Near + Far

by Cat Rambo

  And after all that, you won't know for days.

  Grizz wouldn't say anything about how she thought she'd done—she was afraid of jinxing it, I think, plus she was still pissed at me about the Lorelei business.

  I could tell as soon as we walked out, though, she was happy. I walked her back to Ajah's and said I was heading down to the court to see if our forms had come in. She nodded and headed inside. It was a gray morning. But nice—some sunlight filtered down through the brown haze that sat way up in the sky for once. The smoke-eater trees along the street gleamed bright green and down near the trunks sat clumps of pale-blue flowers, most of them coming into their prime, although a few were browned and curling. I could feel all that memory on my back, lying across my shoulder blades and I found myself Capturing.

  I'd only heard it described before—most people don't have the focus or the memory to do it more than a split-second. But I opened to every detail: the watery sepia sunlight and the shimmer playing over the feathers of the two starlings on a branch near me. The cars whispering across the street and two sirens battling it out, probably bound for St. Joe Emergency Services. The colors, oh, the colors passing by, smears of blue and brown and red flashes like song. The smell of the exhaust and dust mingled with a whiff of Mexican spices from the Taco Bell three doors down. Every detail crystal clear and recorded.

  I dropped out of it, feeling my whole body shaking, spasms of warring tension and relief like hands gripping my arms and legs.

  I tried to bring it back, tried to make the world go super sharp again, but it wouldn't cooperate. I stood there with jaw and fists clenched, trying to force it, but nothing happened.

  Within three days, Grizz had heard. A year of training at the Desmond Horticultural Institute, then a three year internship at the State Gardens in Washington. Student housing all four years, which meant I wouldn't be going along.

  At first we fought about it. I figured it was a no-brainer—go there jobless or stick here where I had contacts, friends ready with a handout or a few days work. But once Grizz had been there a while, she insisted, she'd be able to scrounge me something so I could move closer.

  Ajah's girlfriend, Suzanne, got her set up with a better wardrobe and a suitcase from the used clothing store she ran. I bought her new shoes, black leather boots with silver grommets, solid and efficient looking.

  "What are you going to do without me?" she asked.

  "I've gotten by before," I said. "You work hard for us, get somewhere. Five years down the line, who knows?"

  It was a stupid, facile answer, but we both pretended it was meaningful.

  And we did stay in touch, chatted back and forth in IMs. She was working hard, liked her classmates. She read this and that and the other thing. They kept telling her how well she was doing.

  Unwritten in her messages was the question: What are you doing with it, with the memory?

  Because certainly it was doing the same thing on her body as it was on mine: thickening like scars healing in reverse, bulky layers of skin-like substance building over each other. In Ajah's bathroom mirror, I could see the skin purpling like bruises around the layers. My sole consolation was Capturing; extended effort had paid off and I could summon the experience longer now, perhaps ten seconds all together. I kept working at it; Captured pieces sell well in upscale markets if you can get a name for yourself.

  And I had the advantage of being able to do it as often as I liked, although each time still left me feeling wrung out and weak. I kept trying to Capture and never hit the memory's end; the only limits were my strained senses. My eyes took on a perpetual dazzled squint as though holy light surrounded everything around me.

  I never told Grizz though. Nor about the fact that every time I went to jack into the Net, the drug got between me and the interface. I was glad I hadn't seen Lorelei—I was starting to wonder if she'd given it to me deliberately. It scared me. I lost myself in Capturing more and more. I started delivering packages for Ajah and Susanne, and laid aside enough cash to buy a simple editing package for it.

  Editing is internal work, so you can do it dozing on a park bench if you've got the mental room to spread out and take a look at the big picture. I did. What I wanted to do was start selling clips on the channels. It'd take a while though, I could tell, and I was still working out how I'd upload it, given the problems jacking in. I figured at some point I'd burn it off to flash memory and then use an all-accessible terminal, with keyboard and mouse. In the meantime I caged what meals I could, slept on a round of couches, and showed up at Ajah's often.

