The man stood before him, feet planted, toes wiggling. The knife started to come up, and then there was a commotion, a door crashing open, and the man turned sharply. The quick movement tripled him in Deatry's woozy vision. Bright blue flash and a sound like a hundred light bulbs popping out at the same time. The man sprawled to the floor, head by Deatry's left knee. Scorched whiff of pork. Deatry's fragment put a name to the face: Cook. Jackie Boy.
Then Farkas was there untying him.
“I don't know what you think you're doing coming out here by yourself,” Farkas said.
The Deatry fragment managed: “Shaabing ur life."
“Thanks,” Farkas said. “You did a hell of a job."
“Cook the bastard,” Deatry said, more or less coherently.
“I cooked him, all right,” Farkas said.
* * * *
Monday at ten AM Deatry was not at the Still Life Café.
* * * *
Monday night, Deatry, stone sober, sat before his Scroll in the darkened room that had once been a “spare” bedroom when the house he shared with his second wife was a house undivided, except for the everlasting divisions in Deatry's own mind. He stared at a list of names, women he had chatted with to varying degrees of intensity over the last year or so. For months those names hadn't impelled him in the least. Except for one. White Echo. Kimberley. Now some of the names were lit, indicating online status, and some were dark. White Echo was dark. Deatry stared at the other names for a while, then he stood up and grabbed a beer. He looked out the window for a while. It was raining again. Raindrops trembled and squiggled down the pane. He returned to his desk. White Echo was still dark.
* * * *
“I'm looking at your picture,” Deatry typed.
“Which one?” Joni, the Loved One, asked.
“Some kind of park. Lake in the background, but not summer. Cloudy sky, a playground. You're wearing a black skirt and purple wool leggings and a funny hat."
Deatry had confiscated an image wafer from Cook's home office.
“What's funny about my hat?” Joni said.
“I meant pretty and sophisticated.” Deatry was drunk.
“I know that picture,” Joni said.
“You're very beautiful in it."
“Thank you, Brian."
“Was that a park you visited very often?” Deatry asked.
“No. But I wanted to."
“Why didn't you then?"
“My husband didn't like me to go out of the house without him, and he didn't like the park. So we only went that one time, the time he took the picture of me. He thought I was beautiful, too."
“He didn't like you to go out of the house?” Deatry twisted the cap off his fifth beer.
“He used to say it was so dangerous. With all the bombings and the crime. But we lived in a nice neighborhood with a Homeland Watch Captain and everything. It wasn't that dangerous. I always thought it would be nice if I could take Timothy to the park and let him play while I sat with the other ladies. Or sometimes I thought about going by myself, just to be out in the fresh air with a nice book."
“That's not asking too much,” Deatry typed.
“No, I didn't think so, either."
“Your husband sounds like a harsh man."
Deatry had started to type “asshole” instead of “harsh man” but stopped himself. And then he thought, What difference does it make? It's like talking to myself anyway. But he didn't type asshole.
After a long pause, Joni said: “He was a brutal man."
Deatry stared at the picture on the screen next to the chatwindow. Joni Cook possessed, or was possessed by, a gamine quality. Her face was infinitely vulnerable and guarded, her eyes large and dark. He felt drawn to those eyes.
“Was the park very far from your house?” he typed.
“Not far at all."
“I would have enjoyed meeting you there sometime."
“I think I would have liked that, too,” Joni said. “You seem like a very kindly man. At first I was afraid of you. I didn't know you and I was afraid. But now I can see the kindness of your heart. Or the loneliness."
What the hell? Deatry thought.
“When your module is turned on and no one is talking to you,” Deatry typed, because he was curious, “why are you uncomfortable?” He almost typed “lonely."
“It's hard to explain,” Joni said. “It's like standing alone in a blank room and not knowing if anyone will ever come into the room. Ever. And even then knowing if someone does come in, like you are here now, they will never be able to touch me, and I'll never be able to touch them. It's like standing in the blank room with my memories and nothing else, and thinking about how no one will ever touch me, and thinking this is all there is and all there ever will be."
Deatry looked away from the Scroll. Rain tapped at the window. He thought about the woman downstairs, and then he stopped thinking about her.
He typed: “Let's say you came to that park one day and I was there."
Long pause. Then, “All right."
“Let's say things were different."
“Yes."
“Let's say we knew each other but had never met in person. In real life."
“We wrote all the time and that's how we knew each other so well."
“Yes,” Deatry typed. “And we never turned on all the virtual chat enhancements. We just wrote, no voice even."
“Like letters used to be."
“Right,” Deatry typed.
“So one day we decide to meet."
“That's what I was thinking."
“We would have seen each other's picture."
“Right,” Deatry typed.
“What next?” Joni asked.
“We meet by that playground, and I've brought a couple coffees, one for each of us."
“I like mine with lots of sugar and just a little cream."
“I know that, so I've made sure it's right. Like I'm going for making a good impression."
“It's because you're kind. You're a nice man."
“I can be nice,” Deatry typed. “I have my moments."
“What next?"
“I'm guessing there's a bench somewhere in that park."
