by Dima Zales
A silence follows.
“I’m just trying to look out for you,” Mom finally says, her voice quivering. “He’ll break your heart, the way he broke mine.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I say with fake sincerity. “I’m a big girl and can look after my own heart.”
Another silence follows. “About extending my stay,” she says after a moment. “It would be great if—”
“Actually, I was about to call you about that,” I say, deciding to go in for the kill. “I just lost my job. I could use some help myself, but if—”
“Oh. So you went to your father for money?” She sounds relieved.
“That’s not what I was saying.” I roll my eyes so hard I get dizzy. “Not even a little bit.”
“Say no more,” Mom says conspiratorially. “I totally understand.”
“You do?”
“Obviously, you’ll need to get yourself another job, sooner rather than later. Your father isn’t reliable—”
“I was actually applying to some jobs right before you called,” I lie. “Probably should get back to it.”
“That’s a good idea,” she says. “I’m sorry if I distracted you.”
“You didn’t distract me. I’m always happy to hear from you.”
“Still, I better let you get back to it,” Mom says. “Au revoir.”
“Bye, Mom.” I hang up and stare at the phone.
When I got out of Nero’s office, I didn’t think I could be more rattled, but I was wrong.
Maybe I should somehow unleash Mom on Nero?
The bastard definitely deserves it.
But no. I can’t. He’d probably shred her like an orc, plus such below-the-belt tactics might be against the Geneva Convention.
Shaking my head, I text Felix, How goes Nero penetration?
He replies instantly.
Both my day job and my roommate are distracting me. Makes it hard to concentrate.
He’s got a decent point, so I don’t reply.
Instead, I do my best to practice meditative breathing—and by the time the cab drops me off by my building, I confirm what should be obvious: talking to Nero and Mom isn’t meditation conducive.
When I get home, the first thing I do is pet Fluffster.
Touching his fur is so soothing that a whole branch of pet therapy should be created with chinchillas in mind.
Slightly calmer, I rethink my earlier encounter. So what if Nero refuses to accept that I quit? That’s his problem, not mine. He’ll come to terms with the new reality when I take another job. In fact, maybe I’ll take one of those entry-level gigs, just to spite him.
Thus determined, I grab my laptop and schlep to the nearest Starbucks in order to have privacy from any possible Nero snooping.
The Starbucks is nice and empty at this time of day, so I get a venti cup of coffee and park my butt in the cushiest couch with a window view.
Carefully sipping the scorching brew, I open my laptop, get on their Wi-Fi, and check if I got any responses to my job applications.
My breathing speeds up.
I did get replies. From every place I applied to.
They all apologize and inform me the position has been filled.
My pet therapy effect instantly goes down the drain, and I barely restrain myself from smashing the laptop against the tile floor.
How is Nero doing this?
Did he get a vampire to scan all the job sites and glamour all the HR people at these companies to reject my applications? Or is he this influential in all these industries?
My phone rings and I jump to my feet, then sit back down again before looking at the screen.
To my relief, it’s just Felix calling.
“Hey,” he says. “Is it safe to talk?”
“I’m at Starbucks. Does that qualify?”
“Yeah, should be safe enough. I have good news and bad news.”
“Give me the good news first.” I warm my hands by grabbing the coffee cup.
“All right,” he says. “I’m in Nero’s system, and I’ve figured out how he knew about Darian’s tape—and lots of your other conversations.”
“That’s amazing news.” I nearly tip over the cup in excitement. “What’s the bad news?”
He’s silent for a moment. “Unfortunately, I did my job too thoroughly when I originally set up his security, and I can’t use any of my usual methods to get more information. What’s worse is that I see a really juicy shared drive with lots of files, but it’s password protected and I’m having trouble getting into it. In fact, that’s why I’m calling. I was hoping you could help me.”
“Me help you?” I say as I try to process Felix’s bad news. “How?”
“Wait,” he exclaims in a worried tone. “Did you give Nero your old phone?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Whew.” Felix loudly exhales. “Let’s jump on a video conference and I’ll explain.”
“Wait, how did—”
Felix hangs up.
Both my phone and laptop notify me of a video call, so I eagerly pick up on the laptop.
I see a view of Felix’s workstation from the side. His black chair and split keyboard are identical to the ones he has at home, which in turn look just like the setups in The Matrix ships.
Felix has an intense expression on his face as he stares at all the screens. There are little windows with command prompts all over his monitors, with the exception of one. On that screen is a big window that’s showing the feed from the security camera in Nero’s office.
Unlike during our earlier encounter, Nero has his desk adjusted to the sitting position. He’s peering at the screen even more intently than before while his long fingers dance on his keyboard with the grace of a piano prodigy.
“This PuTTY window is where I’m trying to get the password.” Felix points at a greenish box with black font.
“Hold off,” I say. “You never explained how he did his spying.”
“Oh.” He looks away from the screen and into the camera of his phone, so that he’s looking right at me. “That’s easy. It was that phone you gave back to him.”
“That bastard.” I slowly shake my head. “This kind of makes sense. He gave me that thing himself.”
