by Adam Thielen
“Kate,” he said in a calm, almost gentle, voice. “Yes, I know who you are. I know a great deal about you.”
“Am I supposed to know or c-care who you are?” asked Kate, the hood moving from her breath.
Roland moved in front of her and kneeled. Placing his hands on her knees, he pried her legs apart. Kate’s calm exterior cracked and her breathing became heavy as fear crept into her mind. Somer moved between her knees, pressing his pelvis against the bench. He watched the hood flex in and out with her breath and smiled in response.
The expression evaporated and he grabbed both sides of the Faraday hood where Kate’s ears were, pulling it tight over her face so it took on the shape of it. “I think you know exactly who the fuck I am,” he said through gritted teeth. “You killed one of my men. Another is headed toward an infirmary. You stole my sister. I think I owe you for that. Don’t you?”
“Get f-fucked,” she said, sucking in air through the mesh.
“Fu-fu-fucked?” mocked Somer with a false expression of surprise. His face relaxed into a smug grin. He moved his mouth close to her ear. “You are a little past your prime, but I think with this bag over your head, I could make an exception.”
Kate did not respond. Instead, she queued up an improved cyanide release program. He might have had her beaten, but she didn’t have to suffer his humiliation.
Roland sighed, leaning back. “No? Fine, we can play later. For now, there’s something else I want from you.” He relaxed his grip on the hood and his hands slid down to her neck. “Who’s the other woman? The one from the Russian compound.”
Kate stayed silent.
“And why are you so greased over Chantech? Now that we know the NRI is involved, the corp is gonna seek retribution.”
Still, Kate refused to speak, and Roland’s hands wrapped around her neck. He began to squeeze, just enough so that it made her head start to throb and her throat uncomfortable.
“Good,” he said. “I’d rather take what I want, anyhow.” He leaned forward, touching his crown to Kate’s forehead. He listened for her thoughts and invaded her mind, directing her toward images of Tsenka. Kate felt the intrusion and decided it was time to end things before he grabbed Cho’s identity or any other information. But before she did, he removed his hands from her neck and moved his head away from hers.
“Stop,” he said, his body tensing. It had taken all his strength to release her. He had already created in his mind extensive plans to torment and violate her, but he saw her die to avoid it. It was a thin vision, one that was very old and had not occurred for many cycles, but he sensed her will to die in her mind as well and knew it was true.
“There’s no need for that,” he said with a concerned look. “I need you alive, for now. So relax,” he continued, forcing a grin. “The fun is just beginning.”
Roland’s fingers brushed down Kate’s chest and along her legs, stopping on her knees. He pushed up to his feet and moved to the passenger seat at the front of the van. Kate’s breathing slowed, and she felt fortunate that the hood hid her tears from him.
Episode 14: Entranced
Despite her bravado displayed for the benefit of Danliti, Desre knew that a little magic-absorbing metal was not going to be enough to protect her from Chantech. Step two would be to get out of corporate territory.
Every camera on every corner scanned for facial recognition, and many of the cameras were capable of retinal scans. Even without the ability to make a positive ID based on completely unique features, the cameras could analyze body shape and gait in a secondary attempt to spot persons of interest. In Desre’s case, her right eye was swollen, both of her cheeks bruised, and she had a welt on her forehead and the left side of her chin. It wouldn’t take much more to mask her appearance.
Her first stop was a general store. Regularly placed, such stores were some of the only physical places to shop in the mainland, outside of specialty plazas. While they carried some basic amenities inside, they were mostly used as a simulated shopping experience where customers could order goods and have them drone-delivered from a warehouse in a matter of minutes.
Most general stores had a half-dozen simulated reality booths for use in trying out clothing, picking out food that looked appealing, and shopping for other items that people were not comfortable purchasing without a hands-on experience or a close approximation of one. Many citizens had started installing such booths in their homes, but the expense was still prohibitive for the masses, and the last-gen virtual reality was simply not comparable.
Desre convinced the attendant that he simply had to use the restroom, then swiped a cheap pair of wrap-arounds, a narrow-brimmed hat with the Chantech logo, and a crypto-wallet. The latter was made obsolete by technology embedded into a com but still found a niche in the paranoia market. The disguise of someone without any fashion sense would buy her a little bit of time, and she had to make it count.
The seer hailed a car using a street terminal attached to the inside of a waiting bench, then realized she wouldn’t be able to trick a driverless car. The passenger door windows had old organic diodes sandwiched in the glass that displayed her nickname, in case there was any doubt the car was for her. She stood frustrated outside the vehicle until it gave up on her and drove off.
She went back to the terminal and looked at a map of the city, zooming into the Kingnan district, her current location. She needed marks, and it was already half past three in the morning. Desre couldn’t just steal from the few pedestrians stumbling home. It was far too risky. She needed a crowd. I need, she thought, studying the map, the Sōngshǔ Wǎn. The Wǎn was an all-night dance club a little over a kilometer away. Dang it! Chantech goons will be sweeping the area, she realized.
