Machina Obscurum

by J. Edward Neill

  I had to navigate twice across the traffic lanes, once almost being run down by a hauler, and passed by an abandoned green information kiosk. The six-sided shacks were prevalent in the heart of City Center and, like the fountains, had become casualties when the end of tourism had plunged most of the city into poverty.

  I pulled my mobiterm out of my pocket to check the time and felt proud that I was only twenty minutes late. Probably thirty by the time I got there, assuming there would be security. After four years in and around the Roman underground, it was a personal best. My world did not put much stock in punctuality.

  I had no messages. Probably because I had no friends and tended not to give my enemies my number.

  I looked up just in time to see the large man slam into my mobi, sending it skidding into the street. Pain shot up my arm from my broken left pinky. I had tried to wrap and splint it that morning, but I hadn’t paid a lot of attention when they taught us field medicine. I had been too busy learning how to jump out of gravjets, resist torture and kill people.

  “Harami!” I swore after him, but he didn’t look back or understand me or give a shit. I didn't blame him. We were all just trying to cut our path through the world. No one was going to help us, but there were plenty of people in the way, and sometimes those people got trampled. I knelt to grab the device while at the same time trying not to get bowled over. The Romans forced to go around me spit words like bitch and Paki at me. I snatched the mobi, stood back up and carried on. I looked for damage but couldn’t tell. This mobiterm was already obsolete when Alba sold it to me two years before. It was nicked and scratched and in some ways flat-out broken: the speaker was blown out and due to crack and bleed in the screen; it had been a year since I could see the first three characters of any message. But I couldn’t exactly walk into a shop and order a new one. All comm-gear was registered with the government, and hacked gear was expensive. It was another thing in my life that would have to wait.

  I pulled a small packet out of my breast pocket. My finger was killing me. I placed two (better make it three, take the edge off) insta-tabs of chryo under my tongue to dull the pain.

  Minutes later I arrived at the southwest corner of the Grand Hotel. The St. Regis. Halfway up the block from me was the front entrance, but I took a right down a shaded walkway running along the building’s short side. I saw the worn bronze awning first, then the two dark green-uniformed men standing on either side of a set of green, wood and glass double doors. Both carried Chinese-made Fángbào CPC rifles. Heavy gear. About as nasty as a non-make-dead weapon could get. As I approached, their fingers tightened on their triggers. The men were very serious about whatever it was they were paid to be serious about.

  I stopped in front of them. There was an awkward beat before they figured out I wasn’t going away. They exchanged a look before the taller of the two let out a sigh and spoke:

  “What do you want?”

  “My name is Virata Das,” I said. “I’m here to see Admiral Moreno.”

  The idea seemed preposterous to the guard. “You are, are you?”

  “Ask your boss,” I suggested. “Now.”

  The guard sneered at me. “We don’t take orders from Pakis.”

  Will you take my boot down your throat? I thought. “Please,” I said.

  He raised his non-trigger hand to his temple and gave it a tap. Tiny blue script, scrolling heads-up information, flashed across the surface of his left eye. The guards were hired muscle, for sure. They weren’t Legion, and no municipal carabiniero could afford gear like that.

  “They say to let her in.”

  “Then let me in.”

  “What did I tell you—”

  The shorter guard interrupted, “Let her in, Beppino.”

  They let me in. Six red carpeted stairs led up to a small antechamber, with old-old looking paintings on the walls and claw-footed couches. At the far end was a glass door. I went through it and found myself in a small, well-lit room with an open lift waiting for me. The touchpad inside had only one option. The magnets activated, and the car began to climb, not stopping at any numbered floors along the way. Its only purpose was to get one to and from the Imperial Suite that topped the Grand Hotel.

  The lift stopped, and the doors slid open, revealing six armed and severe-looking men standing in an ornately decorated sitting room. They wore the same uniforms as my friends downstairs. Straight lines of utilitarian green in a parlor of crimson and gold frill.

