by Neil Clarke
This was what he got for staying awake all night bleaching the floorboards after the paramedics and cops had vacated. He sat up, the chair offering a friendly burst of momentum as he rose. The opportunity map for snow shoveling had thinned out. The sidewalks were clearing and the temperature was on the rise. Another storm was due in a couple days.
He’d need it: His cap had fallen further, taking with it the morning’s harvest of hard labor and good deeds.
He pulled metrics. There’d been a surge in his favor, maybe an hour ago—anti-suicide activists throwing him support, thereby officially disapproving of Cascayde’s performance of self-harm.
Seraph’s work. “She adores me,” he mumbled.
Why was he plunging?
Heart sinking, he re-buttoned his shirt, which was one hole off. He’d been in worse shape than he guessed this morning. He remembered dressing carefully, like a soldier going on parade.
“Crane, you booted?”
“Online now, sir.”
“Check the newsflows.”
“All your premium memberships are on hold.”
“Try public access?” The blister on his hand had split as he slept.
He had to endure three minutes of advertising just to find out Cascayde had made a short statement through her publicist:
Cascayde was in a state of despair when she committed her act of self-harm. While Mer Whiting’s remarks about her recent songstorm, Cataract, may have influenced her state of mind, he cannot be held responsible for her actions.
She apologizes wholeheartedly.
This, plus a still of her barely making a ripple in a hospital bedcover, had dropped another depth charge on his reputation. Big bad bully Drow. Virtuosi were sharing it all over Sensorium and their fans were spending lavishly, cutting into cap reserves as the cost per strike rose, three for one strike, thirty for two, nine hundred for three . . .
He realized he was watching his fortunes bottom out in a stranger’s living room.
“Anyone here?”
No answer.
“Crane, where’s Tala?”
“Uncertain, sir. I’m still powering up a few peripherals.”
“You went offline? Total shutdown?”
“I’m . . . Yes, I believe so.”
“How can you be unsure?” Drow dove for his boots and coat. The gloves might be anywhere; he gave them up for lost. For one claustrophobic second, he thought the old lady’s smartlock might not unlatch for a stranger. Would he have to break a window to get out? What if someone saw? Did the Haystack have a transcript proving she’d invited him in?
A click, just as he started to hyperventilate. He lunged out onto the salted porch, the cold air a welcome slap on his unshaven face.
Tala was there, in a pink quilted coat so bright you could probably see her from space. LED eyes with heart-shaped irises glowed from deep within a fur-fringed hood.
“What are you doing?” Drow asked.
“Waiting for my ride.” She pointed as a self-driving car toiled to push a rolling pile of slush to the curb. “Cardiologist appointment.”
“I didn’t mean to pass out in your. Um. Breakfast nook? It’s just I haven’t been sleeping.”
“Oh, Handsome,” she said. “You know you can make it up to me.”
Hiding a sigh, he grabbed his smartshovel. The car paused when it saw him, waiting with electronic patience as he cleared its wheels, even backing up so he could get at the accumulated mush. His broken blister rubbed raw, smearing red on the wooden handle of the shovel.
Twenty minutes later, the car whirred up to Tala’s walk. Drow went and offered her an awkward arm.
“Bless you, young fella. That’s what my granny would’ve said.”
“No problem.” Helping her into the car got him a few likes from passersby. Spit on a bonfire at this point.
“Text from your landlord,” said Crane. “His father says there’s loud noise coming from your apartment.”
He clamped his lips over a curse, smiling at the old lady. I probably look like a maniac.
She laid a pink-gloved hand on his cheek. “Want to come? Help the old dear out at Mount Sinai?”
Drow pulled away, skin crawling. “Thanks, Tala, but . . .”
She waved him her contact info. “We should talk about cancer imaging.”
He remembered her hinting at a trade. Medically unnecessary chemotherapy. For smartdrugs.
Rather than answer, he closed the door, watching the car putt-putt-skid off to College Street before he shouldered the shovel, turning into the winter wind.
