“No,” Redcholate whispered. “I didn’t mean… I didn’t want…” Her voice dwindled to nothingness.
Tanto sat there on his couch. His cranium had a giant hole in it. His eyecubes were still open. Still staring. Right at her.
Everything was destro. Two people’d been morted. No, she’d morted two people. All because of the terrible Watson. And Redcholate’s own incompetence.
The Forger sent her a message. Come see me. Now. He included his address. His real-flesh address. Now.
Redcholate stumbled to the bathroom, washed her face. She didn’t look in the mirror. Didn’t want to see her reflection. The face of a murderer.
There was no question as to what she was going to do now. She didn’t even bother to try and resist anymore. She took the elevator down and left the building. OS, directions to the Forger’s.
An arrow appeared in her bottom right eyecube. She followed it to the moving walkway.
Chapter 24
Gallawaygg
Date: 2419
Outside the entrance to Armintor’s hotel sat a Grade A hook booth. She stood in the frigid rain, hot tears still trickling down her cheeks, and stared at it for a long time. Her mind churned. What did she have to her name? A mere 10,000 creds. They would accomplish nothing if she just kept them in her thumbnail. She could go somewhere, eke out an existence doing… what? She’d been trained to be a detective. But who would hire her without Twomanrie?
What if she solved Twomanrie’s murder? What if she… if she caught the Butcher? Then she’d be acknowledged as the galaxy’s best detective. She’d be able to work whenever and wherever she wanted.
But was she just Watson, foolishly desiring to take over the consultancy after Mr. Sherlock Holmes’s death at the Reichenbach Falls? She shook her head. Twomanrie had been allowing her more and more autonomy during their last several cases. Pride bolstered her for a moment, then her spine slumped. Twomanrie hadn’t really trusted Armintor. Things like the interview with the chemist, when Twomanrie had taken over, proved that. She’d obviously thought Armintor wasn’t good enough to get the needed information.
But it had been Armintor herself who had gained the crucial facts from the chemist, that allowed them to solve Ted Tamobi’s murder. She could do this. She would do this. She would become a detective, and avenge her mentor’s death.
Finally the hook booth asked, “Customer, can I assist in your decision making? All our hooks are virgin.”
Armintor wiped her eyes with her forearm. “You don’t use harvested hooks at all?” The chance that she could have Ted Tamobi’s harvested cranial hook installed made her feel dizzy.
“Llyl regulations state that any Grade A hook booth cannot offer pre-owned hooks for sale.”
She took a deep breath and stepped inside.
The hook booth sealed the door. “State your needs,” it said.
Armintor sat on the only chair, a reclining reflexive cushioning chair in a burnt-caramel color that almost matched her hair. “I need a cranial embed and a tie-in socket.”
“That is our Binary Pac. We have a special offer this week.”
“Good. I’ll take that.”
“You are a geriatric embed customer—”
“Geriatric? I’m only twenty.”
“Any cranial embed customer over 13 is a geriatric customer,” said the hook booth with what Armintor was sure she was only imagining to be a fussy tone.
“Are there any complications for a geriatric customer?” she asked.
“You may experience disorientation, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, blackouts, depression, hives, anaphylaxis, migraines, tinnitus, aphasia, or hearing loss.”
Armintor scrubbed her face with her hands, then pushed her wet hair back. “Do it.”
“May I suggest you also install a hook eye? We have a special offer for our customers, the Triplicity Pac. Our artisan mechas have created a wide variety of naturally-pigmented eyehooks. We have a 99.5% success rate in matching our client’s flesh eye—”
“No.” Armintor shuddered in disgust. She could not bear to have a part of her body permanently removed. A holdover from Variegor’s prejudices, she knew, yet one she couldn’t overcome. “Absolutely no hook eye.”
“Then, customer, I will suggest you consider an eyescreen. We have a special on eyescreens this week, called the Fifty Percenter.”
An eyescreen was a small chip installed in a flesh eye. With it, her cranial embed would be able to display text or vid over her normal vision. “I… All right. Yes. Also an eyescreen.”
