In My Memory Locked

by Jim Nelson

  “How much shorter?”

  “He was pretty short.” The receptionist was beginning to cool off. “He was really short. And he looked, I don’t know, his face, it was kind of…” He peered straight at me. “He kind of looked like a doll. Not a fake one, but a real nice one. Like my grandmother owns.”

  “You mean he had fine features? Small, slight features?”

  “Yeah, that’s a way you might put it,” the young man said.

  “And the other?”

  “I don’t know.” I was tired of him saying that. “He looked average, I guess.”

  “You have a memex,” I said. “Were you recording?”

  He shook his head. “I only use my memex for, you know, livestreaming.”

  Living other people’s experiences. High-quality streams cost real money, but there’s a near-infinite number of poor-quality streams for free on the Nexternet.

  "Certainly you have closed-circuit cameras installed," I said.

  "You would have to talk to the management," he said, pale and wide-eyed.

  I thought it through. "I'll get back to you about that," I told him.

  I retreated to my office. I was sick with myself. For any man to lose the privacy of his most personal and embarrassing thoughts is hell enough. When that man is in the computer security trade, it’s deathly.

  Down in the trap room, I spent an hour reconstructing the breach. Every memex is keyed with a neural-cryptographic key, a quantum digital signature generated by the joining of memex to biological matter. This key is the only way for these delivery men to get past the server security and access the data stored inside. Someone with considerable technical expertise had to have physical access to my memex for an hour or two to strip out the key prefix. That and a sophisticated neural generator could have cracked the server in forty-five minutes.

  I didn’t have time to linger. I had to keep moving. Appointments awaited. Work was to be done. I climbed up the ladder and closed the trapdoor. I couldn’t secure it until I bought a replacement for the lock they’d melted in half. I pulled the rug over the trapdoor and smoothed it down. I messaged the receptionist I wasn’t taking visitors. Inside my little bunker, I lay down across the old green couch I keep against the office wall. Talk about a false sense of security. All my personal security had been forfeited that January morning: my brain, my office, my memories, my very identity.

  Half an hour later, I abruptly came to from a well-deserved nap. A knocking sounded on my lobby door, quick raps and a voice calling out for me.

  “Mr. Naroy?” It was the receptionist’s voice, sheepish but insistent. “Are you in there?”

  The young man stood outside my door. The folding auditorium seats were lined up behind him like crosses in a military cemetery. He no longer had the protection of the box office glass and its squawk box.

  "I have some bad news," he said. "The cameras weren't recording when the delivery men arrived."

  "They were turned off?"

  "No, they're operating fine now and they were running before," he said. "For some reason, though, they stopped recording right before the delivery van arrived."

  I bet they did. "You better tell your bosses they were hacked," I said. Most closed-circuit software isn't as secure as it should be.

  “Also, there was a call for you,” he said. “They tried contacting you over the Nexternet, but apparently, you’re not connected?”

  My memex remained in my pocket cooling off. After the rabbithole attack, it was even possible it had been damaged. I’d not checked yet.

  “Who was it?” I asked him, still bleary from my nap.

  “You have two messages, actually,” he said. “The first was from the Chancellor Foundation?” He touched the back of his neck, an unconscious reaction most people make when accessing their memex. “The personal assistant of a Ms. Cassandra Chancellor called to remind you of your three o’clock appointment.” He recited a street address the assistant had left.

  The address was atop Nob Hill. Out of habit, I tapped on the screen of my personal tablet to access my Wiki and cross-check. After a moment, I realized I was being a fool.

  “Tell me about the other call,” I told him.

  “It wasn’t exactly a call,” he said. “It was a telegram. Delivered by drone?” He pushed a folded slip of paper toward me.

  "Telegram?" Unfolding it, I said, “Who’s it from?”

  “No sender specified,” he said. “The drone flew in about ten minutes ago. It came right to your door and knocked, but I guess you were…?”

  “I was catching some shut-eye,” I told him.

  “So when you didn’t answer, the drone came to the box office and had me sign for it.”

