The Punch Escrow

by Tal Klein

  Sylvia cautiously looked outside. “I know you’re using whatever the Gehinnomites used to disable my comms, Bill. At least do me the courtesy of not lying.”

  “Fair play,” he said, exiting the drone. “I figure we’ve got a few hours left before anyone finds us. There’s a way to make everything we’ve worked for happen again. We just need time.” He held out a soft, blotchy hand to her.

  “Why are we here, Bill?” she asked, staying where she was.

  “We are here to weather the storm, Sylvia. Batten down the hatches.”

  She shook her head. “I won’t go anywhere until you tell me what you’re planning.”

  “I am planning to save our lives. Circumvent these shortsighted monkeys.” When she stared at him blankly, he said in frustration, “I’m suggesting we wait things out in the glacier. Somewhere they’ll never find us.”

  “Are you serious? That’s crazy.”

  “Madness is in the eye of the beholder. Fine lines and all. But this is mere pragmatism.” Sylvia could barely see his self-satisfied grin in the glow of the drone’s control console, but his smug voice assured her it was there.

  “What, so we just pop out of the glacier in a few days and everyone forgives us?”

  “Something like that. Come, I’ll show you.”

  She had been biding her time. Trying to suss out his intentions and waiting for the opportunity to escape during the whole of their flight from Costa Rica. Sylvia ignored the sharp, tingling pain in her still-bound wrists. She had almost made a break for it when they swapped the people-mover for a much smaller drone in a private Ecuadorean airfield, but the only other person she’d seen there was a huge scowling mechanic who looked even more menacing than Taraval, and anyway, without her comms functionality restored, she’d have no idea where to run. So she had let her boss load her into the drone, and kept her eyes and ears open as they drew closer to New York City. The chain of events she’d set off had unhinged her mentor, and they were now nearing the end of his demented plan. The time had come for her to run.

  So as soon as she stepped out of the vehicle, she took off into the darkness, the soft gravel crunching beneath her hiking boots.

  She didn’t get very far. A sharp pain crackled through her skull. She fell to the ground, screaming, the bitter taste of blood in her mouth—the result of a tongue bitten due to seizures triggered by electric shock.

  “Better me than the Gehinnomites, wouldn’t you say?” Taraval approached her, wagging the handheld device her captors had used to block her comms. He lugged her to her feet, nudging her to move forward. “We’ve got several more blocks to walk, so if you’d like to reach our destination fully intact, I’d suggest you start moving.”

  Sylvia had no choice but to obey. They were like two ghosts haunting their way through a series of dark ledges and tunnels beneath Hell’s Kitchen. Every so often, a fine amber beam of the setting Sun’s light would find its way through the cracks of the streets above them and illuminate a bit of grotesque abandoned garbage. There were scrapped machines stripped of all metal and useful parts, crumbling subway station mosaics, and piles of discarded toys. Once she saw a cracked matryoshka doll so like hers that she momentarily froze.

  Taraval had grown tired of nudging and pushing Sylvia. And for her part, she was sick of playing the damsel in distress. So when he poked her in the shoulder for the umpteenth time, she resisted. He shoved her again, and she spun to face him. Taraval brandished the Gehinnomites’ device. She closed her eyes, bracing for another electric shock, imagining the taste of blood and batteries in her mouth, but this time no punishment came. Instead her boss looked wistfully at the concrete ceiling beams, dimly illuminated by his device’s screen.

  “The very space we occupy now, Sylvia, were it only under the restored East River rather than the toxic Hudson, would be filled with luxury shops and apartments. Did you know the mudflats along the Hudson were home to squatters when the railroad came in the nineteenth century? Most of the West Side was a full-fledged shantytown until Robert Moses decided to cram a park and a highway up its derriere back in the twentieth century. Then it flourished, becoming some of the most expensive real estate on the island.” He lowered his eyes back to her, smiling. “It’s all about being in the right place at the right time, don’t you agree?”

  “Bill,” she said, “why are you pretending like we’re having a printer-side chat at work? You’re kidnapping me.”

