by Nas Hedron
Somewhere in my unconscious, below the level of the orgy and the drugs, my mind has been at work. I wake with the conviction that, no matter how good she tastes, Porsche is evil. She is not just the bitchy, catty kind of woman I usually fall for, she is genuinely, thoroughly sociopathic. My dreams are an unconscious representation of that fact, but the fact itself rests on more than a few nightmares. I think about her casual disregard for Sherry, who was just a prop for her in an evening of sex. I know that she has just as little regard for me, and that I was nothing more. If seducing me was intended—despite her words—to subtly co-opt me, it has done just the opposite. I never doubted that she was capable of having her grandfather killed, but now it seems more likely than ever that she has at least tried to find some way to circumvent her wiring. For someone like her it would be just too tempting not to.
Eight: UIFs and the Felon
As usual I meditate for an hour, but I’m off my game. People think meditation is easy—it looks like it in the sims—but the truth is that real meditation is demanding and today it’s a challenge.
HardOn and Sunday Best have built in controllers to prevent morning-after side effects, but Porsche does not. Unless you're a monk there’s nothing chaste about a dharma practice, but there is something specific about sex with Porsche that is the antithesis of a contemplative practice. I started meditating after Tijuana—because of Tijuana—and I had the same feeling then.
My thoughts are scattered and chatter at me like monkeys scolding me from the trees. My emotions pull in conflicting directions and make it difficult to get centered. Maybe the truth is that I’m ashamed of myself and the last place I really want to be is inside my own head. I try to face that shame, to abide with it, but it’s an active, taunting thing that seems beyond my reach. And to be honest I suspect that the pleasure of fucking Porsche is still too fresh for me to get a handle on the shame that comes along with it. And from somewhere in that morass of feelings and impressions comes a very real sense of threat. Porsche, I now think, has no center—at her core there is nothing at all—and people like that are always dangerous.
At 7:00 I rise, shower, skip breakfast, and leave.
What I really need to do is get over to Cloud City and see if Carmen’s found anything. She’ll have been there all night, I have no doubt of that. This is the kind of puzzle that she lives for, and I’ve seen her go two, three, even four days without stopping, without sleeping, without seeming to need to sleep. She simply keeps working at the same methodical pace, in the same meticulous way, until either the problem is solved or even her prodigious reserves of energy begin to run low. If she can’t solve the mystery in one sitting, she catnaps—falls fast asleep in the blink of an eye and then wakes an hour later apparently refreshed and starts all over again. I know she won’t have a complete solution yet or she would have called, but she may have made progress and if so I want to know about it. I could call her, but after a night of guilty pleasures I feel a compulsion to go out there and look around the place myself, as if diligence in my work can somehow make up for my sins.
I descend in the elevator to the underground parking lot, carrying my helmet under my arm. My bike is parked beside three of the four nondescript vans we use for surveillance. Jenna’s van is still out, so she and Prender must have spent the night watching Mr. Tenenbaum. Bad news for Mrs. Tenenbaum. Mounting the bike I put on the helmet and automatically run through my routine morning arms check. Gun in my shoulder holster and a spare in a holster in the small of my back. One small one in a custom-made sleeve within my right boot, should things come to that. I ratchet the flechette launchers on my forearms, ensuring that they’re at full power and off safety. I set them for sleepers. If anything happens I can reset them for lethal in less than a second—that’s Forces training for you.
I start the engine and wend my way amongst the cars, doing it playfully so as to dispel some of the poison of last night’s encounter, but it doesn’t really help. At the garage door I swing down the slim arm of the retinal flash and let it read me. I let go and it springs lazily back into an upward position, out of my way, as the garage door opens in response to its confirmation that I'm a resident of the building and not a fleeing burglar or a gang member letting my friends inside. In a moment I am up the paved ramp and pausing to check the traffic before I merge.
The moment I pause every warning bell in my brain goes off. Then I see them. Three homeless men—one in front of my building, one across the street and ten meters east, and one on the hillside of the parkette down the street—get quickly to their feet. Their arms come up in unison as if they were one creature, guns in their hands.
