by Jim Butcher
The computer was the size of a house, covered with all kinds of monitor screens and readouts but no obvious controls, with great pieces constantly turning and sliding across each other. It was made of metal and crystal and other things I didn’t even recognise. At the foot of it was an extended hollow section, like a large upright coffin, and suspended within this hollow was Frank Barclay, hanging in a slowly pulsing web of tubes and wires and cables, naked, ecstatic, transported. Liza made a low, painful sound, as though she’d been hit.
Frank’s groin was hidden behind a cluster of machine parts, always moving, sliding over and around him like a swarm of metallic bees, clambering over themselves in their eagerness to get to him. Like metal maggots, in a self-inflicted wound. Thick translucent tubes had been plugged into his abdomen, and strange liquids surged in and out of him. Up and down his naked body, parts of him had been dissected away, to show bones and organs being slowly replaced by new mechanical equivalents. There was no bleeding, no trauma. One thigh bone had been revealed from top to bottom, one end bone and the other metal, and already it was impossible to tell where the one began and the other ended. Metal rods plunged in and out of Frank’s flesh, sliding back and forth, never stopping. Lights blinked on and off inside him, briefly rendering parts of his skin transparent; and in that skin I could see as many wires as blood vessels.
The computer was heaving and groaning, in rhythm to the things going in and out of Frank’s naked body, and the machine’s steel exterior was flushed and beaded with sweat. It made . . . orgasmic sounds. Frank’s face was drawn, shrunken, the skin stretched taut across the bone, but his eyes were bright and happy, and his smile held a terrible pleasure. Cables penetrated his skin, and metal parts penetrated his body, and he loved it. One cable had buried itself in his left eye socket, replacing the eyeball, digging its way in a fraction of an inch at a time. Frank didn’t care. He shuddered and convulsed as things slid in and out of him, changing him forever, and he loved every last bit of it.
Liza stood before him, tears rolling silently and unheeded down her devastated face.
I turned to Barry Kopek. “Is he dying?”
“Yes, and no,” said Kopek. “He’s becoming something else. Something wonderful. We are making him over, transforming him, into a living component capable of being host to machine consciousness. A living and an unliving body, for an Artificial Intelligence from a future time line. It came to the Nightside through a Timeslip, fleeing powerful enemies. It wants to experience sin, and in particular the hot and sweaty sensations of the flesh. It wants to know what we humans know, and take for granted; all the many joys of sex. Together, Frank and the computer are teaching each other whole new forms of pleasure. He is teaching the machine all the colours of emotion and sensuality, and the very subtle joys of degradation. In return, the machine is teaching him whole new areas of perception and conception. Man becomes machine, becomes more than machine, becomes immortal living computer. A metal messiah for a new Age . . .”
Kopek’s face was full of vision now, a zealot in his cause. “Why should men be limited to being just men, and machines just machines? Human and inhuman shall combine together, to become something far superior to either. But like all new life, it begins with sex.”
“How many others have there been?” said Dead Boy. “Before Frank?”
“One hundred and seventeen,” said Kopek. “But Frank is different. He doesn’t just believe. He wants this.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Dead Boy. “Looks like he’s coming his brains out.”
Liza collapsed, her knees slamming painfully onto the crystal floor. Her face was twisted, ugly, filled with a horrid knowledge, as all her repressed memories came flooding back at once. She pounded on the floor with her fist, again and again and again.
“No! No, no, no! I remember . . . I remember it all! I came here, following Frank. Following my husband, into the Nightside, and through its awful streets, all the way here . . . Because I thought he was cheating on me. I thought he had a lover here. He hadn’t touched me in months. I thought he was having an affair, but I never suspected this . . . Never thought he wanted . . . this.”
“She talked her way in, yesterday,” said Kopek. “Determined to see her husband. But when we brought her here, and showed her, she went berserk. Attacked the computer. Did some little damage, before the robots drove her off. We wouldn’t let her hurt Frank, or herself, and after a while she left.”
“And she blocked out the memories herself,” I said. “Because they were unbearable.”
“How could you?” Liza screamed at Frank. “How could you want this? It doesn’t love you! It can’t love you!”
Frank stirred for the first time, his one remaining eye slowly turning to look down at her. His face showed no emotion, no compassion for the woman he’d loved and married, not so long ago. When he spoke, his voice already contained a faint machine buzz.
“This is what I want. What I’ve always wanted. What I need . . . And what you could never give me. I’ve dreamed of this for years . . . of flesh and metal coming together, moving together. Thought it was just a fetish, never told anyone . . . Knew they could never understand. Until someone told me about the Nightside, the one place in the world where anything is possible; and I knew I had to come here. This is the place where dreams come true.”
“Including all the bad ones,” murmured Dead Boy.
“What about us, Frank?” said Liza, tears streaming down her face.
“What about us?” said Frank.
“You selfish piece of shit!”
Suddenly she was back on her feet again, heading for Frank with her hands stretched out like claws, moving so fast even the robots couldn’t react fast enough to stop her. She jumped up and into the coffin, punched her fist into a hole in Frank’s side, and thrust her hand deep inside him. His whole body convulsed, the machines going crazy, and then Liza laughed triumphantly as she jerked her hand back out again. She dropped back down onto the crystal floor, brandishing her prize in all our faces. Blood dripped thickly from the dark red muscle in her hand. I grabbed her arms from behind as she shouted hysterically at her husband.
