by Jim Nelson
I suppose I'd made a face at his melodramatics. "I know what I'm doing."
"You like your hypernovels, don't you, Naroy? To lose yourself in someone else's life for hours on end? And when you come back to this crummy reality, you pour yourself a tall glass of the blue syrup to erase that too."
His hands moved like white lightning around the table. His mother-of-pearl cufflinks and pinky rings glittered the color of the electronics' readouts. He was a man who'd done this so many times, he could do it blindfolded, like a foxhole soldier breaking down and reassembling his rifle at night while bombs detonated and rockets whistled overhead.
“When’s the last time you mainlined?” he said.
“Over a month ago,” I said.
“Why? Professional reasons?”
“Of course.”
He paused in his preparations, hands on the equipment. He stared at me through the dim smoky air.
“A week ago.” I stared down at the rounded top of my shoes. Rain had long ago ruined the shine. A dunk in the ocean water had ruined them altogether. “A mainline from Prague.”
"If you keep doing that Eastern European stuff, Naroy, you’ll forget who you are. You do it enough, you start to think you’re another person.”
Which was kind of the point.
"There's a fine line between mainlining and hypernovels," he said under his breath.
Gillette returned to his work. Connectors required adapters, adapters required power, which meant finding free outlets in the power strips running in loops beneath the table like model railroad tracks. With each passing minute came an increased chance Talley Whitcomb and her men had seized Gannon’s retention server.
“Your memex,” he commanded, palm out. He shook his head when I offered Gannon’s. “Your memex,” he repeated.
I pried out my memex and dropped it in his palm. He turned it over in his soft pudgy fingers with the dispassion of a Sixth Street pawnbroker pricing an engagement ring. He attached a transducer to my memex, a miniature corkscrew antenna spiraling up from the flesh cap. He ordered me to take a seat across from the great blue egg. He walked around me and reinserted the jury-rigged memex in my neck.
“Remain still,” he said.
The weight of the transducer was palpable, like attaching a fishing weight to the top of my spine.
Other than the repurposed Nexternet routers and stock cabling, all of Gillette’s equipment was homebrew. He hand-soldered and hand-machined his equipment in a workshop behind his house. The most disturbing piece of equipment was the memex amplifier he’d built, a box painted flat black with a red velvet receptacle on one side. The velvet receptacle was soft and plush and puckered like a great aunt's lipstick-heavy mouth prepared to kiss.
With power applied to the amplifier, he drew Gannon’s memex near the velvet receptacle. The memex’s tendrils excited. They straightened and twisted to a point, quivering with anticipation as Gillette brought them to the mouth of the velvet sphincter. With gentle pressure, he inserted the memex. The blue egg suspended in the cage jumped and rattled in its perch.
What biotech Gillette had magically assembled inside that box, I could not tell you. If it’s unholy to insert biotechnology into our spines—computers coordinating with our minds—then the pagan contents of that box were profane.
Gillette placed a soft hand on my shoulder. “Give me an identity word.”
Mainlining is like volunteering to undergo a rabbithole. Part of Gillette’s preparations were to remove specific safeties in the memex’s biorouting technology, the same safeties added after Cassandra Chancellor was blinded and put into a coma. With mainlining, it’s easy to clamp up and lose yourself in someone else’s life. You come to believe you are that person. Your mind refuses to leave, just as you cannot leave your body right now just by wishing it. Gillette wanted a code word that would free me of the mainline in case my mind seized upon Gannon’s. It had to be a word unrelated to the subject’s life. If I said “Cassandra,” for example, I’d be freed almost as soon as I entered Gannon’s mind—he struck me as the kind of man who thought constantly of his mother. The identity word needed to be personal, a word to snap me from mainline's hypnosis by reminding me I’m C.F. Naroy and not Gannon Chancellor.
“Detachment,” I told him. In my mind, I heard Cline directing me to lie atop Melody. I detected Melody’s faintly disgusted expression as I lowered my corpulent body across hers. I smelled her rainwater shampoo and the scent she'd stroked across each side of her neck before the audition. Her décolletage smelled of bubble bath. Her outstretched hands seemed to accept me and push me away.
"Are you okay?"
"Memories are hot," I managed to say.
"It's the hookup," he said. "It's going to stir up things you haven't thought of in twenty-five years."
Gillette cupped his hand over a chrome-plated box. His thumb rested against a physical switch, chrome-plated and heavy.
“Say the identity word and you’re in,” he said. “Say the identity word again and you’re out.” He added, “Or tell me now to call this fool idea off. We have other options.”
In my memories, Cline at The Pied Piper told me, “It’s a film called Detachment.” In my memories, Dr. Clift in the Alcatraz research room said, “The video is titled Detachment.” In my memories, Leigh Blessing at the blue lounge said to me, “It was a viral video called Detachment.”
I said, “Detachment.”
Across the dark room, Gillette’s thumb strained. There came a sharp and decisive click of the physical switch reaching home. The dead man’s memex jumped to life and resumed biorouting. Neurotransmissions seeped through the optical lines like hot mercury across a mirror. The gel in the blue egg warmed and glowed. I was C.F. Naroy. I was Gannon Chancellor. I was C.F. Naroy and I was Gannon Chancellor, and we were many.
