The Forever Man: A Near-Future Thriller

by Pierre Ouellette

  “You’re pretty old to be a Bad Boy.”

  The Oldie is a sweet woman in her seventies, with pink cheeks, a mischievous smile, and lively blue eyes. She issues her judgment without malice, and seems highly amused by what has just transpired.

  “You’re right,” he replies. “Maybe it’s time to try something else.”

  “Well, I suppose you could,” the woman speculates, “but there really isn’t much else, is there?”

  “No, there’s not.” Lane slumps in his seat and suddenly feels a stabbing pain in his forearm where he collided with the pavement. He tries to ignore it and think about the upside of what he’s done. By now, the Bird has been notified, as he lounges in his downtown high-rise and barks orders to his minions on this side of the river. They will try to move the bank before they’re hit by the cops, but there’s too much gear and not enough time.

  Lane looks up at the promo cards that line the trolley walls. Most are for the Temp Malls, the big halls that broker transactions between temporary workers and the companies that hire them. Their ads deliver feverish pitches about bigger bucks, shorter hours, and better conditions, when, in fact, they all contract with the same pool of companies.

  Lane closes his eyes. The thought of the Temp Malls, with their long lines and empty promises, makes him even wearier than he already is. Even by the standards of a contract cop, this has been a bad day. There have been fewer than half a dozen times in his career when he’s wound up in a jam like this and resorted to extreme violence. And in all the others, the precipitating circumstances were beyond his personal control. But this time, the whole ugly episode came down to one simple fact.

  He forgot his cover lobe.

  Jesus, that was like forgetting your wallet. Was he losing it? It was a terrible mistake that might’ve got him killed, and there was nobody else to blame. Damn, he’d always had a pretty good memory and an excellent eye for detail, but now he had to wonder. If a major item like this had slipped through the cracks, what else had oozed out?

  Maybe he was just getting old.

  These days, that in itself was terribly wrong. The national safety net was now completely unraveled and the populace left in free fall. No Social Security, no pensions, no Medicare, no Medicaid, no welfare. A world where both nuclear and extended families had dissolved into a transient goo left no one to look after Grandpa and Grandma.

  Lane glances over at the Oldie next to him. The woman senses his gaze, turns his way, and smiles. Lane has to wonder if the smile is genuine or a learned device to solicit compassion, her only defense against the predations of strangers. At the same time, he notices the bulge on her neck. Some kind of tumor, maybe like his mother’s, a lymphoma or some such thing. She’ll wind up at one of the Palliative Centers. He remembers passing one a few weeks ago, with its windowless front and discreet signage. Some wag with an airbrush had scrawled THE LAST PAL YOU’LL EVER NEED on the wall beside the entrance.

  For the first time, Lane imagines himself sitting where the woman sits. It frightens him. More than the Bird, more than the Bad Boys. He turns away from the woman and looks ahead, where the sun is setting and little wisps of cirrus stretch across the fading light.

  Chapter 2

  Street Party

  “Know what they call that?” The desk sergeant at the Justice Center says as he points at Lane’s forearm, which is now grotesquely swollen and radiating a low but persistent pulse of pain. “Hematoma. My uncle had one. A real asshole. Tried to smack my aunt, but he missed and hit the wall instead. Served him right.”

  “Wonderful,” Lane says. “Makes me feel a whole lot better.”

  “You know, you better have that looked at,” comments the sergeant.

  “Yeah, I’ll do that.” Lane wonders if the sergeant has any great ideas about who might pay for all this. Contract cops don’t have any benefits, and a trip to the emergency room is going to tear his financial guts out. What a nice reward for pinning down the Bird, he thinks. Especially since everybody at the briefing seemed so pleased with his work. In fact, the Chief himself popped his head in and gave Lane a nod.

  A second sergeant comes up to the desk just as Lane is turning to leave. “Hey, Anslow, you’ll never guessed what happened,” he says with a self-righteous smirk.

  “I’m not in the mood for guessing right now,” Lane says wearily.

  “Well then, let me be the first to inform you that your genius brother is an overnight guest in our accommodations upstairs.”

