“No,” I said, trying to look hurt. I was hurt; I imagined I looked quite tragic. “My God...no, she didn’t say anything! Why? Did she tell you?”
“No, Topher. But she’s been acting real strange. Shaved off her hair. Missed a lot of work. Gaining a lot of weight...I hate to say it...”
“She’s been avoiding me totally.”
“I think she’s taking too many drugs, Topher. I’m real sorry to tell you this.”
“Wow. Yeah...well, thanks. I’m glad somebody told me. If you do hear from her, or if the other girls do, will you call me?”
“Sure. And you do the same, all right?”
“I will. Thanks again, Ebonee.”
I felt repulsed with myself when I switched the vidphone feature off. But I had to make it look like I hadn’t seen Gaby. That she couldn’t be found at my apartment. That I hadn’t murdered her.
I put it off for as long as I could, stalled, paced, at last called my boss.
“Where have you been, Christopher?” she huffed. “Half the day is over and you’re just calling in now?”
“I have a personal emergency, Julie...I’m very sorry...”
“Well, are you coming in?”
“I can’t, I’m afraid. I don’t know...I don’t know when I can. I was hoping I could take a leave of absence, or something...”
“What? What kind of emergency is this?”
“A family thing.”
“Look,” she sighed, “you’ll have to call Diane and explain this to her, if you want a leave of absence. But she isn’t going to be happy, unless you can explain your situation a little better than that.”
Diane was her boss, the office manager.
“Yeah, all right...I’ll do that. But I am sorry, Julie, really...”
“All right,” she sighed again irritably, and cut off the connection.
I stalled, paced. I never called Diane the office manager. I went out and bought Zub and my gyro and nuts (and coffee) instead. And now, as evening fell, and the lights beneath Punktown dimmed appropriately, I sat and watched mindless comedy on VT to deaden myself. Distract myself from the liquid vortex that had once been my brain.
During my shopping trip (when I’d also picked up the printer), I had bought a hair styling kit and a tube of hair accelerator. After I ate and before Pimp Mama T, I buzzed all my hair down to just a dark stubble. Then, I carefully painted the hair accelerator cream on my chin, over my upper lip, with the little brush in the cap. Rubbing my chin now, already I could feel the whiskers broken through the skin. By morning I’d have a full mustache and goatee. I had made sure to make my vidcalls before I changed my appearance.
Tomorrow, a few more errands. I couldn’t envision a long-term plan. One errand at a time. I had to get rid of the yellow gun. I found I had emptied it into Gaby, anyway. Then, I wanted to buy a new gun. I’d discreetly ask around on the street. It would still get me in trouble if caught, but at least it wouldn’t be the gun that killed Gabrielle. Then I thought maybe I’d get some tattoos, to make my appearance all the more different. I could always have them removed in the future. If I had a future.
I didn’t know much about guns. I had fired a friend’s pellet gun in an alley with him, but never a real gun. Real guns had always frightened me. Now, other things frightened me more. I’d do some research on the net. Read up. First thing in the morning, before I went shopping for one. I might want several, now that I thought of it.
I glanced at the palmcomp now. I was tempted to check that game again. I was afraid to check that game again. Had I only imagined that last bit? The Choom prosty? Misinterpreted her, misheard her words?
Had the man who’d called me for help done so just to set me up? Had he tricked me into playing the game, knowing that it contained a personal connection to me? No...that was ludicrous. Paranoia was fine, as long as it was realistic paranoia. But what had happened, then? Had I only been conversing with a computer construct, or had some other person or being been speaking through her, acting through the game?
How would anybody but me know that I had ever met with that girl?
Her apartment was in the same building above Dove Books. Had Mr. Dove seen me talk to the girl, go upstairs with her?
Mr. Dove had not been happy with Gaby or me. We both talked too loudly.
Mr. Dove. Mr. Dove. Mr. Dove.