  “You’ve heard the old aphorism, ‘If God had wanted man to fly, he would have given him wings’? It means something different now, but its origins are rooted in fear of advancements in transportation. When autonomous vehicles became commercially available in the twenty-first century, fears of drive-by-wire failures and GDS hacking nearly crippled the autonomous vehicle market before it could reach its heyday.”

  “Bill—”

  “Lesser minds are never ready, Sylvia!” His shout reverberated through the cavernous subway tunnel before he lowered his voice to a whisper. “Worry not. We will show them, show them that Honeycomb is the next step in our own evolution. In the right time.” He indicated that she climb over the pile of debris behind her. “Now, please saunter on. We are almost upon it.”

  She did as bidden—what else could she do?—clambering awkwardly over crumbled concrete columns and bent, rusted rebar until she reached ground on the other side. A sliver of golden light could be seen at the end of the tunnel.

  “Where, Bill? Where are you taking me?”

  “Taking? My dear, you are not mine for the taking,” he said, sounding offended by the implication. “I believe us to be equals. Intellectual peers, even. However, it occurs to me, do you mean to ask where we are going?”

  “Yes, Bill, where are we going?” she asked, exasperated.

  He pointed at the luminescence ahead—growing wider and brighter as they approached it. “The future, Sylvia.”

  JEOPARDY

  KIDNAPPING PEOPLE IS HARD.

  Unlike Taraval, Joel2 and I didn’t have a lot of resources at our disposal when we abducted Moti. Our face wasn’t all over the news feeds yet, but I assumed that both IT and the Levant had staked out all our usual spots. We needed someplace anonymous, quiet, and camera-free where we could question the man who had been manipulating our lives for who knows how long.

  So once we hustled him out of the coffeehouse, Joel2 took the calculated risk of ordering a car. In less than a minute, the closest available one arrived. It was a dark-gray sedan with rear suicide doors that opened automatically. Moti willingly got into the back seat. Joel2 sat next to him, and I sat on the bench-style seat across from them.

  “Destination?” said the vehicle.

  “Just drive around Central Park, and keep driving around it until I tell you to stop,” Joel2 said. “And disable all third-party APIs.”

  “Yes, sir.” The car smoothly merged into traffic and headed north.

  While it would have been impossible for us to turn off Moti’s ability to communicate with his comrades through technical means, as I suspected Taraval had done to Sylvia, we did have the benefit of a brain-liquefying weapon at our disposal, in the form of the defibrillator I’d taken from the Bellevue Hospital bathroom. As I had viscerally learned firsthand, the threat of death is a very powerful motivator.

  “Don’t even think of turning on your GDS and comms,” Joel2 said, pointing the defibrillator plates at him.

  “No problem,” Moti answered, calm and urbane. “Just be careful with that thing.”

  I had learned in high school how to verify whether or not someone’s comms were enabled. Inbound comms were always blocked by the school during classes to avoid distraction and cheating. We could send messages out, but we wouldn’t receive the replies until after class. I figured out that if I sent a message and it showed the not-delivered-yet icon next to it, that would mean that the person I was trying to contact was also in class or had their comms disabled for other reasons, like maybe they were grounded. But if that icon d
idn’t appear next to the message, then I knew the message was received. A pretty basic ploy, but very useful if you’re trying to figure out if your girlfriend is actually in class or just ignoring you, and also whether someone you’ve kidnapped has disabled their comms like you told them to.

  So Joel2 sent Moti an empty message. We knew that as soon as the not-delivered-yet icon on the message went away, it would mean Moti’s comms were active. If he didn’t adhere, then we would zap him. I was pretty sure I had it in me to do it if need be, but I had let Joel2 man the defibrillator because I knew for damn sure he could. To pull my weight, I gave Moti my best We mean business glare. “Remember, we’ll know if you’re lying.”

  “Why would I lie to you? I only want to help you, Yoel,” Moti said, smiling affably. “And you too, Joel.”

  Did he call him Joel just to piss me off, or does he really believe he’s the original me? More likely, Moti’s probably just trying to fuck with my head. I hate that it’s working.

