I have no intention of allowing that to happen.
I take a sick day—yeah, I know my NanoPrint will forsake my fake cough, and I’m way beyond caring—and spend the entire morning tapping the nexus for leads. I’ve never been very good at this stuff, mostly because I’m too antisocial to keep up with the enormously progressive tools available for social networking. It was child’s play for Arthur—not because he was any more socially apt than me, but because he understood the basis of the technology—but he’s not exactly available for customer service.
An hour before lunch, I finally stumble across something I can use.
Mitzy has dinner reservations tonight at a restaurant in the Palagio in Vegas. I’m not sure why, but I feel my distaste for her sharpen as I learn this; perhaps it’s the impression that she’s gambling away Arthur’s hard work. Or maybe it’s that life is serving up dinner as usual for her while the man she once vowed to stand by is dead on a table.
I submit a contact request through the nexus and sit back to wait. If I’m lucky, she’ll respond in the next few minutes and I’ll get this over with.
An hour later, my NanoPrint remains utterly still. Mitzy’s avoiding me. Perhaps I should leave it at that, but now my ego is raising its hackles. I should probably eat, but my stomach is filled with the rocks of apprehension. I submit another contact request—this time to Adrian, letting her know that I’ll be out of town until tomorrow. With a scowl bitterly affixed to my face, I take a shuttle to the airport. By seven p.m., I’m in Las Vegas headed toward the renowned strip with my scowl quickly losing steam; I guess it’s hard to stay grumpy when you’re surrounded by the bling of Sin City. I’ve been using my pocket terminal to check the nexus as I travel; as of now, Mitzy is still presumed to be on time for dinner.
If all goes as planned, I’ll be waiting for her.
It hasn’t even occurred to me that I should make my own reservations until I arrive to find the restaurant packed with an hour wait. I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right: it is too bad—IntelliQ could’ve prevented this. Fortunately for me, I’m not here to eat, anyway; I just need to be ready when Mitzy walks through that door.
But as time snails ahead and the tables slowly turn over, my nerves begin to rebel. It’s a little past eight o’clock now, and I’ve detected no sign of her. By now, my stomach is cussing and gurgling a rude reminder that I haven’t eaten since breakfast. I check the nexus again to see if Mitzy has rescheduled, and my guts perform an unpleasant flip-flop.
According to her proximity sensor, she’s already here.
Shrugging off the protests of an ultra-chic host, I push my way into the restaurant and begin scanning the tables. It’s a large restaurant, gaudily adorned with oversized chandeliers and colorful frescos. But despite its size and likewise sizeable clientele, I’m certain I’ll find Mitzy if she’s in here.
Only, I don’t.
I’m about to leave when—thanks to the now irate host—security decides to graciously help me along. I land on my rear on the steps outdoors, bruising both cheeks. I’ve never taken the phrase thrown out literally until now—I guess they don’t mess around in Vegas.
For a few minutes, I’m overwhelmed by bewilderment; the best I can manage is to sit on the steps where I landed, rocking from one wounded buttock to the other as I try to pinpoint where my plan went wrong. My next move is unclear. Logic dictates that I wait right here, because eventually she’s got to come out—and when she does, she’ll have no choice but to walk right past me—but my gut is chiming in, and not merely out of hunger.
Something is wrong, it whispers.
How could I have missed her coming in? I’ll cede that I’m hardly trained at this detective stuff, but I watched the entrance very carefully, and I simply can’t imagine how she managed to slip past me. That ship has sailed, unfortunately.
I’m not about to allow the next to follow suit.
Using my pocket terminal, I edit its notification settings to alert me of any activity on Mitzy’s daygrid. Then, I do something I’ve never before considered an option: I put a formal proximity trace on Mitzy’s NanoPrint. Proximity traces aren’t really prohibited, but they’re greatly frowned upon. I’m sure a few million stalkers and jealous ex-husbands think they’re great, but the rest of us find them a little unsettling. Nevertheless, my desperation outweighs my shame for the moment, so I sit back to wait.
As it turns out, I don’t have to wait long—at least, not when compared with the waiting list inside.