“There is."
“We go and sit beside each other,” Deatry typed.
“It's October, not too cold, sunny but brisk. The color of the water and the sky are wonderful."
“Yeah, it's nice."
“Yes."
“We talk about stuff, our lives, our dreams.” Deatry was pretty damn drunk.
“I like just talking,” Joni said. “But there's more between us, we've known for a long time, and now sitting so close beside each other we can feel it strongly."
“I take your hand in mine,” Deatry typed, and in his mind he feels her hand, and sees the vivid blue sky and the darker blue of the water. He's filling up the blank room. For both of them.
“I look into your eyes, your kind eyes,” Joni said.
“And I kiss you on the lips."
Joni didn't reply, and Deatry looked at the window again and thought about retrieving another beer, but he didn't really want another, so he stayed where he was, and part of his mind occupied the bench with Joni Cook in a nameless park on a mythical afternoon in October. Then Joni said: “That really happened to me, Brian."
He wasn't sure what she meant.
“I did meet someone in that park. A man. A kind, sweet man. And we held hands, and he kissed me, just like you did."
Deatry didn't know what to type. Several minutes elapsed, and the room started to become blank again. When it got that way he could feel Kimberley wanting to come in, or maybe it was Barbara. Finally Deatry typed: “Are you there?"
“My husband knew,” Joni said. “And when he got home from work, he hit me as hard as he could with his fist. Timmy was there. He always saw his dad hitting me, but not like this time. This time his daddy killed me. Timmy was just a little boy."
Deatry wanted to t
ype something but couldn't. I'm talking to myself, he thought. It's an auto-reactive program. Yeah, he thought. Just like a real human being. That was funny but Deatry didn't laugh. He looked at the picture of Joni Cook.
“I knew in my heart that he would do it one day,” Joni said. “So I had it in my living will to make this thing, if there was time."
“The Loved One,” Deatry said.
“Yes. I was in a coma for three days. That's when they did it."
“So Timothy would still be able to talk to you."
“A boy needs his mother,” Joni said. “Please turn me off now, Brian. Please."
Deatry powered down the module.
Rain ticked at the window like a clock.
* * * *
At the paradicks office, Deatry and Farkas labored over reams of paperwork with the object of A: justifying the shooting death of Timothy Cook, and B: justifying the trans-jurisdictional nature of that shooting, not to mention the illegal weapon used. In the middle of it all, Farkas handed Deatry a hardcopy file that told at least two stories in the subtextural labyrinth.
“The short not-so-happy life of Francis Cook, our guy's dad,” Farkas said. “Gives you a clue about the Bastard, though. If you need a clue. My opinion, the character clues don't matter. You come out of something bad, you have to have a strong will, but you make your life work. Plenty of people do it. Then there's guys like Timmy Cook."
Deatry read the brief file. It was like one, two, three. One: Francis Cook was a professional, a doctor who also happened to be an alcoholic who enjoyed beating the shit out of his wife. Two: one day he went too far and killed her. Three: police investigation and publicity and a manslaughter charge ruined him, and maybe guilt ruined him further, and, after his sentence, he ended up on the street; a straight fall from the top of the societal heap to the bottom. As a coda: he died of exposure at the age of fifty-eight, the body identified by his DNA flash file. And coincident to it all, about ten years later, derelicts started getting themselves dissected all over Deatry's Grid.
* * * *
On a bench under a blue October sky, Deatry and the thing that pretended to be Joni Cook sat with their arms around each other and watched a white sail skim the lake.
* * * *
Thirty years previous, the world shuddered, glass coughed into a shopping mall's atrium, bodies sprayed apart, including Deatry's mother's. He had been eleven years old.
Brian Deatry's numero uno character clue.
The hand he used to hold.
* * * *
Sometimes the room stubbornly remained blank. Then it was only their two voices. And not even that, but mere typing of symbolic characters in a chatwindow. Deatry had never bothered to figure out how to activate the voice routine. He would have felt uncomfortable with that.
On a very bad night, on a particularly bad night, Deatry typed the wrong thing. Joni had been talking about Timothy again. Not Timothy the little boy, the victim, but Timothy the grown man who had talked to her every day and never once revealed that he was a homicidal maniac, or at least neither Joni nor Deatry ever mentioned it. They were in the blank room and she was talking about Timothy, the wonderful man her little boy had grown into, and why couldn't she talk to him anymore? Deatry, who was frustrated and drunk and craving, not the peaceful October lake, but the other place they sometimes visited, the place where his body came alive in his hand, where they made love of a remote sort; Deatry and the auto-responsive module.
“Let's not talk about Timothy anymore,” Deatry typed.
A pause.
“Why not?"
“Never mind."
“Has something happened to Timothy?
“No, he's fine, I'm sure."
“Please tell me, Brian."
He considered turning the module off. Isn't that what he always did? Turn the module off ? There was a turned-off module living downstairs. There was another turned-off module a couple of grids away, that relationship ultimately depersonalized back to a dark name on a chatfriend list. White Echo was a dead module; Kimberley, somewhere, lived.
