Digital Plague ac-2

by Jeff Somers

  Considering I had no stamina, I made Vinnie take me home early. He’s out again, of course, and I probably won’t see him for some time. Once you let little Vinnie out of your sight he tends to get lost. I thought about calling Gerry but didn’t really feel like it. I’m tired, and I’ve got a cough that hurts every time. I might have to see Killicks tomorrow anyway, just to get something for this tickle in my chest. What a bore!

  Friday, 4:30 p.m.: Hell, what a strange day. I am feeling sick, really sick. Coughing and spewing up the most disgusting things. I woke up feeling like I’d had another rib removed, and when I looked at myself in the mirror, I almost screamed. Killicks guarantees his treatments last a minimum of three years, but I looked almost my age in the mirror and I decided I had to get down to his office and let him know what I thought of his fucking “procedures” and get him to give me something for whatever’s taken up residence inside me.

  Exasperated, I called for my hover but the hover guy wasn’t answering, so I had to fire him, which is a huge pain in the ass. You’d think these people would be glad for a job, but they treat it like an inconvenience. I end up firing everyone eventually and I am starting to think I should just replace everyone with Droids where I can. Monique went all-Droid a few years ago and says she’s never been happier with the service.

  So I had to go down to the fucking street and catch a pedicab. Horrible. The streets weren’t as crowded as usual, at least, but nothing beats sitting upwind from a man whose diet is no doubt on a par with cockroaches and rats-it may, based on the smell, be cockroaches and rats-but who also seems to like the scent so much he refuses to bathe. Ever. While my smelly driver huffed and puffed in front of me, coughing almost as hard as I was, I was barely able to keep my new red coat out of the slush in the streets. Killicks’s is almost seven blocks away-it was an eternity. Then, not only do I have to walk in through the ground lobby like some piece of trash from downtown, I have to pay my fat friend for the privilege of smelling him for seven blocks.

  My goodness, Killicks’s office was crowded, everyone coughing. Something must be going around. One man in an absolutely gorgeous Silvio Martini suit-million yen if it was custom-cut, which of course it had to be-actually passed out and slumped onto the floor. This was after I’d been there for some time, and people whispered that he’d been there for almost an hour! An hour! Whatever Killicks is thinking, he’d better stop thinking it. I don’t care how popular you are, you have to treat your customers with respect. An hour! I’d be passing out, too. Though the poor gentleman looked pretty badly off as I left, and I think I saw blood.

  Friday, 9:33 p.m.: Exasperated again. Someone is shouting in the streets down below. I popped the police up on my Vid screen but there’s a static graphic there instead of an interface, complaining about the volume of complaints. Complaints about the service, no doubt. I have been in bed for hours, sweating, coughing. Every breath feels like someone put a knife inside my chest. The last thing I need is some wretched subhuman from downtown-and no one in my buildng would wander the streets, screaming-keeping me up all night when I need rest most. I look twenty years older, dark circles under my eyes and on my throat.

  Now, I may have to swallow my pride and go wait in Killicks’s office no matter how rude success has made the man. And I might have a little tightening done here and there while I’m in there. The skin under my chin seems a little loose these days.

  Saturday, 2:09 a.m.: Okay, the man has finally stopped shouting. The last hour or so he was almost unintelligible, as if he were gargling thick oil when he spoke. I haven’t been able to sleep. I can’t breathe through all this phlegm and I feel hot, so hot. I can’t believe the police let him shout like that all night. They must have their hands full. I wonder if those animals downtown have set the city on fire again.

  Saturday, 11:03 a.m.: Really, I didn’t feel too bad this morning, and I thought maybe I’d gotten past it, slept through it. I felt okay until I got to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I almost screamed. My throat is bruised and looks kind of swollen. The moment I saw it, it was like all of a sudden I felt awful.

