Cyber Thoughts

by Dima Zales

  Ignoring the nauseating sensation, I smoothly transition from the block into a right forearm strike. To my surprise, I graze Joe’s face.

  This is the first time I’ve made any contact with Joe, and a smidge of elation penetrates my deep dread.

  The look in Joe’s lizard-like eyes turns sixty shades icier than their usual emotionless abyss. Yet—and I could be having an adrenaline-induced delusion—there’s something like pride in those eyes as well. I’ve been wondering why Joe does this to me, and the most generous conclusion I’ve reached is that perhaps these torture sessions are his way of showing me a type of cousinly tough love. Like maybe he’s making sure I’m ready to defend myself should a psychopath attack me—and what better way to prepare for that scenario than fighting him?

  Pride or not, Joe’s counterattack is brutal. I duck just in time to avoid a broken nose. Then I shift to the side, taking a hard hit to my pectoral instead of my neck, but then I falter and get punched in the middle of my chest.

  I’m still trying to remember how to breathe when Joe performs a throw I don’t recall learning, and the room blurs in front of my eyes. Through the camera, I watch myself fly toward the mat and land on my back.

  “This is an ambiguous situation,” Einstein says. “Your oxygen levels are critical, but you’re still conscious.”

  It takes all my willpower to mentally tell Einstein I don’t need the ambulance yet.

  Four hands help me up from the mat, and I dazedly comprehend that two of them must belong to Joe, who’s never helped me up in the past.

  I’m led to a bench and dumped there to come to my senses.

  Dazedly, I hear Gogi and Joe discuss my progress in Russian, as though I’m not there.

  “The kid is a quick learner,” Gogi says. “Must be your good genes.”

  I can’t decipher Joe’s response through the frantic pulsing in my ears.

  “You there? Can you speak?” Gogi walks over to me and waves his hand in front of my face as if I’m drunk. “Do you need my services today?”

  “Maybe later,” I half gasp, half grunt. “Going to the gun range next. I’ll text you after.”

  Gogi loses interest in me and walks back to Joe. I hear him say, “Let’s go smoke a joint. It’s my treat.”

  I’m not sure what my cousin replies with, but they leave.

  I spend the next half hour stabilizing my breathing so I can use an app to summon my new car, Zapo 2. Even in my condition, it’s not hard to get the car to leave the parking lot and meet me by the door. The hard part is walking to the car, but I manage that too.

  “Einstein,” I mentally order when the car door closes. “Drive me to the gun range.”

  “You know you go to the gun range too often when the gun range people know your name, what gun you carry, and exactly how many bullets you’d like to buy,” Ada says.

  Despite her general anti-gun rhetoric, Ada chose a Lara-Croft-inspired avatar to talk to me, one with two guns sitting in sexy hip holsters.

  “I need to focus, babe,” I say and put a bullet in the head of the big target. “It’s a miracle I made that shot while talking to you and looking at that outfit.”

  “That was a pretty good shot.” Ada’s avatar dissipates. “And you made it without the aim-assist app and while being distracted.”

  I grunt in satisfaction and do another warm-up shot, this time aiming for the target’s heart. I hit it dead on, and Ada claps, though without visual cues, it’s hard to tell if she’s showing support or being sarcastic.

  Next, I enable my newest app for the gun range, and the usual AROS interface gives way to a heads-up display (HUD) where I see the world as though through a sci-fi helmet inspired by my favorite video games, particularly Halo and Metroid Prime. The HUD keeps track of bullets in my gun and my hit stats, and it has a sobriety indicator along with other goodies. It also lets me put an overlay on the target I’m shooting at. Today, that happens to be a picture of Joe’s face, but it could easily be anyone from Osama bin Laden to Barney the Dinosaur. Once Joe’s illusion is in place, I pull the trigger, and the HUD shows a nice animation of my cousin’s head exploding when I hit the center of his forehead.

  “Very mature,” Ada says when I restore the fake Joe and shoot him in the forehead again. “All you need to do is refuse to fight him next time.”

  Instead of answering, I hack into the gun range’s security camera and close my eyes.