“One Binary Pac, One Fifty Percenter. That will be 6,054 creds.”
More than half her creds. Yet she needed these things to take vengeance on Twomanrie’s murderer. She swallowed hard, then held out her right hand.
“Extracting 6,054 creds,” said the hook booth. A dainty appendage emerged from the curved wall and hovered over her right thumb for an instant. It retracted, and a different appendage emerged from the ceiling. It misted a disinfectant fog onto her head. The air smelled like lavender and a medicinal bitterness. “Customer, prepare for anesthesia.”
Sorrow and memories flooded Armintor’s body. “Wait,” she grated. Those words took her back to the distant past, seven years ago. The day of the Blue Mist Plague, when she’d broken into the hook clinic. Her body seemed to contract with a visceral sorrow she hadn’t felt in years. That day… that day. When her entire life had been shattered.
And now it was as if she were regressing to her thirteen-year-old self. Was she doing the right thing? She wanted a cranial embed—she always had—yet Variegor’s prejudices lingered.
“Customer, I must have your authorization to proceed.” The hook booth retracted its disinfectant appendage and turned quiescent.
A movement caught her eye. A little girl, perhaps ten, wearing a pink rain-repeller hat and orange bulbdress, stood just outside the door. The girl looked into the hook booth with eyes filled with longing. The forbidden fruit. The girl met Armintor’s gaze. What are you getting? she mouthed.
Cranial embed and tie-in socket, mouthed Armintor, pointing at her skull.
The girl’s mouth opened with surprise and joy. She pressed the pads of her thumbs together and then flicked them apart, a mannerism that had recently spawned from Vega-2. It meant, do it!
Armintor smiled. The expression felt rusty and painful, but also cathartic. The girl seemed to be her very own self from seven years ago, longing for what she’d always wanted.
The girl pointed at her eyes, then at Armintor.
Armintor nodded. Yes, you can watch, she mouthed. Then she said, “Booth, I’m ready.”
“Customer, prepare for anesthesia.”
Chapter 25
Bituminous Tarsi
Date: 2422
Redcholate slunk in through the door of the Forger’s real-flesh address. A skinny boy behind a desk orbed her.
“I’m here to see the Forger,” she said, her voice all croaky.
He pointed with his chin toward a chair. “Wait there.”
It was one of those shab old molded chairs. No reflexive cushioning. She perched on it, stared at the boy. He stared back.
“Haven’t seen you lately,” he said.
“Lately? Who are you?”
He snickered. “I’m Juan.”
“Juan?” He was another of the Forger’s intel brokers. Before today, she’d never seen him real flesh. His avatar didn’t look anything like this skinny boy. But was she even memming him right? Maybe her braincase had been distro’d by grief.
OS, she said. Show me Juan’s avatar.
Her OS retrieved a mem from her cranial storage, showing Juan as he appeared in the Underworld. Muscles piled upon muscles, and a thick black mustache to top it all off. Nothing like his meatsack. Real-flesh Juan bit his nails, too. Juan was a true bogus. Cringy.
She peered around him to the plain plazstik door which led to, presumably, the inner office. “Is he… is he in there?”
“Yuh.�
� He stared at his big tradscreen, one hand fingering the rash of pimples on his neck. Like he had the brains of an antediluvian mollusk.
She peered at the inner door again. What would the Forger look like, real-flesh? Nothing like a matte black cuboid, presumably. Her hands twisted in her lap. At least her head wasn’t morting. Now that it was getting what it wanted—attention from the Forger—her magical power seemed happy. Well, she wasn’t happy. She felt like she was going to lachry and yack and mort all at once. Tanto’s face seemed to be playing on loop in her mind. Red, what have you done? he asked. And then his cranial embed exploded. Raining flesh and bone all over her head.
She should’ve been the one to mort. Not Tanto. And not Sylvey. This was all her fault. No, it wasn’t. It was all Watson’s fault. She hated Watson.
