Anyway, this morning my theory’s finally been proved correct.
I’m sitting here and can see a herd of cows grazing on the meadow below the farm. Look mate, the sight is a chilling one. They’re not in any sort of disarray, as they should be, not scattered in bunches, anything like that. They’re formed in three straight lines across the top of the meadow, each exactly the same distance apart from the next cow. They’re moving down the slope as they eat, all in unison, all keeping pace with one another. It’s like some monstrous line of slow-marching soldiers, munching their way down toward my vehicle.
Strewth, it’s unnerving. You ought to get down here. You’re in Launceston, right? I have to show you this. Parallel cows, eating to a slide rule, right angles to the road. I have to get someone here before these cows finish grazing the field. No one could doubt the strangeness of this scene. This would make the hair on the back of your neck stand up, mate, it really would. I’m leaving. This is too weird.
I hear him start his car engine.
I’m driving away now—going over the short cut, over the heights. You ought to get out here, mister. You ought to see those damn cows . . . shit! The wheel won’t turn. I can’t move it. I can’t move the bloody wheel! Oh, shit. Oh, holy Christ, I’m going in a straight line . . .
I know the heights he’s talking about. The road twists and turns there—snakes along the edge of sheer, deep drops. I want to ask him if this is some sort of elaborate hoax. Is it me who’s being taken for a ride?—but I can’t—the phone line has gone completely dead.
Sweats
Keith Brooke
I stay quiet as my senses kick in, keep my eyes closed. There’s a lot of background noise: the electrical engine whine from traffic in a street nearby, the occasional splutter of internal combustion, jangling bicycle bells, voices talking, shouting, laughing, even singing, a goat calling, music from a radio or TV. Sweat beads my skin. My clothes feel rough, cheap. The heat is unpleasant, and it makes the smells of body odor, decay and spices all the more intense. Or maybe that’s just me recalibrating: new environment, new senses. It always takes a while to stabilize.
I open my eyes, see a plywood ceiling stained brown and black by damp, flies buzzing in mindless circles. It’s mostly gloomy in here, wherever here is, save for a single shaft of bright light angling in through an unglazed window.
I turn. Through the window I see the back of an old stallholder’s head, smoke from his pipe haloing him like some barroom jesus. Beyond him, the street: bustling, packed. Asia, somewhere in Asia. Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, the Phillipines. It doesn’t matter much.
My body is scrawny, white, maybe sixty kilos of skin and bone. I wear battered pumps, baggy khaki shorts, a grubby white t-shirt. Pretty much what you’d expect from a sweat: some kid out in the world for the first time, runs short of money, hires himself out for a few hours to cover the shortfall. We’ve all been there, or our sons and daughters have. Hire your body out so some rich fuck can have fun in it; get it back with maybe a bit of damage and the odd virus or two, but hey, the ghosting company covers you for all that, so you’re fine, fixed up in no time, back to yourself with a couple of thousand bucks in your pocket where there was none before. We call them sweats, rides.
I close my new eyes, bounce myself around inside my new skull. You in there, motherfucker? Is any of you left?
But no . . . my host’s mind, his self, has been warehoused for the duration, will get pumped back in when my time is up.
I open my eyes, stand, adjusting to the mechanics of an unfamiliar body, the balance, all the little inner feedbacks that allow us to stand and not teeter and fall.
I jump, do a starfish in midair, squat on landing, drop to press ups, do twenty before my arms feel about ready to fall off. Roll onto my back, do twenty sit-ups and wish this grubby jerk had had money for deodorant or had at least washed before hiring himself out. At least the body isn’t completely wrecked already. I need it to be a fit one, a sweat who is ready for a bit of action.
Okay . . . if I were one of the idle rich, out for kicks, I’d head off and burn credit in the nearest mall, clean myself up, kit myself out before hunting down some fun. That’s another of the perks for the sweats: They usually end up being pampered a bit, new outfit, that kind of thing. Sometimes it gets trashed, of course: Armanis shredded in a knife fight when a night out turns bad. Sometimes the sweat gets trashed too, but as I say, that comes with the territory. Why hire a ride if you’re not going to try out something you can’t or won’t do in your own body?