  Shooting in this mode is something I still need to master. I shoot, and all that happens is my already sore arms hurt a little more from the recoil.

  I adjust my aim and shoot again. The bullet doesn’t even hit the side of the paper target.

  “Maybe it’s too soon?” I ask Ada rhetorically and enable the aim-assist app in a special camera-view mode Mitya helped me design.

  In the camera view, I see a line of magical-looking light going from my gun to the target. Aiming becomes a matter of moving my arm around until the line touches the desired part of the paper target.

  I align everything and shoot. This time, I hit the bull’s-eye—something I’m hoping to learn to do without the aim-assist as well.

  “I’m visiting Mom after this. Do you want to join me?” I telepathically ask Ada as I reload my gun.

  “Yeah, definitely,” she replies. “I think that’s where JC is, so he shouldn’t bitch too much about me taking a longer lunch.”

  Her mention of her boss, the CEO at Techno, reminds me that I haven’t checked my corporate email today, so I mentally read and reply to emails as I squeeze out a couple more rounds of ammo. Work has become something I do remotely, with a small percentage of my attention dedicated to it. I had to hire a few more people to cover for me when it comes to routine matters, and I made it crystal clear to everyone to only include me in meetings that would have existential consequences to the fund. Those types of issues come up about once every couple of weeks. In any case, given my Brainocytes-assisted ability to pick good companies for the fund, my people probably think I sold what was left of my soul to the devil, and they’re happy to communicate with me however I want, so long as my picks continue making us obscene amounts of money.

  “Your lunch might be extra long,” I remind Ada. “We’re going to the Brainocytes Club meeting after.”

  “I can join that virtually, like Mitya. I’ll dedicate part of my attention to the meeting while I sit in my office at work.”

  “No, please. I need you there. If Muhomor and I are the only ones present physically, he’ll take it as a chance to bond.” That wouldn’t be a bad thing, except for Muhomor, that means talking about his collection of zero-day exploits and telling me how many hackers couldn’t crack his unbreakable Tema. Or worse, making me an accomplice to a federal crime by sharing with me the latest highly secure network he got into just for kicks.

  “Fine. I’ll strongly consider your preference,” Ada replies telepathically, and I learn that there’s a way to make a message sound noncommittal in this mode of communication. “Bear in mind, I’ve been working remotely so much that my minions pulled JC into a couple of meetings, and he’s more than a little peeved with me about it.”

  I tsk-tsk. “Yeah, pulling the boss into a meeting should be considered cause for dismissal.”

  For my last bullet, I shoot blindfolded without the app and again miss. Figuring Ada will do as she wants in regard to the club meeting, I change the topic and ask, “Would you mind picking up Mr. Spock from the Furry Ritz on your way to Mom’s?”

  I approach Mom’s new apartment and ring the doorbell.

  It took all of my boosted intellect to convince her to let me buy this place. Now she lives much closer to my pad and, as a small side effect, close enough for JC to visit on his lunch break. Ada was right: he is visiting Mom today—either that, or someone else in this neighborhood drives a red Tesla with a lucky four-leaf clover pendant hanging from the mirror and plates that spell TECHNO.

  As I walk into the downstairs lobby, I smell Mom’s borscht. T
hat she can go out and locate a store in a new neighborhood, remember to buy all the borscht ingredients, and recall that her new and younger boyfriend, JC, likes borscht for lunch is but a small part of the outstanding improvements brought about by Brainocytes. Mom is completely back to normal—and above normal in many ways, since she can do some of the same things as the Brainocytes Club. Because she’s one of Techno’s success stories, we are keeping her brain loaded with official Techno applications only, but as soon as her official treatment is over in a few months, we plan to extend her an offer to join the Club and take advantage of everything we’ve developed.

  “Hi, kitten.” Mom kisses my cheek excitedly and adds, “JC is here.” She makes JC sound like “Jessy,” but her boyfriend doesn’t seem to mind.

  When I walk into the room, I see Techno’s redheaded CEO holding a piece of dark bread that Mom buys from a local Ukrainian store, and adding spoon after spoon of farmer’s market sour cream into his large bowl of borscht.

