Technomancer

by B. V. Larson

  “So…you bought me a geranium at the gift shop?”

  She looked embarrassed.

  “Thanks for the thought. But I didn’t wake up at Memorial. I woke up in the Sunset Sanatorium under the gentle care of Dr. Meng.”

  I was hoping she would react to that name, but her face was a blank.

  “Maybe they transferred you after patching you up,” she offered.

  At the top of the stairs, she opened the door without any mystical help from me. I followed her inside and accepted a beer while she told me some of her theories about what was happening to the city.

  According to Holly, everyone working on the Strip talked about the decay of the city, wondering about the cause. Some blamed online gambling, or soaring unemployment, or the city’s famously high crime rate. Holly had a less complex answer: in her opinion, the city had “moved on.” It had gone from one century to the next and changed in character as inevitably as people did while they wended their ways through life. She believed a new presence had formed in the midst of the crumbling casinos. Something had replaced the old source of energy and vibrancy. Just as the city had once grown out of the desert sands like a mushroom.

  “The economy has fallen apart in Vegas, just as it has everywhere else,” I said, unwilling to see something more sinister.

  “I think it’s more than that,” she said.

  “We used to have people flowing here, bringing their millions in gambling money,” she said, “but now this new source of energy has brought worse things.”

  I thought about what she was suggesting. That a new kind of life force had come to the city. That this new attraction wasn’t as wholesome as a natural drive toward sex and greed.

  “Sometimes, when enough sinning is done in single place,” she said, “I think it attracts the attention of bad things.”

  “What kind of bad things?” I asked her.

  Holly caught the smile I’d tried to suppress and glared at me. “Imagine you being the skeptic. You should read your own blog, Draith.”

  “I suppose I should, but tell me what you mean, anyway.”

  She went on to describe a frightening scenario. In her imagination, strange shadows were being drawn to this spot like insects gathering around a flickering bulb at night. This had all started years ago, she believed. There had been stories…small things at first. People disappeared, but that was not unusual, especially in Vegas. Soon, the disappearances had turned into outright murders—weird ones. These weren’t just simple gangland killings—there had always been people beaten to death with baseball bats, shot and left for dead on the Strip, hookers found in garbage cans—no, this was worse than all that. These crimes were…disturbing, unusual, even bizarre.

  “It’s almost as if the city is under—I don’t know, some kind of attack, I guess,” she said.

  “From demons, aliens, or evil scientists?”

  “You write about this stuff, and you are making fun of me?”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  We talked on in this vein for another hour. At last we finished our drinks, and I had grown very weary. She let me have the sole bed in the place. She wasn’t tired. She went out into the living room where she had a computer and spent her time on the web. I heard her moving all around the apartment when the door was closed down to a crack. She was probably hiding cash here and there, squirreling it away so no one intruder could get all of it. As I was passing out, she left, telling me she had a few bills to pay.

  “Take care of yourself,” I slurred.

  She looked surprised, like no one had said that to her in a long time.

  I awoke with a start from a dream about a world full of cement walls and shadowy people who resisted illumination despite the harsh glare of fluorescent lights. The shadowy people talked to me, but I could not make out what they were saying.

  It was dark again. I’d slept the entire day away. I got up with a bone-weary groan. I wondered why sleeping for great lengths of time made a man’s body more sore than when he lay down.

  I felt around for the sunglasses, the gun, and the wad of cash. They were all still there. I was happy about that. I’d taken a chance with Holly, and it had paid off. Or maybe she was too happy with all the money I’d helped gather for her to rob me right off. But I knew her kind. If she ever ran out of cash, that was when she would become dangerous.

  After a quick shower and shampoo, which left me smelling overpoweringly fruity, I roamed the tiny apartment. I couldn’t help but smirk when I found a few crumpled twenties stuffed inside the sugar jar and three more tucked underneath the plastic silverware tray. I left them there and made myself coffee.

  The fridge had next to nothing in it. I unhappily spooned some orange créme yogurt out of a plastic cup and chewed on a stick of celery filled with peanut butter. It was skinny-chick food, but better than nothing.

