by Waiting for the Machines to Fall Asleep- The Best New Science Fiction from Sweden (retail) (epub)
I was sent here by a client who I suspect wasn't necessarily telling me the whole truth about the job (again: not that uncommon!). The mission was simple: get in, find the house, get the package, leave. Preferably without causing any major apocalypse along the way.
I was ... wait. There's somebody here.
-click-
-click-
I think I've lost them. Unfortunately I think I'm lost too. The problem with running in the dark is you tend to lose track of the direction you're heading. If I can't find my way back to the Hole before the world shifts again, I'm as good as dead.
What I do know: I'm really deep into the Event Sector now. Deeper than I've ever been. I can feel its energy around me. The air is electric. The hairs on my arms are standing up and crackle when I touch them, sending purple flashes across my skin. When I breathe it tastes like I'm swallowing ozone. I am a living tesla coil.
I'm going to rewind a bit now. Start from the beginning. I should have the time. I got the anti-beat-machine working. It's happily clicking away again. The sound would be soothing if it wasn't so incredibly annoying.
First off, let me introduce myself. No names though. Names are overrated. Here's who I am: A man without an occupation. What I do would never fit on a business card, if anybody would ever think of using such things again.
I find stuff for people. Sometimes I find people too. It's not something I thought I would be spending my time doing. I just seem to have a knack for it. I've taught myself how the city works, where people hide their secrets or themselves. Where they think no one will find them.
I don't have an office, no place where people can seek me out. If they want me, I'll find them.
The day I meet my client, the person responsible for getting me into this mess, I find myself walking into my favorite bar. The thick steel door closes behind me, shutting out the cacophony of the streets. I close my eyes and allow myself a few seconds of quiet, before I venture down the stairs into the main room of the establishment. The old wound in my right leg explodes with a sharp stab of pain. Something moves around in there. I grit my teeth, press my palm against the scar and try not to think about it. It's a weird sensation. It usually never hurts unless I'm in the Event Sector.
I don't even get to order before the bartender nods toward a corner of the room. I glance in the direction, memorizing what I see before I turn to the bar again.
A woman, maybe thirty-five years old. Long red hair. Expensive clothes. A looker.
She's reading a paper. This of course triggers a feeling of discomfort. It takes a certain kind of courage – or stupidity – to read words in the middle of the day, among people. I feel myself hoping that she won't read anything out loud. I'm not ready to deal with that kind of disturbance. At least, not until I've had my first few shots of whiskey.
I put two fingers in the air. The bartender gives me the bottle and two glasses. I bring them to the table.
She doesn't say anything. Just studies me. She makes no secret of the fact that she's appraising me. I take the opportunity and reciprocate. She's stunning, that I could see from a distance. But she's also tired, maybe sick. The makeup hides most of the shadows beneath her eyes and the waxiness of her skin, but not completely. The dress she's wearing is expensive. I'm not an expert, but I'm guessing it's from the early 50s. Perfectly maintained. Just like the last century paper she's reading. It must have cost a fortune.
She doesn't move much, but when she does, she does it with the short and tense motions of somebody who has been in too much contact with visitors. She wears her anti-beat-machine as a wrist band, just like I do. The battery is kept in place by two sharp prongs. A spool of copper thread lodged beneath it. The bracelet projects sounds in a frequency few can hear, but my trained ears have no problems picking them up.
She extends her right hand. I don't. Instead I pour two glasses. We drink in silence until she finally decides to talk and tells me why we're here.
"There's this house I'd like you to visit," she says. Her voice is like honey and cigarettes. Strangely familiar, like I've heard it before.
"I'm sure it's very nice," I say.
"It's a seven story building. On the corner of seventh and seventh. I'm told you know those parts of the city pretty well."
I nod. I know them very well. I was born there and have almost died there on numerous occasions. "Yes, I know my way."
The woman leans across the table. There's a waft of perfume. Sweet. Expensive.
She smiles at me. It's nice. The kind of smile that makes people do anything to see it again. She puts her arm against the table and it momentarily acts as an amplifier for the anti-beat-machine. The dark humming completely wrecks the moment.
"The house has a certain ... historical importance, but mainly I'm interested in it for personal reasons. I'm an art collector and it used to belong to one of my favorite artists. One of the greats."
"You want me to pick up paintings for you? There has to be more if you bother with me." I point at her hand which moves spastically on the table. "And it can't be to find a visitor for you for interrogation. You seem to be able to handle that fine on your own."
She looks at her hand. Clenches it and hides it under the table.
"No paintings," she says. "Books. He was a collector. Before the Event."
Books. Why did it have to be books? "A book?" I ask.
"Multiple. It's complicated."
I feel my stomach tensing up. I contemplate just leaving. But there's something about her smile, her voice, the way she looks at me.
"So why do you want the books? Some people would find your interest in them a bit disconcerting."
"That's my business. Don't worry, I won't be reading anything out loud for you." She smiles again and leans across the table, so close I can feel her breath on me. Tobacco with a hint of mint.
