Ten Directions

by Samuel Winburn

  For a moment he considered leaving well enough alone, but then, in Calvin30’s augmented mind, August buzzed another frantic memo to his clone. Suddenly the time horizon unclouded. The question was control, and to be the sole holder of this whole truth was like winning the lottery. It would be arrogant for such a lowly clone as he to throw away to swine such glorious pearls so carefully sown. No, he would confer them sparingly, one by one, and along the way he’d have his fun. Resolving a scheme, Calvin30 framed which scenes to critically omit when he transmitted the bits back to Saturn during the night shift. Then he neuro-chatted up some Hax crowd to evaporate the professor’s data cloud.

  The cab sat, meter running, while Calvin30 stood on the curb-side absorbed in thought. He felt the sea breeze on his face and looked up out over Santa Monica as the clouds parted to reveal the half-built needle of the Mirtopik Com building piercing the skyline. In the original marketing, the building was meant to demonstrate technologies that would one day build an elevator into orbit, but the money had run-out mid-construction. People had moved in anyway once it became apparent that it needn’t be completed. Many of the offices were rented by the Nets and other sworn enemies of Mirtopik.

  Amidst a sea of such unfinishable ambitions it was the best part of humanity to settle on compromise. Only proper and decent to take things halfway, to a comfortable mediocrity. Halfway between this and that, between stasis and chaos, between heaven and hell, between the Earth and Moon and Stars. Maybe, if the universe can’t pick us out, it won’t destroy us. The real reason ‘once-offs’ hated clones, Calvin30 surmised, was because they were secretly jealous. When the Big Sky Guy decides to let fly with the thunderbolts, with clones there’s always a good chance He’ll pick the wrong one.

  So, given that halfway was where people liked to take things, where do they end up? After all, halfway between something and somewhere was usually nothing and nowhere. A simple choice, like worm holes with unlimited promise, but with ultimate consequences. Where would people find the halfway in that?

  The cab’s horn attracted his attention and Calvin30 climbed inside, but his eyes stayed with the incomplete peak of the Mirtopik building. He smiled smugly as he wetted the reed in his pipe. Take one fuzzy blur of an interstellar grave, add one magnificent age-old dream of manifest destiny, and divide the difference. That was the standard recipe. Very, very few people knew how to go halfway properly. John Coltrane for one, that mystic prophet of 20th Century jazz, ground zero of Calvin30’s musical heroes.

  Paranoid brothers who break out in rashes

  Flaky professors with neurodrive crashes

  Such simple joys in the gifts that I bring

  These are a few of my favorite things.

  Start with an improvisation ringed around a familiar melody. Calvin30 began to blow. Halfway between the two, if you knew where to find it, was a Love Supreme.

  UP FROM THE ROOTS

  ‘As he was sitting there, Ven. Ananda said to the Blessed One, "This is half of the holy life, lord: admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie.

  "Don't say that, Ananda. Don't say that. Admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie is actually the whole of the holy life.”

  ~Shakyamuni Buddha, Upaddha Sutta

  Chapter 7 - Francesca

  Francesca pulled her hand out from the front of her pants and reached for her cup of cold instant coffee and gulped and gagged herself awake. There was no accounting for taste with this nasty stuff. The volume of the weirdo clone’s music she’d recorded from the Deep Space network jumped up in her neurovisor in concert with the abrupt rush of awareness. She hummed along as she headed to the bathroom to wash up.

  She’d been listening to the music aimed at the stars all through her night shift, which blended with her day shift. Basically, Francesca mostly slept in her office because it was the only place that felt like hers since for ages. The music wasn’t bad really, and her musical education, in common with all kids growing up on the streets in Cuba, was coming back to her, which she liked. This guy was inspired, which made her reconsider a prejudice or two she had about clones. The only thing about the recording that bugged her was the static, like something was running in the background. It was a shame this guy didn’t record direct through the audio feed on his instrument instead of recording from a remote mike, especially if this was going to be travelling through the galaxies for the next billion years. Actually, it was annoying because sometimes it sounded like a digital squeal, like the guy had feedback going on. With music this good, why was the recording so lousy? Sometimes it got so bad she’d catch herself actually jamming to the background stuff and not the song.