The pings from Drow’s landlord got increasingly urgent as he hiked, so it was no surprise to find his roommate crowding the couch with her boyfriend and four other virtuosi wannabes. They had helped themselves to his collection of musical instruments: smart drumsticks, a couple faux guitars, gloves for a virtual keyboard, and a real saxophone that he’d tuned and modemed himself, years ago, with Uncle Jerv’s help. They were trying to work up a single, the kind of DIY instahit earworm that made Drow want to grab the nearest pair of pliers and rip out his own wisdom teeth.
He paused at the threshold—actually hesitated. Considered whether he wanted trouble. The bleach smell, he noticed, underlaid a perfume of stale pizza and farts.
Self-loathing got him moving; he logged in to the musical instruments and overrode the guest permissions, shutting them down.
Marcella burbled into sudden silence. “Hey, Drow. You got the blood out of the carpets?”
“Yeah, sad. No grisly spectacle for your friends.”
“Dunno know what you mean. This is a work session.”
“We talked about this, Marce. Stream sound to your rigs.”
“You were out, Drow.”
“You want amps, go to Cole’s. He lives alone.”
“In a shoebox. Anyway, equipment’s here.”
“My equipment. Which’d be point three. You can’t jam with my stuff.”
“It’s gathering dust.”
“I’m conceptualizing.”
“You’re blocked. And sinking fast. Cataract might not’ve ascended to your lofty standards of musical truth and beauty, but at least Cascayde’s composing.”
“Pilfering. I’d rather compose nothing, ever, than loot everyone else’s garbage.”
“Great job! Writing nothing ever is definitely getting to be your forte.” She minced close enough to make him want to back away. Her bright orange Shirley Temple ringlets bounced with every step. “We’ve raised two thousand strokes between us. Want ’em?”
Two thousand. His mouth watered.
Before he could go through the internal litany of why that’s a terrible idea, the boyfriend shifted. Getting a better camera angle? Drow remembered anew that everything he did right now was a potential live upload.
“This sounds like bribery, Marce. Very antisocial,” he reminded her.
“Don’t be sanctimonious. Yes or no?” She gave him a look that, terrifyingly enough, might have been pity. He tried to remember when and why he had liked her, back when he invited her to rent-share.
“We promised Imran a quiet environment for his dad.”
“Basement dad is fucking deaf.”
“I’m having a shower,” Drow said. “When I emerge, you and Wonderboy and your friends will be gone and my instruments will be neatly stowed. Because, uninvited houseguests, I didn’t get your names yet. Marce here is the only one about to take a hit for attempted cap manipulation on a high-profile pariah.”
“You’re not opening a support ticket on me!”
Drow forced himself to turn his back on her. “I’m definitely not opening one on the people in this room whom I have not whoozed.”
He made it upstairs, despite quaking legs. Collapsing against the wall, he peeled off warmth-retentive layers of black, like a fiberfill onion. He hung the coat, unbuttoned the shirt and hung that, too, then stripped the base layer and put it, stinking, straight into the laundry. It smelled a little skunky, though
he hadn’t smoked cannabis in years. Seemed hypocritical, after blocking Jerv.
Crossing the hall, defiantly naked, he paused to take in the sweet sound of brouhaha in progress downstairs:
The boyfriend, Cole: “Give him the strokes, Marce—he won’t report us if we pay him off.”
Drummer: “Tell him it was a joke, right?”
The house was so old it had a nine-foot claw-foot tub, upgraded with a smartshower set to deliver carefully measured bursts of heated water for ten minutes precisely. Drow paid it a precious carbon offset, trading his scant dollars for an extra ten minutes, before he plunged in.
Breathing slowly, he tried to calm the deranged stutter of his heart. He’d had shitty roommates before. It was what you got when you glomerated on the cheap.
Water ran through his hair, spreading comforting heat. He felt the front door slam. Marcella’s friends, abandoning ship before he could run that support ticket?
Jealousy-raddled pusbag. Cascayde’s words. He remembered the anguish in her eyes. The blade coming up. He’d stepped back, expecting her to lash out, not inward . . .
Suddenly he was crouched, curled against his bare knees in the wet and steam. “Oh shit,” he whispered. “Damnation, no, no . . .”
