The woman led Kaili down a hallway to a door marked with a large W.
“In here, we have the women’s locker room. Showers and sauna are through here. If you’d like to remove your makeup, we have vanities available as well.” She stopped in front of a wall of lockers and opened one. “Robe and sandals. Please make sure you leave all of your personal items in the locker, as you won’t be able to take them with you into the treatment room. Hair ties, earrings, necklaces, rings…”
Kaili touched the silver band on her thumb. She had only taken it off once since leaving Rick on the train, and then only for a moment.
The woman noticed the involuntary move. “We do take responsibility for items left in the locker, so even if someone does manage to swipe it, we’ll cover you for the loss. In the five years I’ve been working here, we haven’t had a single theft.”
“I’d rather not leave it.”
“I’m sorry,” said the woman. “It would interfere with the machines.”
Kaili nodded and slipped the ring into her palm.
“We’re on your schedule for the rest of the evening, so please, take your time. We’ll look for you in the relaxation room once you’re ready.”
When the woman was gone, Kaili noticed the tranquil music raining down from the ceiling. Water gurgled from a fountain between two showers on the other side of the room, rushing over polished rocks of tan and charcoal. Venetian doors hid four stalls across from a bank of sinks. Behind her, a long wooden bench extended from the lockers to the sauna. Kaili folded her trench coat into a small square and set it on the bench. She sat down beside it.
In the quiet, she waited for a familiar voice to speak up, to tell her she was doing the right thing and that everything would be okay.
A tenor saxophone whined above the twinkling of a piano.
Something caught in Kaili’s throat and it took all of her concentration to fight bursting into tears. She felt the compression in her nose and the narrowing of her eyes, as if either could stem the sadness rising within her. It wouldn’t have been so bad to cry, to add her own wailing to the saxophone and piano and violin and gurgling water and white noise generators and the hiss of the sauna…
So many voices speaking to her, and all she wanted to hear was one.
Kaili closed her eyes, brought up her personal construct, and screamed into the unending darkness for her sister.
Nothing echoed back. Anela Zabora had not spoken since Perion City.
In the construct, Kaili collapsed on the floor, sobbing.
“I’ll wait,” she said, speaking into her hands.
“Are you okay?”
Kaili opened her eyes and saw the woman with the knee-high boots standing in front of her.
“It’s a man, isn’t it?” she asked, scrunching her nose and raising an eyebrow.
“No,” said Kaili. “A woman.”
“Oh, oh.” Knee-highs wandered away to the sinks and pretended to wash her hands.
Kaili stood and began to undress. She kicked off her shoes and placed them in a cubby inside the locker. Taking off her socks allowed her to feel the soft, microfiber mat on the floor running the length of the lockers. There were two plastic hangers on a small steel rod inside, and she used them to hang up her sweater and blouse. She folded her pants and began removing the rest of her jewelry.
“Is that why you’re here?” asked the woman from the sinks. “Did she break your heart?”
Could a memory break a heart?
“It’s not like that,” said Kaili. She pulled a white robe out and hung it on the locker door. With a quick snap of her fingers, she undid her bra and slipped the robe on.
“I’m pretty sure my husband is cheating on me.” The woman dabbed a washcloth on the makeup beneath her eyes. “Which is fine with me; I’m certainly not going to fuck him. I’ll spend his money, yes, but a woman’s got to have standards.”
Kaili nodded as she folded her underwear and laid them on the pile of clothes in the locker. She shut the door, set a random combination on the keypad, and locked it.
“Maybe he could pay for mine too,” said Kaili.
The woman was still chuckling politely as Kaili exited the locker room.
She walked down the hall in the plastic sandals and sat down on a long, white divan in the relaxation room. A small laugh escaped her lips. She had to tell herself it was okay to find humor in the strange things said by Bonnie Diaz. Knee-highs would have laughed too, had she known Bonnie Diaz was the primary shareholder at Diaz Investments and that her recent stock maneuverings in regards to Perion Synthetics had netted almost four million dollars. To have come out of Perion City with nothing and everything warranted both regret and happiness. If Anela were still around, she would have probably told Kaili to only look on the bright side.