  “Thanks,” I said and closed the door on him. He was pale as all hell. He still worried for his job.

  This was printed across the slip of paper:

  LOOK INTO DR. DARYL LUND ABOUT MISSING DATA. A FRIEND.

  What the hell kind of sick joke was this. Who the hell would send this to me, and why the hell did I get this an hour after almost dying a slow cranial death in the office of Dr. Daryl Lund. Ellis Lotte didn’t send it. If he was working with someone, they had no reason to send it. Sick, twisted joke.

  One perk of the theater co-op were showers in the basement. They were in the old actors' changing rooms. In the bottom drawer of my desk, I kept a spare cornflower shirt still in its brown wrapping paper and a shaving kit. I treated myself to a long, hot shower. I hung the shirt on the peg beside the shower and let the steam soften its creases.

  The hot shower melted down all my hard edges and washed away the jetlag grime of being trapped in a rabbithole for a virtual eternity. Standing before the mirror, I reassembled myself. This early in the day, I had no need to shave again. I splashed on a handful of aftershave for the bracing effect. I brushed my teeth vigorously. I managed to gargle mouthwash without vomiting. The shirt’s starchy crispness imparted me with some of its sturdiness, a cotton exoskeleton holding up my weary frame. I squared the tie knot beneath my Adam’s apple and ran a comb through what remained of my thin, peppery hair. I had just enough time to make it up Nob Hill.

  Someone was swinging for blood. It was time I started swinging back. First I needed some goddamn answers.

  19.

  Cassandra Chancellor’s property on Leavenworth Street was fronted by a sheer lemon stucco wall twenty feet high. The wall was topped with spiked wrought iron, apparently installed to prevent Alpine mountaineers from scaling up and over. The narrow Edwardian house rising behind the wall was dappled with lemon-frosting paint the same as the wall. I counted five ornate stories to the towering house, each story with its own subplots and character development. A wrought-iron gate on the north end of the wall allowed cars access to the Victorian carriage house at rear of the property line. Mounted beside the gate was a video system with old-fashioned telephone-style punch keys and a fat red TALK button.

  The house and wall were notably free of the creeping foliage carpeting the rest of San Francisco. With chemical sprays now illegal, the effect could only be achieved by intense and constant manual labor. San Francisco is always going about things backwards. In New England, ivy covering the property is a sign of old money. Here, keeping the ivy away is the ostentatious display of wealth.

  I took a quick walk around the block. The afternoon rain had broken some time earlier though the skies remained darkly overcast, a mute threat of a repeat performance. As I ascended Sacramento Street, Grace Cathedral’s spire appeared at the crest of the hill like a cactus flower reaching for the clouds. Turning left, I continued north on Jones Street. Half a block in, I stood before Leigh Blessing’s former apartment.

  I called up a street map with my memex. It appeared in my mind’s eye, a translucent grid hovering in the air before me. With some quick thoughts, I rotated it on a pivot point and zoomed in on my current location. Not only did Cassandra Chancellor live on the same block as Leigh Blessing’s previous apartment, her estate backe
d up to Leigh's building.

  Returning to the Chancellor property, I depressed the red TALK button and announced myself. After a moment, a woman’s voice on the other end told me to join her on the second story. A braaat sounded and the gate glided open.

  A spiraling set of wrought-iron stairs led from a walkway of crushed gravel to a second-story entrance. The door was open before I reached the top step. A young woman in a stern charcoal business suit waited for me. She wore a modest amount of cosmetics. Her hair was pinned back to an unassuming ponytail. She struck me as all-business, and she proved it with the no-nonsense way she ushered me in. Not even my purpled-up face gave her pause.

  “I’m Dana, Ms. Chancellor’s assistant.” She led me inside. “Coffee? Tea?” she asked as we crossed the parlor room. Apparently, I had to order and drink on the go. Her pace across the floor was relentless.

  “Ms. Chancellor has you scheduled for ninety minutes,” Dana informed me over her shoulder. “She’s asked if you would care for a light lunch served while you meet.”

