Connect

by Julian Gough

  ‘Ugh,’ says Colt, who has never liked baseball caps. That little clip to adjust them, at the back. He’d spend ten, twenty minutes adjusting. Too tight, too loose, too hard to get them just right. But . . . yes, baseball caps would help, they’d be doing a job. Hide their faces. Colt glances around. Lots of people wearing them. They’d blend in. ‘OK.’

  They buy two from a concession stand.

  Naomi’s says I ♥ Vegas.

  Colt’s says Kiss Me. It only takes him two minutes to adjust it. A new record.

  They head for the foyer.

  ‘I’ll go first,’ says Naomi. ‘You can follow in a minute. Meet you on the corner, in three blocks, that way.’

  Naomi walks out, reaches the pedestrian lights at the corner of the first block.

  The crowd around her stops moving for a moment. The cars come to a halt at the lights. In the sudden silence, Naomi hears a droning noise, changing pitch. Louder.

  She looks up.

  I looked up. Oh Colt, I’m so sorry.

  The pale blue, almost invisible shapes drift closer.

  Lower.

  Faster.

  Past her. Towards Colt.

  The lights change.

  She races back, towards him, but Colt is already running, crossing the road, cutting through the swerving traffic. Jay-running.

  She crosses the road too, squeezing through the tight gaps between automatic vehicles. She’s lost sight of Colt . . .

  He catches up with her on the other side, and grabs her arm. She spins, almost hits him in the face, before she recognizes him.

  ‘Oh Colt! I looked up!’

  ‘It’s not that,’ says Colt. ‘Run . . .’

  They cut through the crowd, run across an elegant bridge, up moving stairs, and stumble into the enormous space of the Venetian. They walk as fast as they can without attracting security.

  Past a wedding fair, just inside the entrance. Dresses, tuxedos, and half a dozen smiling mechanical brides and grooms, arranged in three loving couples, male/female, male/male, female/female.

  As Colt passes, he glances at a bride about to throw a bouquet – looks at her pale flexible lightly animated face, perpetually caught in a little loop of joy – and thinks, for some reason, of Sasha.

  He shakes her out of his head.

  Naomi looks around. She’s only been here once before. Seems like they’ve upgraded the interior . . . There were always canals at ground level, but now a second canal system, suspended on delicate, ornate pillars, sweeps high across the space. A gondola moves past, above them, the mechanical gondolier singing.

  They stop, and lean against a thin pre-stressed concrete pillar painted to look like marble. Naomi is trembling.

  ‘That’s crazy,’ she says. ‘They can track us from fifteen thousand feet. Twenty-five thousand. They can kill us from twenty-five thousand feet, can’t they?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Colt.

  ‘So why did—’

  ‘They weren’t tracking us visually,’ says Colt. ‘Not at first. I think we had fooled them. But we must have been tagged some other way. Some bug, low powered, where they need to get close to pick up the signal. Picked us up going out the door, lost us again. They couldn’t actually identify us. They were just trying to triangulate it, to re-establish visual identification.’

  Colt runs through all the possibilities. Where could they have been tagged? Naomi is thinking the same, echoes his thoughts, ‘But how, where . . .’

  ‘In the base. We must have been tagged with one of those old military Bluetooth bugs, to keep track of us . . . They have sensors at each doorway, so they always know who is where in the building . . . but why didn’t Dad put our IDs on a stop list? He could have used the bug to stop us escaping . . .’

  ‘But they didn’t follow me,’ says Naomi.

  ‘Exactly. It must be on my clothes. Or . . .’ Colt pauses. Tries to think his way through all the possible options.

  ‘You were carrying my clothes,’ says Naomi.

  ‘Oh beans. Yeah.’

  ‘You can swear if you want,’ says Naomi, and gives a jerky laugh. ‘Special circumstances.’

  Colt shrugs. ‘I just don’t like swearing. Don’t really want to transform that.’

  They find a quiet aisle, and tip their old clothes on the floor. Examine them, inch by inch.

  ‘Here.’

  She lifts up the fine angora wool top. Parts the fibres gently.

  Colt leans forward, to see.

  Like a black tick, deep in the wool.

