by Rich Larson
Daudi’s fingers buzzed as he typed the word into Google: softcopy. A slew of articles in English and German fluttered up. He struggled through half a paragraph before switching over to a translation service. Daudi was not a hacker, but he’d heard the term used. Always between jackmen, usually in a hot argument.
The taxi began to rattle over loose-packed gravel, and Daudi had it read aloud to him. Softcopy, a theoretical transfer of human consciousness into an artificial brain. Ramifications for artificial intelligence. Softcopy claim in NKorea revealed to be a hoax. Increased use of neural webbing has led to new questions. Evolution of the human mind.
The taxi sent him an exposé on corruption in the Burundi police forces as a kicker, but Daudi hardly registered it as he swung himself out of the vehicle. He scanned himself through the door in the jagged-glass-topped wall, scattered the pigeons on his apartment’s stoop. The stairs went by three at a time, and then he was in front of his work tablet, working the policense like a bludgeon.
He pulled up reports from three years ago. Death reports. The list was long, long, long. He scrolled through it and they came to him in flashes, so many Jonathans and then so many Josephs, good Christian names for godless rebels, and then he found him: Joseph Rufykiri, the Razor. Responsible for the longest sustained information attack of the war, for the interception of encrypted troop movements, for the malicious reprogramming of military drones, farm equipment, wind turbines, and once a vibrator belonging to the general’s wife.
He was dead by na-virus, but survived by a daughter. Daudi stared at the data and only half-believed it, but half was enough. He found a rumpled rain jacket under the bed and threw it on, and into the deepest pocket he dropped his old service handgun. Useless, unless he put it right up to the drone’s gut, right where the armor had fallen away.
Daudi thought of the bloodspray and his comrades jerking and falling like cut puppets as the hacked drone spun its barrels. He thought of Joseph Rufykiri between blood-soaked sheets, whispering to his daughter that he had a plan and that she did not have to worry.
He had to know, so Daudi stepped back out under the swelling sky and hailed a new taxi, one with less graffiti, as it began to storm.
The dust felt like flying shrapnel by the time Daudi struggled out of the taxi, wrapped up to the eyes. It battered and bit his fingers. The sky was dark and its rusty clouds were surging now, attacking. It looked like the scavengers had packed away and found shelter elsewhere, or else their tents had been torn off the ground like great black scabs. Daudi hurried to where the junkpile could provide some shelter.
On his way a scavenger fled past, stumbling, and then Daudi saw the blurry shape of a jeep up ahead through the sand. Something besides the storm was happening. He crouched against the wheel-well and checked his gun where the dust couldn’t reach it. He checked it again. He breathed in, out, and craned his head around the edge of the vehicle.
Three muti hunters, swathed in combat black with scarves wrapped tight against the storm. Daudi counted three small-caliber guns but could hear nothing now over the howl of the dust. They ducked and swayed on their feet, and the imfizi drone clanked and churned and tried to track them as the grit assaulted its many joints. Bullets had cratered its front, and bled coolant was being sucked off into the wind. Belise was nowhere to be seen.
The drone was long since dry of ammunition, and the hunter was caught off-guard when it lunged, quicker than Daudi had ever seen a drone move, and pinioned him to the ground. The other two rounded on it, firing in rhythm. The imfizi buckled and twitched with the impacts, but then reared up with the hunter’s leg still mashed in its pincer. Reared higher. Higher. Blood spouted as the man tore silently in half.
The other hunters reversed now, moving clumsily in the wind, and one hauled a grenade from his back and lobbed. For a moment, Daudi thought it was a dud, but then a whine shivered in his teeth and the hair on his neck stood up on end and he realized it was an EMP. The drone shuddered once, twice. Froze. The hunters converged.
Something clutched onto Daudi’s calf. He looked down, and of course it was Belise, her translucent hands kneading his ankle, and she was crying something but Daudi could not read lips. He shook her off. He steadied himself. He ducked around the side of the vehicle, and fired twice.
The first hunter dropped, swinging on his heel, punched through the skull and nicked in the shoulder. Daudi had not forgotten how to kill.