  The rabbithole had left me with two sickening sensations: the hangover effect of a swelling brain and an impending sense of vomiting. The hot shower had subsided the latter. I told Dana a sandwich would do the trick. She offered me my choice of lunchmeats and cheese. I asked for a ham and turkey with Swiss.

  Like many properties in this part of the city, Chancellor’s was narrow and deep. A yardstick of a hallway ran down the south side of the building with various rooms hanging from it like apples on a branch. The hallway passed through an open kitchen of stainless steel appliances and multiple gas burners. A chef in a white jacket and hound’s-tooth slacks chopped vegetables on the cutting-board countertop. Dana issued my sandwich order to him in six terse words. He nodded deeply, set aside the knife, wiped his hands dry, and reached for a woven basket of fresh bread of assorted shapes.

  Down the hallway we continued, a seemingly endless tightrope. Windows looked out on the modest side garden below. Finally, we reached the back of the house. The rear fire escape of Leigh’s apartment building was visible through the porch windows. Dana turned abruptly and led me into a bedroom, the likes of which I’d never seen before.

  The bedroom’s wallpaper was black satin embossed with blood-red imagery and gold leaf accents. The wallpaper depicted scenes of ancient nude Cretan men jumping bulls and sprinting footraces. The enormous bed could have slept a phalanx of Olympians. It was covered in red velvet blankets with too many pillows to count across the headboard. Unfinished plaster busts of Venus and Adonis on stands flanked each side. Against the far wall, a vanity like a Hollywood make-up artist’s offered a variety of mirrors and lights mounted at all angles. Bottles of nail lacquer and lotions and creams and a porcelain bowl of pancake covered the vanity's top surface. The room smelled thickly of animal musk and Eve’s sin. I’d forgotten to uncover when I entered the house. I removed my hat now.

  Dana approached an ornate door painted black. A gold doorknob like a cantaloupe was set in the center. At her touch, it eased open. Steam billowed out.

  “Mr. Naroy is here,” Dana announced into the fog. She motioned I was to enter. “Ms. Chancellor will see you.” A tiled dripping room waited beyond.

  “I didn’t bring a bathing suit,” I joked.

  “It’s unnecessary,” Dana said without cracking a smile.

  Unsure of what I was getting myself into, I slipped past her and into the steamy room, hat in hand.

  A frothy hourglass-shaped bath of jetting water was set in the center of the floor. Steam roiled up from the water’s busy surface. Sky-blue tiles with gold flakes covered every surface of the room. On the ceiling, an astrologer’s array of stars and crescent moons were painted into the tiles with what appeared to be silver flake. The muskiness of the bedroom was doubly strong here, like the backroom of a florist’s shop at the end of Valentine’s Day.

  A statuesque woman reclined at the far end of the bath. The frothy bubbles of the busy water fought across her bare bust like worker bees clamoring for the queen’s attention. Her deep brown hair was pinned up, exposing a Romanesque neck and shoulders. She fanned the top of the water with one arm while holding a crystal champagne flute in the other.

  “Mr. Naroy?” Her eyes did not quite make contact with mine. “I’m Cassandra Chancellor. Do you know who I am?"

  "I do," I said, coming close. "You led the team that developed the neurotransmission protocol stack. You also wrote the earliest memex operating system."

  "I prefer to be known for my Foundation." She motioned me into the water. "We have matters to discuss.”

  My brogues clicked wetly on the damp tiles. “If I’d known to bring a pair of swimming trunks, I would have.”

  “If I wanted you to bring them,” she said, “I would have told you to.”

  I dragged an aluminum pool chair from the side of the room to the edge of the bath. Its feet scraped harshly against the tiles.

  “I prefer you to get in,” she said to me. “This is how I do business.”

  “Business? Is that what I’m here for? I was told something about a dress rehearsal.”

  “Yes, a dress rehearsal,” she said with a coy smile. “Get in the water so we can talk.”

  Just as I was about to protest, she stood and crossed the pool to a serving platter on the far edge. It was for serving fowl. At this moment, it served an uncorked magnum of champagne, a more modest bottle of monk’s brandy, and an apothecary dropper bottle of bitters. The loose mushroom-shaped cork bobbed helplessly in the frothy water like a dinghy set adrift.

