Luck and Death at the Edge of the World, the Official Pirate Edition

by Nas Hedron

  One young man, however, had an epiphany about a hundred and fifty years ago. It might have helped that he was stoned on the harsh local weed at the time, but it was an epiphany none the less. Vicente Suarez realized that the way to acquire more suerte was not to ask for it, or to pray, or to buy images of saints or spirits. The way to get more suerte was to steal it—just take it from someone who had it. How do you steal someone’s luck? No one outside the Suerte is sure how they supposedly accomplish this metaphysical theft, except that one method—the first that occurred to Vicente and the simplest—is to inflict muerte, death. By forcing bad luck down your victim’s throat, you displace their good luck, which at the moment of their death flees their body like a passenger abandoning a leaky boat. This puts you in a position to inhale it, imbibe it, bathe in it. Whatever the means, you can collect it and make it part of yourself. There are rumored to be other methods, but given the collective frustration of the poor, muerte is pretty popular, especially since the most obvious targets for this ceremony are those whom they most hate: the fatass rich, with their abundant suerte.

  A group of followers formed around Suarez known as Suerte y Muerte, Luck and Death. At first they were thought to be just another street gang committing aimless atrocities, but soon people noticed that they never stole from their victims, not jewelry or money or cars or any of the other things that gang members typically took. All they took, presumably, was suerte. It seemed absurd but, without robbing a single person or burgling a single home, the group did, in fact, prosper. Through fortuitous accidents, gambling, lottery winnings, and other means dependent on chance, they slowly became modestly wealthy, then very wealthy. No one could prove that they were successfully stealing suerte, but no one could prove they weren’t either, and in the desperate poverty of the slums they attracted a lot of aspiring followers.

  Suarez was smart; he didn’t let just anyone in. He vetted each potential member personally by standards that can only be guessed at, but that are rumored to have included physical endurance, intelligence, ambition, and Yakuza-style demonstrations of personal loyalty with the cutting off of little fingers or the intentional scarification of the flesh. One requirement was clearly bravery, or perhaps desperation, because anyone who tried to become a member and failed immediately became a victim. His or her suerte—however little there might be—was given up to the group and the body was tossed aside like an empty candy wrapper. It was the chance you took.

  Suarez was also cunning. He set up the cult’s headquarters within the slums. Despite his wealth, he stayed in his old neighborhood and managed to project the image of a local boy made good, rather than being seen as having become one of the hated rich. He gave out presents to children on holidays and, just as cheerfully, cut the throats of any rival or enemy who came along. Every now and then some enemy’s head would appear in front of the cult’s headquarters, hanging from a tree by its hair like an ugly fruit. About equally often, Suarez would pay for someone’s expensive medical treatment, or give them a little capital to start a business. Through this combination of goodwill and bloodthirstiness, he maintained control over his group and his standing in the community.

  Mexico is a very Catholic country, and wild stories circulated that Suarez had made a pact with the devil, that he was the devil, that he ate people’s souls. Suarez did nothing to stop the rumors, he simply ensured that his lifestyle was enviable enough that he would always have followers, and that his reputation was sufficiently frightening that, eventually, no one dared to oppose him. If the devil helped him a little in the latter regard, well so be it.

  Taking all that I knew about the Suerte into account, Alan’s difficulty in making a risk assessment made sense. The Suerte had reputedly honed their luck to supernatural levels. It was entirely conceivable that one of their members could have simply walked past all of Max’s security measures, relying on sheer luck to ensure that each piece of equipment failed in turn. The only thing that bothered me about the scenario was the missed killshot, but maybe bad luck can occasionally hound even the luckiest people.