Arm coming up, scarved head turning. Daudi made his body relax and snapped off another shot, feeling it into the chest but hitting belly instead. The hunter fired back but the retort was lost in the dust and Daudi had no idea how close he’d come to dying so he did not falter. The hunter’s scarf ripped free, oscillating wildly, as the next bullet splintered through throat and jaw.
Daudi stumbled to the bodies and scrabbled for their guns, but one had already been swallowed by the sand and the other was locked tight in a dead hand. He tried to throw up but only hurt his ribs. He crawled instead to the imfizi. Its red eyes were starting to blink back on. Daudi put a hand on either side of the carapace and leaned close. He stared hard into the cameras.
“Joseph Rufykiri,” he said, mouthing carefully.
The drone shuddered. The top half of the chassis rocked back. Rocked forward. Daudi mirrored the nod without really meaning to. He squinted back to where Belise was crouched, covering her eyes against the dust. Her skin was stark white against the black jeep. Tears were tracking through the grime on her face.
Daudi realized he had the gun pressed up against the rusty husk. “Do your penance,” he mumbled. “I do mine.” Then he stood up, almost bowled over in the wind, and turned to go.
The ghost girl said something to him but he still couldn’t hear. It might have been thanks. Daudi nodded her on, and she dashed towards her father, now getting to his iron feet. Daudi went to the jeep and found the two little boys on their bellies underneath. He put his head down.
“I have a taxi,” he said. “Come with me.” They exchanged looks with their dark eyes and shook dust from their dark heads. Then they wriggled out from under the vehicle and Daudi shielded them as best he could with the rain jacket.
He looked back only once. Belise was clambering into the drone’s arms, sheltered from the roaring wind, and then they were enveloped by the dust.
THE SKY DIDN’T LOAD TODAY
It was an aching white blank, with little fissures where code leaked out like drizzling rain, but nobody seemed to notice except Adelaide.
“Nina, look,” she said at recess, on the squeaking playground swings. “The sky’s got a glitch.” She kicked out hard, trying to soar high enough to touch the faulty firmament.
“Looks fine to me,” her friend said, draped stomach-down over her swing, feet shuffling the gravel. Her eyes stuck to the iPhone clutched in her small pink hands.
In class, Adelaide couldn’t stop looking out the Windex-streaked glass.
“It’s like someone broke the game,” she said, when the teacher scolded her to pay attention.
“Life is not a game, Adelaide,” he said, raking a strand of black hair behind his white ear. “That’s why you should be learning your times tables. Not staring out the window.”
Adelaide walked home under the void, watching error messages ripple in the wind. She spent the day searching for polygons in the elm trees and invisible walls around the boarded-up well she was supposed to avoid.
When she wormed under her sheets that night, the sky outside still hadn’t darkened. Adelaide argued for an extension on curfew.
“Not a chance,” her mother said, leaving a warm kiss on her forehead. “And don’t worry. I’m sure the sky will load tomorrow.”
But when her mother paused in the doorway, Adelaide saw her silhouette jump and flicker, and a glowing trickle of code leak down her cheek.
YOU MAKE PATTAYA
Dorian sprawled back on sweaty sheets, watching Nan, or Nahm, or whatever her name was, grind up against the mirror, beami
ng at the pop star projected there like she’d never seen smartglass before. He knew she was from some rural eastern province; she’d babbled as much to him while he crushed and wrapped parachutes for their first round of party pills. But after a year in Pattaya, you’d think she would have lost the big eyes and the bubbliness. Both of which were starting to massively grate on him.
Dorian had been in the city for a month now, following the tourist influx, tapping the Banks and Venmos of sun-scalded Russians too stupid to put their phones in a faraday pouch as they staggered down Walking Street. In the right crowd, he could slice a dozen people for ten or twenty Euros each and make off with a small fortune before a polidrone could zero in on him.
And in Baht, that small fortune still went a long way. More than enough to reward himself with a ’phetamine-fuelled 48-hour club spree through a lurid smear of discos and dopamine bars, from green-lit Insomnia to Tyger Tyger’s tectonic dance floor and finally to some anonymous club on the wharf where he yanked a gorgeous face with bee-stung lips from a queue of bidders on Skinspin and wasted no time renting the two of them a privacy suite.
