People from the Rocks dream of this—dream of getting in with a clique of rich guys, Conrad thought. People had envied the hell out of Terri when she hooked up with Natalya. And now I’m getting in. This could get me places. He still did not like it. He would not be on equal footing with them, he would always be in a subservient position, and that gave him a sick feeling.
Sergei came strolling down the road—he was wearing a hoody sweatshirt, spandex shorts, white tube socks and sandals—looking comfortable and confident. He had a big smile as he approached Conrad and shook his hand.
“Glad you could make it,” he said. “I normally shop at Wreck, but they’re on Slat 3 and it’s closed off because of what happened yesterday. Can you believe it? What the hell is wrong with security? And I knew one of the victims! Simon Hersh! A real big shot, killed right on Slat 3! I have to admit he was a bit of a dick, but still, to just get gunned down like that.”
Conrad wasn’t sure how to react. Say sorry? Sergei didn’t look all that broken up by the death.
“Anyway,” Sergei continued, “we have Natalya’s credit code and a free afternoon! Let’s make the most of it!”
The only visible clothes for sale were on two circular racks on the middle of the floor. Several pedestals were scattered around with lifelike animatronic male mannequins wearing the latest fashion—formal wear, beach wear, business casual. Someone who might possibly have been the most beautiful woman Conrad had ever seen in the flesh walked out from behind the counter and approached them.
“Welcome Mr. Pochenko,” she said brightly with her pink lips and stunning smile. She was wearing a body-hugging shimmering red dress with her blond hair pulled high up in a cone. She looked at Conrad. “And Mr.—” she hesitated, confusion flashing on her face for a moment before she recovered and said, “Mr. Hicks. I’m Inez. How may I help you today?”
Sergei motioned to Conrad and said, “My bro here needs a new wardrobe. He’s not on record so let’s start with a body scan.”
She led Conrad to a booth in the back and told him to get inside, stretch his arms straight out, and stand still. After a few seconds there was a loud ding and she said he could come out. She stepped into a back room for a minute and Conrad walked over to one of the racks to look through the cloths.
“Don’t bother with those,” Sergei said. “They’re just for show. They’ve got a factory in back, they’ll custom make everything you need.”
“Oh, okay,” Conrad said, not sure if Sergei was joking or not. All of the clothes he’s ever owned were second hand, coming from storage containers. He was only ever fashionable through the occasional lucky chance of retro coincidence.
Inez returned. “Everything’s all set, if you would just link in to the Stone network, we can get started.”
The words, “Accept Stone Network” appeared in the air in front of Conrad. He lifted up his finger and touched the words. An instant latter several dozen pictures of himself were floating in the air before him, wearing a variety of different clothes.
“Let’s start with casual and work up to formal,” Sergei said. He was obviously linked to the same images because he clicked on a picture of Conrad wearing a polo shirt and shorts.
Conrad basically followed Sergei’s lead, and in half an hour Conrad had ordered six different outfits.
“These will be delivered to your home by five o’clock today,” Inez told him cheerfully. She then leaned forward toward them conspiratorially. “I don’t know if you are aware of the latest fashion trend. Work boots! The more clunky and beat up the better! We have new work boots that look like they’ve been worn on the farm for a decade! And believe me, they are much more comfortable than they look.”
“No thanks,” Conrad said. “I already have a pair.”
“Ah! Excellent! I appreciate a customer on the cutting edge of fashion.”
Getting back out into the sunshine Sergei said, “That was pretty quick. You shop like I shop, just pick what you want and go. You have any more free time? Stop for a beer?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Conrad said.
“Great! The Blarney Stone is right down here. We’ll get some Guinness.”
The interior of the pub looked like it had been carved out from a single impossibly large block of wood. Just a couple of tables had patrons, it being between lunch and dinner. Conrad and Sergei sat in a small booth and were immediately waited on by a ginger woman with a thick Irish brogue. Sergei ordered two Guinness.
“Hey, are you hungry?” Sergei asked.
Conrad was, in fact, starving, but he just shrugged. Sergei said to the waitress, “We’ll have some wings too.” To Conrad, “Do you like ‘em hot?”
“Um, sure”
“Like really hot?”
“Well, er…”
“Medium hot it is.” He turned back to the waitress. “Medium hot.”
After the waitress left Sergei said, “Hey, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but are you, like, involved with anyone? Dating? I feel weird asking, because usually I would just look up your dating profile. But you’ve got nothing.”
“Nope, nothing going on right now.”
“Cool, keeping it loose. Me too. Though I was wondering if you were going to start up anything with Terri. I know you two were tight back in the day, or maybe you were stuck in the friendzone?”
“Is she…seeing anyone right now?”
“What, you haven’t checked her status?”
Conrad hadn’t even considered it. “No.”
“I’m checking it now. No, she’s not seeing anyone.”
The relief must have shown on his face because Sergei said, “I thought you might want to make a move. Go for it, Terri is one of the best people I know.”
The waitress brought them their Guinness. The foam had been poured somehow with the images of shamrocks.
