The Nervous System

by Nathan Larson

  Make positive Kathleen is secure … tinted windows all around on this e6 … should be okay. The neighborhood stirring, old woman paying me no heed, squatting as if waiting for a bus, gray workers sporadic in coveralls wafting up and down the block, scarcely there.

  Nearly every storefront has been scooped out like a pumpkin and flipped to serve other purposes, this is a hood where the original function of a given shop couldn’t always be readily determined pre–2/14 (though I reckon Munchies Paradise across the street had something to do with, like, snacks. But hell, you never know).

  Aware that I’ve misused and abused the System of late, I intend on following it to the letter in compensation and hope all things balance out in the end. First we slap on the PurellTM and scrub the bad dreams away. Then don fresh powdery gloves, and with my left hand I adjust my surgical mask and open the car door, step out, let my lungs and eyes adjust to the Stench. Hit the power lock on the vehicle, and shuffle left to the corner. Then it’s a strict left across the street, and another left back to the entrance of 154 Hester. Recall, prior to 11 a.m.: left turns only. That’s System 101.

  Dos gets it. Gets the System. The man thinks systems too.

  I move past an abandoned FedEx vehicle, within which I note stacks of boxes, mostly Amazon debris. Useless. Kindles and shit, no doubt.

  Gazing high as I approach the door here, I see two closed-circuit cameras, no obvious weapons, concealed explosives, or bear traps, but in truth you’re a fool to make assumptions when it comes to Dos Mac.

  There’s a button with a simple A and an aged sign underneath in Mandarin that reads, NO MENUS/NO CLONES. I grin at that, vintage Dos. Depress the button with my left thumb.

  No response for the time being, but that’s no shock. I remove my new hat and stand for about twenty seconds under the camera, rotate (left) so he can scope me should he be paying attention. It’s pretty clear I’m strapped, the suit is cut a bit close and you can almost see the shape of my pistola under the jacket.

  Burst of feedback from the intercom.

  “Librarian.” Dos must be using a voice scrambler, or one of those old Kanye autotuners. Probably just for the fuck of it.

  “What’s good, Dos?”

  “Clearly very little, if I got the Librarian wanna darken my door. You must be one desperate motherfucker.”

  “My man,” I’m maintaining casual. “Who’s saying I wasn’t just in the neighborhood?” Spread my hands, slow, mellow, no sudden moves now. “Woulda brought croissants or something, but Balthazar was closed.”

  A long pause. Uncomfortably long. Just a hair.

  Decide to goose him a bit. “Still got my pistola, kid?” Knowing damn well he lost that thing.

  Then: a pitched robotic trill, probably Dos simply letting out a long exhale. Then: “Just push on it, brother.”

  Dos buzzes me in.

  _______________

  The reinforced steel door hinges open, revealing absolute darkness. I hesitate at the threshold.

  Maybe this was a fucked-up idea.

  Maybe I’m fresh out of good ideas.

  Proceed inside, hands in the air. “Dos …”

  The door whispers shut, me thinking I deserve whatever I get in here.

  What I get is a faceful of high-wattage industrial light. Reflexively, I go to protect my face, straining to keep my movements mellow and obvious.

  “Letting you know I got a shotgun on you, so just stay put,” says Dos, slightly to my right, pretty close.

  I know better than to respond.

  “Running a quick scan. If I read you as a clone, I’m gonna send you back uptown in a whole bunch of plastic bags. Try to hold still.”

  I’m trying, but I wanna loosen the vibe. Say, “’Fraid I’m gonna disappoint you on the clone thing, Dos.”

  “I sincerely hope so, now just hold still.”

  Don’t need to be told twice. Another minute with the light in my face, there’s a fluorescent-sounding hum, and a buzz not unlike an electric shaver.

  “Okay,” says Dos quietly.

  The overheads come on, we’re in that cavernous space I remember, which despite its size manages to feel cluttered, in constant upheaval.

  Dos is blinking at me, no sign of a weapon on him, bit disheveled in a dirty white Adidas tracksuit. He’s lost weight. Who hasn’t? Hair longer, natural, nappy. I know him to be forty-five but he could be anywhere from midthirties to fifties, you just can’t tell anymore. Big thick glasses, which I reckon is just a look he cultivates, not cause he needs them.