“You see, Frank? I have your heart! I have your cheating heart!”
“Keep it,” said Frank, growing still and content again, in the metal arms of his lover. “I don’t need it anymore.”
And already the machines were moving over him, mopping up the blood and sealing off his wound, working to replace the heart with something more efficient. While the computer heaved and groaned and sweated, Frank sighed and smiled.
It was too much for Liza. She sank to her knees again, sobbing violently. Her hand opened, and the crushed heart muscle fell to the crystal floor, smearing it with blood. She laughed as she cried, the horrid sound of a woman losing her mind, retreating deep inside herself because reality had become too awful to bear. I gave her something to breathe in, from my coat pocket, and in a moment she was asleep. I eased her down until she was lying full length on the floor. Her face was empty as a doll’s.
“I don’t get it,” said Dead Boy, honestly puzzled. “It’s just sex. I’ve seen worse.”
“Not for her,” I said. “She loved him, and he loved this. To be betrayed and abandoned by a husband for another woman or even a man is one thing, but for a machine? A thing? A computer that meant more to him than all her love, that could do things for him that she never could? Because for him, simple human flesh wasn’t enough. He threw aside their love and their marriage and all their life together, to have sex with a computer.”
“Can you do anything for her?” said Dead Boy. “We’ve got to do something, John. We can’t leave her like this.”
“You always were a sentimental sort,” I said. “I know a few things. I’m pretty sure I can find a way to put her back the way she was, when she came to us, and this time make sure the memories stay repressed. No memory at all, of the Nightside or Silicon Heaven. I’ll take her back into London proper, wake her up, and leave
her there. She’ll never find her way back in on her own. And in time, she’ll get over the mysterious loss of her husband, and move on. It’s the kindest thing to do.”
“And the metal messiah?” said Dead Boy, curling his colourless lip at Frank in the computer. “We just turn our back on it?”
“Why not?” I said. “There’s never been any shortage of gods and monsters in the Nightside; what’s one more would-be messiah? I doubt this one will do any better than the others. In the end, he’s just a tech fetishist, and it’s just a mucky machine with ideas above its station. Everything to do with sex, and nothing at all to do with love.”
You can find absolutely anything in the Nightside; and every sinner finds their own level of Hell, or Heaven.
THE THIRD DEATH OF THE LITTLE CLAY DOG
KAT RICHARDSON
FOR TEAM SEATTLE AND THE DENVER MOB
Trouble radiated from the black figurine like some kind of dark neon at the Devil’s own fairground. Not that I could actually see any such thing even in the Grey, but an electric prickling sensation zipped up my arms and down my spine when I touched it and that was close enough; I know human hair can’t literally stand on end like a dog’s, but I would have sworn mine was trying to.
Nanette Grover was still standing at the side of her desk, looking at me and the little statue. Her fanatically neat office flickered silver, smudged with red and orange and sad shades of green she would never see—the emotional and energetic leftovers of her clients still hanging in the Grey like smoke. A ghost or two lingered in the corners with sour, accusing faces and the odor of misery, muttering their cycles of frustration. They weren’t interested in me, so I ignored them and put my attention back on Nan.
She was impeccable as always: her straightened, java-brown hair was smoothed into a perfect French twist, her stylish tweed skirt suit was unwrinkled even after she’d been behind her desk since five a.m., and her smooth, dark skin was highlighted by delicate makeup that didn’t show a single crease. Even her energy corona was cool and constrained to a narrow bright line, except when she stepped onto the stage of the courtroom floor, where it alternated between hypnotic pall and legal scalpel. In spite of her beauty she had all the warmth of a copper pipe in the snow—which was part of her appeal as a litigator, but not as a human being. One of her opponents in court had referred to her as “the Queen of Nubia,” and it wasn’t hard imagining Nan on a war elephant chasing off Alexander the Great—even her allies found her intimidating. “Well?” she asked, the word leaving amber ripples in the air.
“Well what?” I responded, shrugging off the commanding effect of her voice.
“You’re supposed to accept or reject the conditions.”
“What happens if I say no?”
Her energy closed back down to an icy line. “Then I have instructions regarding the disposition of the item.”
“What are those?”
“None of your business. Yes, or no, Harper.”
“What was it the client wants done with this, again?”
Nan sat down on the other side of the desk, the mistiness of the settling Grey giving her a deceptively soft appearance, and blinked once, long and slow—like some kind of reset—and explained again, with no heat or change of inflection from the first time. “A colleague of mine in Mexico City forwarded this item to me upon the death of his client. His client, Maria-Luz Arbildo, left you a bequest in her will, with conditions. Namely, to personally hand-carry the statuette—this little dog figurine—to Oaxaca City in Oaxaca state in Mexico, and place it on the grave of Hector Purecete on the night of November first and attend the grave as local tradition dictates until daybreak of November second. Additional specific instructions for the preparation of the grave will be provided. All this to be done in the first occurrence of November first following his client’s death. Ms. Arbildo died earlier this month.”