  ‘He slapped me on the back, hard,’ she says. ‘It must have been then . . . Did he try the same thing with you?’

  Colt shuts his eyes, thinks back. ‘No.’

  They go over every item of clothing again. Nothing else.

  So. That was it.

  Naomi looks around the immense, oblivious space of the Venetian. ‘Why is nobody trying to capture us? The drones could alert the police. FBI. Whoever. NDSA, I mean it’s an NDSA program. They could catch us in a few minutes.’

  ‘I don’t think the system is set up to capture us,’ says Colt. ‘To capture anybody. I don’t think it’s coordinated with the police, or the FBI, or anybody at all. Not at the human level.’ Colt sways on his feet. His new brain is eating energy faster than he can supply it.

  ‘But it’s taken over some of their equipment . . . hasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, there’s clearly a set of protocols allowing that. But there isn’t full integration. Dad launched it early . . . I don’t think what’s chasing us officially exists.’

  Naomi is worrying her way through all the implications. But Colt has already finished doing that. He begins to tap his thighs lightly. Grind his teeth.

  ‘If Ryan had a bug tracking us in the base . . .’ says Naomi, ‘why didn’t they just capture us there? He could have told them . . .’

  ‘I think he let us go, Mama.’ Colt hesitates. ‘I don’t think he wants you arrested. I think he wants you dead.’

  He’ll have to go back online. He needs more data, and the drones already know he’s here. They could block him, but he’s pretty sure they won’t.

  OK, go.

  He’s searching while he’s talking to her.

  And he’s on.

  Yeah, they’re not blocking him, but that’s not a good sign. They’re monitoring him instead, his searches, what he’s looking for. Clues to where he’ll go next, what he’ll do.

  He tries encrypting, decrypting, camouflaging himself, running dummy searches . . .

  ‘OK,’ says Colt. ‘I have a plan.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We need it to think it has won.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We need it to kill us.’

  ‘And how can we do that?’

  Colt tells her.

  Naomi doesn’t like it. But she doesn’t have a better plan.

  105

  They head back to the wedding fair in the foyer. As they walk, Colt wonders should he flip up his visor, or take off his helmet to look more normal . . . But so many tourists are wearing shades, anti-virus masks, respirators, full-face privacy masks, head cams, or gaming gear of some kind that there seems no point. Hell, a lot of them are in his gameworld, right now. He blends in fine.

  In the foyer, the white silk dresses glow in the UV light. Like ghosts, thinks Colt.

  The big man in charge puts down his Coke, steps out from behind his stand, greets them.

  Colt keeps quiet, as Naomi jokes and laughs with the big man.

  Every time the big man laughs, his ultra-white teeth fluoresce in the UV light of the display.

  False teeth, thinks Colt. All of them.

  Behind the big man a male couple, holding hands, wander up to the two male mannequins, locked in a loving embrace. The mannequins, triggered by human proximity, turn their faces towards the couple, and smile, and their teeth fluoresce too.

  ‘So, how much if you threw in the mannequins?’ she says. ‘The groom and bride set.’


  ‘The mannequins aren’t for sale.’

  ‘This is the Strip,’ says Naomi. ‘Everything’s for sale.’

  He laughs, and looks at her tits.

  ‘I need them for a practical joke on my husband,’ says Naomi, pretending to smile. Hide how you feel, it’ll only push up the price. ‘Name a price.’

  He smiles an extra mile of teeth, and names a price. A Vegas price. A ‘fuck off and stop bothering me’ price.

  I guess I didn’t hide my dislike enough.

  They don’t have that much cash. Nothing like.

  Colt grabs her elbow. She follows him.

  ‘How much do you have?’ says Colt.

  She shows him.

  ‘OK.’

  He takes her money with his good hand, buys some chips at the machine. Goes to a low-stakes blackjack table. Watches for a long time. The other players; the handsome, Italian-looking robo-dealer; the cards. A long, long time, till the packs of cards have begun to reappear. Till he starts to pick up the patterns.

  The patterns behind the patterns.

