Cronix

by James Hider

  Swaincroft looked like he wanted to melt into the floor. “Well, it’s uh…it’s a complicated thing to explain,” he stuttered, running his fingers through his hair.

  “She told me you were worried about having a kid with her. Worried that with her expensive genetic upgrades the kid might be…I don’t know, too perfect. You know, a beautiful genius, but…not quite natural. It’s not an uncommon fear, in the circumstances.”

  Swaincroft nodded. “Well, yeah, that’s part of it, sure. You know how it is…there’s always a slight tension between us indigenes and, er, them. It’s not always easy. I once dated this air-sider, a few years back, just after I’d moved to London as a student. Anyway, she was utterly beautiful, of course, and I asked her out for a drink. She wasn’t too bright, but I was young and, you know, excitable, and I knew the air-siders have this reputation…” He grinned sheepishly. Oriente smiled and nodded at him to go on.

  “Anyway, we had a few drinks. Turns out she hadn’t realized I wasn’t chipped, and had never been air-side. You know what she said?”

  Oriente shrugged, guessing it was unlikely to be good.

  “She just looked at me and said, ‘I’m sorry, it’s just that shades just give me the creeps.’ Then she walked out.”

  “Bitch.” Oriente shook his head. “But you can’t judge Lola for that. They’re not all like that. Look at your colleagues here, they’re all Eternals.”

  “No, no, that’s true, a lot of them are very warm, empathetic people.” Swaincroft worried a fingernail with his teeth.

  “Then what’s the problem? I mean, it’s not really my place to be probing you, with us not having really met before…I know she probably comes on a bit strong about kids, but that’s just her way. That’s what she came back for, it’s her dream. I know some of these broody air-siders can come across like they’re just looking for a sperm donor, but Lola’s not gonna steal your genetics. She really loves you, I believe. And there’s no real pressure right now, surely…”

  “She didn’t tell you, did she?” said Swaincroft. “About who she really is?”

  “Oh that? That she was a taxi driver in the Philippines back in the day…”

  “A male taxi driver,” stressed the younger man.

  Oriente had not known that, but was not entirely surprised. “I know, I know, they have different attitudes towards gender issues from us. But you shouldn’t let that…”

  Swaincroft held up his hand. “Okay, I admit I once slept with a girl I knew had…been a man in a previous incarnation, and it did freak me out just a little bit.”

  “It just takes a little getting used to,” said Oriente. “The old Dr Jekyll and Mrs Hyde syndrome. Common enough though, and you do get there in the end. Hell, it can give the whole thing a certain frisson.”

  “But that’s not it, either” said Swaincroft.

  “Oh.” The older man folded his arms. Over Swaincroft’s shoulder, he saw Poincaffrey return. He pointed to his watch, smiled politely, and ducked into the conference room. Oriente nodded and turned back to Swaincroft. “So what is it?”

  The young academic rubbed his face. “I’m not sure I should be the one to tell you this, but since you are her friend, maybe you should know. The thing is, the taxi driver…he wasn’t just a normal man.” He peered nervously at Oriente, who stared at him impassively. “He suffered from what’s known as a dissociative identity disorder.”

  “You mean – he had a split personality?”

  “Exactly. He managed to live with it, and quite effectively hide it, while he was still here on Earth, but he had a pretty rough time. I mean, all the attendant symptoms, the depression, confusion, not to mention the amnesia. He was twenty three when the Exodus began. He signed up as fast as he could, hoping he could escape all his troubles. The problem was, there wasn’t much consideration given to these things back at that time, given the rushed way it played out in so much of the Third World, and he’d never been properly diagnosed.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Well, he went air side, and the DPP detected the presence of what they assessed to be a fully-fledged, secondary personality – a female -- embedded within the assigned avatar. They didn’t know whether to assign him one or two avatars, so they were held in a basic entry level until a decision could be taken. One DPP counselor advised that pending a decision, the secondary personality should be assigned its own skin. A lawyer was appointed, just in case the taxi driver was concerned that some fundamental part of his own identity was being infringed. Of course, once the problem had been explained to him, he was quite happy to shuck off this unwanted double who'd been making him worry he was mad, and gay to boot. And so Lola was born, metaphorically speaking, of course.”