“Exactly.” Felix readjusts his keyboard. “It was your work phone. Corporations don’t even pretend to give you privacy on your work equipment. When you joined the fund, you probably signed some paper that allowed Nero to spy on any phone he gave you—”
“Oh, I doubt a lack of legal pretext would’ve stopped him.” I glare at the screen where Nero is obliviously typing away. “This explains everything, though. The phone was in my room when I watched the VCR. It’s like a secret to a magic effect; now that I know how Nero did it, I wonder why I didn’t think of it in the first place.”
“Why didn’t I?” Felix looks genuinely contrite. “The important thing is that you gave him the phone back and didn’t take a replacement.”
I inhale a quick breath as a new realization hits me. “My powers must’ve activated before we had that picnic,” I whisper. “Thanks in part to Baba Yaga’s incessant calls, before I came to see you, I left the phone at home, on the shoe rack. If I hadn’t…”
Felix jams his hands into his armpits as though giving himself a hug. He must’ve just realized that if I didn’t leave the phone where I did, Nero would’ve overheard our picnic scheming and known all about this penetration attempt.
“Back to the bad news,” I say, eager to distract Felix from morbid thoughts. “Why can’t you use your technomancer powers to get into this file or drive or whatever? Don’t you have hacker tools or something else techy to help you out?”
“I already used my powers to secure this system to start with.” Felix rubs his reddening eyes. “Nero forced me to make it ‘Felix proof,’ for lack of a better term, so I’m kind of battling my own self. A better self in a way—a self who had months to design the security. So I’m reduced to the most basic method of all—trying to simply guess the
password. But, what makes it harder is that if I guess it wrong more than three times per ten minutes, it’s game over.”
“So guess it less often?” I say, unsure how I can help the mighty Felix in this, of all things.
“Right.” He scratches the top of his head. “The problem is, doing it that way will take an eternity.”
“Hmm.” I drum my fingers on the table in front of me, momentarily oblivious to its dubious cleanliness. “I still don’t see how I can help.”
“You know Nero better than I do.” Felix glances at the screen with my typing ex-boss. “Maybe we can start with your best guesses?”
“I don’t know him that well,” I say bitterly. “No, wait. Scratch that. Try ‘asshole’ as his password. Or maybe ‘heartless,’ or ‘evil,’ or—”
Felix types something in the green screen and presses enter.
Nothing happens.
“Dude, I was kidding. Did you just actually try those out?”
“I don’t have better ideas to try.” Felix looks at me earnestly. “Could you somehow use your power to get at the password?”
“I have no idea how to do that,” I say.
Suddenly, something makes my aforementioned powers tingle in alarm.
“Shit,” I tell Felix. “Something’s about to happen.”
My voice must scare him because I see hairs lift on the back of his neck.
Venessa comes into Nero’s office and puts a piece of paper in front of him.
He stops typing, looks at the paper, and says something harsh to Venessa.
Though no sound is available, I can guess what he says. Something like, “You imbecile. Why the hell are you bringing me a piece of a dead tree?”
Nero is obsessed with a paperless office to such a ridiculous level that he exiled printers from his whole building.
The paper Venessa brought him must’ve come in the mail—and I bet part of his chastisement is about why she didn’t just scan and email it to him.
They go back and forth, and to my shock, Venessa manages not to get shredded into chunks of meat.
My guess is that she tells Nero the paper is urgent, or something to that effect.
Finally, Nero looks pacified and searches for something around his impeccably empty desk—probably a pen to sign whatever the paper is.
Not finding what he needs, he looks expectantly at Venessa—who seems to shrink into herself. She clearly didn’t anticipate that a signing might require a pen; in her defense, our office has no pens anywhere, either.
After Nero says something curt to Venessa, he begins to pat his pockets.
A wave of anxiety hits me then—one that makes Baba Yaga’s phone calls seem like a minor inconvenience.
I understand what’s about to happen.
Nero is going to reach into his pocket and find the device.
And when he does, we’re dead.
Chapter Ten
“Felix!” I shout so loudly that the Starbucks employees gape at me. “Destroy FELLATIO.”
Chin trembling, Felix jumps to his feet and points a hand at the screens in front of him.
A ray of magenta energy flows from Felix’s fingers into the screens just as Nero reaches into his right jacket pocket—the one with the gizmo.
I squint at the screen unblinkingly.
Nero’s hand comes back out, holding something.
A pen.
“He must’ve gotten that pen as swag from some vendor,” I tell Felix in a faint voice. “I didn’t know he had it in that pocket.”
“It’s okay. I made the FELLATIO disintegrate in time,” Felix says, plopping back into his ultra-ergonomic chair. “That was a close call.” He sounds as relieved as I feel.
“We’ll have to try again,” I say, my frantic heartbeat slowing. “You’ll need to give me a new device.”
“Okay.” Felix moistens his lips. “But we’ll still have the password problem. Besides, how are you going to get close to him again?”
At the thought of getting close to Nero, a warm, strangely tingly sensation flutters through my body. It intensifies when I realize that we might have better luck if I place the device in his pants pocket.
Must be due to my stupid nerves.
