by S. C. Jensen
“Not impossible,” Hammett said. “But almost.”
I shrugged my shoulders and put the lid back on the box. I put the box in my bag. “Okay, we’ll deal with that later. What else have you got? Any boutique clothing in there?”
“Just wait until you see.” Hammett’s eyes twinkled with little simulated stars. “Thermonuclear Threads let me choose the prize package option. You owe me big time for this, Miss Marlowe.”
The pig buried its holoskinned head into the mountain of gifts and wiggled its tail. I shifted through the loot until I found the one Hammett was so excited about. I hauled a long box up onto the bed and unwrapped the iridescent, recycled-plastic wrapping. I lifted the lid of the box and gasped.
Inside was a full suit of carbon-threaded mesh body armour. High-cush techheads loved units like this. Figured it gave them street cred to be almost bulletproof. Thermonuclear Threads specialized in armour rigs that looked like something out of a medieval fantasy epic or some kind of retro-futurist cyberpunk RPG. Hammett had chosen the proline, the only set of T-Threads specifically designed not to be seen. The invisible armour mesh was preferred by highbinder politicians, celebrities, and drug lords who wanted to appear nonchalant in the face of skyrocketing public executions and high-profile kidnapping stunts. With it, I’d be invulnerable to anything but a clean head shot.
“I had them make alterations to fit your upgrade.” Hammett flashed its pearly whites at me. “Come on, try it on.”
I bent down and picked up the metallic sphere of the SmartPet’s real body and hugged it. Hammett’s skin tickled wherever it touched mine, and the pig giggled. “You’re the best, Ham. You might have saved my bacon.”
“I really must insist that you stop using that word.” Hammett pushed back at me with a little more electromagnetic force, and I put the pig back on the ground. “It’s demeaning and more than a little predatory.”
“If we survive to see tomorrow, I promise to book you into therapy.”
Hammett huffed. “Are you in trouble again?”
“More like, still,” I said and patted the pig on the head. “I need you to send a couple of encrypted messages for me and then take a nap to finish those updates.”
I transferred Hammett the files over a short-range, wireless connection that I had to pay a subscription for. It was the first time I’d ever used it, but if my plan worked, it would pay for itself a thousand times over. Granted, in order for it to work, I would have to rely on more than my fair share of Lady Luck’s attention. Might be I was just paying to make the post-mortem report a little easier on the desk jockeys.
I pulled on my T-Thread mesh and my white body suit, gave my arm a few tests swings, and slung my bag over my shoulder. Then I rummaged through the pile of Hammett’s winnings and snagged a can of NRG to go.
“You know, one of these days you’re going to have to try organic calories,” Hammett said.
“Maybe,” I said. “But today is not that day. Wish me luck, Smarty Pig. The fate of your future dongles depends on it.”
“You could get yourself a nice desk job somewhere,” the pig grumbled and clip-clopped toward the closet.
“I’d never have been able to afford a trip like this selling digital insurance packages on holohomes,” I said. “Enjoy it while it lasts.”
“Eight hours and counting.” Hammett snorted, and its charging station sing-songed a little jingle. “Maybe next time we can try for half a day.”
“Hey, you got to wear a cute new suit and engage in sinfully self-indulgent human vices.” I bowed and backed through the holoscreen into the lift. “I spoil you.”
Hammett’s station chimed as the SmartPet once again entered maintenance mode. But not before one last short-wave transmission hit my tubes. “A small consolation if I end up in a hockmarket parts bin.”
I stepped out of the lift, through the holoscreen, and ran straight into Cosmo Régale. He bounced off me, tripped over his platforms, and landed hard on his sparkly tuchus in all his ephemeral glory.
“Son of a skink.” He scrabbled back onto his feet like an infant glitter pony learning how to walk. “Where in the whatnow did you come from?”
Then his eyes widened, and he wiggle his unadorned fingers at me. “It’s you!”
“It’s me,” I said. “And it’s you. Whyte let you go?”
Cosmo ran a hand over the top of his micro-mohawk. “Well …”
“Is he okay?”