I shrug. "Never hurts to be sure. Can I be?" My face is a perfect mask. All worries hidden behind it. I unscrew the cork from the bottle and fill my glass. I angle the bottle her way. She shakes her head.
"Do you need to be sure?" she asks. "I pay on delivery. Double the amount you usually ask for. You should find the building easily. It's special. Built by the Architect, just before the Event."
I look deeply into her eyes. For a long time. They're beautiful. Once again I get the feeling that I know her from somewhere, but I can't put my finger on where. Finally I say: "You can't hide from me. Setting me up is a bad idea."
"That's why I came to you. You find things." She smiles at me and I melt like ice cream left out in the sun.
"I find things. Every time," I say. I act tough, because that's what I do. But it's a charade and both of us know it.
As I leave the bar, I take one last look at my new client. I feel like I know her, like this was a conversation we've had a thousand times before. I know those eyes, maybe from a dream. They have looked at me from across tables and empty rooms, from sweaty beds and dark alleys. And I have looked back, smiled and told her everything is going to be alright, yet I'm sure I've never met her before today. I know I will do anything to see her again, if only she smiles at me.
She's beautiful, and she's dangerous, and she's all I've ever wanted.
The last thing I hear before I open the steel door and the noise of the street envelops me, is her cough. Like she's being torn apart from the inside. I know I haven't got much time.
I'm standing where two streets meet, looking out over the melange of people. This is my neighborhood. The Hole stretches from first to third street east/west and fourth to ninth south/north. To the east is the Event Sector. Dangerously close. People who live here have adapted. The city smells differently here. And the noise level is deafening.
If I were to compare the Hole to anything, it would be an air lock. You need to go through the Hole to get to the Event Sector. The analogy isn't perfect. For a start, I assume that if you ever were to enter an air lock, you'd be very aware of doing so. The Hole doesn't work like that. Apart from to
the north, where the border between the Hole and the rest of the city is drawn somewhere in the middle of the river, an outsider wouldn't necessarily realize they've entered a different place before it's too late. There are no clearly visible markers. No signs. No warnings. They'd just suddenly be there, surrounded by new smells, new sounds, new people that are already taking bets on how long the newcomers will last before they either walk off into the Event Sector, or escape back into the safe embrace of the city.
The Hole is a middle ground. Not like the rest of the city, where a visitor showing up or a sudden reality shift is a very rare thing. Not like the Event Sector where reality has a mind of its own and gives zero fucks about the consequences.
It's a place of maybes, I guess. Where bad things can happen, and often will, but also might not.
In the Hole, the low hum of the copper-based anti-beat-machines isn't as prevalent. People here have found other means to keep the visitors away. Stronger means, less likely to fail in times of need. In a part of the city where you can never count on batteries or the power grid holding up, you can't rely on electricity-based sound waves as your only defense. Here, the street-smiths work in shifts and hammer syncopated beats on old oil drums. From church towers and minarets, songs are sung in dissonant choirs, counter to the street level rhythms. Those who live here have learned to speak arrhythmically, with sudden changes in pacing and intonation. Whole sentences spoken aloud in staccato seamlessly flow into half sung chorals in thirteen eights beats. The Hole is covered in a constant carpet of sound. It's the ultimate interactive piece of art.
It's known to drive people insane. Some, like me, thrive here. Others die, or leave.
People in the Hole know how to confound the visitors. But also how to call them. How to best communicate with them and live to tell the tale.
In the time before the Event, this was the city's cultural Mekka. The intellectuals gathered here: The political dissidents, the artists, the authors, the performers. The streets were crowded with wine bars, cafés, basement theaters and hard to find musical halls. And of course, these streets were hit among the hardest at the time of the Event. There aren't many people left to give you first hand accounts, but the stories are many. Nobody knows which ones are true and which are ramblings, constructed after the fact. It doesn't matter. Everybody who lives here has seen something they can't explain. And everybody who lives here has seen things they don't want to explain.
Somebody will tell you of a meeting of black-clad revolutionaries in a basement somewhere, which ended with all of them disappearing. Left were only the clothes they wore. They were wet, and in some cases covered in a thin layer of fine-grained sand. The place stunk of decomposition and whale lard. Of their pamphlets and books, there were only empty covers left.
Somebody else might tell you of a spoken word event at a wine bar, where the words flew from the poetry collection and penetrated the speaker's every bodily orifice. How they then exploded through his pores and flew out the window, letter by letter, covering the dumbstruck audience in a very fine mist of blood.
A third person will tell you the story of how a bus full of passengers suddenly was catapulted thirty meters up in the air, but before it landed again, it grew wings and flew away.
The Hole is full of stories like this. But somehow, people have managed to create a place for themselves to live here. The Event Sector is full of secrets. And people love secrets. They need people to dig them up. People like me. And people like me need somewhere to live. Somewhere close to the Event Sector. Somewhere like the Hole.
Today I don't stick around for long. I buy an extra battery for the anti-beat-machine. Something to eat. Some pain killers. Then I head into the Sector, toward seventh and seventh. To the house the Architect built. Not because I want to, but because of the way she smiled at me.