“I shouldn’t make any moves too quickly,” Conrad said, wondering how they had put the shamrocks there. Did they have some of machine for doing that? “Maybe after we got to know each other again, I don’t know, it’s been so long.”
“I don’t want to sound like a douche,” Sergei said, “but I’m known as a bit of a ladies’ man.”
You sound like a douche, Conrad thought. He sipped the foam of his beer, stretching out a leaf of the shamrock.
“When you look me up it’s in the comments, other people say it, so it’s not like I’m blowing my own horn.”
You’re blowing your own horn.
“Anyway, when people think of a ladies’ man they think of someone who can walk into any room, pick out any lady they want, and take her home. That’s not what a real ladies’ man is. If a guy thinks he can do that he’s just going to get shot down and look like a loser. The truth is, it’s always the woman who decides first. A ladies’ man goes into a room and looks to see if any women show an interest in him. They give signs. They give hints. Most of these signs seem subtle to guys, but to the woman, and the women around her, it’s like she’s throwing herself at you. For instance—eye contact. Look at those girls over there.” Across the room were five women who looked to be in their mid-twenties, sitting together at a table. They were laughing and talking, having a good time. “You might think a ladies’ man would walk over there and try to pick up the tall black one. She’s the hottest. But she also hasn’t looked over here once. Now, I’m going to turn my head and make eye contact with the girl in purple next to her.”
Sergei slowly turned his head toward the table. The girl in purple looked up at Sergei. Their eyes locked for a second and he smiled. She looked down at her drink and smiled. Sergei turned back to Conrad. “See that? If she turned her head to look at another person—that would have been a bad sign, I wouldn’t even think of approaching her. But she looked down. If I was on the prowl right now she would be the one I would talk to. A real ladies’ man knows which woman is going to say yes beforehand.”
“So you have to learn all this body language?”
“Actually, there’s an app
, called Feral. You have to pay for it, but it monitors everyone in the room and flags the positives. It really takes all the work out of it. Anyway, I guess the point I’m making is, the woman always decides who she’s hooking up with first, that’s just a fact of life. If you pay attention you’ll know when Terri will say yes. The thing is, you have to ask as soon as you think she’ll say yes, because that window can close fast.”
Conrad looked over at the table of women. A petite brunette looked back at him. He immediately turned back to Sergei. He wondered if she had a copy of Feral, and if it had just flagged him as a negative. He had been sipping steadily at his beer and it was now half empty, but his throat felt dry. He took a big gulp.
“And if it doesn’t work between you and Terri we can always go out together and find some gals. I can be your wingman. I’m a great wingman. It says that in my profile too. We’ve got to get you some contact lenses. If you’re not going after Terri soon I’m interested in cruising with you, I’d like to see how this ‘man without a past’ thing goes over with the ladies. Hey, you have Consex, don’t you?”
Conrad just looked at him blankly.
“Oh! Bro! You’ve got to download Consex right now! You can’t have sex with a girl until you both Consex. It’s a sexual consent app. Before you have sex you both have to log in and officially give your consent. If you hook up with a chick and she doesn’t have a Consex account you just do a 180 and bolt out of there. If you have sex without Consex you are just letting your butteries dangle out in the wind like an ugly little piñata, ready to get whacked. Download it now, it’s necessary.”
Ugly little piñata? Should I be insulted?
“Yeah, I’ll download it.” Conrad felt uncomfortable with direction of the conversation. He decided to change it. “I was wondering Sergei, what is it exactly that you do? Are you going to school, are you working?”
Sergei took a sip and said, “I graduated from Yale last year with a degree in business administration. I’m taking some time off to think about where I’m going to direct my efforts, see where my strengths are. My step-father has offered to put me in a ground floor position in his hotels, and that’s nice and all, but I really don’t think I can work for him. Fortunately, my real father left me with a very generous trust fund so I don’t really have to rush into anything anytime soon.”
Perhaps it was the beer, perhaps it was just the discomfort caused by of all this wealth around him, but Conrad could not contain himself. “I’ve been raised ever since I was a little kid to hate you people…rich people. My dad would go on for hours and hours about how the one percent has gamed the system to suck all the wealth from the rest of us ninety-nine. I know you were just born into it; you can’t help that you’re benefiting from a kleptocracy. I bet you don’t even call it a kleptocracy, you probably think it’s a meritocracy. And I don’t want to be prejudiced…but I can’t help thinking about what I would do…I mean, I’m thinking about money about eighty percent of my waking life. I’m thinking how I can make what little money I have last, what I can afford to buy, what I am going to do to earn my next paycheck. And I can’t help but wonder, what if I didn’t have to think about money? What if I could pursue my dreams without having to worry about paying for my next meal or having to do some drudge job that’s making someone else more money than I’m making? If I didn’t have to worry about money I’m thinking that I could do something good—hell I could do something great, but instead I can’t do anything. I can’t do a damn thing, I mean, look how messed up the world is. If I had time and money I’m thinking I could do something for the world, I couldn’t fix the whole thing but I’m sure I could make things better, at least for some people.”
Conrad realized that his voice had slowly risen as he talked and his last sentence was practically shouted. The women at the other table had become silent. Sergei stared at him across the table. Conrad quickly finished his beer.