  I spent the next hour on her computer. I found my own blog quickly. The content startled me. Was I a wack-job, a con man, or a person haunted by the bizarre? Murders, disappearances, and equally alarming reappearances of missing persons were listed. The stories presented were told in a flatfooted, matter-of-fact style. One stood out among them to me, a recent entry.

  Heath Anderson was a mild-mannered street person known to this author. He was found in a downtown alley off Garces Ave., burning to death. Covered in flames, the man remained lucid and smiling. Even as the victim’s skin curled, he explained that the fire didn’t hurt. A group of onlookers including myself gathered to help or simply to watch. We tried to splash water on him and beat at the flames, to no avail. The man smiled until the end when he slumped down into a heap indistinguishable from a pile of ash. He remained calm throughout, even gesturing for the crowd to relax. It is unknown if Anderson had relations in the area.

  A photo accompanied the entry. I saw a pile of gray ash mounded up against a sooty brick wall. A single item stood untouched in the middle of the remains: a gleaming metal flask. I supposed no one had had the guts to steal it.

  Holly came back with a bag of groceries an hour later and froze when she saw me sitting there on the couch.

  “You’re still here,” she said.

  I looked up. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been awake long. I should have cleared out.”

  “No,” she said. “No, no—that’s cool. Did you get some coffee?”

  I tipped my mug as evidence that I had.

  “I didn’t mean…” she began. “Never mind. I didn’t mean I wanted you out right away. You just seemed like the kind of guy who would take off while I was out.”

  I nodded slowly. “I hear you. I’ll be leaving soon, don’t worry.”

  She sighed. “I’m sorry. Where are you going to go?”

  “First, I’m going to check out my own home.”

  “You found out where it is?”

  “Whatever is left of my brain can still work the web. I live at the northeastern edge. Not too far from here.”

  “What about after that?”

  “I’m going to hit the police station in the morning,” I said.

  Holly recoiled slightly. “That’s not a good idea, Quentin.”

  My eyes slid to her face. When had I moved up from “Mr. Draith” to “Quentin”? Sleeping all day at a girl’s apartment had some benefits, I supposed.

  “I’m not in love with the law,” I said. “But they have the facts concerning Tony’s death and my own involvement in the accident.”

  Holly shook her head. “Uh-uh. They only have what they want to have.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A monopoly on cracking heads in this town, for one thing. And they want to keep it that way.”

  I frowned. “What does that mean?”

  “Pray you don’t find out.”

  I stared at her for a second. “You didn’t tell me everything you know, did you?”

  She laughed. “No. And you should be glad I didn’t, for both our sakes. Just listen to me and keep out of the police station. It’s not like i
t used to be.”

  I eyed her speculatively. It was easy to see a casual user, a girl who was hooked on nightlife and recreational drugs. She’d gone as far as she could working with the good genetics that had made her attractive. She had managed her resources to their best effect in order to fund her habits. No one living her lifestyle sent people to talk to policemen. Maybe her worry was a simple underlying fear I would grow a big mouth and talk about magically opening safes full of cash…and how we had helped ourselves to it.

  “Don’t worry about me,” I said, standing up.

  She looked me over. “Let me at least get you some clothes that don’t scream freak in a raincoat.”

  I smiled and let her lead me to a cluster of paper bags that stood behind an army of strappy shoes in her closet. Each bag was full of neatly folded clothes, which seemed odd, but I quickly figured out each bag had been left behind by a different boyfriend at one point or another. She had a variety of sizes and soon managed to outfit me in jeans, a dress shirt, and a navy blue hoodie. The pants were a bit loose, so she handed me a belt. For shoes, I had my choice. I went with black running shoes. They looked good and wouldn’t slow me down if I needed to move fast.

  I checked my legs out, squeezing with my hands. Before I had slept and showered, they had been sore and I’d had a noticeable limp. Now, they felt fresh and only slightly stiff. I really did appear to heal fast, just as I’d told the nurse back at the sanatorium.