  Oriente stared out of the window into the courtyard. “Well, she’s still a real person, Quin. Real as you or I,” he said.

  There was a silence from the younger man. To both their relief, Poincaffrey reappeared.

  “Gentlemen, I hate to intrude, but time is running on…” The two men gratefully allowed the professor to usher them back into the room.

  ***

  The light was soft when Glenn opened his eyes. His gaze drifted over the white ceiling. The sedative in his blood lent the wintry sun an unseasonable warmth. He turned his head: he was alone. Door closed. Next to the bed was a night table, on the wall a soothing watercolor of a whiteboard house in a field of summer wheat. An institutional room. The word seemed to carry some obscure importance to his half-waking mind. Institution: he tried to focus his thoughts. Institution. Hospital. Holsten General.

  If you tell anyone about this I'll kill you.

  Glenn sat upright in the bed.

  Both his hands were swathed in bandages, his left with a splint poking out. He was in hospital. But she wasn't here. He was alive, and warm. He had survived. He'd won. She'd lost.

  He could hear traffic, a distant car horn honking, a bird twittering. Everyday town sounds. He went to the window and fumbled open the shades. Mid-morning filtered in through the tinted glass. He peered down at the street, five floors below, and across flat rooftops bare but for a few patches of lingering snow. The sky was clear, the storm had dumped its snow and passed. People walked by, heads down, bodies swaddled in coats and scarves. Holsten City was going about its usual business on the first day of snow.

  He was safe. But was she was out there somewhere, beyond the city limits, maybe even inside Holsten. Was she watching to see if he talked?

  He stared out at the skyline of a small city he'd never even known existed. He luxuriated in the thought that he was safe, not being washed down by a morgue assistant in the building's basement.

  A nurse came in.

  "Hi there," she said, all professional chirpiness. "We're awake. How're we feeling today?"

  "Okay," said Glenn, looking down at his bandaged hands. "What happened to my hands? Is it serious?"

  "Nope, just a little frostbite. You were lucky that farmer came by last night. You coulda been out there all night," she said. "I'll tell the doctor you're up. He wants a little word with you. Meantime, you want some breakfast?"

  The doctor came in about twenty minutes later, just as Glenn was chasing a greasy mushroom round the plate with his unwieldy flippers. He had suffered tissue damage to all his fingers, the doctors said, but was lucky: mild hypothermia, and he hadn't had to amputate any digits, as he could easily have done -- especially the two broken ones on his left hand. He would merely need to wear protective gloves for a few weeks until the skin healed. His hands would always be susceptible to the cold, though.

  "No mountain climbing this winter," he cautioned. "Otherwise you could seriously lose some fingers."

  Next came the burly officer from the sheriff's department to file the accident report. He ambled in with a polite "Mornin'," introduced himself as Larry something-Polish and pulled up a plastic chair.

  Glenn recounted how he had become enmeshed with the absurd machine, the desperate time in the snow. He tri
ed to not even think of the satanic female who had emerged from the darkness to bargain for his life. Had she even been real, or a hallucination induced by cold and fear? As he cut her out of his account, he felt his only chance of revenge slipping away. The cop scribbled away, oblivious. He had no reason to be suspicious. The farmer who had spotted Glenn's car from the road hadn't bothered to look for the tracks of a second vehicle. He had been too busy bundling the frozen young man into his own pick-up and rushing him to emergency.

  The cop paused as Glenn wound up his story. The last thing he remembered clearly was the vehicle arriving, he said, and being half-carried, half-dragged through the snow. He couldn't even recall what his savior looked like. The policeman stared at his notebook, flicked back a couple of pages, and drawled "Uh-huuh." The bandages on Glenn's hands mercifully stopped him from fidgeting.

  "Okay," the officer said, reading his own scrawl. "Uh, just one thing, sir, I'm not quite clear on. You turned off the headlights on your vehicle when you stepped out to buy a Coke?"

  "Uh yeah. I guess I did."