***
MORNING CAME, THE constellations of artificial suns gradually dawned in the concrete sky, and I lay on the sagging but hard mattress of the sleeper-sofa staring up at the pastel yellow ceiling tiles. Idly, I started trying to count them, by counting the tiles along one edge of the ceiling, then by counting those along another edge, and I would multiply the two numbers, but the tiles were too small and some were fallen away here and there and I gave up on the exercise. Also, the walls were not square, which complicated things. On either side of the large single room there were two alcove areas, facing each other, and each had one window in it.
Sitting up sharply in bed, I went from counting the tiles in the ceiling to counting the corners of the room.
Because of the two alcoves, the livingroom/kitchen had eight corners. Eight corners like the bedroom of my old flat. Eight corners for eight of Gaby’s perfumed candles.
Synchronicity, I thought. Or maybe it wasn’t some mysterious cosmic design; I imagined a lot of rooms had eight corners if you bothered to notice. I just never noticed these things, as I never noticed the city around me much beyond what was in front of my nose.
I inspected my new goatee and mustache, actually had to trim them a bit with scissors from the styling kit. Then I showered (hating for my bare feet to touch the stained, aqua bathtub) and dressed in my most casual clothing (I hadn’t even bothered to take with me any of the suits I wore to the office). Gray t-shirt, black jeans. Onto my newly shaven head I pulled a gray visored cap. I would wear dark glasses. I tucked the small yellow pistol into the back of my waistband and let my untucked baggy t-shirt hang over its protruding grip.
Errands to give me some sense of purpose. Errands to take my mind off the fact that I had murdered my insane, perhaps mutated former girlfriend, and sent my entire life whooshing into oblivion. First errand: coffee. I’d buy a better one somewhere than I could make here.
I found a fairly good large hazelnut with cream and sugar at a little stand that also sold doughnuts and hotdogs and native deep-fried dilkies, but I had no stomach for food. I had less luck buying a gun that day. The first man I asked recoiled a bit from me and said, “What do you take me for, Mr. Enforcer?”
“I’m not a forcer,” I assured him, but he snorted and walked away.
I wandered more or less aimlessly, sipping my coffee, hoping to find a tattoo parlor. At the tube platform I sat for a few minutes and watched people funnel into or out of the sleek bullet-faced machines as they glided in for a stop. I felt like I was ridiculously disguised, as if I wore a Halloween costume, but had to remind myself that I actually looked quite natural. Other people wore shades underground, as well. A man in a dark business suit passed close by my elbow and I flinched. For a moment, I thought it might be Mr. Dove, whose shop was just down the street, but when I looked up at the man as he waited to pile into the tube he had a human head. He looked as numbly discontented as I must have looked to others when boarding the tube for work.
I had forgotten my other errands. Tried to pick them like pebbles out of the bottom of a muddy pool. Yes...the gun causing my lower back discomfort. I had to dispose of it. I found a men’s room adjacent to the tube platform, and went into it. I ignored the two men in one of the stalls and what one was doing to the other (they ignored me, as well). I urinated, waiting for a third man to leave, then moved to the sinks. Looking in the mirror, and making certain the two in the stall couldn’t see me at this angle, I quickly slipped out the gun, wrapped it in some paper towels, and dropped it into the trash. There wasn’t much I could do or at least bothered to do about fingerprints or skin cells left on the grip. I was mostly
just going through the motions of self preservation. For the most part, I assumed my recent actions would destroy me, that it was only a matter of how long it would take before I was caught.
Back on the street, the high ceiling reflecting the roar of traffic confined in these vaults. Traffic from above moving below, traffic from below moving above. Great ramps communicated between the two worlds, though there were none within immediate view of Morpha Street.
A billboard screen on the flank of one building showed a gigantic Jessika Heart Thatcher being interviewed, asked how she had enjoyed guest-starring on Pimp Mama T. She giggled that she’d been shy about doing her nude sex scenes with OmarBlast M, but he was quite the gentleman about it. But OmarBlast leaned into view and said it was necessary for Jessika to be on top so he wouldn’t crush her. They both laughed. The interviewer asked if they had really had sex, as it had appeared, or if they had faked it (as some guest stars did). Jessika said she didn’t believe in lying to the audience and OmarBlast chuckled deeply and patted her knee, saying, “Me either, Jess.”