“There was a bit of a kerfuffle,” Cosmo brushed some imaginary dust off his skin-tight bodysuit. “Fists were thrown, blasters were blasted, buttons were pressed, you know? I didn’t really stick around to find out how it ended. Whyte gave me this before they cuffed him. Analogue, you know?”
He thrust a tube of rolled up paper toward me. I said, “How’d you get away?”
“The usual.” He stood with his hip knocked so far to one side I thought he might have broken his leg in the tumble. “‘Never mind the fruitcake,’ and ‘Let’s see how far he can go on those gangly getaway sticks,’ you know? By the time they realized the fruitcake was flying coop, I was long gone. What is it about glitter that makes people think you’re a ninny?”
“Lack of imagination,” I said. “Thanks, Cosmo. I owe you one.”
“We’ll call it even. I did get us tossed in the lockbox, you know?”
I crouched on the ground and flattened it as best I could. It appeared to be a blueprint of the cargo bay. But in the centre, a square of static-like markings obliterated half of the central drawing. I scanned the mark with my tattler and got a low-tech, 2D map scan overlay for my visilenses. It was no blinking arrow, but it would do the trick. Swain had left me a little note in the top right corner of the screen.
“The weather’s about to get real ugly around here, Cosmo,” I said. “If a guy needed to take cover from the storm, he might do worse than Cargo Bay D2.”
The man blinked his white-shadowed eyes at me once. Twice. He smoothed his left eyebrow with a long, unvarnished fingernail and squared his shoulders. “I’ll do that. Thank you.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Do I need a lawyer?”
“Why don’t you paint your fingernails?”
Cosmo’s glittered, pink lips curled, and he looked me up and down as if I was some kind of mutated crustacean that just washed up on his beach blanket. “We’re friends, so I’m going to let that slide.”
“C’mon, it’s been eating at me. What gives? You’re glitter from toenails to testicles, but nothing on the digits? I’m about to go get myself in some serious trouble. I can’t die with this hanging over my head.”
“Who told you about my—” Cosmo narrowed his eyes and turned a galactic cheek at me. “You know what? No. Friends or not, I can’t let you get away with this slander. Don’t be dazzled by my razzle, sister. I’m all man. And men do not paint their fingernails. Not in this day and age.”
“But Cosmo Cosmetics doesn’t even have a polish line. I’ve looked. What about the rest of us? You’re forcing your fans right into the arms of Lorena Val—”
Cosmo lunged for me and pressed my lips closed with a single unadorned finger. His eyes brimmed with pain. “Don’t say it.”
I took his hand in mine and held it. “It’s okay. You can tell me.”
“I can’t compete with her formula,” he whispered, tears brimming beneath his pearly lids. “I’ve tried everything. I cannot bear to release anything … subpar. And I’d rather go naked than wear her line.”
“That’s it?”
He slapped my shoulder. “It?! That’s it? That’s only my most embarrassing secret. I’ve entrusted it to you in the hopes that it will die with you, when you—” He made a fluttering motion with his fingers.
I scanned the map overlay, balled up the paper, and threw it at his head. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
&
nbsp; “Your words, not mine.”
“Good luck with your merchandise, friend.” I started off down the hallway. “Don’t trip on any more dead bodies.”
“Wait! Pinky, wait. You weren’t serious, were you? I didn’t mean it. It was playful banter, you know? The ladies love that. What are you doing?”
“I wish I knew, Cosmo.” I turned a corner where the map told me there was no corner and slipped behind another holoscreen.
Cosmo’s heels clicked behind me with sudden urgency. He poked his head through the wall. “Where’d you go?”
“Don’t stand too close,” I said. “This is going to get messy.”
A network of narrow passageways branched out and twisted away from the false wall, all painted in a subtle shade of pearly pink. Somewhere down one of the hallways, someone whimpered quietly.