  Our car turned onto the paved road that threaded through Central Park. Outside the car, New Yorkers were jogging, throwing Frisbees, and setting up picnics for the July Fourth Last War memorial fireworks later that night. It looked like a lot of fun. After what I’d been through, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to enjoy explosions—simulated or otherwise—ever again.

  “So, what should we discuss?” Moti’s agreeable compliance was putting me on edge. This guy is a trained spy being kidnapped by a couple of amateurs. Is he just playing us? Biding his time? In some ways my paranoia made me feel better. As long as I was paranoid, I wouldn’t become complacent.

  “Maybe we should tie him up,” I said to Joel2.

  “I do not like to be restrained,” said Moti. It sounded like a warning. “I am not your enemy. So—”

  “Not our enemy, huh?” said Joel2. He took off his belt and looped it around the spy’s wrists, cinching it tight.

  His anger activated mine. I leaned forward. “We beg to differ, Moti. You very much are our enemy. I wonder if you even care about giving the Levant leverage over IT, or if this whole thing is your personal fucking pageant. I know you had your puppet Pema send me up from IT to you wrapped in a nice bow. Tell me, Moti, did you electrocute me outside your office for amusement or advantage?” The defibrillator in my other’s hand seemed to hum in agreement.

  “Yoel—”

  “Shut up, asshole. I’m doing the talking now,” I said, fuming. For two days this guy had been watching me run around and get injured, nearly killed, for his personal amusement. “I thought I was so fucking smart, salting your room into printing belladonna for me, but that was your doing, wasn’t it? You dropped the hospital hint so innocently, playing your neurolinguistic spy games with me. You just happened to change your mind and let me go, huh? I should have figured it out when you knew how to work the TC console, but I guess I was too worried about my abducted wife! Tell me, Moti, did you give the Gehinnomites her GDS location? Was it your idea that they kidnap her so I’d go be the hero? Roberto Shila sure as hell sounded like he was informed by someone. My wife was traumatized. He”—I pointed at Joel2—“was nearly killed! And all so you could continue a mental chess match with International Transport. Sound about right? How am I doing so far?”

  “That depends. Are you finished?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, then punched him in the face as hard as I could. He tried to dodge, but having his hands held by Joel2’s belt impeded his effort. My knuckles made loud, solid contact with his right cheekbone—thwack! It didn’t have the intended effect of knocking him backward. In fact, it didn’t seem to have much of an effect at all, other than hurting my hand. “Ow. Fuck!” I tried to shake the pain from my knuckles. “Now I’m finished.”

  Moti pressed his tongue to the wound in his mouth. “Convincing my room to poison you was your own stupid—but … brave—innovation, Yoel. I was very surprised you would take such steps.”

  “So he was right about everything else?” Joel2 asked, anger burning in his eyes. He brandished the defibrillator. “You orchestrated Sylvia’s kidnapping?”

  “You are making a big mistake. Both of you. I did not start this. I did not create teleportation technology. I did not create the bomb Joan Anglicus brought through that TC. I did not create Honeycomb.” He shifted his gaze to Joel2. “I did not make your wife pull you down from an incomplete backup. The world is a dark place, Joel,” he said, giving us both prolonged looks. “You people have allowed corporations like International Transport to grow like weeds. I am just a gardener here to prune them. You think you are a piece on my board, Yoel? You are leverage. Your wife, she is William Taraval’s pawn. She—Aaah!” Moti screamed as Joel2 shocked him in the ribs with the defibrillator.

  “What the fuck, man?” I chastised Joel2. “A shot like that could kill the guy. Don’t fucking forget he’s the one guy who can help us find Sylvia.”

  Joel2 silently glared at me, throwing the defibrillator onto the floor with a look of disgust on his face.

  And that’s when it hit me. Of course I understood that Joel2 felt betrayed by Sylvia. For lying to him about Honeycomb, for leaving him to fend for himself in Costa Rica. I wondered in that moment what I’d wondered since I’d met him, and what I wonder still: Was he angry because, deep down, he thought I was the real Joel and he was just a printed copy? A knockoff of the original? Because what Moti said was true. None of the events that had unfolded would have transpired had she not broken every oath she’d taken both as a scientist and wife. Till death do us part. It’s a definitive statement. There’s no question mark at the end. Joel2 nailed Moti with the defibrillator because Moti was right. He wanted Moti to hurt with the same pain of truth that Moti had unleashed upon him.