  Standing over the makeshift wet bar, she refilled her glass. Froth slipping down her back and legs, she was not wearing a stitch.

  “Would you care for a Napoleon?” she called to me.

  “I’m not in the mood for ice cream.”

  She glared over her shoulder at me. “It’s a cocktail.”

  From the view, I estimated she was in her sixties, ten years or so older than me. She had a dancer’s body. She’d taken far better care of the chassis than I had managed.

  “No thanks,” I said. “I’d rather we got down to business.”

  “Join me in the water.” She returned to the far end of the hourglass bath and submerged herself to her neck. “Otherwise, I have nothing to say to you.”

  It was San Francisco. Trust me. I’d seen weirder.

  “I’m not here for a dip,” I said. “What you call a dress rehearsal has become a matter of life and death for me.”

  “This is a rehearsal of sorts,” she said. “Which means you’re being vetted. If you want your questions answered, you need to get in the water. You should also know, I can introduce you to people who can answer any question I cannot. But I won't do so until you've been vetted.”

  “I’m not letting you set terms so long as I have people setting loose rabbitholes at me and hijacking my memories.”

  “I don’t know a thing about any rabbitholes. But I do have some answers for you.”

  There was an earlier time in my life when I would have yielded to this sort of temptation, and that time was before the filming of Detachment. Cline had dangled before me the lure of rolling around on a couch with a swimsuit model and my twenty-seven-year-old self had eagerly taken the bait. Not this time.

  I kicked off my brogues and peeled off my socks. With the steam, I'd already stripped off my jacket and loosened my tie. Trouser legs rolled up to my knees, I sat on the edge of the frothing pool with my shins in the warm soapy water.

  "This is all you get," I said.

  She harrumphed.

  “I’ll take that Napoleon after all,” I added.

  She stood and crossed the bath as unashamed as Eve first meeting Adam. The brandy made the champagne cloying. It softened the swelling in my itchy little brain. Before I knew it, she was crouching before me in the shallow water. She hovered between my spread legs. She was close enough for our breath to mingle.

  “Now tell me about Mr. C.F. Naroy,” she whispered.
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  Her eyes were chips of pale glass set atop white pearls. Her pupils never locked on mine, wandering instead like lazy goldfish. Cassandra Chancellor was quite blind.

  “What do you want to know?” I said.

  She set her champagne cocktail on the edge of the pool. My first instinct was to help her find a level spot. She managed without my assistance.

  Without warning, her hands covered my face. Her fingers spidered over every contour. Instinctively, I snapped my head away from her.

  “I thought the blind reading faces was a myth,” I said. “One of those Hollywood things.”

  “I’m not ‘reading your face,’” she said. “Not the way you think."

  She put her hands on my neck and shoulder. I lifted my leg to get up. She pushed down on my knee and pulled me in toward her with the forcefulness of a veterinarian.

  "Hold still," she commanded. Her hands continued across my face. "You’ve had plastic surgery. And not by a capable surgeon, I can tell.”

  I pulled her hands from my face. "Like hell you can."

  “I lived in Los Angeles most of my adult life,” she said. “I know the difference between good plastic surgery and the budget variety.”

  I believed her, and she was right. My plastic surgery was a cheap rush order.

  “This was more than a nose job,” she said. “Your cheekbones have been shaved down. Your chin’s been done.” She clamped her hands around the sides of my skull. “Your ears have been pinned back. But no lifts and no anti-aging. No work to roll back the odometer. You weren’t trying to improve your lot in life. You wanted to change who you were. You wanted a new identity.”

  Her hands returned to my nose and cheeks. “But the work was quick and sub-par. The scarring and relapses have left you with a pruned face. You must look like you’ve been soaking in brandy for fifty years.”

  I pulled her hands down again. “Not all honesty is appreciated.”

  Her hands surrounded my purple cheek and eye socket. “Have you been punched?”

  “Someone clocked me last night,” I said.