  “Hi Wolf,” Francesca called as she passed on her way back to her office. The new blonde bitch warming him up gave her the Evil Eye like she was saying no go on Wolfy’s wormy frame. Francesca crossed herself just to be safe. Even as white knuckle as things had got in that department, Wolf’s measly ass would have a hard time making it onto the menu. Francesca returned with a cold, flat, who-the-shit-are-you-do-I-care? look and kept walking.

  “Hey, Francesca,” Wolf came down the corridor after her, which must have pissed the blonde chick off. “Francesca, can you do me a favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “Look. I need to review the feeds from Deep Space and we are short staffed. I was wondering.”

  “I’m pretty busy.” She wasn’t really. Francesca was more bored out of her mind than she’d been in forever, but you had to say that, or people would start asking why you were there.

  “Well, yeah, I know. It’s such a thing, but I’m really in a bind.”

  “Okay.” Because she was such a great zero hero.

  “Okay? What? Really?”

  “Sure. Don’t make a habit of it though. Boss wants me on the ball - not doing too much other stuff.” It was bullshit. No one had talked to her in the last month.

  “Oh terrific, this is really, really great.”

  Francesca smiled at her cup-flowing-over generosity. “It’s cool.”

  Wolf linked his neurovisor with hers and bumped over some mnemes with instructions and pass codes. “Basically, what you need to do is,” blah, blah, blah. Francesca picked up on the job pretty quickly, just open the mnemes and look them over, highlight the clear bits and run pattern recognition software to tease stuff out of the garbage bits.

  “So, this is what, alien stuff?” Actually, that part seemed interesting.

  “Sure, some of it is. Most is just standard diagnostics and astronomical observations though. It is pretty rare to pick up ET. We’ve only seen a handful, but they’re in there.”

  Francesca walked back to her lair and shot a few more wadded paper baskets in the trash-can before starting in on the new job. It was, if possible, more boring than scanning for Hax attacks that never seemed to happen. She slipped her hand down her pants again to give the itch a scratch and pulled it out in alarm. Who was she going to imagine herself with anyway? The talking head of August Bridges as always blabbing away on the staff video monitor? A bit boring because everyone had had him already. And there wasn’t any good local material, the staff in this section was way too nerdy. And besides, hadn’t she’d told herself she had to get a grip. The only direction this led to was cheap and nasty, but despite herself she grabbed a towel out of her locker and signed out to go to the ComSec gym.

  An hour later she was doing something physically hot with some mentally vacant dude who was sprawled out under her on a storeroom table somewhere. The idiot had the audacity to want to shower with her afterwards before she had to tell him to get out of her space. It was the predictability, after the initial rush, which wore her down. She knew the shrink-wrap around it, a way to reclaim power because of what happened to her when she was a kid. It was more impersonal than that really, she just wanted something that wasn’t pathetic like that guy. It was hope really, giving humanity the benefit of the doubt. If basically she wasn’t an optimist, why wo
uld she keep getting let down by the sorry state of people? You let them in and they mostly couldn’t even stay hard let alone stay clear.

  Francesca towelled off, dressed, and headed back to the lift. Great and lousy always seemed to come together at the same package like two sides of the same coin. The lift opened to a strange looking man who seemed puzzlingly familiar, as though she had run into him many times but was also seeing him for the first time. There was a strange vibe coming off him, as much as he tried to cover it by making out like he hadn’t a care in the world, which of course couldn’t be true because everyone did.

  “I know you. You’re the new face in Deep Space.”

  Friendly guy. Francesca knew all about friendly guys. She played it cool.

  “That’s me.”

  “I see. Wolfie’s saying you like my playing.”

  The clone. That’s why he seemed so familiar. Francesca mentally ran through the faces she’d seen since arriving in Mirtopik and concluded that she’d definitely run across his brothers, spread across a range of ages. Weird stuff.