  Anyone with a math degree and a memory used to be able to make a good living at the blackjack tables. It’s just statistics and card-counting. Then some guys from Yale got greedy and messed it up for everyone, and the casinos started using more decks of cards. It’s impossible for a player to track the patterns now. A normal player.

  Colt’s seen enough. He starts betting. Small stakes.

  Then, three big hands in a row.

  Win. Win. Win.

  He stops when he’s won so much that another win would trigger the casino’s reporting rules.

  They cash in their chips, and go back to the wedding fair, with their fistfuls of crisp notes.

  The big man counts the notes, twice. Tests every one.

  ‘Yeah. Take them.’ He doesn’t smile.

  The mannequins smile, though, surprised, delighted; overjoyed.

  Surprised, delighted; overjoyed.

  Surprised, delighted; overjoyed . . .

  Colt switches off their facial animation units, and the smiles freeze mid-cycle. He carries the male mannequin to the elevator. Some spots of blood have seeped through the glove on his damaged hand, but the pain isn’t so bad now. His brain must be getting used to it, discounting it. Good. Colt comes back for the other mannequin, while Naomi holds the lift doors open.

  As he carries the smiling bride across the floor to the elevator, a security guard comes up to him.

  Colt tenses.

  ‘You with the wedding fair?’ says the security guard.

  Naomi runs up, ‘Yes.’

  The security guard helps them get the bride into the elevator.

  *

  They rise in silence, up to the level of the raised canal. The gondolas. Naomi reaches out, across the two mannequins lying face up on the floor, and takes Colt’s wounded hand.

  Colt’s hand jerks in her grasp. It’s a lot of signal. Not the jolt of pain, the tingle of damaged nerve ends. That’s OK. It’s all that warm skin. And emotion, emotion. His mother’s touch. Too big, too much.

  But he doesn’t pull his hand away. He can handle it.

  The mannequins smile up at the mirrored ceiling.

  Ping.

  The doors shuuuush open.

  Colt carries the male, then the female mannequin to the edge of the elevated canal.

  They are a few yards short of where the canal leaves the casino and emerges into sunlight, two storeys up. He studies the curve of concrete and water.

  Yes.

  It swings far outside the building, in a long, lazy loop, supported on slim reinforced concrete legs, everything painted to look like marble, high above the pavements and the cars, before swinging back inside the casino again a little lower down. The flow of water down the gentle slope draws the mock gondolas out and around and back inside.

  Couples and families sit in the boats, serenaded by startlingly lifelike robot gondoliers.

  ‘They used to have real gondoliers,’ says Naomi. ‘Ah well. I guess trained opera singers are expensive.’

  A couple step out of a gondola.

  Good.

  No point being discreet; fast is more important.

  Colt throws the bag of old clothes onto the seat of the gondola, to stop anyone else taking it.

  The departing couple pause, and the man pushes the woman up against a marbled pillar, kisses her. The woman, as they kiss, stares over the man’s shoulder at Colt, at the mannequins.

  ‘Hi, lady,’ says Colt.

  ‘It’s a contest, for the wedding fair,’ says Naomi.

  Her partner breaks off the kiss. ‘Oh,’ says the woman, and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. The man takes her other hand and they walk off. The woman glances back.

  Colt smiles at her, and she looks abruptly away.

  OK, strip the clothes off the mannequins first, goddamn it, it won’t . . . there’s another button in behind there. How many buttons can it take to keep up a pair of pants? Who makes clothes like this any more?

  Colt realizes his mother is looking across at him, over the white wedding dress, the black wedding suit.

  ‘Everything?’ she says.

  ‘Everything,’ he says. ‘Just in case. Pattern recognition. They could be identifying the metal studs in your pants.’

  It’s much quieter up here than down on the main floor, but there are still some people wandering to and from the lifts. Colt and Naomi move a few yards, until a row of short, bushy trees in large terracotta pots screen them. They wait till there’s no one in sight, strip quickly, and put on the wedding outfits.

  Then they dress the mannequins in their old clothes.

  Naomi says, ‘They look great.’

  Colt studies them. Thinks about it.

  There’s a problem.

  Colt shakes his head. ‘They’ll look wrong in the infrared. Too cold to be alive.’

  Naomi sits down, hard. ‘Oh Colt.’