The garage door behind me is closed and in any case there’s no time to turn round. I drop into gear and fly out into traffic, barely slipping between two cars, and make the turn onto North Hill Street. The car behind me brakes, afraid he’s going to hit me, and those behind rear-end him, decelerators whining. I throw a glance over my shoulder and see one of the drivers get out of his car, then pirouette backward, hit by a bullet meant for me.
I am low on the bike, trying to keep traffic between me and the guys with the guns. I’m going faster than those around me, trying to get out of range, when suddenly the passenger window of the car in front of me breaks inward with a pop and the vehicle begins to swerve dangerously—they are trying to cut off my escape. A moment later another car ahead is hit and goes into a spin. Everyone behind him brakes madly.
The traffic is getting too bunched up for me to move. I don’t want to leave cover but I have no choice—jump the curb, miss ramming into a storefront by inches, straighten out, and suddenly I am using the sidewalk as a straightaway, with people jumping left and right to avoid me. They dodge into store entrances and fall into traffic. It’s mayhem, but there’s nowhere else for me to go. I see a man suddenly jerk sideways and slam into a wall, grasping at his gut, obviously shot. A glance across the street shows me that one of the supposedly homeless men is on a bike of his own, racing down the sidewalk on the other side of the street, creating equal havoc there.
There’s only one thing to do. The other two shooters are far behind. Maybe they have bikes too, but if they do they haven’t caught up yet. I brake, skid, and nearly go over the handlebars. I’d lay into the skid sideways, but on the sidewalk there’s no room. It takes time for the other rider to realize what I’m doing, which creates a brief window of opportunity. For a few precious moments he’s too far ahead of me to be dangerous, carried forward by his own momentum, while the others are still too far behind to see what’s happening or get me in their sights. I drop the bike and duck into the Golden City Seafood Restaurant—one of my favorite places to get Chinese—racing through a dining area, barging past people and knocking over a waiter, sending shrimp in lobster sauce, steamed rice, and gailan spattering over nearby diners as everyone yells at me in Chinese. For once I wish I could speak the language, but there would be no time to explain anything anyway.
I yank open a door at the rear of the restaurant and find what I’m looking for: the kitchen, and within it the back door. Before the cooks can react, I’m through the rear door and into an alleyway. I quickly toss my jacket toward the mouth of the alley, then scuttle up a fire escape. On the roof, I run to the front of the building, sliding onto my side like a runner heading for home plate, then spin around and ease myself up to the edge. Like many of the buildings around here the architecture is in an elaborate, faux-historical Shanghai style, giving me ornaments I can hide behind so I can see what’s happening below.
There is a string of mashed and crumpled vehicles up and down the block. There are people lying wounded in the street and on the sidewalk, or picking themselves up from where they’d thrown themselves to avoid us. There is blood, screaming, honking and, in the distance, sirens, the first sounds of the P.D. arriving. Across from my bike there’s another one, similarly abandoned, on the other side of the street. The fucker is following me and is already halfway across the street. Furthe
r down the road his friends are approaching on their own motorcycles.
Snaking along on my belly I back up so as not to be a target, then leap to my feet and run headlong to the edge of the roof, launching myself into open air and landing on the neighboring building. Gravel scatters in an arc as I hit, trying to roll but not quite getting it right. An inelegant landing. Even as my body is moving, my mind is calculating. My primary level Forces training says ‘take them out,’ but my strategic training overrides the lower instinct.
First fact: with three of them coming my chances aren’t optimal. There are not only more of them, but if they’re lucky they can get me in a cross-fire.
Second fact: I don’t know who they are, so I have no idea what their capabilities are. For all I know they’re ex-Forces like me, in which case fighting them is dangerously stupid.
Third and final fact: the P.D. will be here any second and they’ll start shooting at everyone holding a gun. If I’m armed, if I’m fighting, then I’m as likely to be killed by the cops as by the boys who chased me.