  "Mind if I ask why?"

  A noise flickered across his memory. "The alarm was beeping,” he said. “I guess I just switched them off to stop the noise."

  The cop sucked his lip, nodded. He folded his notebook, stuffed it in his inside jacket and slapped his knees.

  "Okay sir, we'll type this up and get it back to you to sign. You'll need it for your legal proceedings."

  "What legal proceedings?" Glenn said, suddenly alarmed.

  The policeman eyed him like he was a simpleton.

  "Mr Rose, there's a whole gang of lawyers out at reception just busting to talk to you." Registering Glenn's blank expression, he went on, "Well, you are gonna sue, aren't you? That machine damn near killed you. I think you could come out of this quite a wealthy man. Every cloud has a silver lining, as they say. You just got to endure the storm first." He smiled, tapped a finger to his temple in salute, and left.

  Glenn stared down at his bandaged hands. He couldn't imagine being able to sign anything.

  His room suddenly burst into activity. Three lawyers in winter overcoats took their turn representing themselves, trying to out-pitch each other. Mr Hamelitz promised him he was set to become a millionaire, Mr Morrow said he could file suit that very day at the county court and proffered lengthy documents for Glenn to sign: finally a Mr Baker offered his professional services, informing Glenn he had secured a six-figure sums for a client who had his right arm ripped off by combine harvester.

  Glenn took their cards. The doctor said there were more lawyers outside, but Glenn pleaded tiredness. When they had gone, he lay in bed and allowed himself to conjure up images of fat compensation checks.

  A hospital administrator informed him the press were asking for an interview. A city evening paper, a cable network and two radio stations wanted to talk to him about his miraculous escape from death. They had already tracked down the modest farmer who had saved him: now they wanted pictures of him standing at Glenn's bedside. Handshakes would clearly be out of the question. Photographers had already rushed out to the lone gas station on the plains to snap shots of the offending vending machine being carted away by the sheriff's office.

  Glenn didn't want to talk to the press, much less have his photo taken. Who knew what London police officer might casually Google his name? The administrator nodded sincerely in acknowledgement of Glenn's all too recent trauma.

  Still groggy, Glenn drifted off again.

  When he awoke, the room was already half dark. He felt drugged and gummy from sedatives and sleep. He reached for the water bottle by the bed, fumbled the cap off with his teeth.

  The phone rang behind him. He leaned over to answer it.

  "Hello?" he said

  "Lucky you." The woman's voice was tinny in the earpiece, an insect utterance from the past. Glenn dropped the receiver in shock.

  "Glenn?” the woman said. “Are you there?"

  He stared at the phone.

  "Can you hear me? Are you alone?"

  Glenn leaned down, scooped the receiver between bandaged hands and held it to his ear.

  "What do you want?"

  "You promised me. Remember that? I still need your help."

  Glenn was already fumbling the phone back into its cradle when a begging note in the woman’s voice stopped him. “I still need your help. If you want to give it.” He glanced at the door to check it was shut, as though he were hiding a dirty secret.

  "What? You’re a fucking headcase. You wanted to watch me die out there, and now that I survived, despite your best efforts, you think I'm going to just come out there and live with you for months? Lady, you’re so out of whack I can't even begin to describe ..."

  The line rang dead, and he stared at the phone for a second. He eased himself out of bed and looked out the window. The lights of Holsten reached up into the night sky. Then the phone rang again.

  Glenn stared at the phone. Let it ring. The sound was piercing, insistent. Fuck you, bitch. It stopped, as though he had willed it into silence.

  He lay down, but got up again immediately.

  "I didn't tell anyone, okay?" he told the plastic phone. It occurred to him she hadn't asked if he had. He tried to piece together the night before, but his mind balked. All he could see was headlights in the dark. He wanted something to do, somewhere to go. He thought about discharging himself. But it was late and cold, and he had nowhere to go.

  He flicked on the television, flicked through the channels. The ring of the phone jerked him out of his trance.

  One ring, two, three. He flicked the mute and answered: "Yes?"

