-filled subdermal implants ranged from stars, to suction cups, bolts, and on one guy’s calf even women’s breasts to augment a tattoo of a buxom femme fatale. As the pages went on the variety got more extreme, people with bagel shapes implanted into foreheads and budding animal horns. I snapped the folder shut.
‘I’m looking for something a little more controversial,’ I said.
Kent’s face lit up like he was warming to his topic. He retrieved another couple of binders from under the counter. Handed me one of them, placed the other on the couch to one side.
I’d seen the plugs people had in their ears before, used to create enlarged holes in their lobes same as Kent had but I wasn’t sure how I felt about the picture of a young Asian-looking guy with a ceramic ring inserted into his cheek. The hole it encircled showed four of his upper and lower teeth like a window into the inside of his mouth. It made me think of zombie movies. The horror theme continued. A photo of two guys with naked torsos was next, one guy pulling on a vicious-looking hook protruding from his partner’s ribcage. A woman with over-inflated breasts on the following page had cat fangs and whiskers implanted in her jaw and face. It seemed cutesy by comparison.
‘I’m looking to go a step further Kent,’ I said.
His smile spread wide. He handed me the other folder.
‘A lot of this stuff veers more into the extreme performance side,’ he said.
I opened up the binder and studied the first few images. I couldn’t imagine what made people do such things to themselves, to their own bodies, or what their loved ones would think. What strength of character they must possess to so alienate the society they lived in. What Kent referred to as extreme performance looked to me to be another man’s torture and I began to regret my recent consumption of seafood.
A girl had corset lacing tattooed down her back in the form of ribbons crisscrossing her spine. Using this as a template she had actual ribbon threaded through piercings in her skin all tied up in a neat bow at the small of her back. Another girl, this time dressed in a pink satin corset, was bent over and suspended by silk cords and lethal-looking hooks which gouged into the flesh of her blood-soaked buttocks.
An older woman, in a professionally staged shot, was draped in black silk and suspended horizontally face-down by several ropes and hooks which stuck into her shoulders, buttocks and calves.
‘The pics at the back are the edgier ones,’ Kent said. I skipped to the last pages. Though clearly part of a show, the folded up bloodied body of a contortionist surrounded by people putting hooks into his flesh looked akin to a mutilated torso being hacked at by sadists. I put the book down.
‘I’m after a bio-hack Kent, can you do it?’ I asked.
He held up an index finger. ‘Gotta magnet inside,’ he said. ‘Can feel electro-magnetic energy lines all around the city. It’s so cool and getting pretty popular now.’ His face changed from one of enthusiasm to one that figured I was going to be plain vanilla after all.
I took out the microchip I’d brought with me.
‘I have one of my own I want implanted,’ I said.
The approved ones the store had a license for were normally the size of a large grain of rice and consisted of an antenna wrapped in a glass capsule.
‘That’s slightly bigger than I’ve seen before,’ Kent said.
It looked a lot bigger to me than it had before. Compared to what it could do however it was tiny. It was in effect a subdermal wireless hard drive that could receive and transmit meaning it could transfer data both ways. Charlie had written a program onto the chip which would insert a script into a target device with a GET command. The antenna would be picked up from about a half inch away and the information retrieved would download to the chip rewriting over the original code.
Usually such chips had the capacity of a few kilobytes. But Charlie knew lots of techies and was nothing if not resourceful. This had a much higher specification hence the size. It was still a lot smaller than the nail on my little finger.
Kent stared at it with a look of fascination. ‘I’ve only ever seen the glass type before,’ he said.
The usual chips he would have had previous experience of implanting were glass ampoules that contained a copper coil for inductive power reception, a control chip, and an on-board memory.
‘What’s it do?’ he asked.
‘It’s a key code to open my apartment door,’ I said. ‘Maybe at some point I’ll get another that can switch on the lights.’