  In the middle of the table is a big chessboard. Leave it to my mother to play physical board games, and chess no less. I can see that the whites—probably JC’s—will be toast in four more moves. That Mom can play chess again is yet another heartwarming sign of her improvement.

  JC looks at me, and I reluctantly smile. I guess as long as he doesn’t make jokes such as, “Call me Dad,” our relationship can stay fairly cordial.

  “Please tell me Adachka is coming,” Mom says.

  Before I can reply yes, the intercom rings.

  I scan the kitchen and notice Ada-safe food in the form of potato-filled dumplings, pea-filled pirogi, and a huge salad. The sight of boiled cow tongue with mashed potatoes throws me for a loop; then, with a sinking feeling, I recall whom Mom makes this for. Confirming my suspicions, I hear Mom scream from the door, “Abrashen’ka, Josen’ka, please take off your shoes.”

  It’s Uncle Abe, whom I’m happy to see, and his son Joe.

  When they enter the kitchen, Uncle Abe shakes JC’s hand, but Joe gives the older man a look that says, If my aunt so much as says one wrong word about you, in lieu of a cow tongue, it will be yours that gets boiled next time—and it will be attached to you during the cooking process.

  Joe then turns his attention to me, looking me up and down. “How did the investor meeting go?” If he’s upset about me not inviting him to join us for lunch, he hides it well. “Everything is cool, right?”

  “All good,” I reply. I wonder if this is Joe’s roundabout way of forbidding me from telling Mom and his father about our earlier fight, or checking how I’m feeling.

  “JC, let’s call it a draw,” Mom says, and I’m pretty sure she’s just pretending not to see her eminent victory. “Next time, I play whites.”

  I help Mom clear the chessboard from the table, and we set more plates down.

  The intercom rings again, and I go open it this time, since it can only be Ada.

  “Hi, honey,” Ada says and kisses me on each cheek. “Here’s someone else who wants a kiss.”

  She takes out Mr. Spock, and he looks at me with the warmest expression a rat is capable of. Giving me a dog-like wiggle of his tail, Mr. Spock washes his whiskers with his little paws and scurries over to my hand. Before Mom can catch sight of him and possibly faint, I give Mr. Spock a little smooch and mentally ask him to hide in my inner jacket pocket—a request he’s happy to comply with, as always.

  We enter the spacious kitchen, and Ada gives Joe a narrow-eyed stare.

  Unsurprisingly, her telepathic message is full of annoyance as she states, “What, the gym wasn’t enough? He’s here too?”

  “Part of the family,” I mentally reply. “In his defense, Mom is happy to see him.”

  Happy might be an understatement. Mom is practically beaming with contentment after everyone sits down and she tells us about the food options.

  “This is amazing, sis, as usual.” My uncle ceremoniously places a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka he brought for the occasion in the center of the table.

  “A toast,” JC says, quickly realizing he will have to drink vodka on his lunch break. “To Nina’s amazing recovery.”

  To match his words, JC looks at Mom with such warmth that I grudgingly pick up my shot glass and clink it against his. Uncle Abe grunts approvingly and clinks glasses with JC, and even my cousin looks slightly less eager to stab JC with his fork.

  I feel guilty that Gogi isn’t here. He loves being the tamada—a type of Georgian toastmaster—at a table with drinks, and his long toasts are legendary. I’ve told him many times that if he left the bodyguard business, he could always turn his toasts into Hallmark holiday cards.

  “Gogi,” I text to appease my conscience. “I have an important meeting taking place at Kharcho in a bit. I could use your protection.”

  I don’t really need his protection during the Brainocytes Club meeting, but if I offered to buy him lunch just for the heck of it, he might refuse. Kharcho is an authentic Georgian restaurant owned by Gogi’s distant relative, so I’m not surprised when my bodyguard eagerly replies that he’ll be there.

  Everyone eats Mom’s food and drinks another round of vodka shots, courtesy of Uncle Abe’s typical Russian peer pressure. Ada is the only person without vodka in her belly, and this is because my uncle gave up trying to convince her to drink vodka months ago. I think Uncle Abe gave up on Ada in general when he learned she’s vegan. We had to painstakingly enumerate a list of what vegans do not consume for him, and I think he still has a hard time with the “no ham” part. To Uncle Abe, Ada’s dislike of vodka is almost normal compared to her veganism, and he probably erroneously thinks that Ada considers alcohol an animal product—and hey, sometimes, there are worms in tequila.

