“Well, hiya, missie! Long time no see!” Cowboy said, his face and upper body popping up on the monitor. “Your heart run cold without a little lovin’ from yours truly?”
“You got me.”
He smiled wickedly.
Always it was the ones so intent on being so suave that were the easiest to play. All it took was reassuring them that their all-too transparent ruse couldn’t be seen from a million miles away. With any luck, her sham would fare a lot better.
***
Jane cracked the door on her research lab, such as it was; it looked more like a janitor’s closet, deliberately so, as she fancied a certain amount of subterfuge in her line of work. Not enough apparently. The first thing that struck her was that someone had gone over the place with the intention of finding something, leaving no box unopened, no computer ungutted, no hard drive unremoved. She just smiled. “Sorry, gents, but I had trust issues long before you jokers came along.”
She pulled out the vial with the glowing green liquid that was dangling on a chain about her neck. “Maybe it’s time I found another home for you in the event I’m the next one to get ransacked.”
***
The vial stowed someplace safe, at least for now, Jane could get back to business as usual, to working in secret, until they found her again. Shaking her tail had been no big thing, courtesy of years spent on the run from the stalker ex-husband. This time she’d need a different lab; she couldn’t return to the same location.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t entertain a gathering of some of her techies. As with any time they met, it would be a virtual get together, of course. But the competition was throwing a party at a local pub to celebrate a breakthrough in robotics achieved without the use of nanotech. It was a minor milestone, at best, but she understood the psychology well enough. In this business there were thousands of minor milestones to achieve before hitting actual pay dirt, and if you didn’t celebrate them, you’d never get to dig up the bounty you were really after.
She put through the call on her unhackable cell phone, again courtesy of the one who’d set up her computer network for her. There was no doubt in her mind that his security had never been breached, and that she’d instead led one of her competitors right to her doorstep by dropping her guard. Might have been just one time, perhaps when she allowed herself to walk from one location to another with her head in the clouds, lost in thought over some stumbling block in her research. That one brief lapse in vigilance would have been all it would have taken.
Her cybergeek assistant, another postdoc slave on loan not just to her but a few others who likely didn’t know of one another either, agreed to set up the virtual get together for her. Her protégés would get to experience her enjoying herself at the party, and feel as if they were a part of the fun and sense of accomplishment. “Fun” in this case being relative to a geek’s sense of a good time. They would never know that they were actually celebrating some other company’s success.
Her cybergeek would ensure that the security cameras on the bar were in service to Jane, and would record only laughter and innocuous chatter, nothing that would reveal corporate secrets, or even what the competition was working on. Those “choicer” snippets would be doctored out on the fly by her hacker buddy, assuming the roving overhead cameras even captured them. The event would no doubt not be going out live, but delayed to give her internet techie friend chance to ensure no one saw through the masquerade.
The only thing left to do now was to go have some fun. She supposed she needed it as much as her techies.
***
The pub was alive with laughter and tinkling glasses; you’d think the local football team had just won the world cup. Mike glanced upwards and noticed the blue collar dive’s owner was not without a sense of humor. In a mock parody of establishments like Cracker Barrel and Red Robin, he’d adorned the walls high up toward the ceiling with his own decorations. The back end of an old Cadillac belched smoke out its exhaust pipe. An inflatable porno doll dangled over another area. Some road kill, a deer to be specific, had been stuffed, with its guts hanging out. He seemed to be saving open spots for the next piece of sacrilege to occur to him.
Mike’s body angled to keep the narrow edge in front of him, he knifed through the hubbub to find Jane as far away from the commotion as she could get, sandwiched in a corner near a fire exit, battling an arcade game. “You’re a good sport to celebrate with us,” Mike said. Jane was shooting her way through the video game against all sorts of cloaked assassins. She cheered herself as she made it past level one.
“Why’s that?” she asked.
“I heard our breakthrough pretty much nullifies the need for your research.” She laughed absently as she kept her eyes on the screen, shooting her way past shapeshifters now and all manner of hell-beasts.
“Nah. Competition is good for everybody. I’m about more paths to the future, not less. More choices. Not everyone can buy in to what I’m selling. That makes you and your team someone’s saving grace. Whoever I can’t reach.”
He glanced at the display that was occupying all her attention. “The monsters just keep getting worse and worse the farther into the future you go, like this videogame.”
“That’s pretty grim. What are you basing that on?” she asked, her eyes still on her marksmanship. She’d yet to give him a close going over.
“Human nature. Come on, you mean to tell me that the Singularity, this ever-accelerating pace of technological change, isn’t some kind of progressive apocalypse?”
That got her attention off the game. That got her to look at him. She set the laser gun down. “I think it’s your turn. Maybe the game can let you work through your worst nightmares. Whoever designed it is definitely on your wavelength.”
He put some more quarters in the machine, picked up the laser pistol in both hands.
“What’s with the one gloved hand?” she asked. “Grieving the loss of Michael Jackson?”