If he considered it was big enough that I might be lying he didn’t show it. In truth, the way Charlie had explained it, it used an antenna array and something similar to a microSD card assemblage to allow USB 2.0 transfer speeds. It was all wrapped up inside a small titanium casing. Once uploaded with the information we needed, I could put it next to a cell phone or laptop and send the data to Charlie.
‘Anyone tell you removing them is the same as removing a splinter?’ Kent asked.
I shook my head. I was under no illusions that to get it out of my hand would take painful, complicated surgery.
‘Truth is it involves a lot of digging around in your flesh though you can make it easier on yourself like this.’
Kent placed his thumb and forefinger of his right hand around the thumb joint of his left hand and began pressing and pushing. A grain of rice-sized outline appeared in the loose web of skin where his thumb joint met the rest of his hand. ‘You get a doctor to mark its position and he’ll make an incision but it’ll still require the use of some kind of tool to scrape away the flesh surrounding the chip,’ he said.
Charlie knew a better way. Neodymium magnets found inside old hard drives are encased in silver or gold overlays because they are more brittle than other magnets. They’re a quarter inch to a half inch in diameter, are derived from a rare earth mineral and can lift ten pounds of steel. They cost around seventy cents apiece and they render micro-chips useless. The implant would remain in my hand but the chip would be nullified.
‘I’m happy to go ahead,’ I said.
‘Awesome. No problem,’ Kent replied. ‘Best place for it is your cagina. That’s the piece of skin between your thumb and forefinger.’
‘Then let’s do it.’
Kent prepped the side table with his tools for the job and I placed the chip into a tray.
I knew that there’d be no anesthetic, but also that I had a high pain threshold. He took my hand and pressed it flat against the table and sanitized the insertion site.
‘You okay?’ he asked. ‘There’s going to be quite a sting.’ I nodded.
He picked up a tool. A large needle coming out of a metal shaft with a plunger. He pointed out the tip of the needle showing a hollowed out core.
‘Ordinarily this contains the chip and I just push it into and under the skin. I’m going to use this to make an insertion but I may need to enlarge it a little. I’ll then hold the cut open while I take tweezers to insert your chip and push it deeper in.’
I preferred not to look but did anyway just to be sure it went in. After the initial sharp sting it was more like an achy pushing and pulling sensation and then the tool was gone and he was pressing a piece of cotton gauze over the incision point. It had been relatively painless.
‘All done,’ he said. ‘It’ll heal up in a couple of days. Be a little tender for the next twelve hours or so.’
I looked down at the wound site and a tiny pink scratch. It was barely noticeable.
‘Come back anytime. Try something new.
’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But this might be it for me.’
‘Shame,’ Kent said. ‘You’re my kinda girl.
41
Friday May 19th
I woke up after a night of fitful sleep and intermittent dozing. I’d fought the urge to get up in the middle of the night like I would normally have, and instead had lain in bed attempting to run through how I hoped things would play out at the reception. Every time I had begun, I’d find myself waking up from a mid-dream state which had left me feeling groggy.
I wondered how Chrissie was doing and hoped that there was someone watching over her making sure she was breathing. I’d done what I could and had contacts around the city keeping an eye out for her but that still didn’t stop me feeling like I was letting her down. I spent a while making phone calls. No one had heard from her or seen her which didn’t bode well. My mood dipped and I told myself I needed to shake it off and refuel.
I had a craving for a burrito from La Cumbre in the Mission but it was a little too far for take-out. I wondered if Knox knew of the place as it was in his neighborhood and then felt guilty I was ditching him once again while I was caught up in my own play.
I really needed to shake off all my guilt and stop worrying about everything. The Dalai Lama said that if you had a problem and there was a solution to it there was no need to worry about it and if you had a problem and there was no solution to it there was no point in worrying about it, but I was a bad Buddhist. I wished I was in my apartment and could call down to my concierge to have him grab me a French dip sandwich. Instead I told myself I’d pick up something at some point from somewhere and attempted to get myself together for later.