“Is that—”
This time I hushed him with a finger to the lips. He pursed them at me and clenched his jaw, but said nothing. The crying came from a corridor to the right. We tiptoed that way. The pink walls were made of some kind of industrial-grade meringue that absorbed sound like a pillow over a snoring partner’s schnozzle. The whimpering was faint, but if we could hear it at all, it must be nearby. I held my breath as we got closer. Sliding my hand along the wall, I felt for any hidden doors that might not be marked on my map. Cosmo followed my lead on the other side. My heart hummed in my chest a little too loudly to be helpful.
Suddenly Cosmo’s arm slipped through the wall and he made an excited peeping noise before slapping a hand over his mouth and bugging out his eyes at me. The whimpering stopped. My map didn’t have any storage closets or staff facilities listed here. Just a long pink hallway leading toward the hidden mecca of the Last Humanists aboard Island Dreamer, and their leader, the Rose. Where were all the pink-robed acolytes? Had they been dispersed throughout the ship, ready to do the Rose’s bidding when the time was right? It was too early to tell yet which side the Rose was playing for. I was probably just collateral damage in his vendetta against Swain. But there was always a chance that Swain really was just a sweet potato, and we had a much bigger problem on our hands.
I took a deep breath and ducked my head through the wall. I let the breath out slowly, with bile burning the back of my throat. Dim, red emergency lighting illuminated a scene from a horror flick. Bodies in pink robes stacked up against every wall, like folding chairs in the church basement awaiting the next potluck dinner. Black faces with dead eyes stared up at the ceiling in uniform oblivion. Fingers curled in palms and knees and elbows sagged like dolls’ limbs. Necks bent sideways. I’d tossed around the “cult” label, but I didn’t think it went this far.
Were the anti-tech weirdos really a death cult in disguise? I hadn’t pegged the Last Humanists for this kind of blow down.
The whimpering started again, and Cosmo’s face hovered next to mine. His bottom lip trembled but he kept it quiet this time. His eyes popped with the effort, and he looked at me like I was supposed to do something about it. I lifted my upgrade out in front of me and leaned farther into the room. “Is someone there?”
A loud sniff. Then a sound like plastic bags rubbing together. A voice hissed from somewhere to my left. “Bubbles?”
“Dickie?!” I rushed into the room, peering between the rows of bare legs poking out beneath pink robes. “Is that you? What the—”
Dickie Rho, minus his Homburg and plus a shiny silver body bag wrapping around his legs and torso like an ill-fitting tube dress, wriggled out from beneath a bench piled with pink-robed bodies. The bag reflected the red light ominously. A piece of duct tape sagged off his mouth, looking like it had taken whatever few strands of facial hair Dickie had managed to grow with it. He had a welt or two on his brain box, not bigger than apples but enough to give me a headache just looking at them. He managed to focus his dark brown eyes in my direction and whimpered again. “I knew you would find me.”
“How long have you been here, Dickie?” I knelt and ripped the last of the tape away, leaving behind a raised pink patch of freshly depilated skin.
Dickie squealed and twisted away from me. “There goes six months of my masculinity, you boob!”
Cosmo’s platform shoes tiptoed up beside me. He whispered, “What the cuss is going on here?”
“God?” Dickie’s eyes watered. “Oh no. I’m dead, aren’t I? Are you dead, too, Bubbles? They told me they were going to kill you. I thought—”
“You are not dead.” I rolled Dickie onto his face and tugged at the body bag. “Unlike the company you keep. Who said they were going to kill me?”
“They aren’t dead, Bubbles.” Dickie shrugged out a shoulder and an arm and started helping me peel the crinkly silver material from his body, his eyes as wide as blaster barrels and just as jumpy. “They’re plugs. All of them. High-end, illegal, AI plugs. Flesh skins and everything.”
“Robots?” I grabbed Dickie by the collar and shook him harder than I meant to. “Are you sure?”
“Every last one of them, except—” His eyes roved over my shoulder, staring into the darkness behind me. Ice prickled across my shoulder blades. “I don’t know, I thought I heard someone else struggling when they dropped me. Then they topped me. I didn’t see what happened to her.”
“What the shiznat is a flesh skin?” Cosmo stomped the floor next to me. “Like they use in those Porno flicks?”