  Determined, I called around for a hover, but no one answered. I think most everyone got out of the city last night, but no one thought to tell me. Feeling weak I went out onto the street for the second time in two days. Big mistake. No pedicabs. Not a single fucking pedicab anywhere. I would have paid one of those sweaty slobs a million yen to drive me seven blocks, but there were none to be had, so I had to walk. In my sixty-thousand-yen Pierre Olivier stilettos, which fell apart about three blocks along, one heel just snapping like a twig. By this point I was sweating and gasping, coughing, but no one would help me. In fact, everyone kept away from me, crossing to the other side of the street. Some had these ridiculous masks on, white pieces of cloth strapped to their faces.

  Oh, the punch line? Killicks’s office was closed. Fucking closed.

  Saturday, 7:33 p.m.: Even getting home was hell. The city feels empty-there are people everywhere, but for some reason it feels light and thin. And every third person has on one of those masks, like that’s going to do anything. I finally got around to watching the Vids, and according to them this is just the flu, the regular old flu. And I’m late to take my position down on the street to hold hands with everyone else in New York and start singing. The flu. I know the Vids aren’t worth much, but do they really think we’re that stupid?

  Sunday, 12:45 p.m.: Shit, I think it’s time to get the hell out of the city for a while, go travel a bit. I’m worse than ever and it’s got to be this rotten city air, poisoned by all the lowlifes I have to rub shoulders with. Besides, I can’t raise anybody-it’s like the whole town has skipped. I’m wheezing my way down to the street again, because of course again there are no hovers to be had, and

  Sunday, 12:53 p.m.: Right here in front of me, there is a dead man in the street.

  Sunday, 1:09 p.m.: Unbelievable. A Department of Public Health hover has arrived. They’re scooping him up using Droids, and they’re all wearing protective clothing-rubbery suits, masks, gloves. They won’t talk to any of us, though most people are just avoiding them, crossing the street. He’s… disgusting. His neck is like a balloon, and crusted blood is all over his front. It looks like his whole jaw is just… gone.

  Shit, I’m not feeling well at all. I think it might be time to get out of the city. A little vacation. I’m heading home to make a few Vid calls. Vinnie has a small shore house somewhere in the Caribbean, he’s told me. If Manhattan is about to go all redline again, with another riot and police everywhere, it’ll be nice to ride it out somewhere far away.

  Sunday, 2:35 p.m.: Total washout-no one is in. I thought Vinnie answered-the Vid screen jiggled and I thought I saw a flash of his apartment, but it might have been just a dropped connection, and he didn’t pick up when I retried. I even tried Father, which tells you how desperate I am, but the old bastard wasn’t picking up, either. Probably out in the fields whipping the Droids. I think Daddy wishes he still had people working for him instead of robots, just so he could go out there in those fucking boots and inspire them a little.

  Well, looks like we’re dipping into the trust fund. I’m going to see if there aren’t a few cops willing to stick me on an SSF manifest heading somewhere better. Oh, but I look like hell. My neck is all black and blue and I’m red and shiny. My hair! Oh, my hair is a fright. Thousands of yen and it looks like a wig. I’m going to have to spend some time getting myself into shape, and then my new red coat and we’ll see if we can’t charm some lieutenant or captain into slipping me onto a police ride.

  Sunday, 5:46 p.m.: Insane, fucking brutes. Just as I step outside, wearing flats for a change since apparently we’ll all have to spend the rest of our lives walking everywhere, all the Vids go fritzy and there’s a goddamn lockdown. We’re all ordered into our homes. I’ve been through this bullshit plenty of times-every time those assholes set downtown on fire again, they lock the city down and order us into our homes and no one pa
ys any attention.

  Toddling on my sore feet, I made my way over to The Rock, where all the cops hang around looking tough. All I needed was a friendly young man with a gold badge and clearance to sign me onto a hover. I saw a likely-looking group-three men and a woman, one of them looking a little beat-up and weathered, but I’m used to my police looking worse for the wear-and hurried over. It had started that scum-yellow snow again, bad for the skin, and I guess I lost my footing and ended up stumbling into one of them, a nasty-looking giant with red hair. I went down on my ass, feeling dizzy, feverish, my chest seizing up into a painful fist. And then there was a team of those hover monkeys they toss out, the ones that never speak to you. I was dazed, and they just plucked me up, called me ma’am, and took me away.