“Let me worry about FELLATIO delivery,” I say firmly, to cover up said nerves. “You figure out that password. Maybe you could see him typing it after he logs out and logs back in?”
“I’d have to wait until he wants to access those specific files,” Felix says, studying Nero’s screen with a worried expression. “Plus, the camera is too far away for me to know exactly what keys he’s pressing.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure out a way,” I say and beam my most confident smile at him. “Please think about it. Meanwhile, I’ll stop distracting you. Let’s talk later.”
Before Felix can object, I hang up and gulp down my now-cooled coffee.
Since I’m out of the apartment already, I head to the gym to burn off some of my nervous energy.
Fancier than most spas, my gym advertises itself as “an executive’s gym,” and not having to pay the exorbitant membership fees is a perk of working for Nero. Given his earlier rejection of my resignation, I’m not surprised when my membership turns out to still be active.
I make my way into the locker room and change into the brand-name workout clothes the gym supplies.
I lift some weights and ride a stationary bike, but overall, my workout is rather perfunctory without Ariel’s metaphorical whip. She’s the one who dragged me into the gym to start with, and whatever muscle tone and stamina I now have is all thanks to her. Which reminds me: she hasn’t dragged me to this place ever since she met Gaius.
I guess whatever “friendly” activities they do together is exercise enough for her.
I’m walking to the locker room, wiping sweat from my forehead, when I spot the yoga class gathering behind the glass.
I’ve only done yoga a few times in my life, but I recall it being referred to as “moving meditation” and the teacher saying how great it is to do yoga before an actual meditation.
Maybe this class could help me with what Darian has taught me?
I walk in, grab a mat in the back, and do my best to keep an open mind and follow everyone else.
As during the other times I’ve tried this, instead of a meditation, yoga reminds me of playing the game of Twister and Simon Says at the same time. Still, by the end, I’m pleasantly fatigued and eager to try meditation again.
After rewarding myself with a session in the steam room and the hot tub, I shower and go home.
Fluffster is napping when I walk in, so I tiptoe into my room, change into comfortable clothes, get into lotus pose, and follow Darian’s meditation instructions once more.
The yoga or the workout, or maybe the spa sessions, must really help with this. My palms get warm at record speed, and I do my best to focus on breathing instead of worrying about lightning about to hit my eyes.
I breathe in and out for what feels like another hour, and then, as expected, lightning bolts explode in my vision.
I expect a vision but find myself somewhere indescribable.
Is this what Darian called Headspace?
No wonder he couldn’t explain it.
My body is missing, like in some visions, but this time, my senses are gone too.
Or, as I soon realize, they are not gone.
They’ve been replaced by senses I have trouble comprehending.
Still, I introspect with all my willpower and soon decide that I’m floating.
I’m not really floating, of course, as that implies air that’s lacking here. There isn’t even a vacuum, or spacetime, or anything from a physics class.
Floating also implies that I have the senses of movement and balance, but I don’t.
So I pseudo-float for a while, trying to make sense of where I am. Actually, “a while” is also an approximation, as is the concept of “where.”
Wherever or whenever I am, I doubt it’s part
of the regular three (or is it four?) dimensional reality.
Though my sight is missing, I begin to experience something like it, though this has elements of taste and smell, along with heat and cold detection. For all I know, instead of sight, this is what the echolocation of a bat is like, or a shark’s ability to sense electricity.
So I sort-of-see a warm cloud of multicolored shapes that have tastes and smells. These shapes defy geometry, and if I had a head, it would hurt trying to make sense of it all.
Some of the “shapes” look like contradictions of mathematical definitions—like a cube that’s also a sphere at the same time—while others remind me of visual illusions made famous by artists like M.C. Escher.
Not a single one of the shapes is identical to any other, though the ones in proximity (for lack of a better term) to each other are more similar than ones “farther away.”
Another sense, one closest to hearing, makes me realize that each of these shapes also emits something like music, but instead of vibrating the air, these pseudo-sounds create waves of foreboding and calm.
Eventually, I become aware of something like a sense of touch—though touch implies having appendages, which I lack.
Instantly, I yearn to “touch” the lukewarm, brown, pineapple-tasting, snowflake-looking shape next to me, but the foreboding music emanating from it stops me.
Some new sense tells me I wouldn’t like it if I touched this snowflake—so I don’t, opting to seek another, safer shape to touch.
But all the shapes near me play the same scary tune.
After a while longer, I figure out how to change my perspective in this place. What I do is a hybrid between moving around and zooming in and out with binoculars—all without arms, legs, or eyes.
If I zoom in on a shape, I find that it’s made of other similar but not identical shapes. If I zoom in on any of these inner shapes, I find them made out of their own smaller shapes.
Zooming back out, I find the same recursive pattern replicated on a bigger scale. Groups of similar-looking shapes turn out to be like bricks (or perhaps molecules) making up a bigger shape, over and over.
Tired of examining the shapes in one spot, I try moving “forward,” and as soon as I get farther away, I examine a burning-hot green strawberry-tasting round-pyramid shape that plays a calm melody.