"Proxy purchase accounts will be made available to you for all necessary expenditures. I shall make the determination of which expenditures are necessary."
"I rather think that I'm the better equipped to make that particular determination."
"You should have thought about that before you chose to illustrate your questionable judgment."
Garotte scowled. "You are a good deal more controlling than I remember from my last visit with Karter."
She swiped at her slidepad. "Doubtful. I have always been controlling. I am a control system."
"I seem to remember you following orders back then."
More swiping. "The context of my role at that time was to service the requirements of my facility, my creator, and my guests. The current context requires that I assure the timely removal of my creator from harm. Obedience is thus contingent upon an assessment of the wisdom of a request and its ability to further this end."
"Well your refusal to be helpful is endangering the mission."
"This is an inaccurate assessment of the current situation. I shall make the determination of which expenditures are necessary," she stated, swiping to add, "If you refuse to show me proposed expenditures, you are at fault."
"Fine," he grumbled, working at his own pad until he'd drawn up a list. "There, does this meet with your approval, your majesty?"
After his device was placed before her and she had read through carefully, she selected one item – a high powered military data radio – and doubled the requested amount. She then added an item to the list.
"Expenses approved," she said.
Garotte looked at her addition.
"A dozen eight-conductor, double-shielded transmission cables, terminated with type MOL-7 micro polarized connectors? Why, may I ask, do we require those?"
"They will permit the data radios to be attached to a hardwired data port, enhancing data transfer speed and bypassing wireless-specific security measures. Additionally, because I said so."
Garotte cast a long, measuring glare at the bizarre creature/device in the navigator's seat. It was beginning to become clear why Lex had shown the tendency to treat it like a woman. It certainly acted like one. The question was, how much more of it was he willing to deal with before the time came to find a way to remove her from the equation?
Chapter 13
Just over a day had passed and Lex was once again sitting in a landing queue. This time he had even managed to remember to use his actual registered transponder code, since this was one of those rare trips that wasn't under a false pretense. Despite the fact he was carrying no illegal materials or passengers, and as far as he knew was not currently wanted by any law enforcement agencies, landing on Tessera had him just a bit nervous. It wasn't that it was a shady planet. To the contrary, it was a veritable paradise. Tessera was one of only two planets discovered in the earliest days of FTL exploration that required virtually no terraforming to be made habitable. That meant it had a very long history, and its spectacular climate made it a favorite for resorts, corporate headquarters, universities, and anything else that could benefit from a nice view. Even better, since it was developed after the "trial and error" phase of industry, it was run by extremely environmentally friendly technologies, and thus had remained fairly unspoiled despite its population and popularity. Anyone who did any traveling at all on an interstellar scale would end up there fairly often, be it for sightseeing, attending a concert, visiting a museum, or just kicking back for a while. Lex, on the other hand, had avoided it for the last eight months. Why? Because the last time he was here, he hurled himself off the top of a train station into rush hour traffic.
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
That stunt, like so much in his life these days, had been the result of the VectorCorp fiasco. The circumstances of the aftermath had led to any lasting records of his behavior being wiped from public record, but no amount of covering up could erase him from the memory of the people whose cars he'd dented up that day. Yes, it was a massive, heavily populated planet, and yes, he was currently heading toward an entirely different continent. That did little to quiet the voice in his head that was convinced that as soon as he touched down, he would hear someone yell "There he is, get him!"
To take his mind off of it, he decided to call Michella to let her know that he'd arrived. After a few moments of establishing a connection, a face popped up on his slidepad. It was a man with dirty blonde hair organized into a meticulously disheveled coiffure; the sort of hair that one styles for an hour to achieve the "Just rolled out of bed" look.
"Hello, Mr. Alexander," said Jon, Michella's assistant.
"Hey, Jon," Lex replied.
The first few times he had called Michella and a man had answered, it had been an unwelcome surprise, but now it was par for the course. She was so frequently on camera, on stage, or otherwise in a situation in which she should not be disturbed, Jon was her slidepad's official keeper. As a result, Lex spoke to his girlfriend's personal assistant almost twice as often as he spoke to her. Now that he though about it, it was kind of sad.
"Mitch around?" Lex asked.
"Well, it is 4:15 PM local, so she's at a meet and greet for the next hour and forty-five. You're here already?"
"That I am. 4:15 PM? Oh, right, Tessera's days are a weird length..."
"Don't I know it. How did you get here so fast?"
"Trade secret."
"Well, Miss Modane has added you to her room's access list. That's room 1553 at the McKenzie Pavilion. It is on Richardson Road, right at the north end of the Millennium Convention Center complex in the center of Rackton."
"I'm sure I'll be able to find it."
"Did you get your VIP credentials for the convention?"
"Let me check... Yeah, I've got the message right here."
"That should get you into the meet and greet if you like."
"Actually, I'm just a wee bit ripe after all of the travel I've been doing. For Mitch's sake, I think I'll take advantage of an actual, factual shower."