  “Yeah. You’re good.” Her intuition told her to play the dumb Comsec lugnut role here. “Some of it reminds me of the stuff where I grew up.”

  “Oh yes, Latino jazz is unsurpassed. I am happy to pass on more of my pieces. It is a pleasure to perform for those who who appreciate el primo.”

  This guy had a strange way of talking. It reminded her of Green Eggs and Ham, that crazy book she used to read to Elena. Like a cloud passing behind another cloud her mood darkened.

  “Uh. Thanks,” she muttered, “I’d like that.”

  “Consider it my pleasure.” The clone pulled the instrument hanging on his neck strap and started to play various riffs as mnemes started to stack up in Francesca’s public neuroview directory. “I’ve indexed my songs by notes not words, from my end it cuts in thirds how long it takes to float tracks to my friends.”

  End friend song long fox in a box on a train in the rain. This joker was on top of some game, and Francesca was definitely going to screen those files for Hax and hooks before she listened to them.

  “That’s cool,” she smiled approvingly.

  She swore the clone’s eyes sparkled. Francesca felt drawn in despite herself.

  “Let me know if you think anything syncs. I’ll transmit through some more.”

  “Thanks. What’s your name?”

  The clone paused for a moment and his brow furrowed, a chink in his charm.

  “Calvin30. C30 to my friends.”

  “Thanks Calvin.”

  The clone got off the lift a few floors down. Francesca’s mind went into overdrive. She had a gut feel that meeting hadn’t happened by accident, there was a heavy pull around the guy and she was going to be careful about getting sucked in. As strong as the impulse was to google his details through the ComSec system, she had a feeling he would be on to her game the minute she did. Francesca found an observation lounge with a forever view and laid back on the couch to check out the files. Satisfied that they were clean of viruses, she opened one to listen to. Right on target it hit her most raw nerve.

  It was long ago in a shitty little apartment with dirty windows in Havana. Drunk men being un-gainfully employed with music shifted in and out of the rented storage containers across the street. They were playing the same song back then that Francesca was listening to now in her neuroview. They kept breaking and starting over because they were too wasted to get it right. They were pathetic and more dangerous because of that. Francesca ignored them and concentrated on drawing pictures with her niece, trying to out monster the monsters. They were bringing amazing super-heroines into being. Laser beam nails, and fairy wings, and jaguar spots that looked stylishly bad-ass.

  A late afternoon rain flurry rattled the tin roof. Elena looked adoringly up at her with those big soulful brown eyes, “What super powers do you have Tia?”

  “Me? I am invincible. Nothing can stop me,” Francesca had bragged, in a way that was soon shown to be hollow. They ran amok around the apartment. Francesca deliberately took the full brunt of whatever missiles Elena could hurl at her. As Francesca fell back laughing on a lounge, Elena hurled herself head first into her midsection and winded her.

  “Tia, are you okay?”

  Francesca recovered and rose to her full adolescent stature. “Huh that? What do you expect from being hit by a meteor? But it hasn’t stopped me.”

  The rain stopped and, along with it, the music. Francesca only noticed as the sound of drunken voices came bumbling up to the landing outside the door. That meant Hector was coming back. Francesca hated that guy, her sister’s new husband. When her sister was away, like tonight, he was always sleazing, touching her ass or coming up behind her and sliding his hand under her shirt and making some lame joke about how her melons were ripening.

  “Jesus. You’re drunk.” was a complaint that was safe but never diffused anything, and only excused the creepy behavior. Her sister was so desperate around the asshole; he had her so wrapped around his greedy fingers that she couldn’t say a word. In fact, the bitch got jealous, as if it was Francesca, at fifteen, who was some kind of temptress coming onto that detestable bastard. And Momma, where was she? Who was she? Who the hell knew that? Even when she was at home laid up in her bed and not whoring around the town looking for some white knight that always turned into some kind of dark abscess on what was left of their family. For sure she had had to deal with worse than Hector over the years, a lot of guys had beat the crap out Momma and her sister and her as the result of one drunken tantrum or another. What a bunch of crybabies.