  I laced my fingers behind my head as they patted me down. I didn't carry a weapon. To get caught by The Legion with any kind of unregistered piece was trouble, and I wasn't the kind of person that got things registered.

  The door to the next room opened, and a man in a suit emerged. He was tall for a Roman and well groomed. Probably past fifty, with rod-up-his-ass posture and a gleaming bald scalp. He walked with the assistance of a black cane topped with a brass sphere, although the hitch in his step seemed mild to me. In slow Italian he introduced himself as Orso Cola, the Admiral’s assistant, and asked if I needed anything.

  “No, thank you,” I responded.

  “Did you have any difficulty finding us?”

  “No. Just left my place and walked north.”

  “The Admiral is waiting for you.”

  “How should I talk to him? How’s his Italian?”

  “He has been in Roma since before you were born.”

  “So better than mine.” In the army I had been given subconscious flash-training on all of the Romance languages. So when I washed up in Roma, it only took me a few months to become functionally fluent.

  He smiled. “Would you prefer English? Your Italian is quite passable, but he so seldom gets to converse in his native tongue.”

  “No, that’s okay. When in… yeah. Don't worry about it.”

  He led me through the door and into the suite. It was as gaudily furnished and decorated as the antechamber and twenty times the size of the cube I called home. Maybe thirty. It smelled like flowers and antibac gel. There was music playing. Old music, the kind with words. A whining voice sang slowly and earnestly:

  Summer has come and passed.

  The innocent can never last.

  Wake me up when September ends.

  Whatever that meant.

  Along one wall were a dozen two-dimensional photographs framed in molded gold. A princess called Grace. White men with their names written beneath their faces in script: Clinton, Ilysasov, Gere, Mercier. A dark-skinned man named Nwosu and a dark-skinned woman named Winfrey. Another Clinton, a white woman. A Chinese called Du.

  The other two I recognized. Xian Hao was a late twenty-first century scientist who had made the first tentative contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life. Since then, we had been having a cryptic long-distance conversation with what we assumed was an advanced alien race. We had no idea what they were saying, and we were pretty sure they had the same dilemma.

  We had already discovered life on other worlds: first the microscopic fossils on Mars, then the millions of nonocular, silicon-based “blackfish” under the icy surface of Europa. But Xian had proven that we weren’t alone as thinking, intelligent beings, even if the others were eleven light years away. I always found it comforting to know that if we truly fucked things up down here, there was something out there that still had a chance.

  My father had been an admirer of Doctor Xian and spoke of him often.

  The other picture was of Sagni Dubashi, who had been the Prime Minister of India during the Shame of 2020 and the ensuing global, genocidal war. My father had hated him and I never met anyone who felt otherwise.

  Here comes the rain again.

  Falling from the stars.

  Drenched in my pain again.

  Becoming who we are.

  “Do people think that staying in a room where an extraordinary person once slept will somehow transfer their greatness to them? Relevance by osmosis?”

  The man speaking sat on one of the room’s six sof
as. Admiral Jonah Moreno, I presumed.

  “As long as they change the sheets often enough,” I said. “I wouldn't worry about anything transferring to anybody.” He looked about seventy, with a full head of fine black hair, parted on the left. His skin was wrinkled and worn, but free of any molds, lesions or growths. A mouth full of polished white teeth hid behind his thin, pink lips.

  “You're Admiral Moreno?”

  “No.”

  “Where's Moreno?”

  “There is no Jonah Moreno,” he said. “Not anymore. He lives on when it behooves me to not use my given name.”

  “Which is?”

  “My name is Caden Kennedy. I'm sure that means nothing to you.”

  “Less than zero-zero. Who was he?” I was intrigued by this man who wanted me to make dead for money.

  “An old friend. Well, a rival. Of sorts. From a long time ago. We were two very different boys with one common interest.”

  “A woman.”