  No way-ma’am! I felt a hundred goddamn years old. By the time I got my lungs working again, I started coughing until I almost blacked out while they loaded me into a big, smelly hover that fucking ruined my new coat. By the time I had the strength to protest, they were all gone with a vague promise that an officer would be around to check our IDs and decide what to do with us. Half an hour later some fat asshole in a leather overcoat, hacking and wheezing like there was a smaller, much sicker man inside him, showed up and did brain scans on each of us, grunting your fate. He told us he could arrest us for violating an emergency instruction, but he’d just send us home and expect us to stay there. Fucking assholes.

  Excellent. I feel like shit. Feels like someone put a razor blade in my chest. I’m taking e-tabs until I pass out.

  Monday, 10:44 a.m.: So, I feel like someone’s cut me open, removed a few pounds of necessary materials, and closed me back up. I don’t dare look in the mirror. There was blood on my pillow when I woke up. I’d rather not see what I look like.

  Shit, the city is quiet. I tried to go downstairs, but they finally got around to setting the building shell, and the elevators are locked. My own shell won’t boot now. It’s like living in an empty, hollow building. I can’t even get my own front door open. I don’t have any food in the apartment-who keeps food in the apartment? If this emergency goes on much longer, I won’t have to worry about coughing up my own lungs. I’ll be dead.

  Think I have a few n-tabs here and there, some older than fucking I am-or parts of me, anyway.

  Monday, 7:48 p.m.: Oh crap, I slept for a long time and feel worse than ever. Everything is so quiet. There’s plenty on the Vids, though you’d never know anything’s going on from it. Serials, those half-minute dramas everyone’s so nuts about these days, but no news. Well, news, but nothing local. They’re demonstrating in Tokyo again because they’re so terribly happy, and the police have caught some murderer who was very much wanted in Cardiff of all fucking places. But the fact that I can’t leave my own apartment? That I’m coughing up my own lungs? Nothing. Not a peep. I

  Monday, 9:33 p.m.: You keep thinking the worst has come-there were shots outside. One minute everything is so quiet I can hear myself wheeze, the next it’s like a war outside. Just a burst, gone just as fast as it started, and then it was silent again. Then more shots. I’m frightened. I’ve turned off all the lights by hand and I’m just sitting here in the dark, and every time there are more shots outside I jump and want to scream.

  Monday, 10:21 p.m.: Okay, I keep falling asleep. Or passing out. Shots keep waking me up. It’s so hot in here. I can’t breathe.

  Tuesday, 6:09 a.m.: Unbelievable. There is a man ‹unintelligible› outside my window. He is ‹unintelligible› walking along the narrow ledge, slowly, picking his steps with great care as he is twenty-seven stories up and there is barely room for one foot at a time on the ledge. He doesn’t look good… oh, shit… I bet neither do I. His neck is just a huge open wound. I wonder how he got out there, and if I should try to get out there, too. But this seems like a lot of work. I’m so tired.

  Tuesday, 9:15 a.m.: Right. I woke up unable to breathe ‹unintelligible› like there was a mass of soggy cotton jammed down my throat. I took some a-tabs, but I barely feel them. ‹unintelligible› I’m going to have to get out of here or I’m going to… die here. I don’t know what I have or what’s going around, but I know I need to leave this apartment.

  ‹unintelligible›

  Damn. Getting out of the apartment’s no bother-just pull the manual lock override. Getting out of the building is another matter. ‹unintelligible› Emergency lockdown means the building shell won’t budge. I’m not even sure the elevators will run. I… don’t know

  Tuesday, 10:55 a.m.: Excel-Oh, shit ‹unintelligible› I don’t even think I can walk. I tried to stand up and just fell over. And that was… an hour ago. There’s a big bloodstain on the rug where I was, too.

  Ah, it’s fucking unbelievable. I’m going to die. That quack Killicks kept telling me they were doing wonders in Europe about death-pushing it off, making it more of an inconvenience, but where the fuck is he now?