  “Jesus,” Lane mutters. “So what happened?”

  “According to the arresting officer, there was some kind of philosophical disagreement among several gentlemen in a downtown drinking establishment, your brother being one of them.”

  “Okay,” Lane says crossly. “I got the idea.” As he heads toward the elevator to the jail upstairs, his arm broadcasts continuous assaults of discomfort.

  When the deputy opens the cell door, Johnny springs to his feet as if there were no such thing as mass and gravity, as if he were athletically exempt from all the wearisome physical laws that govern everyone else in the world. Lane looks on sadly. He knows the source of the spring in his brother’s legs.

  “Hey, bro,” Johnny says with a sheepish grin that obviously wants to explode into a smile full of radiant teeth.

  Lane’s relieved that Johnny doesn’t appear to be hurt. Johnny. The brilliant one, the gifted one, with an intellect that sprints all the way to the end of an idea while others are still coming out the gate. But in the end, the liabilities inside Johnny’s brain outweigh the assets. John Anslow is two years younger than Lane but appears several years older. A thin gray fog has settled over his blond hair. His eyes have retained their manic beam but are slowly receding into some unknowable distance. A cracked web now spreads beneath them.

  Lane no longer argues with Johnny about his brother’s affliction, about the collection of mental symptoms that comprise “bipolar disorder.” He no longer pleads with Johnny about taking the drugs that can easily compress his emotional excesses into a more tolerable range. Johnny’s defense for not medicating is devastatingly simple. “It’s like hell when I’m down,” he once told Lane, “and it’s like heaven when I’m up and everything in the middle is just one big, unbearable bore.”

  Johnny crosses the cell, and as his arms open to embrace his brother, Lane feels the terrible vulnerability and boundless affection that will bind them forever. It has endured all the exuberant highs and crushing lows, the hysterical joys and darkest rages, the spontaneous generosity and unchecked paranoia. Lane knows that a scared little boy struggles to keep afloat at the eye of this emotional storm that never ends. And it’s this helpless child that he loves, the one that will never grow up, because the very nature of his brain won’t allow it.

  “Thanks, man,” Johnny says softly as they wrap their arms about each other. “Thanks for checkin’.”

  “So what happened?” Lane asks as they part, his forearm shouting pain from the pressure of the embrace.

  “Hey, you know,” Johnny says with a mirthful smile. “I’m in the bar at Jake’s. And pretty soon, there’s a little pushing here, a little shoving there, and next thing you know, I’m trying to explain it all to this police officer, who fails completely to understand the subtle dynamics of the situation.”

  “I see.”

  “I talked to my attorney,” Johnny continues, “and he’s going to get it downgraded from assault to disorderly conduct. He’s arranging bail right now, so I’m almost out of here. Good thing. I got a hot date tonight.”

  Johnny sports a cashmere sweater and perfectly pleated slacks. Despite his affliction, he glides deftly high above the ruins of the national economy. The Medplex provides him with a generous stream of compensation for his research. He holds twin doctorates in computer science and molecular biology. Did it all in just three years. Then a trough set in. Tattered clothes, stinking mattresses, rented rooms. Eventually, he pulled out of that and began a spectacular professional
ascent. But there’s been trouble on the way up. Regardless of the subject, Johnny’s convictions verge on absolute as he flies ever skyward. But the world hasn’t always conformed to his glorious arc.

  “Jesus!” Johnny exclaims, noticing Lane’s injured limb. “What did you do to your arm?”

  “Line of duty,” Lane says stoically.

  “You’ve got a hematoma. A bad one. You busted a blood vessel in there somewhere and it’s leaking fluid. You’re going to have to have it drained.”

  “Yeah. I figured as much. What I haven’t figured is how to pay for it.”

  “No problem. I got it.”

  “What do you mean you got it?”

  “Just hang on a couple of minutes downstairs. As soon as I’m out of here, we’ll go over to the ER at Health United. We’ll pay cash off my lobe.”

  “Cash off your lobe, huh?”

  “Absolutely. Simple as that.”