Instead of trying to take them out, I move to the rear of the building and hide behind a ventilation intake so I can take a look into the alley and at least keep track of the threats around me. The guy who’d dumped his bike launches himself out the rear of the restaurant and aims his gun in all directions at once, not knowing where I might be. He spots my jacket and follows the false trail out the alley’s mouth. An old trick, and not one that would work on a seasoned killer, but apparently it’s enough. Clearly they aren’t ex-Forces. For the first time since the whole thing started my heart starts to slow.
I go to the front of the second building and risk another look into the street. The P.D. are arriving now, drawing up slowly and carefully on their own bikes, 1,500 cc monstrosities. The two assassins who’d lagged behind are nowhere to be seen, presumably spooked by the P.D.
For once I’m actually glad to see the cops. I return to the rear of the building and begin climbing down the fire escape, but this one doesn’t reach to the ground. The extension that’s supposed to take you the last two meters is padlocked in an upright position, probably to keep the homeless from camping out on the roof. It’s a Code violation, but who checks these days? I let myself hang from the last rung, then drop and roll, this time doing it right. Dusting myself off, I grab my jacket, and re-enter the restaurant the way I came, careful to keep my hands on top of my head, fingers laced together. As I near the front door an amplified voice rings out.
“Come out of the restaurant. Drop to your knees and assume a face-down position on the sidewalk. Do not move your hands.”
I don’t argue. A moment later, rough hands grab my arms and pull them behind my back, cuffing them there. One of the cops rolls me over onto my back and pulls my helmet off and I find myself staring into the familiar face of Felon.
“Gat?” he asks, even more surprised than I am.
“Dave. How’s Selby these days?”
“We split up man. What the fuck’s going on?”
“Sorry to hear that. Three UIFs tried to puncture me is what.”
UIF is an unofficial Forces acronym for Unidentified Fucker, routinely used when referring to snipers, masked bandits and, in this case, people wearing motorcycle helmets. Apart from private security the other obvious career route for someone leaving the Forces is to join the P.D. That’s the route Felon took, and we run across each other once in a while, although not usually so dramatically.
“Get this guy uncuffed, he’s the vic,” he yells over to another cop, who hurries to remove the cuffs from my wrists.
I stand up, still moving slowly. Adrenaline takes time to clear out of a cop’s system, so I’m being careful with these guys. Someone who isn’t in the loop might still shoot me if I make a sudden move. I bend over with my hands on my knees, catching my breath and suddenly feeling the scrapes and bruises all over my body. In the middle of the chase I’d turned all off the pain, but now it comes rushing up at me.
“You hit?”
Dave sounds genuinely concerned. It’s a good thing he doesn’t know how much I hate him. Dave Fellows is a big man, with a boy’s face perched on top of a bull’s body. He earned the name Felon in a dozen ops and was the kind of soldier who made me ill, the kind who enlisted for the express purpose of being able to hurt people. It’s no wonder he ended up in the P.D. afterward.
Still, he’s always been too full of blustering Forces camaraderie to ever notice that I don’t like him. We wore the same uniform—to his mind that means we must be the same kind of people. He believed in the brotherhood, still does. Me, I just joined because I didn’t know what else to do.
“No man, I’m not hit, just winded. You get any of those guys?”
“Carson tagged one down the block a ways, but we won’t get anything out of him. His guts are all over the place. The other two disappeared.”
“Fuck.”
“Sorry Gat.”
He looks genuinely sorry, like he owes it to me, being former brothers-in-arms, to have done better.
“It’s okay Dave. Maybe you can ID him, get a lead.”
He nods tersely.
“Count on it buddy. Nobody fucks with the Forces.”
Temporarily we are back in Tijuana, or Boulder, or somewhere. So many somewheres. I play along with it because I need him. Give him a slap on the shoulder.
“I appreciate it Dave. No shit.”
“You got anything to get us started? Any ideas?”
“Not a one,” I lie. “I work personal security these days, so a thousand people might want me out of the way.”
Actually I shucked all my other cases off on friends and employees the day Max hired me. Jerome insisted he be my full time job and at the prices they paid I wasn’t about to argue.