  “A girl.”

  I wasn’t able to dig up any information on an US Navy man named Moreno. “He was an Admiral?” I asked.

  He smiled. “No, but I feel naked without a title in front of my name.”

  “What's your real title?”

  “Senator. United States of North America. Deceased.”

  “Deceased?”

  He shrugged. “Officially, yes. I’m sure that seems odd.”

  Not to me it doesn’t, I thought.

  “And your real name again?”

  “Kennedy. R. Caden Kennedy.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” I asked. “It's a pretty lousy cover if you go telling strangers about it.”

  “Once I explain everything to you, you will understand why it's useless for me to hide such information from you.” He motioned to the sofa opposite him. “Please. Come sit with me.”

  Ring out the bells again.

  Like we did when Spring began.

  Wake me up, when September ends.

  When I got closer, I got a better look at him. He was much older than I first thought. Much older. His eyes were devoid of crow’s feet, but his full lashes were obviously synthetic. As was the hair on his head, his teeth and maybe even his tongue, which looked natural but had an odd tint to it. His pupils were dead like dulled onyx. He breathed shallowly, as if it would hurt to pull the air deeper. He was a barely together machine adorned with sparkly new buttons and knobs. He wore a gray hooded sweatshirt, unzipped to his navel, a plain white T-shirt underneath. At the bottom of his distressed denim pants were narrow old-time sneakers, black canvas with rubber heels and toes. The bright red, loosely drawn laces were only nominally tied.

  I sat, crossed my hands in my lap, tried to look attentive. Don’t fuck this up.

  He picked up a small tin from the end table and used two fingers to pop open the lid. He held it out towards me. The candies inside were brown and green striped discs. I shook my head. He shrugged, took out a piece for himself and popped it in his mouth.

  As my memory rests.

  But never forgets what I lost.

  Wake me up when September ends.

  As he set the tin on the sofa beside him, he said, almost to himself, “They're called Bombas Bocas. They’re from back home, from one of the Mexican states. They don’t have them here. I’m not even sure they make them anymore. I smuggled some over years go. Each one I eat is precious to me because my supply is finite. I do not eat them idly.”

  He was telling me I should have indulged him and taken the damn candy. And I knew I should have. You're already fucking this up.

  Kennedy rolled the candy around in his mouth, savoring it. He closed his eyes, and we sat silently until it had dissolved entirely. He swallowed, and the simple act seemed to cause him pain. After it had passed, he smiled. As he opened his eyes, he asked, “Looking at me, how old would you say I am?”

  A dozen ways to crack wise came to me, but I stayed quiet. I could tell the difference between a man who wanted a conversation and a man who just wanted to talk.

  “I am a hundred and forty-six years old.”

  He said it with no humor, no slyness, no hint of bullshit. He meant it.

  Even ignoring the cosmetic augmentations he looked half that, and I had never heard of anyone living that long. He would have been worldwide famous. Who was this guy?

  He continued, “In my grandfather’s generation a centenarian was a rarity, a man to celebrate. The product of either careful living or luck.”

  “Or both.”

  “Or both. What do your friends call you?”

  What friends? I thought. “Rata,” I said.

  “Rata.”

  “Can I call you Caden?”

  He ignored me. “Just so you know, Rata, I will be offering you money to murder a man. But it’s one of the few things I’ve never done in my long life, and I believe I’ll have to work my way up to it. If that is alright with you.”

  I nodded. In the name of the criminals I owed, I had made threats, broken bones, caused terrible confession-inducing pain. But not made dead. I hadn’t killed anyone since the war. Not since Neu Berlin.

  Wake me up when September ends.

  The music stopped. The Senator smiled and sat forward, resting his creaking elbows on his thighs. He ran his hands down both sides of his artificially hairless cheeks. He seemed on the verge of tears, but I doubted his ducts worked anymore. “I seem to be having a hard time. Why don’t you tell me about yourself, Virata Das?”