Have to risk it, she decided, hurrying along the sidewalk, pushing herself close to other groups of people to try to blend in. A light shone in her direction from the street as a Chantech car passed by. She moved behind another pedestrian and faced forward. The car continued past her.
All along the glass windows of the specialty shops, restaurants, and apartment buildings were advertisements for various Chantech goods and services. The corporation owned most of the real estate in the busy downtown area, which meant after dark they could use the screens built into almost everything to provide a constant stream of influence over the public. It was that way in Tianjin. It was that way all over Beijing. It was that way all across China, with the notable exception of Baoding.
Chantech didn’t impose a curfew on its citizens. It didn’t prevent demonstrations. It didn’t imprison or kill political opponents, though it would ruthlessly destroy its competitors. Chantech was a business, and businesses want money. They are built to accumulate wealth and expand. If there were no wealth, then there would be no Chantech.
In the months after the Collapse, many smaller corporations proposed banding together for the stability of the Chinese way of life. They wished to create a system of pure communism, where they would provide allotments to each citizen, and each citizen would agree to work to be a part of that system. Chairman at the time, Yong Chan hosted a gala for his board, their families, and the executives of its various departments. He treated them to an extravagance of entertainment, art, food, and chemical substances the likes of which were practically scandalous given the economic climate.
Yong then explained to them, very casually, that such events would never happen again. That such wines would never be preserved. That such entertainment would never rise above the throng if the smaller corporations got their way. Chantech was large enough that with the support of its ruling class, it could stop the descent into mediocrity. And that’s what they did. A spoiler as large as them ruined the entire plan, and a propaganda war began. Yong and his team of ad men were the better marketers, and the people got what they were convinced they wanted.
In an ironic twist of fate, the nation that had traditionally eschewed capitalism, at least officially, embraced it wholeheartedly after its government collapsed fro
m a concept that existed only in such a free market system. Without regulations to slow them down, it was only a matter of time before one winner came away with the entire pot. The only other real player was Ping Interests Group. All other major corporations accepted the agreement that Chantech would govern the mainland, except for PIG, holding onto its territory of Baoding.
Once they controlled everything… almost everything, Chantech decided how much workers were paid, their own as well as those of other corporations. They determined the costs of goods and services sold within corporate territory. By controlling both, they controlled every other aspect of the public’s life. Habits that the board deemed bad were made expensive. A per-calorie health fee was added to all food prices. Everything that a person needed was priced to perfection using extensive calculations to ensure that the massive working class spent every dime from one paycheck to the next.
Chantech then issued them stipends, paltry amounts of money they could spend on limited forms of entertainment, both to keep them fooled into feeling like they were abusing a welfare system and to keep them from revolting in frustration. It was a masterful plan that had worked for decades, but it didn’t placate everyone and while Baoding remained poor, its citizens believed somehow that their poverty was better because their money wasn’t simply pooling inside an executive’s bank account.
During the daytime, Tianjin had seemed like a fairly normal city to Desre, not that much different from Ulaanbaatar. But during the night, with every window lit up in a concert of appreciation for all things Chantech, it made her feel an unease foreign to her body even after the long years of torment she had experienced as one of their test subjects.
The Sōngshǔ Wǎn was a repurposed pre-Collapse tire and lube garage that had sat abandoned for decades before being given away to the first entrepreneur willing to sign a contract stating, more or less, that it would be put to good use. A failed musician took Chantech up on the offer, using the club as a way to provide some amusement for over-privileged executive offspring and to sneak in promotion of his own tracks.
To her dismay, when she arrived, the club was open but populated by only about a dozen patrons, three of which sat in front of virtual boxes. The rest were dancing on an open floor. Or at least Desre assumed it was dancing. Lasers painted foggy air with the illusion of waist-high water, even managing to simulate splashing as dancers gyrated to the sounds emanating from vibro-poles twisted around each other reaching from the floor to the ceiling. The style of the tune was a slurry of cultural folk song, jazz, and bass thumps synthesized together.
She entered the virtual pool and a teenage girl walked up to her. She wore a dress made mostly from strips of reflective plastic. Her hair was black, curved around her wide face, with the points resting against her neck. The girl must have assumed Desre would understand English better than Mandarin, and greeted her with a simple, “Hello,” followed by leaning in and kissing Desre on the lips. They brushed tongues and disengaged. The kiss had become the default greeting for youth in the mainland and many other territories but at her age, it made Desre feel a little childish. The girl smiled.
“I am Fen Ju,” she yelled close to Desre’s ear. “I like hat!”
The psion smiled politely. “I am Desre.” She made a swirling motion with her finger, to try to convey that she just wanted to move about. The girl seemed to take the hint with a simple, “Okay!”
Desre moved from dancer to dancer, many of them dressed with the intention of drawing as much attention as possible with ornate handmade clothing. It was late, Desre realized, and only the very hardcore had stuck around.