Give in. Give in, you’ll feel better.
Filthy no-talent bottom-feeding scum!
Dirty, dirty, where’s my soap?
Soap? Missing. Snuffling, he peered through a crack in the shower curtain. There: stained with more of Marcella’s friends’ pizza sauce. He had to get out, leaving sodden ovals on the bath mat.
By the time he’d scrubbed the pizza sauce off his pricey scentless soap, then washed the imaginary marijuana smell off his hair, then chewed off the dead-skin petals curling and drying around the edges of the raw blister on his left palm, the urge to melt down had congealed. An acidic mess of bad feeling pulsed stickily between Drow’s lungs, tightening breath, refusing to dislodge.
The showerhead pinged a one-minute warning.
“Ten more minutes,” he said. Begged, really.
“Not recommended, sir,” Crane said. “You have exceeded your weekly carbon ceiling. Exponential pricing would raise the cost—”
“Fine!” Should he upgrade his sidekick? Was there a more soothing alternative to his dads’ irascible homegrown assistant?
Crane threw a countdown into his lower peripheral. At ten seconds, Drow stepped out. He dried off, sopped up his wet footprints, and hung the bath mat on the shower bar.
“Is Marce out there, waiting to ambush?”
“They’ve left, but I have messages,” Crane said.
“Summarize.” Pathetic, the fragility in his voice. Wounded baby boy with his lip aquiver.
“Mer Zapiti opines that nobody will live with you if she gives notice. Mer Cole says: Please don’t make trouble, here’s a thousand strokes. No strings.”
“Huzzah.”
“In better news, your downstairs neighbor has confirmed that the noise has stopped.”
“All hail the tiny victories.” No, Crane was perfect. Butler, enabler, dad substitute . . . just right.
Emotionally tone-deaf, though. Now the inbox was open, the sidekick had clearly decided to blast through some to-dos. “And from Seraph?”
“Play it.”
“Drow. Some anon donor has kicked Newsreef funding for an expanded version of the cancer story. Call me?”
He winced. “I don’t suppose you’ve got one from Anon Donor herself?”
“Meaning, Master Woodrow?”
“Anything from Tala Weston?”
“There is indeed.”
“Play it.”
“Drow, it’s Tala. How would you feel about driving to Buffalo for medical imaging tomorrow?”
He shouldn’t do this.
“Crane, compose reply. Ask Tala what the hell she wants from me.” Scooping up a washrag, he began to work on a tomato-sauce handprint on his sink.
A pause. “She’s sent a contract.”
For?
“It’s an artist’s modeling release.”
“Can you run it through some kind of legal?”
“With our cap, it would have to be public access.”
More ads. He groaned. “Copy to Seraph.”
Modeling release. Presumably, Tala wanted to make some kind of artstorm of Drow taking chemo.
“Compose a reply. I’d want some guarantees. About the after-treatment care we discussed.” He was careful not to mention smartdrugs.
Again, Tala’s response was almost immediate. “Can’t specify aftercare in writing, but we can work something out. Eight months, perhaps? Can I pick you up at ten?”
Liquid Brill. Eight months’ supply. Maybe he was Uncle Jerv’s son after all.
“Tell her yes.”
Seraph was against it, of course, so opposed she showed up in the flesh next morning, right at ten as Drow was making to leave. She piled into Tala’s gas-guzzling hire-a-limo, brimming with righteous fire. “Drow’s supposed to profile an insider who’s against the pop-up chemo program. End of story.”
“You know I wanted to realtime a patient.”
“Victim, you mean?”
Tala interrupted: “Are you going to introduce your friend, Handsome?”
“You’ve already whoozed each other.” The women bristled from opposite corners of the cab. “Seraph, it’s a better story. First I do the medical screening, then I take the pop-up assessment. It will show just how much they’re distorting the risks.”
“Yes, very clever. Show the distort by all means, Drow. Compare, contrast, get the scoop from your source! Like Like Like! But draw the line at actually doing chemo.”