  “Shock me all you want,” Moti said, wincing in pain. “It won’t change the facts: the world is filled with dangerous technology. You want one company that can hold all of us, copy us, duplicate us, move us anywhere they want at will? No. So in this dark world, sometimes good men have to do, well, gray things to nudge us back toward the light.”

  A random bit of trivia popped into my mind. Marguerite Perey discovered francium in the mid-twentieth century and eventually died of cancer related to her research. Could she be blamed for the element’s use as a quantum trigger for a terrorist bomb nearly five hundred years after her death? Of course not. But that’s not what’s on the table here. Joel2’s not mad at Sylvia for her research; he’s angry with her for her actions.

  Joel2 pressed on the scorch mark the defibrillator had left on Moti’s suit. “Where’s. Sylvia?”

  Other me is scaring me. If he’s this pissed, why does he even want to find Sylvia? Does he want to confront—or worse—hurt her? Or does he want her to choose one of us? To decide once and for all, which is the real Joel, her husband? And do I want to hear what she has to say?

  The spy grunted but refused to answer. Joel2 pressed harder.

  “Calm down,” I said to Joel2. “We’re not like them.”

  Am I just fooling myself, though? Telling myself these things to help me cling to the notion that I’m the real me?

  “Maybe we should be,” Joel2 said defensively. But he took his hand off Moti and sat back, annoyed at me.

  The “travel agent” rolled his neck as if shrugging off the pain. “Finding your wife was exactly what I was working on when you interrupted my coffee.”

  Suddenly the car eased to a stop. I scrambled to scoop up the defibrillator off the floor as the back door opened and Zaki nonchalantly got in and sat next to me. He was breathing a little heavily but otherwise looked calm.

  What the fuck?

  Zaki ignored the defibrillator mere inches from his nose and nodded to Moti.

  “Car, you may continue on your route now,” said Moti. Then, to Zaki: “Status report?”

  Zaki adjusted his dark-gray raincoat. His hand nervously reached into the pocket I knew contained the cigarette with which he liked to fidget. “Taraval and Mrs. Byram have gone off the g
rid.”

  HALCYON

  THE THICK WROUGHT-IRON GATE was enveloped by the golden amber hue of the setting Sun and crowned by an iridescent rainbow—the side effect of billions of mosquitoes pissing at once. New York’s magic hour was renowned for its beauty, so long as one didn’t dwell too much on how it was achieved.

  Taraval gestured at the view beyond the gate. “Appropriate for our send-off, wouldn’t you say? Today will be the culmination of our life’s work, Sylvia. The day that Honeycomb will be recognized as humanity’s ultimate achievement!”

  In that moment she knew he had gone beyond the pale of lunacy. She wondered whether he had always been this nuts and she had refused to see it, or whether his self-experimentation in Honeycomb had changed him.

  Either way, Taraval’s ranting showed no sign of abatement. Sylvia guessed that he had progressed past trying to convince her, and was now trying to sell himself on whatever plan he had improvised for both of their futures.

  Her boss bent to fiddle with the complex locks on the gate—a blend of physical and digital security controls designed to keep tunnel moles and curious urban explorers from whatever lay on the other side.

  “How many great inventions does our species have left in it?” he asked. “How many could be classified as the definitive tools of humanity? The wheel? The gun? The computer? Today, Sylvia, Honeycomb shall eclipse them all.”

  Sylvia was at her wit’s end. She felt betrayed not only by her mentor, but also by her employer, by science, by life. “Honeycomb is not a tool, Bill. It’s a mistake,” she said evenly.

  Ignoring her, Taraval continued, “Forget space travel. Right here on Earth: What if we routinely mapped everyone? An accident happens and someone you love is lost. But thanks to us, you have real life insurance! Your loved one comes back to you—good as new—courtesy of International Transport and Honeycomb. We were thinking like scientists, not actuaries. I say we channel Corina’s spirit, Sylvia. Create a world where death is not the end.”