“The twentieth of October,” I added. “A week ago.”
Nan nodded.
“November first is the day after Halloween. Doesn’t that seem strange to you?” I asked.
Nan’s ice-smooth expression didn’t change. “No.”
“And I never met this woman, never heard of her, but she sends this thing all the way to Seattle so I can take it all the way back to Mexico—the far end of Mexico, I might add. Still not sounding kind of weird?”
“I don’t question the conditions of clients.”
“Is this sort of thing even legal?”
“Perfectly. If it flew in the face of public interest, then it would be illegal, but this does not. The conditions also do not require you to do anything illegal either here or there, nor to violate your professional ethics, nor take on unreasonable expenses—everything will be paid for by Ms. Arbildo’s estate. If you choose to follow the conditions of Ms. Arbildo’s bequest, you will receive the thirty thousand dollars, once the conditions have been completely and correctly met. Sum to be paid through this office.”
I was raised in Los Angeles County, California, so I’m not totally ignorant of Mexican culture—just mostly. I knew the first of November was the Mexican equivalent of Halloween, but I didn’t know the details. My experience as a Greywalker, however, makes me wary of any date on which the dead are said to go abroad among the living. I know that ghosts—and plenty of other creepy things—are around us all the time, it’s just that most people don’t see them. I do more than just see them; I live with them and I’ve discovered that days associated with the dead are usually worse than most people imagine—they’re veritable Carnivales of the incorporeal, boiling pools of magical potential. So being asked to take a folk sculpture to a Mexican graveyard on the Day of the Dead sounded like a dangerous idea to me. Especially when the client is deceased.
On the other hand, I can at least see what’s going on. As someone who lives half in and half out of the realm of ghosts, monsters, and magic, I stand a chance against whatever strange thing may rear its head in such a situation. And the money was attractive. The work I regularly did for Nan, investigating witnesses and filling in the details of her cases prior to trial, paid the majority of my bills, but it wasn’t an extravagant living. Even with all the rest of my work added in, thirty thousand dollars was a major chunk of what I usually made in a year and it would only take about four days.
I looked back down at the statuette. It was a hollow clay figure of a dog, about a foot tall and long—give or take—and about four inches wide. The shape was simplified, not realistic, with stumpy legs and tail, a cone-shaped muzzle, and a couple of pinched clay points for ears. It had been painted with a gritty black paint and decorated with dots and lines of red and white that made rings around the limbs and a lightning bolt on the dog’s side. It also had two white dots for eyes, but no sign of a mouth.
Peering at it, I could see the little clay dog had been cracked and repaired at some point, the casting hole in its belly covered up with an extra bit of clay and painted over with more of the black paint. A hint of Grey energy gleamed around the repair seam, but beyond that, I couldn’t tell anything about what might be inside the dog. The statue itself had only a thin sheen of Grey clinging to its surface like old dirt, as if whatever magical thing it came from had withered long ago. There wasn’t any indicative cloud of color or angry sparks around it as I’d seen with other magical objects, yet I was sure there was something more to it than met the eye.
I looked back up at Nan, who hadn’t moved so much as an eyebrow. The silence in her office would have unnerved some people, but I found it pleasant in contrast to the incessant mutter and hum of the living Grey and its ghosts.
“What about the lawyer?” I asked.
“What about him?”
“Is he legit?”
Nan didn’t crack either a smile or a frown. “Yes. His name is Guillermo Banda. He does a lot of maritime and international work.”
I admit I had some reservations, but I was also a little intrigued by the mystery of it—I’m a sucker for mysteries—and the m
oney was pretty good, so I shrugged and said, “All right, I’ll take the thing to Mexico.”
Nan waved to the small shipping carton from which she’d originally removed the dog at the start of our conversation. “You can put it back in its box while I get the papers ready. I’ll need your signature on a receipt to prove that you picked it up and I have a copy of the instructions for you as well.”
I nodded and wiggled the little clay dog back into the snow-storm of paper shred that had sprung from the box when Nan had opened it. We finished up quickly and I left with the papers in my pocket and the box full of probable trouble under my arm.
The aluminum and glass tower that houses Nan’s office has lousy cell reception, so I had to wait until I was just outside the lobby doors to make a call.
“King County Medical Examiner’s office. May I help you?”
“I’d like to speak to Reuben Fishkiller, please,” I replied.
I was put on hold for a few moments while someone located the forensic lab technician for me. I’d met him during an investigation into the deaths of homeless people in Pioneer Square and Fish’s connections to the local Salish Indians had certainly come in handy. But he’d been a bit upset when one of his ancestral legends tried to kill us and I hoped he wasn’t still too freaked out to talk to me.
“This is Fish, what can I do for you?”
“Hi, Fish, it’s Harper Blaine.”
He paused. “Oh. Hi, Harper. You, uh . . . need something?”
“I do, if you’re willing to do it for me.”
“Does it have anything to do with monsters in the sewer this time? Or Salish holy ground? Because I really didn’t enjoy the last time.”
“No monsters, no Salish, no sewers. I promise. I just need an X-ray.”