  “I'm not as loose with my self-data as you are.”

  “Then let me guess. You live in The Esquilino, but your name suggests to me you are not of the Yatiim. Indian?”

  “Bengali.”

  “And the Paks let you be?”

  “I keep my head down.”

  “I’m old enough to remember when there actually was a Pakistan,” he said.

  He can’t be, can he? This is ridiculous.

  “I like your jacket.” He pointed to my chest, to the faded badge above my pocket. “You served.”

  “No. I bought this from a hockshoppe on Via Cavour.”

  “No, you didn't.”

  “Jump Commando. Ninth battalion.”

  “What theater?”

  Fuck do you care? I thought. “All of them,” I said.

  “Saudi? Russia? Germany?”

  “All of them,” I said again with a touch more force.

  “I would guess you are fifty-five years of age?”

  Pushing aside my vanity, I calmly told him I was thirty-eight. Give or take.

  “Sorry. I have lost my ability to guess the age of young people. It has been so long since I have looked my age. Thirty-eight. Have you ever been in love?”

  “I don't see how that's any of your—”

  “I remind you that you are here for an interview. If I ask you a question, let's just assume it's fucking pertinent. Have you ever been in love?”

  “Not so far. I don't believe in fairy tales.”

  “Good. That’s good.”

  “It is?”

  “I’ve seen four world wars come and go. I was given a college deferment in the first, was too old for the next one and legally dead for the last two. Not that I wanted to fight in any of them. I’m just curious. So when you were killing and trying not to get killed in the name of your country, did you think often of death?”

  Sometimes. All the time, I thought. “Not a whole lot of time for that,” I said.

  “‘Learned men do not grieve for the Dead or the Living.’” He was quoting something, I could tell, but I had no idea what.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Those words are from your book, are they not?”

  “I don’t read a lot of word-fic. It puts me to sleep after five minutes.”

  “‘Never have we not existed, and never in the future shall we cease to exist.’ It’s from the Gita.”

  Great. One of those. “That one knocks me out before I get it loaded.” I wanted to get off the topic.
r />   “I’ve always found myself drawn to the Indian traditions. The food, the music, the art…”

  If you called me up here to quench your Tandoori Fever, you’ve got the wrong girl, you old bastard, I thought. “Really? That’s fascinating.” I said.

  Don’t. Fuck. This. Up.

  “The religion is of course nothing more than a toxic mythology, but aren’t they all? I don't believe in fairy tales, either.”

  Kennedy began to stand for the first time since I had been there. I stood and offered my hand, and he took it. He arched his back, and I heard the bones cracking, but once he was upright, he had remarkably good posture for someone born in the twentieth century. When he walked, he took deliberate but steady steps. He approached the wall of portraits and looked at them while not looking at any of them.

  “When I was forty-one, as a consequence for having my father’s weak genes, my heart exploded while I was speaking on the floor of the Senate. At least that was what it felt like. All this time and I still remember. Cardiac arrest, but that seems like such a clinical term for being ripped apart from the inside by a spiteful and parlous fiend. It hurt like a motherfucker.”

  He paced back and forth in front of the photographs, pretending to study their faces as he spoke. I felt my attention wavering between his story and my throbbing little finger.

  “When I woke up, the docs told me I had been dead for eight minutes. Even in my medicated haze, I realized the magnitude of that fact. Do you know what happened in those eight minutes?”

  How much more of this will I have to sit through before he gets to the job?

  “Nothing. I did not see the Heaven the nuns told me about in school. I was not reborn into the cycle of samsara, nor did I find the release of nirvana. There were no virgins waiting for me. I did not commune with my lost loved ones. I was, for those four-hundred eighty seconds, nullified.”

  I had abandoned the beliefs of my parents, of my people, any beliefs, when I was a teenager, but hearing it stated so concretely chilled me.

  “I decided then that I would never allow myself to die.”