And yet, it wasn’t the same as hearing her sister’s voice in her head.
“Ms. Diaz?”
Kaili looked up and saw a girl in purple scrubs standing in the doorway.
“I’m Ginger,” she said. “I’ll be assisting Dr. Jenkins today. If you will follow me, I’ll show you to your room.” She waited for Kaili to join her in the hallway and then led her around a curve to the left. “We’re going to be in the fifth room on the right.”
Room five was rectangular, barely eight feet across but double that in length. The pod sat on a thick, metal pike in the center of the room with its doors open; the inside glowed yellow from the lights beneath the stasis gel.
“And you’ve got no biochip, is that correct? No Guardian Angel no one told you about?” asked Ginger.
“No,” said Bonnie Diaz.
“I’d rather die,” said Kaili Zabora, to herself.
Ginger closed the door and rolled a cart closer to the pod. She pulled a tray of electrodes from a metal box. “If you’ll take off your robe, I can get these placed and have you draped before I bring Dr. Jenkins in.”
Warm air rose from vents on the floor, providing a blanket of heat so Kaili could feel comfortable standing naked while Ginger applied electrodes to various points on her body.
“Have you ever done this before?” asked Ginger.
“Not like this,” said Kaili.
“It’s the way of the future. We’re building another location downtown and next year we’ll have an office in Westport. Couple decades from now, we’ll all be living like this.”
The construct bloomed; within it, warehouses grew in a massive grid, each one containing racks upon racks of stasis pods, their occupants’ bodies suspended while their minds wandered the endless sea of empty registers in VNet.
“We’ll see how my body takes six months,” said Kaili. “Then we’ll talk about spending the rest of our lives jacked in.”
Ginger smiled as she gave Kaili a once-over. “You’re going to be fine. When you come out and get a look at what we’ve done, you’ll fall in love with yourself.” She stepped aside and gestured to the pod. “If you’d like to lie down on your back, I’ll get you covered up.”
Kaili sat down on the lip of the pod and put one foot at a time into the stasis gel.
“If it’s too hot, let me know,” said Ginger.
Maybe those lights at the bottom were actually heat lamps.
Kaili let the warm gel envelope her body. It rose in swells on the sides of her legs and ribcage. It trickled into places that made her smirk.
Ginger laid a white towel over Kaili’s body, covering everything from her ankles to her neck.
The gel nipped at Kaili’s earlobes and she shuddered.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” said Ginger. “Stasis is perfectly safe.”
Kaili laughed. She could give a shit about going under for a while.
“It’s not that,” said Bonnie Diaz. “I just haven’t been to VNet in forever.”
Ginger put her hands on her hips. “How long has it been for you?”
Since before Perion, thought Kaili.
“A decade or more, give or take.”
&nb
sp; “Well, then you’re in for a surprise, aren’t you?”
The door opened after a curt knock. An older man with features like Chuck’s walked in carrying a palette. He glanced at Ginger and then smiled at Kaili.
“Ms. Diaz, how are you? Comfortable?”
Kaili nodded as the gel clung to her hair.
“Good, well, your vitals look fine. Nothing showed up on the tox screen. Let’s get you jacked in so we can get started on your treatments.”
“Sounds good,” she replied, not really listening. The warm cocoon pulled her towards sleep.
“Ginnie, let’s get the sedative going.” Then to Kaili, “We’re going to take your brain offline for a while until we’ve got you stabilized. Then you’ll wake up, so to speak, and be logged into VNet for the duration. You’ll be on a temporary Soleil Rouge permit, so you’ll be getting a specialized Personal Assistant to explain the accommodations to you. They will be able to answer any questions you have, including the progress we’re making out here. Do you have any questions for me?”