I wandered on. I drifted past a robot vendor selling coffee and decided maybe I’d get a fresh one on the way back. I wandered past the Japanese video store. Outside it, on the sidewalk, a holographic samurai with an insect-like robotic head – an advertisement for a new release – spun his sword around him in vicious arcs, as if to slash at the passing pedestrians, most of whom ignored him and walked right through his ghostly blade. A little Choom boy pretended to duel with him. I smiled at the child and walked on, and then realized where I was unconsciously wandering to.
There it was, the purple brick building. Not missing, as on the vidgame. On the ground floor: Dove Books.
Several young girls loitered outside the front steps, either nude or mostly so. One girl had tattoos that glowed like neon twined around her bare limbs, and her breasts were outlined with luminous red hearts. I didn’t see my little friend...but I recognized one of the girls from my previous visit to that building, and I approached her. As I did so, I stole peeks at the lower windows of the building through my tinted lenses, half expecting to see a fishy gray face peering out at me, but the windows had all been adjusted to a full tint of opaque blackness.
“Hey, hey, lovey,” this girl said as I approached her, stepping forward to meet me half-way.
“Hi,” I said. “Hey, I’m looking for your friend...this girl with dark purple hair? Long hair? Choom girl? She had an Asian thing done to her eyes? A star tattoo on her chest?”
“I have a star tattoo on my chest,” one of the other girls announced proudly, opening her shirt to show me. It was indeed the same design my girl had worn for protection, applied by one of the other girls. Rosa, my girl had said the tattoo artist’s name was. Sort of a witch, but a prosty, too.
“You’re looking for Jelena,” replied my girl’s friend. “She’s gone – sorry.”
“Gone? Was she...sick?” I thought she meant she had died. I remembered how she had looked in the game.
“He’s afraid he caught something from her!” the other prosty with the star snickered.
“No, she just quit,” laughed Jelena’s friend. “She just couldn’t take the life anymore, y’know?”
“Yeah...it’s tough,” said the star girl. “This ain’t no Pimp Mama T.”
Her comment made me embarrassed for having rented Jelena’s services the last time. I stuttered, “Well, okay...I’m glad she got out of the life, then...”
“She was having weird dreams,” said the star girl. “So do I. I think it’s this life. It gets to you.”
I nodded sympathetically, then I noticed something about this prosty. A bump on her head, protruding through her sleek black hair.
“What...what’s that?” I asked, pointing.
Self consciously she clapped her hand over it. But before she did so, I noticed that the lump was pointed and distinct. It looked raw and pink, and as if it had begun to peel.
“It’s nothing!” she snapped defensively. “Don’t worry about it. I’m clean. Ric makes us all get check-ups, once a month. We’re all clean.”
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, backing away.
“Where you going?” cooed Jelena’s friend. “Jelena’s not the only fish in the sea, honey.”
I glanced at the black-tinted windows of Dove’s Books. I wasn’t ready to go in there today...but I knew that I must, as if it were my destiny, preordained, part of some invisible scheme of things. Another errand...but not for today.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated to the prosties, and turned and headed back the way I had come.
***
I SPENT THE rest of the afternoon reading about guns on the palmcomp, only leaving my flat again to buy another sandwich and a few snacks to keep in the apartment. Based on what I read, and what guns I had used in vidgames, I thought I had an idea of what I might seek out on the street, depending of course on what was available.
Vidgames. Dare I try that game again? It was beginning to grow dimmer outside with the approach of artificial night. It might be noon upground for all I could tell, though I knew it wasn’t. For some reason, I wanted to look at that game now, quickly, before it got dark out, if I was going to look at it at all.
It started out in the apartment again. I remembered the man’s name was Marrk Argent. Greeting me in his flat was Jessika Heart Thatcher and Angelah Lee Henderson, playing his roommates. I was tempted to check out Argent’s sex program as it linked from Sweet Revenge (though I didn’t have a VR set for the full effect) – I much preferred the cute Jessika to the plastic blond Angelah – but I was too unsettled to pursue it. Again I selected my weapons (a few more this time around), again I took to the streets. I almost trotted to the tube station.