As she admired the peacocks, she also listened to their thoughts, guiding them toward their com ID numbers. She entered them into her crypto-wallet, then got close enough for a near-field channel to open between the two devices. She sent a request for money, a small amount, like one thousand crypto-bits. The request caused the patron’s com to vibrate, demanding their attention to either approve or deny with the option to block. At that moment, Desre made the choice for them, just a little nudge of the mind to hit the green button rather than the red. A simple mistake that anyone using recreational drugs might make when surrounded by loud pounding music after a long night.
However, that didn’t stop the boys and girls who lost their money from looking about for the person who made the request. Desre pulled the scam on one after another, keeping the wallet in her pocket to avoid detection. So when the next person looked with confusion at their com display, the previous victim became suspicious of them. After a half hour of working the pool, everyone was yelling at each other loud enough to drown out the music. The psion figured it was time to leave before they realized they had all been had and that one of them did not belong.
Once out of the club, she raced for a terminal and summoned a car that quickly zipped around the corner and came to a stop in front of her. A young man with spiked silver hair ran out after her, yelling in Mandarin. Desre flung herself into the back seat of the vehicle and yelled for it to go. It obliged moments before the man’s hand reached the door panel.
“The nearest talismonger,” commanded Desre.
“I do not know of any shops that meet this description,” the car replied in a soothing female tone. “Would you like a listing of destination categories?”
“Shit, uh,” said Desre, trying to think.
“Would you like to visit a public restroom?” asked the car.
“No, hold on,” sighed the psion.
“Standing by.”
“Spell wards,” said Desre. “Healing crystals… just magical bullshit. A curio shop or something.”
“Madam Mei’s Curios, rough translation,” said the car. “Four minutes travel time.”
“Sure, let’s go with that,” said Desre, then, “Yes, car, please.”
The car acknowledged her command, taking the next left after plotting a route. It took her south to an old neighborhood where shopping malls and fast food restaurants had been converted to housing or merely squatted in. Street lamps were far apart in this section of town, and the buildings were dark on the inside and out.
When the car pulled into the empty lot of a small shack that had likely seen a dozen businesses try and fail, she realized that this shop would not be open for several hours.
“Uh, car,” she said. “How much to sit here for four hours?”
“For this car to wait, it would cost one hundred and twenty bytes for the first hour, one hundred and fifty bytes for the second hour—”
“Okay, never mind,” interrupted Desre. “Too expensive.” She exited the car and it zipped away, leaving her alone in the dark neighborhood. The shack in front of her stood in the middle of a field of asphalt that was once a parking lot with a strip mall behind it. She moved to the window of the building, noting that it had security bars placed horizontally, and peeked inside. It was definitely the place she was looking for and might even have some real polonium inside.
She placed her hands on the bars, leaning backward. “Dammit, Des,” she muttered. She let go and turned around, sitting on the asphalt to rest. She recalled the evening’s events: the drinking, the drama, the break-in, and her running. She grabbed at her hair and whined. “Coward,” she hissed. “You’re a fucking coward… If she dies, it’s your fucking fault,” she scolded herself.
Desre had only been bluffing when she told Dan that Kate was their leverage, and only because she felt guilty for running. She had had no intention of being traded back to Chantech. The neuro was already dying, after all. But somehow, this sound logic was starting to fail her as she sat in eerie pre-dawn silence, waiting to get an essential tool for her escape. She lay on her side, curled into a ball with her head resting on her hands, and closed her eyes. Fatigue caught up with her, sending her to the abyss.
* * *
“No,” said Drew, staring out the window of the monocopter at the charred exterior of the Hotel Tangla. “No,” he repeated, his brain refusing to accept the li
kelihood that the longtime companion he abandoned had been killed. “No.”
“Snap out of it, Drew,” said Tsenka. “We have to get in there. Can you get into the emergency services records?”
“I will not,” he said, frozen in his seat.
“What do you mean, you won’t?”
“I have determined that not knowing would be better than the average of… two possibilities,” he explained.
Tsenka bent down, putting her face next to his. “Listen to me, Drew. If she’s gone, if, then there’s nothing you can do. But you owe it to her to find out. And if she’s in there, or somewhere still out there, and something were to happen to her because you were too afraid, how do you think you will feel then?”
“If I left her, and something happened…”
“We all lose people,” said Tsenka.
“Not like this,” he countered.
“Sometimes,” said Tsenka, looking down at the flight controls. “Sometimes we do.” She placed her hand on his shoulder joint. “But sometimes we can’t avoid pain. You are worried about how you might feel, but ask yourself, is what you feel important right now?”
The question was a strange one to Drew. He wondered if it wasn’t some sort of trick. How he felt was neither important nor trivial, it was just how he felt. The AI realized that while his sentiment urged him to do one thing, he was capable of defying it and doing another. He just had to stop trying to avoid the pain, but that meant denying a basic tenet of human behavior.
“No,” he said. “I have been malfunctioning, devoting too much compute power to considering future scenarios. My sentiments have become a liability.”