  Sometimes after a meal, he'd roll out the still on its mismatched castors, and we'd strain its milky contents in order to drink them. He and I would sit near the window, passing the bottle back and forth.

  Early on into Grizz's apprenticeship, he asked me about the memory. He said "That med complex near the dock, the one that went bust a few months ago, did you guys ever score out of there? I know that was in your turf."

  "Went in one time and scored a little crap but not much." Our hands were both touching the bottle as I took it from him. I added, "Nothing but some old memory," and felt the bottle twitch in his sudden anguished grip.

  "What did you do with it?" he asked, watching me pour.

  "We used it. How do you think she did so well on the Exams?"

  "But you didn't," he said, confused.

  "Well, Grizz isn't a moron, and I am, which would account for it."

  He grunted and took the bottle back.

  "If I'd taken stuff from there," he said. "I'd just not mention it to anyone ever. There have been some nasty customers asking around about it."

  I went to visit Grizz a few weeks later; her roommate was out of town for the weekend. We ate in the cafeteria off her meal card: more food than I'd seen in a long time, and then went back to her room and stripped naked to lie in each other's arms.

  We could have been there hours, but eventually we got hungry and went back to the cafeteria. The rest of the weekend was the same progression, repeated multiple times, up until Sunday afternoon, and the consequent tearful, snuffling goodbye. I'd never seen Grizz act sentimental before; it didn't suit her.

  "You need to do something," she said, looking strained.

  "Other than planning on riding your gravy train?"

  "It's not that, Jonny, and you know it."

  I could have told her then about the Capturing, but I was annoyed. Let her think me just another peon, living off dole and scavenging. Fine by me.

  The wall phone rang, and she broke off staring at me to answer it.

  "Hello," she said. "Hello?" She shrugged and hung it up. "Nothing but breathing. Fuckazoid pervs."

  "Get much of that?"

  "Every once in a while," she said. "Some of the other students don't like Dregs. Afraid I might stink up the classroom."

  It irritated me that she'd said how much she liked it and now was asking for sympathy, as though her life was worse than mine. So I left it there and made my goodbye. She clung to the doorframe, staring after me.

  It wasn't as though I had much to leave behind; it was perhaps my mind's sullen statement, forgetting my jacket. I got four blocks away, then jogged back, ran up the stairs. Knocked on the door and found silence, so I slipped the lock and went in.

  By then ... by then she was dead, and they had already left her. The memory was stripped from her skin, leaving ragged, oozing marks. Her throat had been cut with callous efficiency.

  I stood there for at least ten minutes, just breathing. There was no chance she was not dead. The world was shaking me by the shoulders and all I did was stand there, Capturing, longer than I had ever managed before. Every detail, every dust mote riding the air, the smell of the musty carpeting and a quarrel next door over a student named Dian.

  I didn't stick around to talk to the cops. I knew the roommate would be there soon to call it in. I might have passed her in the downstairs lobby: a thin Eurasian woman with a scar riding her face like an emotion.r />
  When I got to Ajah's, they'd been there as well. He'd taken a while to die, and they had paid him with leisure, leisure to contemplate what they were doing to him. But he was unmistakably dead.

  They had caught him in the preparations for a meal; a block of white chicken meat, sized and shaped like a brick lay on the cutting board, his good, all-purpose knife next to it. "Man just needs one good knife for everything," he used to say. A bowl of breadcrumbs and an egg container sat near the chicken.

  Someone knocked on the door behind me, and opened it even as I turned. It was Lorelei, still well-heeled and clean. Her bosses must be paying well.

  "Jonny," she said. She didn't even look at Ajah's body. Unsurprised. "Is it true?"

  "Is what true?"

  "They said he gave up a name, just one, but when I heard the name, I knew there had to be two."

  "What was the name?"

  She chuckled. "You know already, I think. Grizz."

  "Because of the memory?"

  "It's more than memory. It grows as you add to it. Self-perpetuating. New tech—very special. Very expensive."

  "We found it in the garbage!"