Just like it's more or less impossible for an outsider to know where they cross the border into the Hole, it's just as impossible to know when you're crossing between the Hole and the Event Sector. Unless you know what you're doing. I know exactly what I'm doing.
As I put my foot forward and take that last step where I leave the relative safety of the Hole behind me, I can feel the hairs on my arms standing up. The slight change in air pressure. The minute difference in gravity.
There's also the pain in my leg. The wound starts throbbing. There is a weak sound, as if somebody is whimpering. I'm used to it. I fling a couple of the pills I just bought into my mouth. Chew on them and swallow. Until they kick in, I'll stow the pain in a back compartment of my brain.
This is where I always make the crossing. I know every detail of the surroundings, as well as you can in a place where reality keeps shifting around you. I walk across the street toward the old café on the other side. I have a cache there, behind the counter, a small box with a code lock. It's armed. If anybody tries to open it and uses the wrong code, a word I trapped ages ago will shoot out at the perpetrator. I have no idea what the effect would be, but I'm sure it won't be pretty.
I open the box and take out the map. There are no words on it of course, no glyphs of any kind, but I have charted all the locations I've ever visited on it. I keep several copies of the map in caches throughout the Event Sector. They're a vital tool for any explorer. Though the city shifts, it never changes too much per iteration. I keep these maps to remind me where I'm going and where I've been, and constantly update them as I travel. The Event Sector is a slippery place and it does things to your memory. Sometimes I forget whole days.
As I'm about to leave the café, I hear the familiar sound of a passing visitor. A wailing but strangely beautiful song. Words upon words. Strung together in senseless sentences. I hide behind the dirty window. Peek out. It's a weird one. On its head it wears a tattered gray fedora. The body is covered in what looks like a torn apart space suit. It drags a big two-handed sword behind it, leaving a trail of sparks where it scratches against the asphalt. He/she/it is a mix of half-formed ideas, of shapes of things that haven't quite fused together.
They all look different. Some people find the way they look funny. That's usually the last thought they have, before their bodies are criss-crossed with living words and torn apart.
The anti-beat-machine does its thing and the visitor keeps moving, never realizing that I'm here.
They're blind. And probably deaf. That much I know. But drawn to rhythm. Such as your heart beating. Or the sound of somebody reciting a poem. The anti-beat-machines continuously project arrhythmical sounds. It tricks the visitors and keeps us safe.
I ...
-click-
-click-
Ok. That was close. Too close. It's like the machine isn't doing its job. Probably isn't, this deep into the Event Sector.
I lost them again. There were three of them. Floating into the apartment, each a unique blend of insanity. Singing while canvassing the environment, as if they were looking for me. I threw one of them to the side, briefly touching its surface, dry like old paper, and ran out of the room, head first, while words I barely comprehend hit the wall behind me, spitting chunks of plaster and bits of garbled digital audio into the air. Algorithmic generation malfunction detected. Genre cross-pollination definitions updated. Stockholm-AV-base eradication attempted. Failure. Failure. Subject flees.
I ran across the street into another building and hid there. It wasn't there a half hour ago. The world shifts too frequently for me to keep up. The map is useless now. I have no idea where I am and no idea where to go.
I guess it was just a matter of time before something like this would happen to me. You can only go into the Event Sector so many times before you get hurt. I was in a similar situation once before. The wound on my leg reminds me of that every day. Back then, I was young and stupid. I didn't even use the map.
Anyway, let me tell you about the job and how I got into this particular predicament. She said she wanted me to find multiple books for her. Multiple. It turns out that means quite a few. Luckily they're al
l on a hard drive. A local copy of some part of the net that no longer is reachable.
A hard drive. In a desktop. On the seventh floor of the building at the crossing of seventh and seventh.
Getting to the building is easy. The city is in a low-shift phase and not much has changed since I was here last. I update the map a few times – images, always images, and never the same one twice. I have drawn buildings many times and I've never repeated a form even once. Can't be too careful. I've heard of words coming alive even though they're put to paper as hieroglyphs or cuneiform. The shift is blind to language. It sees grammar, morphemes and structures.
This part of the Event Sector still mimics the past. Broken, blinking and wordless advertisements sell products no one cares about anymore. I see beautiful women smiling, shiny cars shining, children eating breakfast cereal, half covered in grime and dust. God knows where the signs get the juice from. Maybe this is where the power from the main grid ends up.
I pass a couple more visitors, but they don't notice me. They stare at the signs, moaning and singing to each other.
The front door is unlocked. I enter. The elevator is old. Has room for maybe three people. I don't trust it. I take the stairs. Wish I didn't smoke so much.
I get to the seventh floor. The office is the seventh one to the right, facing the street I came from. I open the door slightly. It catches on something. Can't get it open more than an inch or two. It's an old style office door. The upper half is a window into the room. Half scraped off letters on the glass tell me, well not much, since they're barely legible. I make out Trope 4, office of. The glass is so dirty I can't see anything through it. I give the door a push. Something cracks, then moves slightly and it opens a bit more, just enough for me to squeeze in. I peek inside first.