“It’s a way to get at the truth—”
“I won’t green-light this.” Privately, she sent him a pair of spiked entertainment flows, stuff that hadn’t made it out of Newsreef, draft articles about two closed screenings of Tala’s most recent artstorm, something called All Fun and Games Until . . . The streams avoided—carefully, Drow noticed—saying what the pieces themselves were like. Brawls had broken out at both screenings, and the second theater had a full-scale medical lockdown afterward. Out of business for six weeks.
“Newsreef isn’t the only platform, young lady,” Tala said. “Drow will find a taker for this piece.”
Seraph folded her arms, leaning back into the upholstery. “Really? With his cap?”
Tension ratcheted then, as they waited to see if Tala would offer to somehow level him up from pariah.
“It suits you, doesn’t it? That he’s desperate.”
“Face it, Seraph—I am desperate,” Drow said. “And this streams. Everyone in music wants to see me pay for what I did to Cascayde.”
“You did nothing!”
“Verdict’s still guilty, though, isn’t it?”
“If you show you’re a serious journo, they’ll reassess in time.”
“Time. Years? If I make myself sick and we pour strikes all over the pop-ups, we can trim that to months—”
“So it’s a shortcut? Get your life back and start treating Newsreef as a dodge again?”
“This story was your idea,” Tala reminded her.
“Drow will be too hagged to assemble newsflow.”
“I’ll prerecord most of it. You’ll help me sharpen the rest.” He couldn’t tell her about the smartdrugs; she’d be an accessory. “I’m not making light of what you do, Seraph.”
“We. What we do.”
“I have to stop myself from bottoming out.”
Seraph rubbed her fingers through the black-rooted honeycomb stubble on her scalp. “Maybe.”
Tala shifted in her seat, seeming to sense victory. “Can I drop you somewhere, young lady, or are you proposing to accompany us to the U.S.?”
Seraph’s lip curled. She sent text: You want me to ridealong? Silent, so she can’t overhear?
Drow’s breath hitched. Come in person, he wanted to say. Don’t leave me.
Fact was, Tala creepe
d him out.
But she was so old. What was she gonna do?
Aloud, he said, “I’ll be okay, Seraph. Swear.”
“Mer Raffe?”
“Drop me at the subway,” Seraph said.
Tala’s LED eyes blinked. She was swaddled in a pink cashmere cape with fur fringe. The color made her skin look chalky, powdered. One of her earlobes had become untucked from the earphones. It dangled, rubbery as an udon noodle. She must have worn a hoop in there when she was young.
The driver pulled up at Saint Andrew. “Subway.”
“Don’t put her out here,” Drow said. “She’ll get strikes for riding in a limo.”
“I’ll take the hit,” Seraph said, flinging the door wide. “Expect me to micromanage this one. Nanomanage. I want scan results from Buffalo. Itemized list: They do it, I review it.”
“Don’t worry.” He reached for her hand, but she slipped his grasp and lunged out into the frosty air.
They left her scowling on King Street, no doubt taking hits from everyone who’d seen the car. The limo sped toward the Queensway and the Niagara Falls border crossing.
“You could’ve dropped her in a parkade somewhere.”
“Mer Raffe clearly wished to make a display of herself. Now. My clinic needs a medical history.” Tala sent a long document to his inbox. “Questions for you from the doctors.”
Grateful for the distraction, Drow dove in, offering up family medical history and bio deets: name, age, Social Insurance Number. Doctors’ appointments, blood work, surgery, serious illnesses. Soon they were at the border.
“Passport?”
“Already?” Surprised, he brought it up, transmitting to Border Services. She read his expression. “I’m authorized for the fast lane. No four-hour wait today.”
Twenty minutes later, at a clinic that looked like a vacation resort—one of those places that turned the death-fearing rich into ever-older zombies—he was stripping down and chugging contrast liquid. A technician eased him onto a deep tray in a hyperlinked room. The tray was layered with plastic bricks; as he relaxed onto them, they crumbled into beads, forming a synthetic bed that cushioned him completely, adhering to his ankles and feet as he sank into the nodules like quicksand. They stuck to the backs of his knees, pressing into the curve of his butt, the nape of his neck.