Just do it, she thought. She could see herself standing on the edge of the infinite rabbit hole, just waiting for someone to push her in.
“No,” she replied.
“Great, then I will see you on the other side, Ms. Diaz.”
A plastic mask came into view; Ginger placed it over Kaili’s nose and mouth. “Breathe deeply and slowly,” she said. “Start counting back from one hundred.”
“One hundred,” said Kaili. “Ninety-nine.”
“Sleep tight,” said Ginger. “Dream of beautiful men in warm climates.”
Her face lost all definition and turned to smoke. Kaili grasped at it with her mind as she fell into the void.
For a time, she walked the beaches of San Diego with Rick as the sun forever set on the watery horizon.
And then, lucidity pulled her into a construct.
She found herself sitting on bent knees in the center of an ill-defined space. Ribbons of light shot out from beneath her at ninety degree angles. They repeated, shifting a few degrees, until they had constructed a blue-white floor of viscous light. Kaili felt the pressure increase on her knees.
Behind her, footsteps sounded, perhaps made by Le Soleil Rouge’s custom Personal Assistant.
It took an eternity to turn her head.
Standing there in her blood-red dress was Anela.
Kaili fought to find her voice. “Are you… are you real?”
Anela simply smiled as she offered her hand, electric current pouring from her fingers.
CODA TWO
ROBERT GANTZ
January 2016
The taxi crept along the streets of Umbra, dodging bleary-eyed youths who couldn’t be bothered with crosswalks. David Yates observed the distracted population from the back seat, tired from his trip, but unable to tear his attention away from the sensory overload pouring in through the half-open window. Umbra blocks were tightly packed; the neon of one storefront bled into the next, creating a never-ending pastiche of dancing lasers, scrolling code, and inviting women. Together, it was a light show that refused to be ignored. When Yates looked down, he saw it reflected in the puddles on the evercrete sidewalks. Looking up revealed lustrous animations racing along the Umbra Canopy.
A young girl in a tattered, brown jacket stumbled into the street, causing the taxi to brake abruptly.
Yates held tight to the metal cylinder in his lap.
“Open your eyes, sugar tits,” said the driver, barely audible over the thumping of distant bass reverberating through the car.
He didn’t know how wrong he was.
If anything, these lost and wandering sheep needed to close their eyes against the unreality surrounding them. Umbra was an optical delight like no other, but it held no real information, no truth. The people walking its streets were neon blind, unable to see anything but the pretty veneers and flashing lights. They needed a thick tarp cast over the world, and not just for the sake of their sight, but for all of their senses.
More than anything, they needed to silence the many voices in their heads, the entertainers and celebrities and advertisers who drowned out their own common sense.
The taxi bit the curb at 301 Nand Street and came to a stop, its gears grinding as the driver forced it into park.
“Saint Barbara’s in less than twenty minutes. What’d I tell you?”
“Thank you,” said Yates, thumbing away twenty-five bucks on the meter.
Warm and misty air had settled in Umbra. Yates felt it reach over his blazer and into the collar of his button-up. Sheep crisscrossed in front of him, the pierced nipples of men and women poking through tank-tops and cut-off shirts. They barely glanced at the tall man with the square haircut as he maneuvered through them to the front doors of Saint Barbara’s.
An access panel lit up at his approach, casting a blue light over the no trespassing sign hung above it. Yates tapped out the code on the worn buttons and got a harsh beep in return. The blue LEDs flashed red. He tried again with similar results.
“That’s Umbra for you. Everything’s amazing but nothing works.”
Yates turned to the voice and saw a middle-aged man step out of the crowd. He was dressed in black except for lines of neon green streaking across his button-up at random intervals. His slim face held augmented eyes of a similar emerald color.
“Mind if I try?” he asked.
Yates took a step back and watched as the man typed the same code and then banged on the door just above the keypad. The panel responded with a whir and switched from blue to green. The man nudged the door open with his knuckles.