  She laughed. "You've done it yourself, I know. What's the best way to steal from work?"

  "Stick it in the trash and pick it up later," I realized.

  She nodded, "But when two streets come along, and take it first, you're out of luck." Her smile was cold. "So then you ask around, send a few people to track it."

  "Did you mean to poison the Net for me? Was that part of it?"

  "You mean you haven't found the cure yet?" she said. "Play around with folk remedies. It'll come to you. But no. I was angry and figured I'd fuck you over the way you did me."

  "Do they know my name?"

  She smiled in silence at me.

  "Answer me, you cunt," I said. Three steps forward and I was in her face.

  She backed up towards the door, still smiling.

  The knife was in easy reach. I stabbed her once, then again. And again. Capturing every moment, letting it sear itself into the memory, and I swear it went hot as the bytes of experience wrote themselves along my back.

  "They don't ... " she started to say, then choked and fell forward, her head flopping to one side in time with the knife blows. She almost fell on me, but I pushed her away. Her wallet held black market script, and plenty of it, along with some credit cards. I didn't see any salvageable mods. The GPS's purple glimmer tempted me, but they can backtrack those. I didn't want anything traceable.

  All the time that I rifled through her belongings, feeling the dead weight she had become, I played the memory back of the forward lurch, the head flop and twist, again, again, her eyes going dull and glassy. The thoughts seared on my back as though it were on fire, but I kept on recording it, longer and more intense than I ever had before.

  She was right about the folk remedies; feverfew and Valerian made the drug relax its hold and let me slide back into cyberspace. I've published a few pieces: a spring day with pigeons, an experimental subway ride, a sunset over the river. Pretty stuff, where I can find it. It seems scarce.

  One reviewer called me a brave new talent; another easy and glib. The sales are still slow, but they'll get better. My latest show is called "Memories of Moments, Bright as Falling Stars"—all stuff on the beach at dawn, the gulls walking back and forth at the waves' edge and the foam clinging to the wet sand before it's blown away by the wind.

  I don't use the Captures of Grizz's body or Lorelei's death in my art, but I replay them often, obsessively. Sitting on the toilet, showering, eating, walking—Capturing other things is the only way I have to escape them.

  Between the royalties and Suzanne's continued employment though, I do well enough. She's moved into Ajah's place, and I've taken the room behind the clothing store where she used to live. I cook what I can there, small and tasteless meals, and watch the memories in my head.

  Memories of moments, as bright as falling stars.

  Afternotes

  The story started for me with a vision of Grizz and Jonny putting the memory wire on each other. From there, I tried to build a world that paid attention to class dynamics—in a system where money buys you the augmentations necessary to move ahead in the system, what happens when someone gets augmentation that they weren't supposed to have? It drives me a little nuts when speculative fiction doesn't acknowledge issues of class, and so here, as with other stories, I've tried to think about where the money in the society lies and what effect that has.

  This piece originally appeared in Talebones, edited by Patrick Swenson, with an absolutely beautiful illustration by Ben Baldwin that really showed he'd read the story. It's always such an odd delight to have someone else illustrate your work, and I took great pleasure in his lovely artwork.

  REALFUR

  You may remember the ad campaigns, which they yanked hastily just as the trial began: a shot of a woman, damask skin and midnight hair, her back turned, against a red-draped background.

  As the commercial begins, she has apparently just stepped naked from a fur coat, which lies pooled in silvery-gray folds around her feet. Looking over her shoulder with a Mona Lisa smile, she dips and extends her hands to the fur, which surges upward to meet her touch. Like a cloak of furry snakes, it slides over her exquisite form, and she turns as it extends over her torso. Skin flashes, tantalizing, before the fur curves over it. So cool, so clean, so seductive.

  "I believe," she informs us with a touch of hauteur, "in being pampered." She slides a palm along the fur, stroking it.

  The fur lengthens as her hand passes over it, extending to calf-length. Her sculpted chin brushes along the fur collar and the subtle soft gray darkens at the touch, like a monochromatic blush. Lifting her face, she gives the camera an orgasmic smile.