A half hour after my gymnastic exit from the Palagio, my pocket terminal begins to vibrate like mad. I get my feet underneath me as a small crowd exits the restaurant and spills onto the stairs. Not a crowd, really, just five people who are loud enough to give a crowd-like impression. Among them, there are two smartly dressed men arm-saddled to gorgeous ladies, and a fifth, unaccompanied woman, who is pretty, though considerably less so than her peers. I scan their faces, though it’s obvious that Mitzy is not among them. At their approach, I’m forced to step aside to allow them passage down the stairs. All the while, I keep a frantic eye peeled for my quarry, who ought to be here, yet somehow is not.
I check my terminal and discover with mounting frustration that Mitzy has somehow gotten past me again. Her daygrid has updated, reporting that she’s headed to a nearby nightclub, just a few blocks down the strip. I step toward the shuttle queue but think better of it—I’m in a hurry, and to be honest, I could use a little break from sitting—and begin walking in a brisk stride down the strip, passing by lurid posters and beckoning marquees. When I finally approach the club ten minutes later, my trace reports that she’s already inside.
Following her trail, I forfeit an ungodly number of credits just for the privilege of walking through the door. It’s dark, lit primarily by strobes in opposing corners. The music—if I can call it that—is loud enough that my ears might well begin shooting blood at any second. The flickering lights are messing with my vision a little, but it looks like—yes, I see something. In the corner, seated at the bar without her beautiful friends, is the pretty lady from the Pelagio, nursing a watery drink through a long straw. Actually, though I perceive her to be alone, she’s all but surrounded—yet completely ignored. At first I can’t make sense of what I’m seeing: a pretty lady in what appears to be a thriving singles bar, without a bite on her lure? She seems sad, resigned. She’s swaddled in the sort of melancholy that makes her all but invisible to those around her, and though nothing about this situation makes sense, I feel my heart ache for a beat. I check my pocket terminal to confirm my suspicion, and sure enough, it’s her.
Except that it isn’t.
At once, my empathy turns cold. Instinct tempts me to swarm in and expose this little con of hers—and if I choose to do so, I’ll be completely within my rights; nexus fraud and identity theft are tantamount to murder these days—but something tells me that’s not the right move. So instead, I squeeze alongside her at the bar and introduce myself.
I’m terrible at this in real life—I don’t doubt that women have been pushed over the very edge of sexuality by my romantic ineptitudes—but the situation in which I’ve just found myself doesn’t quite seem real. It seems so surreal, in fact, that I very nearly spit out a fake name and crash and burn right out of the shoot. I try to buy her a drink, but that goes nowhere fast; the music is just too loud and the lighting is so sporadic that lip-reading is a complete impossibility.
Suddenly—and mercifully—she throws me an unexpected bone.
Slugging back the clouded dregs of her drink, she takes my hand and leads me outside. With the blare of music at our backs, she laughs nervously. “Take two, if you don’t mind,” she says. She speaks in a clipped tone that is at once guarded and approachable. In the harsh neon of the strip, her eyes shine like smoldering chrome. “I’m Mitzy.”
I let that percolate for a second before opening my mouth to respond. Maybe I didn’t expect her to be so bold with her alias, or maybe I’m ju
st finding it hard to marry such a familiar name with the face of a stranger. Either way, I’m taken aback—and therefore immediately at a disadvantage. “Uh, Wilson,” I reply. “My friends call me Wil.” We shake hands like businessmen, and she giggles as our implants do likewise. Her xchange stats uploads to my NanoPrint almost instantly; for once, I don’t purge it.
“Well all right then, Wil. Are you going to ask me to dance, or is it too old-fashioned to expect something like that from you?”
I chuckle with a cringe. “Oh, I’m plenty old-fashioned. But I’m a miserable dancer.” Believe me, this confession is understating reality to the point of absolute irresponsibility—imagine a chicken burning alive in slow motion, and you’ll be on the right track.
“Thank goodness,” she exclaims with a nervous titter. “My roommate says my dancing is more than likely the reason I’m still single.”
“Suddenly I feel like I’m missing out on something.”