  “I was bullshitting about the shotgun. And man, I never did apologize but I’m sorry about that nine, Librarian. Force majeure. Was just making coffee, you want some coffee?” Already with his back to me, busy with this and that.

  The machine he had trained on me looks like one of those ancient overhead projectors we had in school. He’s got it on wheels and is maneuvering it into a corner, the device making clicks and whirs.

  “Looking trim, Dos. How have you been holding up down here?”

  Dos scoffs. A single bark.

  “I look like fucking death. Feel like death. You look like ass too, player. Somebody go buck wild on your face? Step all over your hand?”

  Dude starts fussing with what looks like a homemade percolator.

  “Yeah, a Korean chick kimchi’d my shit.”

  Dos makes a face. “Those people are loony toons. Run a tight grocery though. Unlike the motherfucking Dominicans, man. Twinkies, pork cracklins, and shit? I like me some kombucha.”

  “I never got that kombucha thing. Rotten-ass tea? Fuck that,” I say. “But hey, for real, Dos, you look all right. Fuck it, man, it’s hand-to-mouth, yo, it’s no joke out here. To state the obvious. You’re holding down your zone and that’s doing pretty good in my book.”

  Mac grunts again, says, “Want the good news or the bad news first, Librarian?”

  I laugh. Dude is a cut-up.

  “What kind of fucked-up question is that? If you got any kind of news, just come with it.”

  “So good news first.” Starts singing a variation on that old MJ ballad, in a striking falsetto: “You are not a clone.” Grins wide. I’m stunned. My boy sounds good.

  “Damn, Dos, you may have missed your calling …”

  Him saying, “And the bad news. You, sir, are one popular nigger. Every law enforcement and government operative with a radio is talking you up. You jumped from under the radar negative to nation’s most wanted, public enemy number one. Crazy-fast rise to the top. Give any man a nosebleed. But don’t forget the little people, get all cocky on me, cause I knew you when. All I got is creamer. Want creamer?”

  I’m processing. That was fast, again no surprise, but speedy with the APB.

  The coffee. “Naw. Yeah, black is fine.”

  “Indeed it is,” says Dos, eyeing me. I see him flash on my gun. Get a whiff of something, what is that? Smells like fear.

  Good. Be afraid, Dos.

  He pours two cups, hands me one.

  “Thanks. Mac, check this,” trying to vibe breezy, put the boy at ease, “I gotta be straight about—”

  He holds up a hand. “Before we get into that, before you explain to me why you’d drag my ass into your nightmare, I owe you the balance on the bad news. If you wanna hear it. Some folks, they don’t even wanna know. Might not make any difference whatsoever.”

  I sip at my coffee. Scalds my smashed upper lip but I don’t flinch.

  That he would even hesitate to drop it on me, this is concerning. Dos doesn’t generally give a shit.

  Fuck it, he’s either gonna tell me I got cancer eating my heart and moments to live, or confirm some such suspicion I’ve had for ages anyway.

  “Well goddamn. Since we’re chatting like this and we got a minute or two, let’s have the whole nine, Mac.”

  Dos is watching me over the top of his glasses. Sets down his coffee. Rubs his forehead, sighs.

  “You’re absolutely riddled with implants, Librarian. I d
on’t think I’ve ever seen anything come close.”

  Ever gotten a niggling suspicion you always knew to be all too true independently confirmed? There’s that satisfaction, see I TOLD y’all, and the pure horror of the thing itself.

  Two fingers shoot to my throat and I hold them there, feeling my heart accelerate.

  “You okay, Librarian?”

  Swing my peepers here and there, looking for a place to land them …

  DA Rosenblatt. “Decimal. Your file. The stuff they did …”

  All this time, all this pain, all these fucking questions, all these blurry brain snapshots, and I’m closer to an answer than I’ve ever been. I am near tears.

  “I just … ah.”

  “Yeah, boss,” sighs Dos Mac, sipping his coffee. “Them’s the breaks. They got you good.”

  Now I focus, and take a nice long look at Dos Mac. How well do I really know this man? Certainly anybody could be employing him. Just as anyone could be employing me. Circles within circles.

  My body is misbehaving. I go to set down my coffee and miss the table. My cracked mouth is numb. My voice is not my own and emanates as if from across the room.