  "Don't you deserve something real? RealFur. Because there's no luxury like life around you."

  Scrolled across her belly: http://www.noluxurylikelife.com.

  The Yahoo Most-Mailed Photo of the Day featured her standing with the coat sliding slowly off her. Most of the media furor was manufactured, sponsored advertising hype: few people could afford the coats at 10k a pop.

  But Larry always had to have the latest thing for Libby. And because they had a two for one deal, he bought me, her sister, one as well.

  At the time I lived in the back of the house, where I had my own little studio apartment, bathroom and kitchenette. Most of the time I was home with Libby; sometimes I went out running errands or working with one of the foundations that sometimes call me in. I'm a CPA, the sort you hire when everything else has failed, or if there are mysterious gaps in the database that need to be reconciled. I could afford my own place easily but this way I felt like part of the family. Larry hinted that he wouldn't mind me out, but he also liked the money I bring in—the way I covered half the mortgage on his lakeside house. That was us, the New American Family.

  The package arrived in a big brown truck, two large boxes labeled REALFUR(TM), which I signed for. They were addressed to Larry, so I left them in the hallway and went in to find Libby in the living room, staring out at the water.

  I've always hated that room. It's the Land of Exotic Knickknacks, souvenirs from Thailand, Bali, Australia, Japan, Switzerland, all over the world. Larry's sole decorating criterion was that it not be American-made, and every time Libby suggested it might be updated, he'd whine ferociously until she abandoned the thought.

  "Larry got some packages," I said.

  She pulled her attention back from the water and looked at me. "What sort?"

  "Looks like two RealFurs."

  "What? Those cost an arm and a leg."

  I shrugged. "Latest thing," I said, my tone noncommittal.

  She went into the hallway and looked at the boxes. Even the outside packaging was distinctive: glossy plastic coating with a metallic sheen, the logo like a sleek animal sprawled across the surface.

  "I'm opening them," she said. "Well, one at least."
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  The kitchen knife whispered through brightly colored packing tape. The Styrofoam pellets inside were the same color as the label.

  "Nice packaging," I said, peering over her shoulder.

  "Piss off," she said. "How much do you think he spent on this?"

  "There's the bill of lading." I pointed.

  She snatched it up and unfolded it. "Two for one deal," she said.

  "What's the description?"

  "Basic RealFur (lilac) and Basic RealFur (pink). Two complimentary feeding stations. Two manuals and certificates of ownership."

  I pulled out the silvery sack. "Do you think this is RealFur (lilac) or RealFur (pink)?"

  "There's only one way to find out."

  The knife spoke again, and fur spilled out in lavish warmth. As the air struck it, it stirred, and Libby stepped back.

  "Pink, evidently," I said.

  She knelt and stretched a hand out to it. It rolled forward and rose to meet her touch like a cat arching its back into a caress.

  "So soft," she said.

  It crept forward to nuzzle her ankles.

  "Will it become a coat now, I wonder?"

  "I think it's waiting to be asked," I said, watching it.

  She reached her hands down and it flowed upward and along her shoulders. Her eyes closed, focusing on the sensation.

  "It's warm," she said a little breathlessly.

  I paged through the manual. "It cleans itself through an electrostatic charge," I read. "You set the feeding station up in a corner of the closet you'll be keeping it in."

  "Won't that smell?"

  "It says it lives off protein molecules."

  "That's pretty meaningless. What sort?"

  "Doesn't say."

  She stroked her bare forearm along the fur, eyes dreamy.

  "It's like being hugged," she said. "So soft, so warm."

  I found her that night asleep in front of CNN, the coat wrapped around her like a blanket. I shook her awake and left it there on the couch as I walked her off to bed. When I returned it came willing into my arms, soft and warm, stirring against my skin as though scenting it. As instructed, I laid it on the floor on the closet where its feeding station had been placed. They must have figured everyone who can afford one has a walk-in closet, I thought, amused.