  Lane looks away. It isn’t simple at all. Nothing with his brother was ever simple. Sometime back, Johnny had soared out of his latest cerebral catapult and shot upward toward a maniacal heaven of his own making. All the while, gazing down benignly on those less fortunate, Lane included.

  It seems supremely ironic that this fragile, brittle creature would assume the role of benefactor and caretaker at this particular moment. After all the years, all the scrapes, all the jams, all the interventions by Lane.

  Lane stows his feelings. “Don’t think so.”

  Johnny’s entire face falls under the sudden tug of emotional gravity. His grand moment, gone. “Why not?” he asks.

  “I can handle it myself.” It was mostly a lie. Over time, he’d built up a meager financial buffer between himself and the street, but this one incident would pretty much wipe it out.

  Johnny brightens as his endorphins surge. “Well, the least you can do is let me buy you a drink. Hey, why don’t we meet up at Headwaters tonight? Before I meet Rachel for dinner.”

  So now it was Rachel, whoever she was. It was a safe bet that she was attractive, smart, and competent. During his ascending phases, Johnny had always reeled in the good ones. His unbounded confidence and unshakable conviction carried the day. It took a while for them to understand the reality behind the fetching persona. Over the years, Lane had learned to gauge their intelligence by how quickly they cracked the code. Johnny’s moods and personality were a moving target, both going up and coming down.

  Lane shrugs. “Yeah, sure. Why not?”

  He’s too tired to say no.

  Oak paneling, green carpets, crystal chandeliers, starched white on the waiters. All wrapped in Class 10 security. Headwaters is out of Lane’s financial grasp, but not Johnny’s. They sit in the bar, both nursing a glass of Glenfiddich.

  “We’re gettin’ old, bro,” Johnny observes as he rotates his glass around some imaginary axis. The surface of the liquid dips and rises in perfect symmetry. His brother’s grasp of the mathematical, spatial, and mechanical still amazes Lane.

  “No foolin’,” he replies.

  “Know why? Because our genes are getting old and telling us to die. It doesn’t take much. Ever hear of Werner’s syndrome?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “If you’ve got it, you enter old age at twenty and you’re dead by fifty.”

  “Bad deal.”

  “Really bad deal. There’s a single gene that codes for Werner’s syndrome, and it doesn’t work like most genes, which make various things happen inside your cells, like muscles twitching and neurons firing. Instead it goes off and works on other genes, and tells them how to make you die. Think about it. One gene out of thirty thousand and it can bring down the whole house if it’s defective.”

  “So how does it work?”

  Johnny breaks into a sly smile. “Good question. Very good question.”

  Lane doesn’t take the bait. It will lead to an ornate scientific exposition that features his brother’s undeniable genius. He changes the subject.

  “My contract with the cops is coming up for renewal. Cross your fingers for me, okay?”

  Johnny raises his hand. “Not an issue.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  Johnny leans forward. “Here’s the deal. I’m leaving for New York tomorrow. I’ll return in a couple of days. And then you’re set for good, believe me.”

  Lane senses the growing tension as his brother tries to keep a lid on himself, tries to keep from spewing out a mad tumble of gloriously agitated verbiage. Johnny wants desperately to retain his emotional dignity in front of Lane, to keep his malady in check so it doesn’t burden his brother, whom he both admires and loves.

  “What do you mean, I’m set?”

  “You’ll never have to work another day in your life.”

  “Come on now …”

  “Hi, John. Sorry I’m late.”

  Lane looks up to a woman in her thirties with short dark hair and intense green eyes. She wears a loose silk blouse and trim skirt over an obviously athletic frame. It has to be Rachel. Attractive, smart, competent. No surprise.

  Johnny stands, Lane follows. “Hey, Rachel. No problem. This is my bro, Lane.”

  She lightly shakes his hand with a palm both dry and cool. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “Likewise.” They sit. Johnny flags the waitress. Rachel orders before Johnny can ask her what she wants. Competent.

  “Lane’s in the security business,” Johnny volunteers. “He has his own consulting firm.”