  “No doubt there’s … surgery. Surgical procedures.”

  “Hey. Hey, man,” says Dos, looking concerned. He laughs uncertainly. “Just playing, brother. I know you had hang-ups, but damn. Librarian, I’m just fucking with your head. You’re clean, you’re good.”

  Relief and solid fury have a brief wrestling match in my throat. Relief wins.

  Dos picks my coffee cup up off the floor, then wanders over to the homespun machine and retrieves what looks like a transparency, or an X-ray.

  I’m trying to reestablish my ability to speak, and Dos adds: “Clean except for that big motherfucker at the base of your skull, of course. Wrapped around your, what’s that called … your medulla.” Peers at the floppy sheet closer. “Got like tendrils going every which way, very very fine threads, my equipment’s not sensitive enough to register all of them.” Slaps down the sheet of celluloid. “What is that nasty shit, some sort of pacemaker? Whazzit do for ya?”

  Looking through and beyond Dos again. I bring my hand, gently, to the nape of my neck. Shortly I smile and begin to nod my head, up and down.

  Now is not the time to take this one on.

  “Yeah. Like a pacemaker,” I say. “Dos, lemme tell you why I’m here.”

  _______________

  Goddamnit if Kathleen didn’t come around almost as soon as I hauled her up and out of the backseat of the e6 and slung her over my shoulder. Goddamn if the woman didn’t start bronco-bucking, cracking her own head against the doorjamb in the process. Her knee glanced off my cracked knuckles and I nearly passed out. Bitch screaming and whatnot. Were it not for the rag I shoved into her mouth she would’ve undoubtedly been clearly audible for blocks in every direction.

  Not that anybody would’ve particularly noticed. Chinatown isn’t all negatives, baby. People drifting around, urban tumbleweeds. See no evil, hear no evil, that’s the way they do and that suits me down to the dirty ground.

  Now. Dos and I met under somewhat sensitive circumstances. Without belaboring it, some Kuwaiti power broker/construction magnate had his boyfriend go missing. The DA sent me after the kid, and that led me here, where the young man and Dos were cohabiting in what struck me as a completely consensual manner.

  Hey, I am many things, but I am most assuredly not a moralist. Each to his own hustle, and these two gentlemen seemed genuinely okay.

  So I buried the thing. My report said the kid had fled the country, and I had documents made up to prove it. My findings were never questioned. Nobody had really wanted to juggle that hot potato anyhow.

  More recently, the boy borrowed a 9mm off of me, and promptly shot himself with it. Not on purpose, mind; so to spare him embarrassment, I’ll leave that one alone. Wasn’t really my gun anyhoo.

  Like I say, I am all for kicking it laissez-faire, but while investigating him, I couldn’t help but discover that Dos dug it a touch kinky. My man got physical. All within the realm of acceptability, which is to say nobody ever got, like, irreversibly hurt. Or so I was assured.

  One of the features my brother rigged up, devoted exclusively to libertine pursuits, was an isolated, underground S&M chamber (he calls it a “soundstage”) set up with microphones and cameras and whatnot. Beyond the fact of it, I didn’t push him on this, but I assumed it wasn’t just for personal use; the setup was expensive, and professional-grade video could be generated therein. Resulting material, of course, could be sold or traded.

  It was this room that must’ve got me thinking last night, with respect to ol’ Kathleen.

  Yeah, the whole issue disappeared with the Kuwaiti, and from more recent encounters I know that the boyfriend has hit the trail as well … but one thing you don’t want is to be on the bad side of a jilted lover with a pile of cash and access to all manner of manpower and guns. Though I would never be so gauche as to articulate it, this allowed me a certain leg up on Mr. Dos Mac.

  I suppose what I’m doing right now is exploiting the relationship a hair, but hey. It is what it is, y’all.

  First thing Doc says this morning when I start talking about Koch is absolutely no fucking way. Tells me to take my drama elsewhere.

  I just need to look at him. Mac moans and kicks something over. Knows he’s got no choice.

  Dos Mac. The Dos and the Mac, to demonstrate that the PC-versus-Mac argument was based on snobbery and packaging. The man is comfortable on both platforms. It’s all x’s and o’s and the rest is lifestyle shit, like designer coffee, office chairs.