  The door slammed open and Elena grabbed her hand so tight at that moment that she thought it would squeeze off. By the time Francesca looked down to comfort Elena, the tables had turned.

  Elena looked up at her with wide steady eyes. “I’m not afraid. You can stop them Tia. Nothing can stop you.”

  “Yeah, don’t worry querida. We’ll be all right.”

  Elena smiled conspiratorially back at her. “I know.” But Francesca didn’t know anything.

  “Hey Hector. There’s that sly little puta with the ripe pechonas. Mind if I break her in man?”

  Francesca froze. Hector she could probably handle, but two men?

  “There ain’t nothing to break-in, not in this town. I don’t mind amigo. Don’t leave no marks though. The little one’s a biter, you got to watch for that.”

  Shit. The offhand way Hector had said it, even through the separation of many years, still made Francesca’s blood cool.

  The stranger, now a faded blur of menace in her memory, stumbled towards them. He was big.

  “Get him Tia,” screamed Elena, daring the stranger to bring it on.

  Francesca tentatively stepped forward, guarding her niece.

  “A fighter eh?” smirked the stranger, the stench of rum he brought in on him was the only part of him that had stayed with her. One swing and Francesca was flying. He towered over her, laughing, as he fumbled with the buckle on his belt.

  “Hey Man. I said no marks,” shouted Hector. The man’s attention wandered behind him.

  “Say she fell down.”

  It was an opening and Francesca went through it. She kicked the stranger with everything she had and, unbalanced with his pants part down, he fell.

  “Hey. Fucking bitch.”

  Francesca pushed past Hector knocking his drunk ass over and ran to the landing and her freedom and her eternal imprisonment.

  “Tia! Tia!” Elena shouted desperately. “Come back. Come back. Finish them.”

  And that was it. Just a few things happening for some stupid short moments and then you couldn’t go back. She was coming back - she’d promised. She’d come back, as soon as she found someone who cared. She’d come back. She’d been coming back to these moments for seventeen years and the shame burned unbearably in her soul each time. Francesca had been only a teenager then, but she could look for all the excuses she liked, and it didn’t change the fact t
hat she had still gone, leaving Elena to God knows what fate, and hadn’t done shit for her since.

  How old would Elena be now, mid 20s or something? No, she would always be nine, looking up to her Tia without fear, waiting for her to finish them off, defender of the goddamn stinking universe. What a pathetically useless superhero she was.

  Francesca flipped off the music and squeezed her head, hoping it would just pop off. The hole in her heart grew ten thousand times, so big she fell straight into it and wished she’d never crawl out. And she laid like that sprawled out on the couch sobbing and feeling sorry for herself listening to that painful music. And then the music stopped, and some idiot came into the lounge and looked at her with equal measures of pity, bemusement, and discomfort until Francesca hauled her ass up out of it.

  Propping herself against a wall Francesca stood up on her quivering legs and began an impossible walk to the door. With each step forward, she recovered some power. Smoothing her uniform, she reconstructed herself. The hole in her heart stayed put, but her body walked on away from it. Why was it one event in a life could become the center of the whole thing? Like you could run as fast as you wanted, but you’d still be orbiting it from the same distance and hadn’t really gotten anywhere at all?

  As Francesca headed to the mess for dinner she turned her mind to more recent problems. Like what that criminal clone was up to - that’s what she wanted to know. Something began to bug her, something little and hardly noticeable, which was the sort of thing that always turned out to be at the middle of everything. Something too small for most people to notice, when they weren’t paying attention, but there it was, bugging the shit out of her, and she didn’t know what it was.

  She bought her soup and sat down by a window to slurp it. The rain was coming down hard, one of those freak storms that made the whole Needle sway. It made the city below, its buildings outlined by low watt LEDs to keep a skyline going at night, roll. They flickered in and out from under a bank of quickly moving clouds, looking like broken moonlight on a choppy sea.