  “Thanks,” I told her, and I meant it.

  “It’s the least I can do,” she said.

  Holly followed me to the door. I stepped out onto a concrete walkway.

  I turned around and looked at her. “Can I come back to call on you sometime?”

  She smiled and kissed me lightly on the cheek. It felt good.

  “You can,” she said. “But don’t bring trouble, OK?”

  I shook my head. “No promises in that department.”

  I left her then and headed down the stairs. Experimentally, I took two at a time. It hurt my knees, so I slowed down and leaned on the rail. There was no reason to push things.

  I looked back at her once and saw her standing above me, bent over the rail and watching me. Then I left the courtyard and headed out onto the street.

  I pulled my hood over my hair and headed into the northern districts. People were less likely to mess with you when they couldn’t see your face. It was a bad neighborhood that had once been middle-class. Everyone I passed was either a predator or a victim—I found it easy to pick out one from the other. Each eyed me, calculating which category I was in just as I did the same to them. As we passed by one another, people invariably took a step or so to the side—a respectful acknowledgment that I didn’t look like a mark. I often did the same, signaling I wasn’t dangerous at the moment. But my silence, my hood, and my lack of expression gave the impression I could be dangerous under the right circumstances.

  I knew something was wrong before I reached my house. I suppose it was the smoky smell in the air. The stink grew and grew until I stopped dead on the sidewalk. My place…was gone.

  I knew what my house must have looked like—even if I couldn’t remember it. Every house on the block looked more or less the same. They were all mid-1900s stucco boxes. There were rows of flip-up garage doors, blandly painted walls coated in spiderwebs, and yards full of weeds. Some yards had degenerated into pure crabgrass and dried-out trees. Others lawns had taken the final step, reverting to the purity of the desert sands from whence they’d come. Water was expensive in the city, and not everyone could afford to water their patch of land.

  My house was on the right, the third from the corner. There wasn’t much house left, however. Looking at the devastation, my first thought was that it must have burned down, although it looked more thoroughly destroyed than a burnt house should. All that stucco and the old brick fireplace—something should have survived. Instead, it reminded me of a bomb crater. Only the farthest corner of the garage stood, a sooty finger of concrete and charcoaled two-by-fours.

  Getting over my shock, I walked with quiet care among the silent eddies of ash. Had I left the stove on when I’d gone to talk to Tony? Had I owned a pet that had accidentally tipped over a source of combustion? I didn’t think the answer was so mundane. It was hard to believe fate alone had dealt me such a hard blow. Call me distrustful, but this went beyond an accident or even arson. Someone had demolished my house in hopes of destroying whatever it was I had discovered. Possibly, the same somebody had tried to kill me more than once.

  As I looked around the place, I began to think maybe Dr. Meng had done me a favor by keeping me on ice at her institution. What if someone had killed Tony, but meant to kill us both? Or maybe they’d really been targeting me all along. I didn’t like the idea.

  I trudged around the ruins in the dark, looking for clues. When I finally found something interesting, I was greatly surprised by the nature of it.

  There was a trembling movement in the ashes. I froze, staring. I suspected it was a cat, but what kind of an idiot animal would be caught playing in this mess at midnight? Perhaps a rat, then, I thought. This faint hope propelled me to take a step closer to the shivering pile of ashes, then a second and a third.

  I stood over a lump covered in the black ashes that I calculated were the cremated remains of my living room furniture. The lump shivered again as I watched it. All I had to do, I knew, was reach out with a toe and tap the thing at my feet—but I hesitated.

  The wind sighed in the trees around me. Distantly, a siren wailed out in the direction of the boulevard. I could hear TV voices floating out of a neighbor’s window from somewhere nearby. I stared at the lump and waited for it to shiver again. It did nothing. I willed the thing at my feet to reveal itself without my having to act upon it.