Dorian put a finger to his lips to mute the pop star in the mirror, partly to ward off the comedown migraine and partly just to see the hooker’s vapid smile slip to the vapid pout that looked better on her. She pulled the time display out from the corner of the mirror and made a small noise of surprise in her throat.
“I must shower.” She checked the cheap nanoscreen embedded in her thumbnail, rueful. “Other client soon. Business lady. Gets angry when I late even one fucking second.” She spun toward the bed. “I like you better,” she cooed. “You’re handsome. Her, I don’t know. She wear a blur.” She raked her glittery nails through the air in front of her face to illustrate.
“That’s unfortunate,” Dorian said, pulling his modded tablet out from under the sheets.
“Like I fuck a ghost,” she said with a grimace. “Gives me shivers.” She turned back to her reflection, piling up her dark hair with one hand and encircling her prick with the other. She flashed him an impish Crest-capped grin from the mirror. “You want a shower with me?”
Dorian’s own chafed cock gave a half-hearted twitch. He counted the popped tabs of Taurus already littered around the room and decided not to risk an overdose.
“I’ll watch,” he said. “How’s that?”
Her shoulders heaved an exaggerated sigh, then she flitted off to the bathroom. Dorian flicked the shower’s smartglass from frosted to one-way transparent, watching her unhook the tube and wave it expectantly in his general direction. Dorian used his tablet to buy her the suite’s maximum option, 60 litres of hot water.
Once she was busy under the stream, rapping along to Malaysian blip-hop, he took advantage of the privacy to have a look at his Bank. The scrolling black figure in his savings account gave him a swell of pride. 30 000 Euros, just over a million in Baht. He was ripping down record cash and the weekend’s binge had barely dented him. Maybe it was finally time to go to a boatyard and put in some inquiries.
Dorian alternated between watching curves through the wet glass and watching clips of long-keeled yachts on his tablet. Then, in the corner of his eye, the mirror left tuned to a Thai entertainment feed flashed a face he actually recognized: Alexis Carrow, UK start-up queen, founder of Delphi Apps and freshly-minted billionaire. Dorian sat up a bit straighter and the mirror noticed, generating English subtitles.
CARROW VACATION INCOGNITO
Alexis Carrow young CEO from Delphi Apps on vacay in our very own beautiful country, celebspotters made clip yesterday on Pattaya Bay Area. She appears having a wonderful time perusing Soi 17 with only bodyguard. No lover for her? Where is singer/songwriter Mohammed X? Alexis Carrow is secretive always.
Dorian dumped the feed from the mirror onto his tablet, zooming in on the digital stills from some celebspotter’s personal drone that showed Ms. Carrow slipping inside an AI-driven tuk-tuk, wearing Gucci shades and a sweat-wicking headscarf. Thailand still pulled in a lion’s share of middle-class Russian and Australian holidayers, plus droves of young Chinese backpackers, but Dorian knew the West’s rich and/or famous had long since moved on to sexier climes. Alexis Carrow was news. And she was here in Pattaya.
Cogs churned in his head; grifter’s intuition tingled the nape of his neck. He eased up off the bed and walked to the smartglass wall of the bathroom. Inside, Nan? Nahm? was removing her penis, trailing strands of denatured protein. He doubted it was her original organ—surgeons needed something to work with when they crafted the vagina, after all—but customers liked the fantasy.
Dorian put his forehead against the smartglass, watching as she slipped the disembodied cock into the nutrient gel of a chic black refrigerated carrycase. The night’s activities were a slick fog. He tried to remember what she’d told him between bouts of hallucination-laced sex, the endless murmuring in his ear while they lay tangled together. Things about her family in Buriram, things about her friends, things about her clients.
Someone even richer than you, she’d said, fooled by his rented spidersilk suit and open bar tab. Wants me all the week. You’re lucky I think you are handsome.
Dorian couldn’t contain his grin as he looked down at his tablet, flicking through the photos. She was right about one thing: he had always been lucky.