  At the same time, whether or not Max had luck to steal was a question that could be answered either way, as Jerome had hinted. Max had never had a lot of talent, and what little he had he’d been born with. Despite that, he’d parlayed his minor skills into a staggeringly successful and lucrative career. He’d indulged himself in behavior that had caused many of his peers to die of overdoses, get thrown in jail, get bogged down in paternity suits, or simply alienate their fans to the point where they could no longer work, and yet none of that had happened to him. Despite his present decrepit state, he was still alive and people still occasionally played his sims and listened to his audio recordings. He was rich beyond the standards of even most wealthy people. In all these ways he seemed to have more luck than just about anyone you could think of.

  Nonetheless, what was more unlucky than succeeding in such measure while failing to find any happiness in it? His daughter had been a wreck from the beginning and was now dead. Her mother, his first wife, had left him long ago and there had been a succession of failed marriages in her wake. His only living relative was a shallow vixen who, despite her inability to do anything about it, wanted nothing more than for him to die so she could have his money. He was surrounded by a staff of yes-men who catered to his every whim but wouldn’t have bothered to attend his funeral had he died. He was insane and, most of the time, seemed either angry or sullen. Looked at from this perspective, his wealth and fame weren’t luck, they were a cruel joke and the worst form of bad luck in that they seemed to place happiness within his grasp, only to pull it away again every time he reached for it.

  Would the Suerte see him as a tasty morsel or a poison pill? No one knew them well enough to guess.

  Suarez had his vision a hundred and fifty years ago, but he is still alive. Apparently he has not even aged much. The shell technology that can now be used to effectively confer immortality upon those who can afford it was only perfected in the last twenty years, so no one can explain how he does it.

  Certainly, I have no explanation. I’m forced to wonder if maybe he’s just lucky.

  Seven: Rubbing Herself Against It Like a Cat

  I’m still reading when someone calls me at 22:00. I fish my kaikki out of my pants pocket and thumb the receive button while continuing to scan a document on the holo.

  “Burroughs.”

  “Missssster Burroughs,” says a familiar voice, drawing out the sibilant hiss in a playful way.

  “Porsche,” I say, trying to cover my surprise “what can I do for you?”

  “Now that’s the question I’ve been waiting to hear you ask!” She sounds like she’s in a mischievous mood, both perky and evil, possibly high. “Are you in bed yet?”

  “Technically, yes.”

  “Technically yum,” she says. “Then what you can do for me is let me come up.”

  “You’re here?”

  “Yeah, I’m calling from your lobby.” The video chime sounds as she adds a camera feed to the call and I glance at the screen. She sweeps her kaikki quickly around her to show me where she is—I have a brief, blurred view of the lobby from behind the locked door that restricts access to the elevators and the residential part of the building, then I see Jung Jing Road behind her, and then her face -- that face.

  I like to think I’m an intelligent person, but from time to time I provide evidence to the contrary, or maybe some things are just outside the realm of intelligence and stupidity—in the territory of chemicals, bodily fluids, and primordial psychological structures. Whatever the case, I dial the code to let her into the interior lobby.

  At the door I hesitate, but only briefly, then open it. This time she’s dressed in an imitation of me, of all things, with a tight wife-beater showing off her breasts and military green cargo pants. The pants are slung low on her hips in such a way that I get a glimpse of her belly and one pelvic bone. Incongruously, she smells like orange blossoms. I close the door a
nd turn to find her inspecting my condo.

  “You’ve done wonders with the place,” she says. Her tone is mocking, but softened with a bit of humor.

  “Yeah, well most of my earnings go back into the company.”

  “Ambitious.”

  For once she seems impressed.

  “You shouldn’t be here.”

  She moves closer to me and the orange scent wafts over me.

  “You want me to be though.”

  “You still shouldn’t be.”

  “Let me ask you a hypothetical question.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay. If we were to fuck like hyenas in every possible position known to humans, would you take me off your list of suspects?”

  “No. You know I wouldn’t.”

  “That’s right,” she says, apparently pleased. “And if we were to fuck like horny virgin teenagers until you couldn’t see straight and then you found out I was guilty, would you still arrest me?”

  I don’t like where this is going, but at the same time I do, too.