  Then I began to feel something on my face as I stared at the thing. I felt heat. This spot, alone among the fifteen hundred-odd square feet of ash and debris, was still hot. The heat spread to my exposed hands. As I stood there, I felt the burning sensation intensify upon the legs of my pants and sensed it sinking into my shoes as well. Did it come from the shivering thing before me? I wasn’t sure.

  Still staring, I reached out my foot and touched the lump with the toe of my shoe. It was hard, heavy, and solid. I felt it tremble. It was as if I had nudged a vibrating bowling ball covered in sodden ashes.

  I yanked my foot away and lifted the other, planning to beat a stealthy retreat. It was too late, however. Whatever was crouching in the middle of my home, I’d awakened it.

  The thing unfolded itself. Ash dribbled away and it grew taller as I watched. Still, it was barely a foot in height—make that eighteen inches now. I almost bolted, but kept watching. Maybe that was my curse, my weakness. I felt an overwhelming urge to investigate this oddity, rather than to flee from it. I knew in a flash of remembrance I’d faced alien things like this before and failed to run from them when any sane man would have.

  The unfolding thing rotated a part of itself to look up at what had nudged it. To me, it now resembled a bulky worm made of lava rock, with a head section that rose up to regard me. The sensation of emanating heat grew ever more intense and its eyes met mine—eyes of blue flame on stalks of blackened, porous stone. It did not run from me, but instead straightened and slid forward very slowly. It stared at me with curiosity—or was that hunger?

  I saw it clearly now, despite the fact it was not illuminated by a streetlamp or neighbor’s security light. The thing glowed faintly with the color of dying coals. The creature seemed weak, almost pitiful. I sensed it might have become aggressive in a moment of strength. But for now it only eyed me curiously and approached very slowly.

  “You’re a crazy bastard, Draith,” said a voice. “Just like they said.”

  My head jerked toward the voice. A man stood on the sidewalk. He lit a cigarette and continued to watch me from a safe distance. His cigarette glowed orange, but the rest of him stood in shadow. I could tell from his voice
and bearing he was a plainclothes cop.

  I looked back toward the thing at my feet. It raised a stony appendage in my direction, moving lazily, tiredly. It reached toward my feet. I took a step backward. The thing stirred itself like a tired old man and rippled in weary pursuit.

  The cop on the sidewalk chuckled around his cigarette. “It still wants to get you. Talk about dedication! Ninety percent dead and almost burnt out, but it still goes for you.”

  I took another step back, then a third. The thing at my feet looked up at me reproachfully, but with exhausted determination, it squirmed its form closer. As it moved, I heard a faint sound like that of two bricks grinding against one another.

  “What is it?” I asked the man on the sidewalk.

  The man ignored my question. “Do you know how long I’ve waited for you to come back? I’ve endured long days on this stakeout. My back is sore from sitting in my car for so damned many hours. You owe me, Draith.”

  “I take it you want to investigate this obvious case of arson?” I asked. Maybe Holly had been right and the cops weren’t going to be helpful.

  “Ha,” said the cop. “Yeah, right. Come out of there, man. Nice and easy. Do you know I had no idea that thing was still alive? It must have smelled you or something and woke up again.”

  “What put it to sleep?”

  “The water from the fire hoses, I figure. It likes fire; cold seems to mess it up. But how the hell do I know? You’re the expert on freaky shit like this. Don’t you read your own blog? Get over here, Draith. You’re under arrest.”

  I backed away from the thing, which still pursued me in relentless slow motion. I tried not to stumble in the ashes and debris. I didn’t want to turn my back on it, suspecting it might leap upon me in that moment. When I crossed onto the scorched yard, I turned toward the cop.

  The cop had stepped closer while I retreated from the thing in the ashes. He pressed his car remote and the headlights flashed. I caught a glimpse of him then. He was a little taller than I was, with an athletic build, and I guessed him to be about forty. He wore a gray blazer over a yellow dress shirt. His gray slacks were as nondescript as the rest of his clothing, intended to make him blend into any crowd. His face had strong features, with a thick brow ridge and a large chin. His eyes and hair were dark.