"You're all heart, Mr. Alexander."
"That's what I keep telling her. And I keep telling you to stop calling me 'Mr. Alexander.' Every time I hear that it is paired up with 'Your payment is overdue' or 'We would like a word with you privately.' Stick to Lex or Trevor, please."
"I'll try to keep that in mind, and I'll let her know you're here. Take care," Jon replied, motioning to hang up.
"Wait! Uh, Jon... I know this is going to sound weird but... Does Michella talk about me?"
"Does she talk about you? What do you mean? Does she badmouth you?"
"I mean does she bring me up in any way, shape, or form, Jon. Is she at all aware of my absence?"
"You never struck me as the insecure type."
"Just answer the question, Jon."
He smirked and rolled his eyes. "Let's put it this way. You know how much she talks, right?"
"Do I ever."
"Well, when she's talking to me, about half of that is Trevor Alexander. Is it true that one Valentine's Day in college, you-"
"That'll do, Jon. Thank you."
He quickly ended the call and shoved the pad in his pocket. The landing queue finally started to move, and without the need to bluff his way through a cover story, he was into the atmosphere without anything particularly eventful occurring. Thanks to the general wealth of the residents and the strictly enforced laws, you couldn't simply land on the surface. Typical visitors were expected to leave their ships in an orbital dock and ride the shuttles down. If you wanted the honor of actually letting your ship touch their soil, you had to cough up for a landing permit. Lex always did. Call it paranoia, but he hated the idea of his ship being on one side of the atmosphere and himself being on the other. In exchange for the fee, he was at least treated to a flyover view of the city of Rackton.
If you were going to make a brochure for human civilization, Rackton is what you would put on the cover. Every aspect of it was carefully planned out in
advance and immaculately maintained. There were vast stretches of emerald green, perfectly manicured grass. Surface roads were completely absent, replaced with skyways with mandatory autonomous vehicle piloting. No human controlled vehicles meant no cutting people off, no speeding, flawless alternate merging, and no traffic congestion. The laws were enforced with an enthusiasm that fell short of a police state, but not by much, and kept walls graffiti free, dark alleys safe, and property values high. The architecture leaned heavily on the artistic side of the sliding scale of form vs. function. For one thing, the opera house, in accordance with some sort of unwritten law that states such a structure must never be a simple box, was an angular, arching sculpture of a building, based on a fractal. Rackton was a shining example of what many would feel is the best that a city could be. Not bad for a place that sounds suspiciously like it was named after a Swedish shelving unit.
The other building that dominated the landscape from the air was the McKenzie Pavilion, his destination. It was a gleaming work of art, the entire exterior appearing to be a smooth, seamless glass shell. Like the opera house, a simple "four walls and a roof" design simply wouldn't do. Instead it was shaped like a cresting wave, starting almost flush to the ground and rising in a smooth curve until it climbed hundreds of stories into the air, where it actually curled over and produced a scenic overhang, then a steep slope back to the ground. It was breathtaking. Of course, evidently the shiny surface and smooth curve had a habit of focusing the reflected sunlight from the steep side of the building into a dangerously intense beam at certain times of day, and said beam had been scorching the grass until they installed a strategically placed reflecting pool, but such are the costs of art.
In keeping with the city's aesthetic, it had a handful of shipyards, but they were all underground facilities, and they all sat at the perimeter of the city. Normally Lex didn't mind mass transit much, but his journey thus far had allowed for little in the way of personal grooming. Between a face that hadn't seen a razor in a few days, hair that hadn't seen a comb in a few days, and clothes that hadn't seen an iron... ever, Lex was feeling a tad self-conscious about standing on a tram beside the galaxy's social elite. He kept to himself, avoided eye contact, and quietly hoped that the pseudo-hygiene products one relies upon during marathon space flights had done as good a job as the commercials promised they would.
His arrival at the hotel did little to restore his confidence in his appearance. Lex had stayed in places like this before. The kind of people who got a room at The Pavilion didn't do it so that they would have a place to sleep. They did it so that they could inform others that they were staying at The Pavilion. It was a status symbol, the equivalent of a college diploma for the rich and famous. If you were able to stay there, you were somebody. He had stayed there exactly once, a few weeks before the Tremor Grand Prix and his subsequent fall from grace. Returning here now, after all of this time, was an unwelcome reminder of how far down that fall had taken him. The last time he walked through these doors he'd been greeted by name and offered a complementary gift basket. This time...
"I'm sorry, sir, but the service entrance is on the side of the building," said a snooty doorman in a uniform that made him look like he should be playing the triangle in a marching band.
"Believe it or not, I'm here with one of your guests," he said, pulling out his slidepad and showing the access privilege email.
He glanced over the credentials, then Lex's wadded up wardrobe.
"My apologies, of course. The elevator is to your right. And do tell Miss Modane that, in the future, interviewees should be cleared with building management before being given access to the premises."
"I'm not an informant, Jarvis, I'm her boyfriend," he growled.
"Of course," he said, holding the door open.