  A man's voice. "Mr Rose? Evening, this is Dave Morrow from Kayser and Strich. We spoke this afternoon."

  "Oh. Yeah. Sure. Hi, how's it going?" Glenn said. The phone call from his prairie tormentor had put all notions of lawsuit bounty out of his head. But Morrow had an apologetic tone, as though Glenn had already hired him and he was wasting his dollars.

  "I hope I'm not disturbing you. I could call back later."

  "No, that's okay. I just … thought you were someone else."

  "Sure. Well, Mr Rose, I've been looking into your case and I'm afraid we've run into a not insignificant hitch. You see, the company in Pennsylvania that manufactured and serviced the machine that nearly took your fingers has been out of business since March this year. Filed chapter 11 on March 22, to be precise. Seems your accident wasn't the first time they'd had trouble with their machines. In June last year one of their units damn near took the fingers off a kid in New Mexico. Lucky for them the kid's family was dirt poor and settled for a paltry out-of-court settlement. But Chilcott's president, one Jay Tucker, instead of ordering a costly recall of all his vending machines, shifted all his assets to an offshore subsid and skipped the country. No one seems to know what happened to him after that, except that he shredded all company documents before leaving, including the customer list for the Auto-Chrome Seven, which was the beast that got a hold of you last night."

  Glenn stared blankly at the TV. The phone made a brief beeping sound in his ear. "Which means?"

  "Which means we won't be suing them. Now, the franchise holder on the Sunoco gas station subcontracted a Budfork supplier to restock the machine, but as neither was the owner of the vending unit, and neither was aware of the demise of the manufacturer and the swift departure of Mr Tucker, neither are strictly speaking liable for its operations. Now, what we can do is approach Sunoco out of court and try to come some arrangement which would avoid any embarrassment stemming from the fact that a motorist almost froze to death on one of their forecourts. But since the story is out already, it would appear that any PR damage is done, and any settlement might imply culpability in future cases."

  Morrow paused to draw breath. Glenn inspected his bandaged hand. A tight knot of anger and disappointment formed behind his breastbone.

  "So what does all that mean, Mr Morrow? That I'm screwed?" His new tic spasmed beneath h
is eyes, and he fumbled to control it with his swaddled fingers.

  "Not exactly, Mr Rose. We could also go after the franchise holder, though if they don’t have specific insurance the chances of getting much out of them is slim. But my firm is willing to pursue the case if you'd like us to. On a pro-bono basis, so you don't stand to lose a thing."

  "Right," said Glenn. The guy sounded a bit desperate. He found he was too tired to say much else.

  "I could come around tomorrow, you sign the retainer form and we'll go ahead."

  "Okay," said Glenn. On the screen of his television, a Buddhist monk sat on a rocky outcrop, dressed in robes the color of ancient wine and beating a drum. The picture briefly hooked his attention, in the abstract way television images have of intruding on the mundane present.

  "Fine, then, I'll be round tomorrow at 9:30. Take it easy."

  The line went dead. Glenn watched the Buddhist monk drumming silently. He put the phone back on its holder. There was a message on the digital display. One missed call.

  That beep on the line when he was talking to Morrow. Her? How had she placed the call, when the press and the other lawyers were being blocked by the hospital reception?

  The doctor came in and told him he would be discharged in the morning. Did he have insurance? No? He raised his eyebrows, then shook his head slightly. Glenn felt a pang of worry: he'd have to pay cash. Christ, American hospitals cost a fortune though, didn't they?

  The doctor said they'd change his dressing in the morning. Glenn barely noticed his words until the man had left: the cold world was loomed in again, pressing with its irritating demands and practicalities.

  He realized he had forgotten even to ask what happened to his car.

  ***

  Dr Porter, the unkempt head of research, was already in Poincaffrey's office when Oriente arrived for his morning coffee. The two men were deep in conversation.

  “Sorry to interrupt you gentlemen,” Oriente said. The academics insisted his company was never an interruption, as Poincaffrey poured his guest a coffee. “Javan,” he said. “Ship docked in Greenwich two days ago. Which is good, because I heard shops were running low. Supply and demand is still not quite what it once was.”