Juan snuffled a quantity of snot into the back of his throat, then hawked and spit it into a reservoir on his desk. With a quiet whir his optical hook focused on her. He pointed down. “I got a NutriSling.”
Curiosity overcame her self-recriminations and she stood to peer over his desk. His chair was reflexive cushioning, generous around the head and armrests so he’d be supported during Underwork.
“What’s so daebak about a NutriSling?”
“This.” At some unheard command from Juan, a sheathe emerged from the seat of the chair and cradled itself around his entire groin. A tube snaked out of the right armrest like a cobra and inserted itself into a port in his forearm. “Full life- and elimination-support. I can stay Under for a week at a time.”
Gross, she thought. “How nice,” she said. “And how do you get to be the one who works here in the office? Isn’t he afraid you’ll lead someone here?”
He mumbled something that sounded like heather peas.
“Heath… wait. You mean you never leave?”
He nodded. “I’ve been in this office for,” he paused, obvs to query his OS, “3 years, 18 days, 1291 minutes, 47 seconds, 653 milli—”
“All right, all right, I cogik.” She glanced around. “What do you do here day and night?”
He codfished, his jaw dropping so much she could peer into his mouth and see the indifferent state of his dental hygiene. “The Underworld. Befo you got here, I’d been under for over five days straight. It’s why I have a NutriSling.” He stroked his chair. “Oh, I didn’t finish telling you about it. Orb this, it’s also got—”
The door to the inner office swung open.
After a milli, Juan said, “He’ll see you now.”
This was it. What she’d wanted. No, what Watson’d wanted. But now that she had permission to enter the Forger’s office, she had to force each leg to move, one by one. Left, right, left.
The inner office was dim. She could only make out vague shapes. Everything felt bizzo. Menacing, almost. She clenched her hands and stepped inside. The door swung shut behind her. She forced herself forward a few steps so she wouldn’t look so cringy standing there with her back pressed against it.
Squinting, she made out a massive desk near the back wall. A huge tradscreen hung centered over the workspace. Vid and text pulsed in strange staccato patterns, as if not meant for human understanding.
Behind the screen a hulking figure stood. The Forger. He gestured toward a chair in front of his desk. “Sit.”
His voice sounded tinny for such a large man. When he stepped out from behind the screen, she saw why. He was completely hooked. Both eyes had been replaced by implants. The left eyesocket held a many-faceted orb still able to receive real-world visual data, but the space where his right eyecube had once been was nothing more than a flat black panel.
Redcholate stared. She knew she was codfishing like a rube, but she couldn’t help it. That flat eye-panel was part of the Hexagon implant, the full connection of eye, ear, hands, mouth, nose, groin. A full Hex cost over 600,000 creds. At least. An ulto reimagining of the human nervous system. Even more if you got the sex-sensury upgrade. She’d never seen anyone with a Hex real-flesh.
“Sit,” the Forger said again. He leaned his rump against the corner of his desk. She couldn’t place his accent, and his words came stilted through the speaker that rode on his left shoulder. His voicebox was completely routed into the Hexagon.
She crept to the orange chair that looked like no visitor had ever sat upon it before. “Forger,” she said, “um, my client, Watson?” She hated how she sounded. She was a forger too. She didn’t have to sound so cringy. “Remember? She wants—”
“You have caused too much destruction in your ill-advised quest for intel.”
Tanto. His reproachful look. Red, what have you done?
“I know,” she whispered, shivering with guilt.
“You were not supposed to go see Tanto with that bifile. You were supposed to come see me.”
She didn’t know what to say. She felt dreadly. Tanto, orbing her with reproach. Red, what have you done?
The Forger leaned back and crossed his arms, which ended in metal nubs where his wrists used to be. “Your greed for intel has caused the death of two forgers. Sylvey was a lost cause. But Tanto was not. I groomed him as my successor.”
Tanto’d been the Forger’s own apprentice? She hadn’t known he was that good. “He picked me as his apprentice.”
The Forger snorted. “Don’t tell such stupid lies.”