“Thank you,” said Yates, extending his hand. “Mister…”
“Gattis, Frank Gattis. And it was nothing.” He turned to peer inside. “I remember when Saint Barb’s closed in what… ’08? Would you mind if I came in and took a quick look around?”
“All are welcome, my son,” said Yates.
Gattis was able to find the light panel to the right of the doors; the can lights in the ceiling were still in good shape and ramped up to a warm glow.
The church wasn’t even half the size of the WG in Perion City, but Yates hadn’t purchased the building for its main chapel. He looked around for the doors to the right and left of the cramped rostrum. They led to a space in the back originally used as dorms. There were ten, eight by eight rooms, each just big enough to hold the deprivation tanks he had ordered. With those tanks, he would transport the distracted throngs to what he saw as a silent nirvana, a state of being free of the feed.
“Well, they certainly let this place go to hell,” said Gattis. “Pardon the pun.”
Yates traced his finger over the backing of a pew; it came away coated in black dust.
“What you see is not always the truth,” he said. “Underneath, she is still a church. She will shine again.”
“No offense, but the average Umbrat doesn’t care much for churches. That’s why Saint Barbara’s went under in the first place. I hope you’ve got some serious bankroll because donations will be hard to come by.”
Yates found a shelf along the left wall near a bank of melted candles. He placed the cylinder upon the warped wood and stepped back.
“I do,” he said, “thanks to a generous donation from a friend. It will be enough to sustain the church for several years. By the time the money runs out, I will have shown this city the value of my way and they will support me.”
“Your way?” asked Gattis. “Which way is that?”
Yates smiled and walked to the center aisle where Gattis stood. He put his hands behind his back.
“Do you yearn for a new way, my son?”
“That depends on what the new way entails. Are you reviving a church or starting a cult?”
“What’s the difference?” asked Yates. “I just want to quiet the agitated mind and help people hear the music and smell the flowers and see the things no one else sees.”
Gattis crossed his arms.
“You can se
e what no one else sees? Are they supposed to take you as the new messiah?”
“I’m not some supernatural son of a sky-god,” Yates replied. “I simply know how to see. For instance, those irises of yours are brown beneath your latticework; you changed your color to encourage people to look you in the eye. Your shirt is damp around the shoulders, which means you were waiting in the rain for quite a while before my taxi dropped me off. You underestimated the travel time between here and Umbra Terminus.”
Gattis tried to smile. “Anything else?”
“Yes, there is one more thing. That red glow beneath your cuff means your sliver is recording everything we say, making you an aggregator and a purveyor of distraction. Do I have that right?”
“Spot on,” said Gattis, chuckling. He flashed a laminate that had been tucked into his belt. “Frank Gattis, with Banks Media out of Los Angeles. Pleasure to finally meet you, Dr. Yates.”
“I haven’t been out of Perion City a full day and already the vultures are circling.” Yates shook his head. “I have nothing to say to the media. I would like you to leave, Mr. Gattis.”
“After you’ve answered my questions. I’m investigating the disappearance of one of our aggregators. He went off the grid about the same time all hell was breaking loose in Perion City and hasn’t been heard from since. As a former employee and resident, I figured you might know something.”
Yates sighed. “What is his name?”
“Cameron Gray. He arrived in Perion City on November 9th of last year.”
“I heard his name,” said Yates, “but I never met him. I do know we would have been better off if he had never come to Perion City. If it weren’t for your kind, no kind of hell would have broken loose at all.”
“So you admit, there was some hell?”
“Leave now, or I’ll call the police.” Yates pulled out his phone.
“Ask for Commissioner Webb,” said Gattis. He cleared a spot on a nearby pew and sat down. “I’m sure he’ll send a dozen men right over.”
Yates thought about the shotgun he had used to put Truman down. It wouldn’t arrive until the next day along with the rest of Yates’ possessions. He found a spot on the wall and arched his back against it, trying to relieve some of the pain.
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