  Another thing I dig about the guy: he doesn’t give two fucks about the Internet as a tool of worldwide unity. The lie of the “Global Village.” His interest is in strictly localized systems, area specific. Subways. Traffic flow. Urban layout. This slots right in with my own System.

  First thing I did was drop all the CDs and the hard drives on the man, he took a quick look and confirmed that for the most part they are data discs holding video. One or two are audio CDs. We’d get to all that; meanwhile, we got lady Koch comfortable.

  Row of old computer monitors stacked willy-nilly on top of one another, Dos is fiddling with a universal remote, frowning. Half of the monitors are working and display different areas of the building, the street outside, the mouth of the Holland Tunnel, Times Square, the doorway, etc.

  “Oh, here we are. Haven’t, uh … used this thing in ages,” says Dos, with a pretty good approximation of cool.

  Fat old iMac hums to life, as the screen warms up we’re looking at a black-and-white image of the mummified Kathleen, taped to a chair.

  She’s been down there in Mac’s aforementioned “soundstage” for a good twenty minutes, and I can report now that she has stopped struggling.

  I realize I gotta speed this whole thing up. No clue as to what’s doing with Cyna-corp, and as things drag out it’s looking progressively worse for Rose Hee …

  Lean in, say, “Do we have audio?”

  “Affirmative, boss, just gotta turn it on.”

  “All right, well, before we do, enjoy your last moments of peace, man. Woman likes to hear herself speak.”

  “Yeah, so I understand. Hey, you’re for sure gonna get me killed. Look at this shit,” says Dos.

  I hook him up with two sticks of jerky and he rips into one. Eyes nearly flip into the back of his head.

  “Motherfucker, I forgot how amazing these things are. Why didn’t I get down with more of these joints back when?” He looks at the package in wonderment.

  I’m exploring the flesh of my neck. Methodically. Trying not to think about it. Say, “It’s relative. Water to a drowning man. I thought you were like a vegan, cousin.”

  “Ha, that’s a beautiful record. Or is it ‘Water on a Drowning Man’? Yes indeed. Naw man, the vegan thing went out the window way back. Gotta get some protein up in here. Librarian,” he says, shifting his eyes to meet mine, “you
know why I have all this security, this precautionary jazz? Cause if any of those contractors knew I was down here, they’d be on me in a second, trying to suck me into their shit. Making me offers I can’t refuse and whatnot. I’d rather be drawn and motherfucking quartered than work for those thugs.”

  It’s true. Anybody the least bit interested with infrastructure would be all over the Mac if they knew he was on the scene. His designs build themselves.

  “As it is, they’re just aching to clone me. All they need is a clean scrape of skin, a couple hairs. Never, fuuuuuck no.”

  I don’t know about this whole clone jive. Dos takes another bite.

  “Word is, they got something big going. Like, big-asa-motherfucker big. They’re dragging in everybody, especially folks who worked with the City, civil engineers and shit …”

  “They, who they?” I ask. Thinking, as much as I find this fascinating, I need to get things moving …

  Dos laughs. “They, like you know, man—all of them. Can’t tell them apart. Private, government, contractors … Chinese, Middle Eastern, white motherfuckers from all over, CIA, former Blackwater, CACI, Titan, yada yada … they’re all in the same gang. Want no part of it. Don’t wanna know. It’s too much, man. Oh yeah. Looking for me. They even got a bounty out for anybody who can get Dos Mac to come in. No, fuck no. Never.”

  Dos snaps his fingers as if he’s just remembered something important.

  “Yo, you of all people will appreciate this shit, Librarian. Wanna show you what I’m working on.”

  Digs around in a desk drawer and pulls out some sort of smoky black pad–type deal, flips it on, and hands it over.

  Torn, I’m looking at the time, yet fully aware that it’s an honor to be getting a peek at this man’s work.

  His pad comes alive, an elegant tangle pops out in the 3-D, multicolored and layered. It’s exquisite. It’s beautiful. My heart goes straight to my throat.

  “Am I looking at what I think I’m looking at, Mac?”

  He leans back and wags his head, grinning. “I improve on the shit a thousandfold here. It’s self-sustaining in every respect, self-cleaning, and the best part is it requires very little actual construction. Look, man, we’re using the old physical stations.”