Several seconds passed.
Sergei suddenly barked out laughing. He lifted his glass which was about three-quarters empty and clinked it to Conrad’s and said, “Yes! Yes I bet you could save the world! Yes!” He finished his beer and motioned to the waitress for two more. When they arrived a moment later Sergei said, “Listen, I get it, it sucks to be poor, and I imagine it looks like we have it great, and we do have it great in some ways, but we’ve got shit to deal with too. There’s real pressure where I sit, in this chair right here. I mean, I have no excuses, none at all. If I fuck up, if I fuck up my life, I have nothing, nobody to blame but myself. I can’t say, ‘oh but I’m poor’ or ‘I’m oppressed.’ I have absolutely no excuses, so I must excel. Look at all these shows and videos just reveling in fucked up rich kids. The public can’t get enough of it. But if I became one of those fucked up rich kids I would never get taken seriously again. I would never be able to make anything of myself. And we have cameras on us twenty-four seven! And there are huge expectations on us. The folks I went to school with, we are all expected to run things. Run companies, distribute resources, decide where the investment money is going, decide who is going to work on what new technology. And let me tell you, I know the world looks fucked up now, climate fucked and infrastructure fucked up the shitter in Africa and half of Asia—refugee camps the size of major cities—but just keeping what we have from falling apart is basically saving the world. I mean, I’m really studying this stuff and we one percent are doing all we can just to keep this whole edifice from collapsing into a real shitty hell-hole.” He paused for a sip of beer. “So I get what you’re saying, yeah it sucks being poor, and I wouldn’t give up what I have to be poor, but we do have our own shit to deal with right here where I’m sitting. So can you see it’s not just one big party for us?”
Boo fucking hoo, Conrad thought. Poor little rich kid. He said nothing.
“Hey, about your father,” Sergei said. “Nat has contacted her people but she needs some video of your father, preferably from right before he disappeared.”
Conrad hated the idea of anyone else seeing his last encounter with his dad. “Does it have to be from the last time I saw him?”
“Nat said that would be best. Get him exactly as he appeared before he disappeared. Plus, to get a psychological analysis, you know, his state of mind. She said any little bit will help.”
“No one else is going to see this but her and her investigators, right?”
“Absolutely! Nat is as good at keeping a secret as anybody.”
Conrad shook his head but said, “Alright, I’ll send her the video.”
“Great! Another thing, I really do appreciate this moral center you’ve been showing to us, Nat’s been asking if you could send us your father’s manifesto. She’s really been talking about your 3CV ethical framework, or whatever. I think she might become your first convert.”
“It’s not my 3CV. Dad’s been teaching it to me all my life but it’s…just…so…old. And Dad was really careful about who he showed his manifesto to. I think he was worried about it being associated with him, because he released it anonymously back when he was hacking.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Sergei said. “It’ll stay just with us. I think your father would be glad to have a convert finally after all these years.”
Conrad wasn’t sure if Natalya was the kind of convert his dad had in mind. Did she really have a serious interest in 3CV? Was it possible that she could actually see how superficial her life really was? After all, she was still a human being. If she was actually looking for deeper meaning in life, he had a responsibility to help her.
“I’m sure my dad was exaggerating the danger of his manifesto getting out. I’ll dig it up, maybe send her a copy. But she can’t show it to anyone else. I don’t know how much she’ll get out of it. He really was way out there sometimes.”
Sergei laughed good-naturedly. “Well, Nat is sometimes way out there too. It might be right up her alley. Hey! The wings! Finally, I’m starving.”
Chapter 20
Like so many
people these days, Jerome dealt with and made most of his money off of information. Governments and corporations simply sucked down as much information as possible from as many sources as they could. This meant wielding prodigious amounts of computing power combined with ever-changing methodologies for employing artificial intelligence to filter all of this data for that rare useful nugget. Jerome, being a one-man operation lacking those sorts of resources, had discovered another method for getting valuable information—identifying the telltale signs of when a person or corporation or government was trying to hide something. With the free flow of information making electric ribbons and patterns through virtually every human and human-made object in the world, whenever someone tried to deliberately hide information it made an identifiable knot in this fabric that the discerning eye could spot. Jerome had that discerning eye.
For instance, Ragnar Kekkonen was extremely protective of his DNA. Wherever he traveled his people went to great length to prevent anyone from getting samples of his genetic code, meticulously looking where the stray hair might have fallen and scooping away used glasses and utensils. So when Jerome discovered last year that Natalya was attending a private dinner party that included Kekkonen, he requested that she secure one of his napkins and send it to him. She had succeeded. It actually turned out to be useless because Jerome discovered after analyzing it that Kekkonen must spray his skin and clothes with other people’s DNA to obscure any traces he leaves behind. Jerome hated knowing there was information out there beyond his grasp.
Now Natalya had presented him with the mysterious case of David Hicks. This man was remarkable. He had somehow managed to remain hidden his entire life and had barely made a ripple in the tapestry and flow of information. There had to be a story there.
Girl in a Fishbowl (Crowbar Book 1) Page 11