“Well,” Dave says, with what passes for thoughtfulness on his face “we’ll find ‘em anyway Gat. The P.D. doesn’t fuck around, you know that.”
“Thanks Dave. I better check my bike.”
He helps me get it upright. Apparently the only thing seriously damaged is a side mirror that has torn off. There’s a lot of paint scraped off one side, but it starts as easily as ever. I give Felon my card.
“Keep me in the loop, huh?” I say, playing on the brotherhood thing.
“Absolutely,” he say earnestly. “Adios muchacho.”
“Via con dios. Sorry about all this.”
I nod in the direction of the dead and wounded, the smashed cars and broken store windows.
“Oh shit, civilians,” he says with dismissive contempt. “We’re always cleaning up their messes. Nothing new.”
I edge the bike down onto the street and slowly ride back the way I came, winding my way amongst the ruined cars. Here and there people are sitting on the pavement holding their injured heads, or arms, or family members. One woman cries inconsolably, holding the body of another woman her own age—a friend or a lover. There’s glass everywhere and the place stinks of gasoline and exhaust. Gawkers line the sidewalks, including a large number of homeless—men and women, young and old. It isn’t surprising, they’re everywhere in the city and their lives are so empty of excitement that they’ll be talking about this for weeks, but I can’t help scanning their faces, wondering if the assassins are among them. The only things that had set them apart from the other homeless were their guns, which they could be hiding, and their bikes and helmets, which they presumably dumped. It could be any of them and I’d never know it.
Nine: An Elegant Problem
I return home and remove my torn and dirty clothes, then use the med-unit on my cuts and bruises. Another wonder of nanotechnology. You never feel a thing, but molecule-sized bots emit from the disc-shaped face of the unit and immediately go to work, diagnosing, repairing the torn and bleeding capillaries that cause bruising, mending the stretched and abused nerves that make your wounds ache, stitching up invisible seams in your ripped skin. Inside of ten minutes I feel a whole lot better. The bots’ work isn’t perfect�
�home units aren’t good enough for that—but in a few minutes I’m looking and feeling a lot better than when I arrived.
In the Forces our shells were perfused with nanobots on a permanent basis. If you were injured in the field you didn’t have to call for a medic—there were already medics inside you by the billions. Pain was suppressed and virtually any wound would be healed given a little time, whether it was a lost limb or a huge bleed-out. That’s a perc of being in the military, though. When you’re decommissioned they purge you and the bots self-destruct, dissolving harmlessly to be excreted like any waste. You get to keep the high-grade shell, with all its wiring and the training that’s been drilled into your nerves, but not the bots. It’s one of the things that gives the Forces an edge over civilian rebels.
A shower takes care of the cosmetic side of things and by the time I dress again no one would guess what I’ve just been through. Looking in the mirror stalls me for a moment, though. Every once in a while this happens—I look up, expecting to see myself, and see a stranger instead. The sandy hair, hazel eyes, and pale skin are gone, as is the slim body. Instead I see a face and body I’ve become used to using, but only partially adjusted to looking at. The hair is dark brown and the face is wide. The skin is a medium brown with a slight coppery sheen, a blend of pigments drawn from African and Asian wells. The body is dense and cut. It isn’t me, but it’s me for now. I shake off the disorientation. After all, if my plan for immortality works I’ll have to get used to a lot of different shells, and a lot of different looks, over the centuries.
And a Forces-grade shell is no small matter. Unlike a commercial model, it’s in peak physical condition and hard-wired not only for strength but for lightning-fast reflexes and optimal mental performance. The combination of a nearly perfect sensorium with superior mental capabilities gives you something approaching intuition: when the body is hyper-aware of its surroundings down to the smallest details, and when the brain can process those details more quickly and effectively than a normal human brain, the result is something like a sixth sense, setting off alarm bells when danger threatens. It’s not magic, and it doesn’t inoculate you against danger, but it can come in very handy. And after being decanted there was training, training, and more training. We became the most powerful, agile, intelligent, and well-informed soldiers on Earth, and unlike the nanobots, those qualities can’t just be extracted when you’re demobbed.