By the time the hooker was dressed, Dorian had checked on Skinspin and verified her name was Nahm. She exited the bathroom wrapped in a strappy white dress, her black hair immaculate again. Dorian appraised her unending legs, soot-rimmed eyes and pillowy lips. She was definitely enough to catch even a celebrity’s biwandering eye.
“What?” she asked. She crouched to retrieve one Louboutin knock-off kicked under the bed; Dorian produced its partner.
“Nothing, Nahm,” he said, handing her the sandal. “I was just thinking how much I’d like to take you back to London with me.”
“Don’t make a joke,” she said, but she looked pleased. She gripped his arm for balance while she slipped into her shoes and then gave him a lingering goodbye kiss. As soon as the door of the privacy suite snicked shut behind her, Dorian scrambled back into his clothes.
Someone had dumped half a Singha across his shoes and his sport coat stank like laced hash, but he didn’t have time for a clothing delivery. He raked fingers through his gel-crisped hair, prodded the dark circles under his eyes, and left. The narrow hall was a bright, antiseptic white unsullied by ads, and the soundproof guarantee of each privacy suite made it eerily quiet, too. AI-run fauxtels did always tend toward a minimalist aesthetic.
Walking Street, by contrast, bombarded every last one of Dorian’s senses the moment he stepped outside. The air stank like spice and petrol, and a thousand strains of synthesized music mingled with drunk shrieks, laughter, trilingual chatter. The street itself was a neon hubbub of revelers.
Dorian used his tablet to track the sticky he’d slapped to the bottom of Nahm’s shoe. He couldn’t see her through the crush, but according to the screen she was heading upstreet toward the Beach Road entrance. He plunged off the step, ducking an adbot trailing a digital Soi 6 banner, and made for the closest tech vendor. A gaggle of tourists was arrayed around the full body Immersion tank, giggling at their electrode-tethered friend drifting inside with a tell-tale erection sticking off him.
Dorian cut past them and swapped 2000 Baht for a pair of lime green knock-off iGlasses, prying them out of the packaging with his fingernails. He blinked his way through set-up, bypassed user identification, and tuned them to the sticky’s signal. A digital marker dropped down through the night sky, drizzling a stream of white code over a particular head like a localized rain shower.
Stowing his tablet, Dorian hurried after the drifting marker, past a row of food stands hawking chemical-orange chicken kebabs and fried scorpions. A few girls whose animated tattoos he vaguely recognized grabbed at him as he went by, trailing fake nails down his arm. He deked away, but tagged one of them to Skinspin later—it looked like s
he’d gotten her implants redone.
Once he had Nahm in eyeball sight, he slowed up a bit. She was mouthing lyrics to whatever she had in her audiobuds as she bounced along, necksnapping a group of tank-and-togs Australian blokes with the sine curve sway of her hips. She detoured once outside Medusa, where bored girls were perusing their phones and dancing on autopilot, to exchange rapid-fire sawatdees and air-kisses. She detoured again to avoid a love-struck Russian on shard.
Ducking into a stall selling 3-D printed facemasks of dead celebrities, Dorian looked past Nahm to the approaching roundabout. A shiny black ute caught his eye through the customary swarm of scooters and tuk-tuks. As he watched, Nahm checked her thumbnail, then glanced up at the ute and quickened her pace. Dorian felt a jangle of excitement down his spine as he scanned the vehicle for identifying tags and found not a single one.
Someone had knocked over a trash tip, spilling the innards across Nahm’s path, but she picked her way through the slimed food cartons and empty condom sprays with pinpoint precision that left Dorian dimly impressed. He squinted to trigger the iGlasses’ zoom, wondering if he should chance trying to get a snap of the inside of the ute.
Then the lasershow started up again, throwing its neon green web into the dark clouds over Pattaya’s harbor, and as Nahm craned her beautiful head to watch for what was probably the millionth time, her heel punctured a sealed bag of butcher giblets.
“Shit,” Dorian said, at the same time Nahm appeared to be saying something similar. Casting a glance at the approaching ute, she lowered herself gingerly to the curb to hunt through her bag. She produced a wipe and cleaned the red gunge off her ankle and the strap of her sandal. Dorian bit at the inside of his cheek.