“He was afraid to grow old, wasn’t he? When he died, his body was in its forties, but you have to ask yourself if emotionally he ever made it out of his teens. Don’t you think that’s what’s behind all this technological zeitgeist? The desire to live forever? To never have to grow up? To just be boys with toys forever, only always playing with bigger, and better toys?”
“You do realize you guys hit a major milestone today, but it’ll still be years before much comes of it. Plenty of time for more people to die of Alzheimer’s needlessly. If you ask me, the future can’t come fast enough.”
She returned her eyes to the game. “You suck at this. At this rate, you’ll never get off level one.”
“It ever occur to you, I’d rather face human assassins than the monsters that exist at the higher levels?”
“Are we still talking about the videogame, the future, about what technology is turning us into, or the corporate hierarchy?”
“You tell me. You ever meet the people who hired you to do your research?”
She lowered her eyes.
“It’s been my experience the people who create the breakthroughs are seldom the ones who get to decide what becomes of them,” he said. “Those decisions always get made by people far too twisted for words. People who make the monsters in this videogame look good.”
Her eyes darted up to him; they were burning this time. But he was gone. Vaporized into the crowd. “Hey, what are you doing over here in the corner all by yourself?” one of the merrymakers from Team Breakthrough said.
“I was playing against some guy. There he is, the one with the gloved hand. See him?” she said pointing.
“Yeah.”
“Who is that guy?”
“No idea.”
“He said he was one of you.”
“Could be. It’s a big research team. Everyone who wants to share in the credit is here tonight, including a lot of people who don’t deserve to be here.”
“I guess,” she said, relaxing. “Strange sort, that one. Not someone I
’d expect to be working in our field.”
“Takes all kinds to build the future. Keeps it from becoming too lopsided.”
“That’s what I just got done telling him, more or less.” She let the subject of the strange man go. “Come on, let’s get back to the party and having a good time.”
Mike continued to monitor her conversation and activities from a distance courtesy of the microphone he’d planted on her. It wasn’t particularly hard to blend back into the woodwork considering how packed the place was and how good he was at disguises. Already she’d bumped up against him twice, looked straight at him, and had no idea who he was. He’d long since pulled off the latex nose, the plunging forehead, the blond hair, and the slightly enlarged ears, all without bothering to go to the restroom and lock the door behind him. Walking through the throng, and using the moving bodies to mask his trail and his eye-line, pretty much assured that whoever saw him wouldn’t be able to connect the dots as he continued to morph before their eyes. His voice or his scent wouldn’t be the same the next time he saw her either.
***
This was the second bar she’d frequented in as many nights. Mike hadn’t figured Jane for the bar type. Or the drinker. Maybe something was riding her every bit as hard as he’d like to. At least he could breathe in here courtesy of the high ceilings. A lot less crowded too and a lot more high-end. If the last place was a little too blue collar for his tastes, this place had white collar execs written all over it. The more subdued atmosphere was a boon to his ears, which were still ringing from the night before. The amber lights cast a warm glow on everyone, which suited Jane’s personality as much as her looks, he thought. Though she had held up just fine in the harsh lighting of the previous watering hole. Strangely, she and her people seemed more at home in the dive, which spoke well to their down-to-earth natures, he supposed. But maybe she didn’t have all the party reverie to separate her from her thoughts tonight, either.
He headed over to the bar and sidled up beside her, keeping to her left side.
“You shouldn’t drink out of that,” Michael said, as the bartender poured the vodka.”
Jane looked at the half-filled glass as the bartender finished adding the orange juice. “And why not?”
“He didn’t wash the glass,” he whispered as he leaned into her.
Jane chuckled. She hadn’t bothered to take him in yet except in her peripheral vision, probably thinking he was just hitting on her in his own inimical manner. Perhaps he was. Pity, the new dimpled chin he was sporting, courtesy of a little applied latex, was a work of art, not to mention the haunting green eyes. The colored contacts would have been that much harder to spot in the soft lighting. “The liquor will kill any germs long before it impairs my judgment as much as yours,” she said.
“Well, then, don’t drink it because vodka is so beneath you. As a liquor, its presence is too easily masked by the juice. To think of slipping something in to yourself so devoid of personality, that it can come and go without leaving a trace.”
She chuckled. “That’s a fair description of my last couple boyfriends, alright.” She took another swig of her drink waiting for the witty retort that never came. Finally, her curiosity getting the best over, she looked over at where he was sitting.
But by then he was already gone. By the way she swiveled about on the stool, whipping her head about in an effort to see where he’d made off to, how he could have made off so hurriedly, he could tell he’d spooked her more than charmed her.
***
The next time Mike crossed paths with Jane, she was attending a medical conference. He made sure to sit to her left; his right side was his good side. He’d altered his appearance and his voice yet again. His skin was so bleached, he’d have passed as a Nordic type who never saw any sun. The more chiseled features, again with the help of some latex, helped maintain the illusion of the handsome Norseman. He made sure his skin color was never entirely the same. It might strike beginners at this game as a minor point, but experience had shown him something as minor as that could arouse suspicion, especially when meeting someone new, since the person’s guard was already up. Even his scent was quite different, as it needed to be, this close to her. More like warm cinnamon this time, less like the Spanish marjoram of the last time, or like the woodsy, musky aroma the time before that.