“Believe me, we’re all better off.” She apparently realizes the contradiction in her behavior thus far—leading me down a path to dancing, when in fact she has no interest in following through—because she immediately follows up with a disclaimer. “Sorry, I guess I’m not very good at cutting the ice.” Her eyes lose focus for a split second and she blushes. “I mean, breaking the ice.” A breeze brushes past us and the pheromones of her faint perfume perk me up.
It suddenly dawns on me that I’ve been flirting with a pretty sexy lady, and for some reason she hasn’t run away in tears yet. Maybe there’s some truth in what they say about men becoming more attractive simply by entering a relationship. Perhaps this woman can sense my unavailability and is subsequently helpless under its strange power. “How about a cup of coffee?” I offer. She smiles her assent and offers an elbow.
“What about your friends?” I ask, though I don’t hesitate to link arms with her. “Won’t they miss you?”
“Oh, sure. They’ll be heartbroken to lose their fifth wheel.”
We find a little diner that serves breakfast and pie all night long and I order a cappuccino and a slice of blueberry pie. I could do some pretty substantial damage to the entire menu, but some adolescent psychology has me feeling weird about eating real food in front of her. I keep having to remind myself that this isn’t a real romantic encounter—that this girl is an imposter—and that whatever attraction I may be feeling for her is just another product of her deception. Then, to my surprise, she orders a cheeseburger and fries, and rounds it out with a chocolate milkshake. Noting my boggled face, she laughs with a cute roll of the eyes. “Don’t worry, we’ll go Dutch.”
“Oh, uh—”
>>Go Dutch?
...In a courtship situation where both parties are assumed to have a similar financial standing, the traditional custom of the man bearing the financial burden may be forgone in the ritual of “going Dutch”; the origin of this ritual is often attributed to the Netherlands where—
Jeez, forget I asked.
“Um, tell me about your name,” I say when our waitress leaves us. “It’s a little unusual.”
“It was my grandmother’s.”
“Really. Where was she from?”
“You wouldn’t know it from the name, but she grew up in France. A little south of Paris. I went there once when I was a kid. They still speak French there today, if you can believe it.”
I scoff. Leave it to the French to defy world order while the rest of us speak Unified English.
“She and my grandfather died when I was fourteen. Automobile accident—some crazy guy rammed their tram with one of those old gas cars. They both died instantly.”
Her explanation sobers the mood a little; if she’s lying, she’s very accomplished at it. I ask about her job, her hobbies, her favorite things about the city—all subjects intended to reveal inconsistencies in her identity, which are easy enough to cross-reference against the xchange stats hovering in my social buffer. Interrogation or flirtatious curiosity, she’s either too highQ for me, or she’s the real thing. Not one of her responses seems to be anything other than the honest truth.
And the way she keeps looking at me? Wow. I haven’t the slightest idea what has attracted her to me, but let’s just say I could very easily forget that I’m not on the market.
“You’re cute,” she announces abruptly. My heart flip-flops.
“Um, I think your definition of cute may be a little off.” She laughs and I feel my cheeks flush.
“Maybe,” she admits. “I think it goes deeper than appearance, though. You’re different than other guys I’ve met.”
Relaxing a little, I sip at what’s left of my cappuccino. “How so?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she mutters shyly. I shrug and level a patient stare; there’s no unringing that bell. Mitzy realizes this and eventually relents with a grudging smile. Her pretty eyes narrow as she takes me in, slowly and methodically. A moment later, she sighs. “Well, for one, you don’t exactly dress the part, do you?”
“What do you mean? What part?”
She giggles. “You know, a ladies’ man.”
I scoff at the absurdity. “Me? Oh, that’s funny. What else?”
She bites her lip, gaze pushing through my eyes to some plane far beyond them. I sense that the conversation is about to go a little deeper than I’ve been in a while, but I don’t stop her. I’m not sure I could if I wanted to. “I kind of get the feeling you don’t quite… um, belong.”
I feel my heart deflate, but I try to smile anyway. “Wow. How flattering.” I lean back in my seat, crossing my arms.