26.
Faye Justin approached and whispered she needed to speak to me. It was before seven and the regular staff had not arrived. Nevertheless, we spoke in the corner using quiet voices. She informed me of Michael Aggaroy’s death. We were in the communications office, our Nexternet nerve center to the other campaign centers across the state. This was the room we deployed strategic messaging across the Nexternet itself. Advertisements and platform statements went across the wire by the minute. We coordinated communication with the press here as well. Under my supervision, we’d broken down voters by age, gender, race, income, and geographic location, and cross-categorized them by interests, buying habits, followers, friends, and reputation. Our Nexternet campaign had broken much ground. I’d organized the first pure-Nexternet campaign events in a national Senate run and commissioned four hypernovels allowing our followers to experience first-hand a bold, fresh California as it would become under Samuel Justin’s leadership.
Detachment—
*
My scalp was damp with sweat. I focused on my breathing.
Gillette stood before me, hands on his tooled leather belt and his face bobbing up to mine. “How you holding up?” The sudden transition had left me fish-eyed.
I checked my memex chronometer. I’d only been under for forty-five seconds.
“What the hell was that?” I said.
“You got a bad one, huh? Abuse? Neglect?”
“It’s like this guy is selling himself to himself.” Gillette pushed a carton of cold water in my hands. I drank greedily. “He’s fluffing himself. He’s constantly reminding himself of his achievements. It’s too much.”
“We should do a direct replay," he said. "Then we see only what he sees and only hear what he hears. No inner voice. No monologue."
“I’ve got to go back in,” I told him.
Gillette made a sour-lemon face. “All you have to do is say the identity word.”
“Detachment—”
*
“Are you telling me you didn’t see the police on New Montgomery Street?” Faye asked.
“I entered through the garage.” I drove up Second Street coming in and did n
ot notice any police activity.
“When was the last time you spoke to Michael Aggaroy?” We stood in the corner of the communications room continuing to use our quiet voices.
“Yesterday afternoon. He explained that, as part of his investigation, he needed to speak with a peer of his. A network security consultant named Leroy or La Roy.”
“We’re bringing another person in?” Faye said sharply.
“Aggaroy has assured me he can ask his friend the right questions without revealing the nature of his work,” I said. “I’ve checked this Leroy’s background. He seems legitimate.”
“The police are on New Montgomery right now,” Faye whispered. “I’ve been told they discovered Aggaroy’s body in the alley. I do not want this incident to be misconstrued by the press. Whatever happened to Aggaroy had nothing to do with us. Correct?”
“Tell Sam to stay away from the hotel today,” I said. I meant Samuel Justin himself, of course. We often spoke of each other using first names. Mother taught me the importance of establishing a rapport with new associates. When I met him, we immediately felt at ease with each other and quickly agreed to forgo formalities. “No need for him to be photographed near a crime scene. I think you should try to slip out as well.”
“I’ll be remaining here,” she said tartly. Faye was the head of her husband’s campaign, so it was undeniably within her purview to make that decision. “I need you downstairs dealing with this now. And, Gannon—do not let the police up here. By no means are they to get past the hotel lobby.”
“They won’t get past the taxi stand,” I told her. "They won't get past the front walkway."
Downstairs, I crossed the lobby from the elevators to the main entrance. Ms. Darren joined me. She’s our contact person with the morning shift. We walked in lockstep to the New Montgomery entrance. It was nearing eight o’clock and the lobby was crowded with the morning bustle to be expected for a hotel like the Palace.
“I’ve spoken with a police detective leading the investigation.” Ms. Darren told me. We spoke discreetly as we walked. “Her name is Talley Whitcomb.” Mentally, she transferred the police detective’s Nexternet ID to my memex. “She tells me the body on Stevenson Street has not been positively identified, but they have full reason to believe it is a gentleman named Michael Aggaroy.” She enunciated Aggaroy like it was a foreign word. “I double-checked and a man with that name has been cleared by you for access to the penthouse floors—”
“Did you tell the police this?”
“They asked if he was rooming here, not if he was allowed inside. I said no.”
“That’s fine, thank you. Continue to work with the police as a representative of the Palace. If they make any further inquiries to you about Mr. Aggaroy, please direct them to me.” I stopped walking and faced Darren. “Not to Faye Justin, and especially not to Samuel Justin. All inquiries come to me.”
She nodded, looking up into my eyes. She placed a gentle hand with manicured nails on my sleeve. “I understand,” she said softly, unblinking.
Due to the urgency of the situation, I’d left my suit jacket upstairs in the comm room. The morning rain was chilly and it felt slightly muggy outside. The doorman that morning was a man named Laurence. I asked if he could loan me an umbrella and he complied.
New Montgomery was blocked off at both ends with uniformed police redirecting traffic. Directly across from the Palace’s entrance were police cars and emergency vehicles parked askew across the mouth of Stevenson Street. Under the protection of the house umbrella, I crossed New Montgomery midblock, now devoid of through traffic. A uniformed officer stopped me from entering Stevenson Alley. He softened when I explained I worked for Mayor Justin. Within minutes, I was speaking with Detective Talley Whitcomb.