“Those aren’t real.” Dickie extricated himself from the rest of the material and crept between the lifeless, pink-robed bodies. “I mean, they were, like, eons ago. OE tech. But flesh skins have been illegal for hundreds of years. Ever since AIs got sophisticated enough to mimic human speech patterns and behaviours. The Trade District only allows AIs housed within TD approved shells.”
“Tell that to the gearheads on this cruiser.” I shadowed Dickie as he peered into a darkened corner. “Human holoskins are a dime a dozen.”
“Holoskins, yeah?” Dickie crawled on the ground between two rows of acolyte robots, and I felt my own skin crawl away in the opposite direction. “Not flesh skins. These are different. Cut them and they bleed synthetic blood. You can’t tell one from your first-grade teacher unless you open them up. Which we frown upon in case it actually is your first-grade teacher. That’s why it’s banned tech. Holoskins can be scanned. There are fail-safes built into their designs. The idea is to prevent people from using robots to do their dirty work.”
Cosmo crossed his arms over his narrow chest and shuffled back to the holoscreen to the hallway. “Or from becoming their dirty workers.”
“Did you say cruiser?” Dickie smacked his head on something and cursed. “Where exactly are we?”
“Orbiting Terra Firma on the Island Dreamer,” I said. “The Lucky Bastard Sweepstakes seems to have been less lucky and more fu—”
“So much for luxury cruising,” Dickie said. “I wonder if the concussions are free, or if I’m getting a bill to go with the lumps.”
“What’s wrong with these plugs,” I asked. “Are they listening to us right now?”
“I don’t think so,” Dickie said from somewhere underneath a bench. “I think they’re, like, on standby or something. Here.”
He tugged something shiny and silver out into the dim light of the emergency pulsers. He pulled back the cover of the body bag and revealed a mop of curly, black hair clinging to her fine brown skin. The woman’s wide black eyes shot from side to side, and her nostrils flared as she sucked air in and out over top of the dull grey tape across her mouth. I pulled the tape away slowly, and she gasped in huge breaths.
“Sure, you’re all gentle with her,” Dickie said. “She’s not even trying to grow a moustache.”
I wiped the hair away from her face while she started to relax. She didn’t quite look like the ’gram Whyte had shown me, but I had to ask. “Patti?”
Her eyes darted to my face and her chest rose and
fell, rose and fell. She licked her lips. “Who are you?”
“My name is Bubbles Marlowe,” I said. “Do you remember me?”
“No, I—” She shook her head. “I don’t remember … I feel strange. How long have I been here?”
“Dickie?”
“I don’t know.” Dickie ran a hand through his dark hair and let out a long breath. “The last thing I remember is recovering from that curry cart lunch after we sealed up the documents on that divorce case.”
“That was over a week ago.”
“Well, I did get hit on the head a few times.” He crouched next to Patti and rubbed the back of his skull. “Cut me some slack.”
“You don’t remember anything about the Lucky Bastard Sweepstakes?” I asked. “Or making my business cards?”
“You don’t have business cards,” Dickie said. “Terrible move in this industry. Everyone has cards.”
“I just spoke to you this morning.” I ran a hand over my face, trying to make the pieces fit without jamming them together too hard. “Or was it yesterday morning?”
“Nope.” Dickie frowned. “Can’t have. I get food and water once a day, and toilet privileges twice, plus the complimentary sapping. I mean, it blends together a bit, what with all the knocks to the noodle, but I’ve been up here for days. Can’t say for sure about her.”
“This is bad, Dickie.” I shook my head. “It was you. I would have sworn it. How could a robot mimic your . . . quirks … so perfectly.”
“Well, I’m no expert. But who knows who monitors our tattlers. Just because the Trade Zone says its illegal doesn’t mean nobody does it. They could have years worth of audio and video data to run through the AI programming. Oh man. Feed searches?” Dickie’s eyes went wide.
“What about you, Patti?” I said.
“I don’t remember anything since the lab,” Patti said. “Jimi—”
I turned to her. “What about Jimi?”
“He was hurt,” she whispered. “Someone had … I called it in …”