  ‘It’s OK, Mama,’ he says. He slides his old trousers off the plastic groom again. ‘We’ll leave our old clothes here.’ He strips down the groom. Naomi strips the bride. Colt pushes the old clothes into the deep shadow behind the terracotta pots. Stands up.

  ‘Where are we going?’ says Naomi.

  ‘This way.’

  Colt, in his wedding suit, drags the naked groom away from the canal. Naomi glances back at the shadow hiding her old clothes.

  Colt says, ‘If the drones are following the movement of the bug from outside, if the signal’s that strong, and they have a plan of this building . . . I don’t want to them to follow our movements.’

  Naomi nods. Picks up the naked bride.

  106

  They haul the mannequins to the nearest restroom. The Venetian gets a lot of customers from the Middle East; the restrooms are still gendered.

  But Colt and Naomi have begun to adjust to the urgencies of their new reality and they hardly glance at the sign.

  Inside, Colt sits the plastic bodies on the tiles, under the old-fashioned warm-air hand-dryers, and sets the dryers roaring.

  ‘Mine’s getting hot already,’ says Naomi, over the noise of the dryer, her hand flat to the thick plastic of the forehead.

  ‘That’s only the surface. Make it hotter, right through. All over.’ He pulls off the groom’s hand. Grunts as the crusted blood of his own wounded hand cracks open again, and the nerves sing in pain. He examines the male figure’s fingers and palm. Hefts it. ‘Thick plastic. That’s good. Won’t cool too fast.’ Colt pulls off the groom’s wig with a long riiiip of Velcro. ‘This hair needs to be shorter.’

  ‘I have nail scissors,’ says Naomi.

  Riiiip.

  Naomi takes both wigs to the sink, and starts to trim.

  The door swings open, fast. A blonde woman of about thirty walks in briskly, holding a half-full cocktail glass. A pink umbrella and two orange straws roll from side to side as the red drink sloshes with each step.

  She sees Naomi in a weddi
ng dress, squatting on the floor, chopping the hair off a wig. The woman slows.

  Sees Colt standing by the sink; he swings his hands behind his back – there’s something wrong with one of them – she stops.

  Double-take, as she realizes two other people are sitting naked under the dryers.

  She steps backwards so fast that, though she holds her glass level, a little red slops over the edge, drips on the white tiles.

  ‘Woooh . . .’ A triple-take, as she realizes the two naked figures are mannequins. ‘Oh, sorry, hah, I thought . . .’

  ‘It’s a contest, for the wedding fair,’ says Naomi, standing up.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘We’ll be out of here in a minute.’

  ‘No, fine, carry on.’ The woman sucks hard on one of the orange straws until half the remaining red liquid has vanished. She steps into a cubicle, and locks it.

  Naomi and Colt turn the mannequins every minute or so beneath torrents of hot air. Heat the bride and groom till the warmth gets deep inside the thick plastic.

  Once, both dryers cut out at the same time, and, in the second his hand is travelling toward the sensors to switch the dryers back on, Colt hears the woman in the cubicle emit a dry heave, or a sob.

  Data he can’t analyse. Is what’s happening in there physical, or emotional? He’s heard it but he doesn’t know what it means.

  She does it again. Pukes? Weeps? It distracts him, he can’t focus, though he knows he has to . . .

  But he feels rising panic at the gap in knowledge, until, finally, he groans, and moves towards her cubicle.

  Ducks his head, to look under her door.

  The soles of her shoes. She kneels there, yes, head over the toilet bowl, but it tells him nothing. Another dry heave, or a sob.

  White cubicle.

  Black box. Encrypted. Compressed. No codec.

  Colt feels a hand on his shoulder, and whips around.

  His mother.

  She looks him in the eye, and whispers, ‘She’ll be OK, Colt.’ He goes to speak, but Naomi talks over him. ‘Or she won’t. But it’s her life. We can’t save everyone.’ Awkward, kneeling on the tiles, Naomi hugs him tight.

  Even though it’s too much, even though all his skin is screaming from the warm touch, too much of it, all over, way too much signal, like he’s on fire, he lets himself be hugged.

  She lets go.