  “I’d have you arrested,” I say, “I just wouldn’t do it myself.”

  “Right. So if I take my clothes off right now and we do what we both want so much to do, it really doesn’t make any difference to anything, does it?”

  Her logic is impeccable, no doubt practiced on a hundred, maybe a thousand men before. I stare into that catty, carnal face. Her pupils are dilated with something that is sure to make her proposition every bit as good as it sounds.

  “No, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference,” I say, reciting my lines like a good boy.

  She pulls her top off over her head, exposing breasts that have been designed by a team of psychologists and surgeons to elicit the maximum possible arousal in a man. They are large, but not artificial looking, and as she shifts slightly they sway in a deliciously pliable way. Then she surprises me by lowering herself slowly to her knees.

  “Come here. Please.”

  She smiles a smile at me that is so full of lust and delight that it drags all my teenage fantasies out of memory and loads them into my brain like a program. I move toward her.

  She catches my pants by the belt loops and pulls my pelvis against her face, rubbing herself against it like a cat. I feel myself get hard under the pressure and she makes small, muffled sounds into my pants when she feels it too. Her fingers find my zipper and open it, then unbutton the waist. She runs her mouth up and down my cock, still sheathed in underwear, which is somehow almost sexier than if it was bare, then takes the underwear carefully between her teeth and pulls downward until they drop over my hips, taking my pants with them. With calculated slowness she takes my cock in her mouth and begins to move her head back and forth while her tongue circles me, creating suction, then releasing it again. She withdraws it and begins rubbing her face against me again, this time with nothing between us.

  “I have a girlfriend you know,” she says.

  “Is she going to be jealous?”

  She laughs, but continues her frottage, now and then twining her tongue around my cock.

  “No soldier boy, she won’t be mad, not if I call her and tell her to come and join us.”

  I brace myself against the wall behind me so I can concentrate on the pleasure she’s giving me without having to worry about staying upright.

  “By the time she gets here it could be too late.”

  “Oh no,” she says innocently, “she’s waiting downstairs in my car. She can be here in seconds.” She takes my cock in her mouth and I put my hands on the back of her head, pushing her against me, pushing myself into her.

  “So fucking call her,” I say, not completely lost in her but coming close to it.

  She withdraws again and pulls her kaikki from a pocket on the leg of her pants. She hits a button, connecting with someone while she keeps working my cock, now slippery with her saliva, with her hand.

  “Sherry, come on up. We’re just getting started.”

  Despite what I’m doing—or allowing her to do to me—some part of me above the waist retains its military training. Porsche is still a suspect, and it’s possible that ‘Sherry’ will turn out to be some goon, brought here to persuade me to take her off the list of suspects. Captain Burroughs is ready to push Porsche away in a second, forcefully, and to defend himself, even if Gat Burroughs is a little preoccupied.

  She replaces her kaikki, takes mine from the sofa where I’d dropped it, holds it up so I can unlock the lobby door, then tosses it back onto the sofa and runs her tongue up and down my cock one more time.

  “You feel anything yet soldier boy?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Not that, you goof,” she says, laughing. “There’s HardOn in my lipstick.”

  HardOn. Well fuck me. Her girlfriend could be halfway across L.A. and still get here in time for the action. It’s clear that my cock isn’t going to go down for hours.

  “You’re joking, right?”

  She pulls her face back to look up at me and her expression is pure greed.

  “Not a fucking chance.”

  Just then Sherry knocks at the door and Porsche rises to let her in. In a moment, all my defenses are down. Her name doesn’t suit her, but that’s because it’s fake. I recognize her instantly from the sims, from advertising campaigns for Shelte and other top-end designers, from celebrity gossip shows. The creamy, dusky skin and long dark hair, courtesy of her Arabic and Italian ancestry. She smiles suddenly, seeing recognition in my eyes. It’s a huge, bright, little-girl-gets-the-candy smile. I’m about to say her name when Porsche shushes me.