Mitzy covers her mouth with a cringe. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
I wave off her apology. “It’s fine, really. Besides, you’re right. This place,” I nod toward the window, into Vegas’s pretentious cityscape, “isn’t really my thing.”
The brightness in her eyes fades a notch and her mouth forms a bittersweet curve. “That’s not quite what I mean,” she says softly.
Meeting her gaze, I nod slowly. The truth is, I know exactly what she means.
I feel her hand seek out mine and the world seems to flicker. “The thing is, Wilson,” she says quietly, “Neither do I.”
An hour or more later, I walk her outside to the street. As we stand by the tram tracks, radioactive in the glow of blinking neon, I realize she really is exceptionally pretty. Just not necessarily in the conventional way—her charm is a vital component, and with it added to the equation of her allure, she’s truly a delightful creature.
A tram clatters through the moment and cinches against the curb at our feet. I’m hesitant to let her go; after talking with her, I feel more confused than ever. I’m afraid of what might happen if I dare to stick with her—because there is some undeniable chemistry happening between us—but I’m equally afraid of letting her out of my sight until I’ve unraveled this tangle of pretense.
Mitzy seems to detect—if not understand—my apprehension, and before I’m aware of what’s coming, she steps boldly—yet somehow timidly—into my arms and touches my lips with hers.
The moment we connect, I feel like I’m drowning in electrified honey. It’s a sweet, unpracticed gesture that feels more real than any human contact I’ve ever known. Images of corn fields and homemade apple pies enfold me. I try not to think, to just bask in the moment—but from the periphery of my mind, a voice berates me. I should probably listen to it, because even now, with lips tingling and cheeks aglow, I recognize that what I’m doing is not only wrong—it’s dangerous. Yet I can’t seem to grab hold of common sense; it tosses about like a kite in the wind—and before I know it?
Well, I suppose what’s done is done.
Like it or not, my heart has just divided. When I return home to Adrian, a piece of me will undoubtedly remain here, with this lady. Long after her tram departs, I stand there in a daze.
Oh, crank. What’ve I stepped in this time?
I hole up in a cheap hotel—a good mile from the strip, wh
ere an average Joe like myself can still afford to sleep indoors—and spend the next several hours fact-finding on the nexus. I’m getting better at it. Plus, I’m better able to focus my efforts with Mitzy’s xchange profile at my disposal.
Stuffing my face from a second-rate room service menu, I find the first bit of interesting news: in February of 2091, a woman named Mitzy Renard was in fact killed—along with others, including her husband—in a freak automobile accident in Paris. The driver of the other vehicle, an eccentric local historian named Etienne Aucoin, was purportedly obsessed with the antiquities of transportation. Only a year before, he was arrested for operating an illegally restored motorbike after losing control of the machine and colliding with a road sign. He survived—miraculously, by the tone of article—only to repeat his insanity later, this time with irreparable consequences.
This situation is starting to show all the hallmarks of data corruption, or perhaps misaligned data feeds. Fifty years ago, this sort of thing supposedly happened all the time. Records of like individuals sometimes became entangled through a variety of early-nexus hiccups and subsequently spawned broad confusion that lasted months or even years. These days, our records are uniquely keyed to our DNA profiles via our implants, rather than to the implants themselves. As a child, I remember hearing about these twins who had some weirdness with their implants because they shared the same nuclear DNA. But even that nonsense is ancient history. It simply isn’t possible for one person to be electronically confused with another.
Or so I thought.
I’m not sleeping well at all. My sleep add-ons have individually been mildly helpful, but while each seems effective at putting me out, I repeatedly wake with a start, uncomfortable and confused about where I am, and none of them seems capable of keeping me out. Part of the problem, I know, is that I’m simply overwhelmed by the sheer variety of disconcerting situations in which I’ve found myself over the last several days. My mind simply won’t shut off, and no amount of pleading makes a difference. Perhaps more than that, I’m a creature of habit, and I’ve betrayed my nature. This little adventure of mine feels less like a casual broadening of my horizons than an unpleasant stretching of my coping skills, which I’ve coerced well past their reasonable limits.
The Pedestal Page 5