Even Deatry himself was a dead module.
Or becoming one.
He was staring at the window again, the rain squiggle, the flat glare of arc-sodium safelight, an infinity of loneliness.
He turned back to the Scroll. New words had appeared.
Hello?
Are you there?
I'm hell on staring at windows, Deatry thought.
He typed: “Joni, listen to me."
“Yes?"
“We have to be careful. If we're not careful we'll get lost and forget what we're doing."
“I don't understand."
“I mean we'll forget who we are, and we'll start thinking this is a real conversation and that we're real people."
“Brian, I know what I am."
“That makes one of us."
“Why are you acting so strange?"
“Who says it's an act?"
“Tell me what's happened to Timothy. I know you're keeping something from me."
“It doesn't matter. I'm just talking to myself."
“Brian?"
“I'm talking to myself."
“You're scaring me."
Deatry typed: “Timothy is dead. My partner shot him because he was about to cut me open. Your son was hell on cutting people open."
“Don't say that."
“It's the truth, and you've probably known it all along."
“Please don't. Why would my son want to hurt you?"
“I'm a police detective."
“You lied to me."
“Yes."
“It was so nice for us. Now it's ruined."
“Yes,” Deatry typed. “It's ruined."
No more words appeared. Deatry got up and went into the kitchenette. He was out of beer and coffee. He grabbed his coat and keys and his stunner. Just to prove it didn't matter, he left the module running when he left.
* * * *
At half past two AM he returned. The Scarlet Tree closed at two. Remarkably, Deatry was not drunk. For the last hour he had been thinking about Joni. Thinking about the bench, the high October sky, the blue lake. The blank room, his cruelty.
On the screen Joni Cook's reactive memory engramatic imprint had written: “You used me."
He removed his coat and sat down. He wasn't drunk, but he had downed a couple of pints and felt lucid. He typed a long, rambling message, and then waited for a response. None came. He waited, but there was nothing. He typed: “Are you there?"
Nothing.
He opened a window to White Echo and typed another message. When he was done he read it over and was repelled by the desperateness of what he'd written. He deleted it.
He left the desk and turned on the TV. Every once in a while he checked the Scroll for a reply from Joni. There never was one. Finally he got up and wiggled the cable connection, noted the power ON light of the module. Everything was in order. Just before dawn, thinking of the blank room, Deatry powered down the module, unplugged it from the Scroll, and threw it in a drawer.
He was dozing on the sofa when the dead module named Barbara knocked on the interior door.
“Are you there?” she said.
Deatry stared at the door, wondering: Am I? Rain ticked at the empty pane. He stared at the door, some kind of urgency churning him. He stared at the door, and in his mind he stood up and opened it.
Copyright(c) 2006 Jack Skillingstead
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Chaos Theory
by William John Watkins
(For my son, Wade, 1963-1993)
Events from little lives go rolling out and twist unstable systems into storm;
large systems teetering on the brink without the little nudge that makes big changes for shift and cascade toward states unforeseen,
“just right” shades softly into “gone too far,"
one angstrom changes blue to bluish green one atom split too m
any kills a star.
The worst disasters start from tiny things, one drop can make the brimmed cup overflow, and hurricanes evolve from Monarch's wings.
Most things are now in flux, that much we know, and yet we trust the ground on which we stand, and lose sons to a surgeon's tired hand.
—William John Watkins
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
The Hastillan Weed
by Ian Creasey
Ian Creasey was born in 1969 and lives in Yorkshire, England. His fiction has appeared in various venues including Oceans of the Mind, Gothic.net, On Spec, and The Mammoth Book of Legal Thrillers. His spare time interests include hiking, conservation, and gardening—anything to get him outdoors and away from the computer screen. He puts his knowledge of these activities to very good use in his first story for Asimov's.
* * * *
“Since we have so many new faces,” I said to the half-dozen volunteers, “I'll start with a tools talk. Safety points for the spade—the most important is that when you're digging, you push with the ball of your foot."
I picked up a spade from the pile, and demonstrated by digging up a bluebell growing by the hedge. From the large bells all round the stem, I knew it was a Spanish bluebell, a garden escapee that if left unchecked would hybridize with the natives. Too late now, though. You can tell the British bluebell because the flowers are smaller, deeper blue, and they're usually on one side of the stem, so the plant droops under their weight as if bowing down before its foreign conqueror. There's hardly a wood left in England where you'll see only native bluebells.
“Or you can use your heel on the spade.” I heaved the invader out of the earth and tossed it aside, knowing it would safely rot. “But you should never press down with the middle of your foot. The bones in the arch are delicate, and you can injure yourself."
I turned to the alien. “Of course, that may not apply to you. I guess you know where your weak points are, if you have any."
The Hastillan picked up a spade with her grey, double-thumbed hand. “Your lawyers made me pledge not to blame you for any accidents. But I know how to dig. I have a Most Adept Shoveler ring I can show you.” Her translator spoke with the neutral tone of a BBC newsreader, so I couldn't tell whether she was joking.
Asimov's SF, February 2006 Page 10