  “So, how are things going between you two?” Mom asks, her words slightly slurred from the alcohol. She asks the question in English, though Ada’s Russian is now good enough that she would’ve understood it.

  “Things are great,” Ada says after an awkward pause. “Why do you ask?”

  That pause makes me worry. This is yet another example of strange behavior on Ada’s part that I should’ve discussed with the shrink. Language aside, Ada probably doesn’t realize this is Mom’s roundabout way of asking when she’ll be a grandmother, so there’s no reason for my girlfriend to feel weird about the question.

  “I think you make the most wonderful couple.” Mom smiles at us and plops another serving of mashed potatoes on Ada’s plate.

  “You really do,” my uncle says. “Let me say a toast to you.”

  He orates the equivalent of an epic poem dedicated to our health and vitality and about how lucky we are to have each other.

  I don’t let my uncle’s words go to my head. To consume extra vodka, Russians will happily drink in celebration of anyone’s health, including dead leaders like Lenin, and use any holiday as an excuse to drink, even something as uneventful as National Doughnut Day or Dress Like a Pirate Day.

  “We should leave before dessert,” I mentally tell Ada after she explains to Mom how full she is. “JC is too drunk to worry about your lunch time.”

  As though to support my secret message, JC gulps down another shot, his nose already turning a deeper shade of red. Until recently, I thought JC had Irish blood, but now I’m less certain. When it comes to drinking with the Russians, JC definitely doesn’t live up to the Irish stereotype of being able to handle large amounts of liquor—not that I believe in stereotypes.

  “Blood alcohol level is unsafe to drive,” Einstein informs me after I swallow my final shot.

  “Noted,” I mentally reply. “When we get inside Zapo 2, you’re driving, no matter what I say, and Ada can even sit behind the wheel.”

  Chapter Six

  Ada and I hold hands as we walk from the parking spot to the restaurant where we’re meeting the rest of the Brainocytes Club.

  Unfortunately, as the vodka buzz begins to dissipate, the annoying feeling of being followed returns. I wonder if the shrink’s effect was inde
ed a placebo, and a short-lived one at that. I almost feel as though I’m being followed by a new group of people. This is odd, and not just because I have no clue who was following me before, besides figments of my imagination.

  Gogi is already at the restaurant, and Muhomor promises to arrive in a couple of minutes. The day is extremely nice for November, so we decide to get a table outside and order our drinks—vodka for Gogi, a glass of famous Borjomi water (a mineral-rich water of volcanic origins that’s over fifteen thousand years old) for Ada, and tea for me.

  When Muhomor arrives, we order food and wait for Mitya to get in touch with us remotely.

  Ada and I get gozinaki, a confection made of caramelized walnuts fried in honey, and I get an extra piece for Mr. Spock. Since we’re the only guests at the restaurant at the moment, and because the server knows us, I allow Mr. Spock to sit on the table, next to my plate.

  Gogi comments that we ordered a treat that’s traditionally eaten on New Year’s and thus incongruous in the middle of fall, especially on such a warm day. We point out that it was on the menu, so his gripe is with Nikolozi, his fourth-removed cousin and owner of this place. Gogi orders kharcho, the signature Georgian soup from which the restaurant got its name, and shashlik, a Georgian version of a shish kebab.

  “Lots of vegan-safe dishes,” Ada says wistfully as she scans the menu. “I’d like to try the beetroot pkhali with walnuts, but I’m too full.”

  “I’ll bring you here on an empty stomach tomorrow,” I promise. “Also, Mom knows how to make some Georgian dishes since they’ve made their way into Russian cuisine, so I’ll tell her to make something for you next time.”

  “Are we ready for the meeting?” Muhomor sends Mitya, Ada, and me an invite from the Teleconference app.

  “I’m ready.” Mitya shows up as a see-through holographic image in one of the empty seats at the table, making our meeting look like the Jedi Council gathering from Star Wars.