Aggrieved indignation temporarily overcame her grief and fear. “It’s not a lie. I mainli—”
“Enough.” The Forger chopped through the air with his handless arms. “You’ve brought attention to Bituminous Tarsi that never should have been here. You’ve brought the Butcher.”
She jumped to her feet. “The Butcher’s here?” Her voice sounded like a squeaky mouse.
The Forger shook his head. “Not in actual fact. But they might as well be. And if I don’t take action against you, the Butcher will come here and deal with you themself.”
She sobbed, sank back onto the chair. “Everything’s wrong. And it’s all Watson’s fault. She made me do it.”
A musical trill emerged from his speaker. Was it a gasp, a laugh, a grunt of confirmation? “Watson made you do it. Now there is a joke.”
His tone made her stiffen. “A joke? Sylvey died. Tanto died. And it’s a joke?”
The Forger pushed to his feet, minced around his desk and sat. “You’re the joke.”
Redcholate squinted, trying in vain to peer through his tradscreen. She scooched her chair to the left to see around it. “Why’re—”
He talked over her. “Tell me what this Watson looks like.”
“Watson? She’s got longish hair. Kinda chestnut colored.”
He motioned with his hand stumps for her to continue.
“Well, brownish eyes. And she’s got an okay figure.”
“You’ve got an okay figure.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“And her hair’s about the same length as yours. And the same color. Underneath all that holobead commotion.”
She brought one hand to her hair, making the holobeads clack together. “Why does it matter?”
He banged his stumps on his desk, making her jump. “Answer.”
“All right, all right! Yeah, about the same.”
“You’ve got brown eyes. And an okay figure.”
“And?”
“You’re the client.”
A painful laugh stuck in Redcholate’s craw. “Me?”
“You cannot expect me to believe she didn’t look even slightly familiar,” the Forger asked.
She shook her head, but unfortunately her OS accessed the mem file. She was looking at Watson standing with her hands in her pockets, leaning against the mantel. An aching sense of familiarity twinged mem-Redcholate’s innards. “Have we met?” she’d asked.
But Watson couldn’t be her. That’d be too bizzo.
“And I suppose nothing strange happened during your meeting with Watson,” the Forger said.
“N-no.” But it had. Watson hadn’t bee
n able to see the shoe nailed to the mantel. That meant it hadn’t been preprogged into her responses. And then, after Redcholate had come back into the room, Watson’d poofed into existence and started talking like they hadn’t already met. Redcholate had to admit the truth, at least to herself.
“She was a pictula,” she whispered. “Wasn’t she?” A snapshot of a person, created to act as an autonomous temp avatar. Unconnected to a meatsack in the real world. Used for suposcary Underworld work. But the prob was, pictulas were only as good as their creator’s foresight. Any intel not preprogged into a pictula just wasn’t there.
The Forger snorted, which made his speaker sound like it was being grated to bits from the inside. “It took you disappointingly long enough to realize the truth.”
“But I never created a pictula.” A desperate hope welled up inside her. “No, wait! Watson said she was only twenty-one! And I’m twenty-four. So she couldn’t be me.”
The Forger slumped his shoulders and hung his head. As if she were disappointing him. “Oh, Redcholate. All that means is you created it three years ago. And that your pictula was too honest.”
“But I don’t have any mem of creating one!” Right? she asked her OS.
Affirmative. We have no memories of such a happening.
“Look up here.” The Forger gestured to the tradscreen above his desk. She turned to look at the vid, and saw an image of herself following a creepto old lady down a hallway. Redcholate’s hair lifted on the back of her neck. She had no mem of this event. She leaned forward, examining her image. “That’s not me. Has to be faked.”
He shook his head. “I’d be able to tell.”
“A pictula?” she whispered.
“This vid is from the real world,” he said.
“Then it has to be a clone.”
“Tell me who would bother to clone you.”
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
He leaned back in his chair. “Three years, two months ago, Standard Terran, a young woman arrives on Bituminous Tarsi.”
The Disk Mirror Solution (Galaxia Mortem Book 1) Page 17