Belowground, I passed the building that contained my new flat, and paused to gaze up at its windows, as if I were inside that building even now staring at the game on my stolen palmcomp. The two mes contemplating each other in an infinite Escher loop... Moebius strip.
Down the street, around the corner: Morpha Street B. I wanted 14-B...
Would the building be there this time?
It wasn’t. That alley, instead. I gripped the double handles of a fully auto assault rifle loaded with flesh-dissolving plasma rounds in a fifty shot banana clip. If that purple-haired prosty, with her antler-like growths, stepped out of the alley I thought I was more likely to shoot her on sight than question her again. I tried to control my fear. I must question her. Her name was Jelena...
There were indeed several girls in the alley, though they didn’t seem to correspond with the pimp Ric’s girls I had seen in my actual visits. They didn’t have the red and blue painted lips that seemed to be Ric’s brand. When I tried to converse with them, they spoke in the sleep-walker’s voice of computer constructs, not programmed for much interaction. When they began to repeat themselves I gave up on them.
So – had I hallucinated Jelena into the game, after all?
I was about to leave the program – with a good deal of relief, despite my failure – when I noticed a design spray-painted on the tiled alley wall I hadn’t noticed before. It was quite large, done in a softly luminous purple paint, and it was almost a cross between a spider web, a mathematical equation, and a map or blueprint. Very intricate. Others had since spray-painted over parts of it.
“What’s this mean?” I asked a Tikkihotto prosty, gesturing at the design with my gun barrel.
“Want some sugar, baby boy?” the prosty droned.
I exited the program.
***
THE GUN DEALER’S name was Rabal, and he was a Kalian. I had been sent to him by a gang of twelve-year olds I questioned in the street about where to buy guns (I figured they might know, since a couple of them openly wore pistols in holsters).
The boys directed me to the Subtown Library a few blocks from Morpha Street B, on Obsidian Street B. If Rabal wasn’t in his van, in a vacant lot behind the library, he might be inside as he frequently was, in the Kalian Reading
Room. I was instructed to look for a gold hovervan or a “fat Kalian in red pajamas”. I gave the boys a ten munit note to split. “Zat all?” one boy barked in what I hoped was mock indignity, slapping his hand to his holstered handgun.
I joked to change the subject. “You buy that from Rabal? Is his stuff good quality?”
“It’ll kill,” he said with a shrug.
I walked the several blocks to the subterranean version of Obsidian Street. The Subtown Library was a smallish building of only three stories, its hide fashioned from blocks of pale greenish marble with glittery veins of gold. It rested in a largely Kalian neighborhood; I could tell not only by the numbers of Kalians who bustled around me, but the smells of their food (I loved Kalian food) and the sounds of their music coming from open windows and passing cars (I liked that, too). No wonder the library had allocated some space for a Kalian Reading Room. It was very hot, muggy in this section of subtown, and I didn’t know whether that indicated faulty climate control or if the climate had been adjusted here more to the taste of the Kalian majority.
Nearly all of the Kalians I saw -- male and female – wore turbans, which might be silken or rough, wrapped close to the head or piled high into cones or thickly coiled into bulging globes. These were always blue. Anything from powder blue to deep indigo, but blue. Their clothing varied from business suits to loose pajama-like affairs to robes (always long-sleeved robes on the women I saw), and metallic gold appeared to be the preferred color; even suits of red or green silk tended to be heavily embroidered with gold thread. Between their dress and their physical appearance, they were a strikingly handsome race. Their skin was a glossy gray (ranging from light to charcoal), their lips tending to be very full, their eyes slanted in an oriental fold. The eyes themselves had no whites, were entirely black like volcanic glass.
I skirted around the library to the fenced-off vacant lot in the back; stalks of a brittle, albino weed grew from cracks in the surface. There were a few vehicles parked here and there, though half of these were stripped skeletons. I thought I heard a baby crying from one of these shells; I half-started toward it, thinking an infant had been abandoned, but I heard a shushing woman’s voice, so instead I walked toward a gold-colored hovervan.
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