  ‹unintelligible›

  There’s finally something on the local Vid spectrum. Not much, just a grim-faced DPH asshole telling us to remain indoors and not panic. It’s a loop-he talks for five minutes and then starts again. Stay inside. All is well. DPH is scooping up the bodies as they fall from your ledges and keeping our city clean. Downtown is certainly not on fire again, and you are all not going to die. Ever. Fuck.

  Hey

  Tuesday, 3:02 p.m.: Yikes. The power’s out.

  ‹unintelligible›

  Outside, far away, something exploded-my windows rattled and everything in the place jumped-and then ‹unintelligible› dead. It’s stuffy as hell in here, and I can barely breathe. I wonder what the battery life on this handheld is? I’m ‹unintelligible› set it to sound-activated to try and stretch it. Though I don’t know why I’m ‹unintelligible› gasp into it. Habit, I guess. And shit, aside from cataloging the spongy red shit I’m ‹unintelligible› all over the place by size and weight, what else do I have… to do?

  Tuesday, 3:05 p.m.: ‹unintelligible, coughing›

  Tuesday, 4:33 p.m.: Unreal-this can’t be allowed. Isn’t ‹unintelligible› wondering about all of us? Or am I the only one trapped in here? I’ve been in bed for hours, ‹unintelligible› puking myself up onto the sheets. I’m so hot. This can’t be. This can’t, I mean, I have friends, I have money-did every single other person just up and leave the city? I can’t even get out of my own building now. I could maybe drag myself down to the lobby, ‹unintelligible› every third floor, but then what? I don’t even know if the doors will open with the power out.

  ‹unintelligible, heavy breathing›

  Right. And if I can get out of the building, so what? There’s no one to take me anywhere. And it’s not like there’s some magical hover to take me somewhere.

  Tuesday, 5:05 p.m.: ‹unintelligible, coughing›

  Tuesday, 5:15 p.m.: Exit Tricia-shit. I should try to get to Bellevue. What the fuck is wrong with me? I’ve been chipped. There have to be doctors at the hospital, don’t there? Better than just dying here.

  Tuesday, 6:15 p.m.: No… I think… I think I’m on… Twentieth…

  Tuesday, 6:21 p.m.: ‹unintelligible, coughing›

  Tuesday, 6:23 p.m.: ‹unintelligible, coughing›

  Tuesday, 6:34 p.m.: Daddy always ‹unintelligible› I guess… trying to walk… down… so… many… fucking stairs… when you… only… have… half a lung left… wasn’t…

  Tuesday, 6:45 p.m.: don’t want… don’t want

  Tuesday, 6:47 p.m.: ‹unintelligible, coughing›

  Tuesday, 4:23 a.m.: ‹unintelligible›

  ‹END TRANSCRIPT›

  Acknowledgments

  When the government asked me to write this book, I wanted to refuse. I had planned a busy summer of drinking beer on the deck and watching my cats hunt sparrows, and writing a book would, I knew, take up precious hours of my day. The scientists sent by the government were adamant, however-something about the space-time continuum, me being my own grandfather, and avoidance of future events so ter
rible they shuddered every time the subject was returned to. Eventually they got around to mentioning huge advance monies and nationwide promotion, and since I was getting sleepy by that point, I hastily agreed.

  When my lovely wife, Danette, found out, she didn’t believe me about the government scientists and whatnot, which didn’t bother me because in the movies the noble hero is always doubted, made fun of, and mildly beaten by his wife before he’s revealed as, well, the hero. But she remained my biggest supporter and fan throughout the process, and it could not have been done without her. Every time I made her read a draft of the book, she would hit me on the head with her shoe and shout, “Better! You can do better!” And then she’d dry my tears and I’d revise, and it would be better.

  My agent, Janet Reid, and my editors, Devi Pillai and Bella Pagan, are three women who can probably kill a man from across the room, just thinking about it with their huge, pulsing brains. Every time I sent a draft of the book to one of them the ideas and suggestions they returned to me were humbling in their genius. It was a privilege to receive sternly worded Edit Letters from each of them.

  My sainted mother was interested in my writing even before there were huge advance monies to be contemplated, and also she brought me into this world and somehow ensured my survival until I was able to care for myself, at approximately age twenty-eight. When, coincidentally, my wife took up the job.