Ms. Whitcomb was a young woman with an active figure and a hard but put-together face. She immediately struck me as professional, a woman I could work with. She reminded me of my mother, if not as ambitious.
“You work for the mayor?” she asked me. "Or the mayor's campaign?"
“I’m here to inform you Mr. Aggaroy worked directly for me,” I said. “He was a network security consultant. I hope you appreciate my offering this information to you.”
“And your position with the campaign?”
“I’m the Director of Nexternet Communications and Advocacy,” I said. I’d negotiated vigorously with Sam for the title, which I felt best indicated my role within the organization.
“You say Aggaroy worked for you?” she asked. “Was his role with the campaign?”
“I mean it literally,” I said. “I employed Michael. He had nothing to do with the campaign.”
I smiled. She did not smile in return. I began to wonder if Whitcomb was a woman I could work with after all.
“We have a great number of people across the state working for the campaign,” I said. “Most of our workers are volunteers. Samuel Justin’s campaign is a grassroots organization.” Before she could interrupt, I spoke over her. “Those on our payrolls have fluid skills and can be shifted from responsibility to responsibility depending on their talent set.” I sighed to convey a sense of helplessness. “There are certain duties in this organization that are, well, sensitive. I consulted with Mr. Aggaroy regarding our computer network security, which I’m certain you understand is vital in this day and age. However, it was personal consultation and not done in an official capacity for the campaign.”
“Who wrote the checks to him?” she said without hesitation.
“I did,” I said. “Out of my own pocket. Please—” I held up one hand. “The arrangement is entirely consistent with campaign expenditure law. But I must insist you understand: He worked for me.”
Det. Whitcomb made notes in longhand on the screen of her personal tablet. “How long did Aggaroy work for you?”
“Three months. I’m shocked to hear of his death. Can you provide me with details?”
“The M.E. will give us a better picture. It looks like he was attacked by one or more individuals last night after midnight.”
“That’s devastating. Unfortunately, I’m not in contact with his family. When you reach them, please offer them my condolences.”
"You can speak to them yourself," she said.
Something about my mien was cryptic to her. I can't imagine what. I'd been perfectly forthright with her.
I washed my hand through the air. “After midnight, this area becomes a bit seedy, what with the bars and nightlife. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was mugged.”
“Did he mention anything untoward to you?” she said. “Threats being made on his life, threats being made on your life, or the life of—”
“Absolutely not. I’m certain beyond a moral doubt this attack has nothing to do with the campaign.”
She peered up behind me. Without looking back, I knew she was staring at the top floor of the Palace where the campaign is headquartered.
“What was he doing here so late last night?” she asked me. “Working late?”
“I don’t mean to sound prying, but Michael Aggaroy was a heavy drinker. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d spent his last hours at a bar.”
“The hotel bar?” She considered it for a moment. “Were you expecting him this morning?”
“We had no meetings planned,” I said. “As I've explained, his work for me was on-and-off.”
“Did he have any appointments or meetings arranged with anyone else you knew of?”
“I’m not certain why you’re asking,” I said. "As I said, he worked for me, not the campaign."
“We believe he was meeting another security consultant here later this morning."
“Of course,” I said, brightening as though it slipped my memory. “Yes, one of his associates was meeting him here.”
“Do you know his or her name?”
“I do not.”
“Meeting for any particular reason?”
“I’m not certain I follow.”
She exhaled a sharp bre
ath. She spoke to me like I was dense. I found it patronizing.
“Did the meeting have anything to do with the campaign?” She motioned at the body on the ground behind her. “We located Michael Aggaroy’s scheduler on him. He had a breakfast meeting scheduled in it. There were some cryptic notes in it about the Internet and erasure. I’m trying to connect it—”
“Yes, I know what that refers to,” I said. “We asked—I asked Mr. Aggaroy a technical question which he admitted he couldn’t answer. He requested he consult with another network security consultant for more information.”
“Do you know this consultant’s name?”
I nodded, as though jogging my memory. “I believe his name was Leroy.”
“Naroy,” she corrected me. It's annoying she would know his name and pretend she did not. “Did anyone else in the campaign know of Naroy being consulted on this question?”
“As I mentioned, I was the only person to speak with Mr. Aggaroy on the subject. The matter was sensitive in nature.” I shifted my weight to lean in closer to her. "I don't see how any of this relates to Mr. Aggaroy's death. I would think you'd be more interested in who was here last night when he was killed."
"Let me worry about that."
"You could share your reasons."
"I could," Det. Whitcomb said.
She stood there staring at me. It was intended to make me uncomfortable, some notion of police psychology, I suppose. To break the stalemate, I continued. Lead with your best foot, Mother always told me. Lead toward your advantage.
“If you're asking about Aggaroy's associates, I'll let you know, we’ve had our suspicions about Mr. Aggaroy since the beginning.”
“You don’t say,” she said dryly. Det. Whitcomb enjoyed being sarcastic, a low form of humor. It occurred to me that the police might not take a high view of private security consultants, computer or otherwise.