Lex endured one final uncomfortable journey of judgment, this time on the elevator, then found Michella's room. She had still not returned, which was good, because Lex was already starting to strip down for the shower before the door was even finished closing. He opened the door to a room that looked more like an enchanted grotto than a bathroom; all marble and brass with potted plants and waterfall faucets. After figuring out the shower head, which had more settings and modes than his sound system, and finding the soap, which contained more fruit than he'd eaten in the last month, he finally got down to business. Twenty-five pulsating jets of water quickly convinced him it had been worth the wait.
#
Meanwhile, in a freshly purchased Mobius Armistice, Garotte was stroking at his slidepad, working at the built-in art application. Most of the previous day had been spent in silence. Ma had become a savvy enough judge of human nature to know that the engaging discussions she shared with Lex would not be nearly as fruitful with Garotte. As for him, at no point during the time had the thought of engaging the creature in conversation even occurred to him. He hadn't considered chatting with the control panel of the ship, either, and for much the same reason. After a few hours of sleep drifting in the weightless interior of the cargo bay, he had begun assembling and preparing the documents and equipment he would need for the next stage of the mission. This had begun with the negotiation of the purchase of the Ma-approved equipment list. As luck would have it, one of his suppliers was still in business, and he was able to contact him through the elaborate notification system that had been put in place to prevent their communications from being tracked. It involved making a carefully worded post in an entertainment forum. Seven minutes later there would be a reply that contained a link to a game. For the thirty seconds immediately following the post, the user with the third highest score would be the login to a third site, and the score would be the password. This site would provide the contact info for a go-between, who if he deemed you to be trustworthy would pass you on to the real contact via a random jump, high encryption connection. If the military thought that they had the most secure communications system in the galaxy, it was only because they'd never seen what the black market had come up with.
His suppliers were able to supply every item on his list, and would have the shipment ready for pickup in a few days in exchange for a massive quantity of high denomination poker chips. (One did not shop the black market for the low prices.) With that out of the way, he had turned to the art app and gone to work. Starting with his own face, he began smearing pixels around, altering tints, and tweaking textures. After a while, he had produced a face that, though only the result of subtle changes, looked almost completely unlike his own.
"There. That seems within my capabilities," he remarked, setting the slidepad adrift in front of him and digging a bundle from the bag he'd brought from deGrasse. He continued to dig, releasing a few profanities when he failed to find something else he had been searching for. "No blasted pain killer? How could I forget that!?"
The one item he had been able to find was a canvas roll, and when he pulled at the fastener holding it shut, it unfurled to reveal a series of syringes, perhaps a dozen in total. He eyed them with the same look one wears when preparing to remove an adhesive bandage from one of the hairier parts of one's anatomy.
"Oh, to have worked in the old days," he said with a shake of his head.
"Please clarify your statement," Ma replied.
"Well, I wasn't speaking to you, but considering the task awaiting my attention, in this rare instance your interruption is a welcome one, so I will indulge you," Garotte replied, still staring down the needles. "It all comes down to disguises. For millions of years of human civilization, one simply didn't need a disguise. There were no photos, there was no video. One only knew what someone looked like if that person was a friend or foe. Strangers were just other faces in the crowd. Dismissed easily. Then came the camera, and things became more complicated. Now definitive images could be spread quickly and easily. By good fortune, technology evolved on both sides, and disguises improved; spirit gum, latex, paints and makeup in infinite shades. A man skilled with cosmetics and props could become a stranger in
ten minutes. Not only that, but there was still the need to take and distribute a picture. That took time and was limited. Unsatisfied, science marched on. Now cameras are everywhere, the internet delivers their results far and wide in the blink of an eye, and intelligent machines match faces to names. It has made the lives of those like me truly nightmarish. These days the damned computers don't just recognize faces, they recognize bone structures, and scanners pick up chemical composition. No amount of costume tomfoolery will trick the blasted things AND humans at the same time."
Ma worked at her pad for a few moments.
"Properly applied IR-reflective paint can reliably prevent facial detection and identification," she informed.
"Indeed it will, but a man with black blotches all over his face will raise a few eyebrows in a supermarket. A maximum security prison wouldn't even let him in the door. Thus, we must resort to these," he said with a sigh, "Ossifil and Myofribrox. The former causes bulging, swelling, and extension of affected bone cells, and the latter does the same for muscle tissue. Judicious application of the two in concert will cause physical alterations to facial physiology that nothing short of a deep tissue medical scan will detect. And all for the minor cost of agonizing pain while it is being applied, and the slight possibility of permanent disfigurement if applied incorrectly. A trifle, really."
He clipped the slidepad to a mount on the ceiling, superimposed a video image of himself over the edited photo, and made ready to make the injections. The first of them was moments from touching his skin when a comment from Ma nearly startled him.
"You seem to harbor negative feelings toward computers due to their role in complicating your chosen profession. Is this the motivation behind your uncivil behavior with regards to myself?" she asked.
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