  Yeah, sure. In his two-room apartment on the fringe of the Null Zone next to the Trade Ring. Johnny doesn’t want her to know he has a brother who’s a bottom-dweller.

  “The security business,” Rachel repeats. “Well, I’m sure business is quite good.”

  Lane shrugs. “I can’t complain. And what business are you in?”

  “Politics. I work for Harlan Green.”

  Her green eyes scan him intently to gauge his reaction. Nobody’s neutral about Harlan Green, but Lane plays it cool. “Oh yeah? So how are things in the Street Party?”

  “Never better.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.” Actually, he is certain she is right. Five years ago, Green was a salesman in a discount store in Phoenix. Today he sat atop a political party growing faster than a mushroom in the warm drizzle of the rain forest. It was already seeping into both houses of Congress, and a shot at the presidency was almost certain. At first, the DC Beltway pundits wrote Harlan Green off as a joke, a populist caricature. The “Street Party”? I mean, come on. But the humor quickly turned to sobriety, which rapidly descended into paranoia.

  In the seats of power, they did what they could to squelch him. The Feed all but ignored him. The Meternet filtered him out. But in every major city, Green drew large, fulminating crowds, telling them what they already knew: Their houses were gone, their jobs evaporated, their safety net riddled with a million holes, and their streets verging on anarchy. He consolidated the collective rage and blew it back at them with amazing force. Such was his genius.

  Lane would love to engage Rachel in discussion about the dark side of the Street Party, the side he frequently encountered on his excursions into the Middle East. In every city, the party had quietly formed alliances with local gang leaders like the Bird, and was transforming them into a militia of sorts. Ultimately, it was quid pro quo, because Green had survived two assassination attempts and needed security.

  But tonight, this minion of Green’s has a date with his brother, so Lane opts for civility. “And what do you do for Mr. Green?”

  “I’m his chief of staff.”

  She was turning out to be more than competent. She was becoming a force to be reckoned with. “In most places, that means you’re the one who actually runs the thing,” Lane observes.

  “That might be true, but the Street Party is not like most outfits,” she replies. “Our mission is public, not private.”

  Spoken like a true politician, Lane thinks. Did she get that from Green or was she equally gifted? This
isn’t the time to find out. He puts down his glass and stands. “You guys are probably getting hungry, and I’ve definitely got some things to do.”

  Johnny stands to acknowledge Lane’s departure. “Hey, bro, I’ll talk to you when I get back from New York.”

  “All right then.” Lane turns to Rachel. “Nice meeting you.”

  The guttural hum of tires assaulting pavement leaks out from the underside of the Morrison Bridge as Lane strolls beneath it on the walkway bordering the Willamette River. The hematoma in his arm pulses pain and radiates trouble. He’d better get it fixed before it turns into a full-blown medical catastrophe.

  A lone seagull perches on the old cement railing and looks at him disdainfully, its feathers a soft, radiant white. So what was this raving from Johnny about New York and never having to work again? Not good. But right now, the least of his troubles.

  Lane stops and looks out over the river, blown into a shiver by the late evening breeze. He shrugs in resignation and heads for the emergency room, where he will undergo both physical and financial surgery of the most unpleasant sort.

  Chapter 3

  The Gompertz Curve

  Mount Tabor. A volcanic cinder cone, an artifact of the earth’s rage gone cold. A dome of forest rising 600 feet above the surface of the surrounding city, it formed a compressed oval occupying 120 square blocks draped in a canopy of dark green fir. Once covered with walking trails, picnic sites, open reservoirs, and even a small amphitheater carved from the ancient residue, but then the fiscal crisis hit and never ended. The crushing debt load brought the city to its monetary knees. Every saleable asset went on the block, including city parks. Private interests from around the globe swooped in and acquired the finest of them, including Mount Tabor. Razor-wire fences sprouted on its periphery, where fields of fire were cleared. Watch posts hid on its slopes, and access was limited to a single, bombproof checkpoint. Multistory buildings thrust out at key points on the mountain’s slopes, structures of unknown purpose, the target of endless speculation.