“I’m glad I’m not the only fool here today,” he said, making a mock effort to look about at the spotty attendance in the auditorium. “If I read this guy’s paper right, he thinks electrical stimulation can help regrow limbs.”
Jane stifled a chuckle, giving him only a passing glance. “I don’t know; it’s not that outlandish.”
“But you do agree it’s going to take more than that, a hell of a lot more. Of course, what would I know? I’m not a scientist.”
Once again, she smiled without really giving him her full attention. “This is pretty high level stuff for someone who doesn’t have a PhD in the area.”
The lights dimmed and the speaker walked onto the podium. “Sorry,” Jane said, “that was very condescending of me. I forget sometimes it often takes someone from outside the field to lend a fresh outlook. That was true in my case. No reason why it can’t be true in yours.”
When she didn’t get a response, she checked the seat beside her, and it was empty. He was sitting a row back now and pretended to be listening to the speaker when she turned around to check the row behind her and found just him sitting there. But by then he’d peeled off the beard, added the hat from his left jacket pocket and the pipe from his right. The pipe smoke already working to mask his prior scent from the cedar oil infused into the tobacco. She didn’t give him a second look. When she checked the seat beside her again, she saw the note, picked it up, unfolded it and read it.
You should learn to take in your surroundings better, Jane. Be more alert to people, places, and things. It could save your life.
He heard her gasp.
She got up, ran up the aisle, tapped the man on the shoulder seated closest to the aisle a few rows up. “Excuse me. Did you see someone leaving the room suddenly?” When she didn’t get a response, she gazed down at him, impatient and annoyed, and only then realized the man wasn’t just looking her way; his neck was snapped. She felt for a pulse, got none. “Hel… Hel… Help!” she finally got out. “Someone help! A man’s been killed.”
The speaker asked for the light to be raised. “Oh, dear God,” he said.
It took a moment for her to realize he wasn’t referring to her remark or the man she was standing next to. When she gazed around the auditorium, she saw the other eight people were all dead. They were all staring over one or another shoulder with dead eyes, their necks snapped. “I’ll… I’ll check for pulses,” the speaker at the podium said, “while you call for help.”
“No,” Jane said. “One of them could still be the killer, cloaking himself until he can get out of the room.”
Smart, Jane. Glad to see you getting with the program.
“I’ll go for help then, you keep an eye out,” the speaker said, fleeing the room.
Jane smiled. “You do that.” She kept scanning the room for him. How could he tell her that he’d just saved her from these people? That he wasn’t the only one following her? That if it weren’t for him she’d have been kidnapped, tortured, or killed, many times over already? That these latest bodies didn’t even add to the body count appreciably? The simple answer was, there was no telling her. If he were in her position, he’d be convinced he was entirely psychotic. Locked in some delusion of being her rescuer secondary to some perverse fixation on her, like any stalker escalating into a serial killer. He was beginning to think the same thing himself.
She kept vigilantly combing the room for the first sign of movement. But by the time the commotion set in with medics and emergency personnel flooding the room—it was a hospital, after all—it was easy to get lost in the hubbub, for her and for him.
SIX
That night Jane w
as taking dinner at a five star restaurant where everything sparkled. Everything was beautiful. Mike could tell by how she relaxed more and more as she took in her surroundings that the designer motif made her feel safe, as if it could keep all the ugliness of the world at bay with colors, and shapes, and composition alone. She’d made herself over to suit in a fine dress, makeup, which was rare for her, earrings, which he’d never seen her wear. She smiled every time the waiter came to freshen her glass of wine.
“Come have dinner with me,” Mike said. He was seated the table over. It was perhaps the first time she’d seen him with both her eyes front and center, instead of just in her peripheral vision. It didn’t matter. He’d morphed yet again, with the help of more applied latex and theatrical makeup than ever. He was in his sixties in this incarnation, instead of his actual age of thirty-five. His face was one she’d not likely remember even while staring at it. “No point in both of us eating alone. I assure you, I’m quite harmless.”
“Somehow, I doubt that.”
He chuckled. “Alright, you got me. I lure beautiful women into five star restaurants to dispatch them horribly in a parking lot somewhere because why do it on the cheap when I can spend all this money to do so?”
She laughed nervously, feeling like a damn ass as the air trapped in her lungs all this time found its way out finally. All the same, it was a little too soon from the aborted lecture at the hospital with eight dead people for that joke to really fly. Running her eyes over the restaurant, she found it very suspicious that no one else was being seated. She returned her eyes to him, the sense of panic returning.
“Relax,” he said. “I paid extra for the privacy.”
“Then why am I here?”
“I told them to make an exception for any beautiful woman dining alone.”
Nano Man Page 4