  “No names,” she admonishes. “Not now and not ever. I’m only wired for Max, you know, not for you.”

  Her threat is as cold as the smile of a man on Brace, but it isn’t necessary. Why would I ever bother to repeat Sherry’s real name?

  “No names,” I tell her. “I’m trained to keep secrets you know.”

  “I know, soldier boy. I know all about you.”

  Just as she did in the garden she caresses the Tijuana decal briefly, but this time it has little effect on me. I am far, far from Tijuana now. The HardOn is doing its work, and beneath it I can sense that she’s laced it with something subtler too, something she hasn’t mentioned: just a touch of Sunday Best. It’s not enough to make me hallucinate, but it tints the entire scene with a radiant glow and time seems to slow slightly, making every delicious moment last longer.

  “Okaaaaay,” Sherry says, moving toward us and unbuttoning her shirt at the same time. “Party time is here.”

  The drugs are doing their job and I am awash in a tide of hormones, filled with nothing but sex and more sex. Sherry floats toward me as though moving through water, shedding her clothes along the way. Her body is slim and dark and perfect and I want to eat every inch of it. Her voice—that famous, triple platinum, multi-award-winning, siren of the airwaves voice—is saying: Porsche, it’s just like you promised!

  The only problem with Sunday Best is that although it gives you its luminescent visions, it has an effect similar to Erase. Not as efficient, mind you—you always remember something, but you never remember everything. Even as events are taking place you are forgetting them, so the sex appears to me as a series of snapshots.

  Moment one: Sherry prostrate on her belly with me on top of her, sliding myself, slippery, into her, while her face is buried between Porsche’s legs. Porsche grinds her hips slowly at first, then lets out a whoop like a cowgirl and starts thrusting them wildly, Sherry’s head bobbing in her lap.

  Moment two: Sherry is on all fours, riding Porsche’s hand. Porsche is stroking her between the legs in such a controlled, masterful way that I can’t help but admire it—this is skill. She brings Sherry close to cumming, then eases her back from the brink, then drags her back to the edge of that cliff, and then finally throws her off, Sherry howling the whole way, making animal sounds, her long hair flying furiously and her entire body shuddering with such force that her teeth chatter in
voluntarily.

  Moment three: Porsche on her knees again. I am cumming—finally, at long last—and she is milking it out of me with her hand. In that pose, in an ecstasy close to rapture, she seems to be praying, and I baptize her as she begs for more, laughing her head off, covered in it.

  Eventually the HardOn and Sunday Best in my system wind down, as do whatever drugs the girls are on. Sherry is the first to go. She seems a little tense now, as though coming down has made her realize what she’s done—not the sex, but the risk to her reputation, to her future. Today’s star can so easily become fodder for tomorrow’s tabloid simcast. Porsche lingers, watching her go.

  “She’s worried,” I say.

  Porsche just shrugs.

  “She’ll get over it,” she says, doing up her pants. “In a day or two when she sees that you haven’t sold your story to the media she’ll be fine.”

  Although her reasoning makes sense, there’s nothing in her tone to indicate that it matters to her in the smallest way.

  “I’m still on the list of suspects aren’t I?” she asks rhetorically, then pulls her shirt over her head and tugs it into place.

  “Yeah, you’re still on the list.”

  “And if I did it and you catch me, I still get arrested, don’t I?”

  “Yup.”

  “See,” she says with a combination of sweetness and evil that’s hard to read. “I told you. It didn’t change a thing.”

  I have nothing to say to that, so I keep my mouth shut and watch her leave. I go to bed, hoping I can sleep at least two or three hours before getting back to work. When I dream—despite the evening I’ve had, or perhaps because of it—they are not good dreams. I am back in Tijuana, glimpsing small scenes of what went on there. In my dreams, though, Porsche is there, laughing, flirting with the soldiers, riding them and going down on them between atrocities, during atrocities. I wake up earlier than I’d intended to, cold with sweat.