I walk to the beaded doorway, peer out, and the old man turns his head, bows a little, smiling. “You tell me what you wanna do, mister, I tell you the place to go and the man who can set you up.” In his baggy jeans and Sex Pistols t-shirt, the old man doesn’t exactly look like the proprietor of a ghosting company’s premises, but that doesn’t really mean much. Sometimes it’s a swanky high-class clinic, sometimes a back-street dive like this. Depends what the client is looking for, and willing to pay for; depends how desperate the ride is.
“I don’t need nothing, thank you, sir,” I tell him, and step past him into the street.
I have business to attend to.
Looking like shit has its advantages.
Looking like this, like a western kid down on his luck and right out of money, and probably a junkie to boot, the hawkers and hustlers take one look at me and no more. No hassle. Easier money elsewhere.
I hit the main drag and flag down a rickshaw, give the driver an address that pops into my head. He jabbers something in my face, and I guess his meaning; I wave a wad of bills at him to prove I can pay. He gestures me into the seat and then guns his engine back into life.
Fifteen minutes later we’re pulling up in a residential part of the city, white houses partly hidden behind stone walls and cast-iron railings. Rich vegetation crams the gardens around manicured lawns and large, open swimming pools.
We’ve already made one stop along the way. Another side street, a doorway screened by a beaded curtain, a bony kid on his haunches outside watching me as I pushed through the beads to another shady room where I found the man, struck a deal, came out with a heavy lump of steel tucked into my waistband.
Now, I pay off my driver and walk up to an iron-bar gate that extends at least a meter above my head. I look through to the sprawling white mansion, people in and around the pool, cars pulled up out front.
A security camera is watching me from the top of the wall. I run clawed hands through my lank hair, give a junkie twitch, rub my nose on my upper arm, turn away.
He makes it so easy.
Less than an hour later I hear the electric whine of three scooters coming down the drive. The big gates swing open, and I stagger out into the roadway, looking disoriented, confused.
One bike knocks me stumbling sideways, and I land on my knees, head spinning. My left wrist jags with a stab of pain in a way that makes my stomach clench. Blood seeps through the knees of my khaki trousers.
The scooters skid to a halt, the one that struck me somehow managing to stay upright.
Voices rise, suddenly.
“Wha—?”>
“You stupid fucking idiot!”
“Hey! Hey, Mr. B—you okay?” This addressed to the rider of the scooter that had hit me.
A guy in shorts and a gold netting vest looms over me. “You okay, bud?” he asks. Then: “What the fuck were you doing?”
I squint up at his square face, then turn away. One of the others.
I look at the one on the lead scooter, the one who hit me.
He’s still sitting there, one foot on the ground. He’s older than the one who spoke to me, older than the other guy too, who’s just going up to him, saying something to him. His dark hair is a thick, short crop, and his muscle top shows off his bulging shoulders and pecs. Hard to say how much of it is cosmetic, but it’s the kind of look you’d expect from someone who pays for the mansion they’ve just emerged from.
He
looks at me as I reach for the Heckler and Koch tucked into my waistband.
I take it out, the heft of it feeling at once natural and strange in this hand that may never have held a gun before.
I fire it, once, twice, allowing my right arm and shoulder to ride out the recoil.
One round takes him right between the eyes, the other in the chest as he falls.
The guy with the gold vest is swinging at me and so I duck, twist, slam the heel of the pistol into his temple, and he collapses in a heap.
The other guy is in middraw as I shoot him in the side of the head.
My first instinct is to return to the back street where I woke, get myself plugged back in, upload to netspace, and let the dumb sweat back into his body.
All the forensics will point to this body that I’m riding, so once I’m gone and the owner is back in place, it’s him they’ll track down and throw into a cell. Sure, they’ll piece together the fact that he wasn’t in control at the time, but that buys me breathing space. Meantime, I’ll be covering my tracks in netspace and . . . and what?
Where do I go after that?
I don’t know. I don’t remember.
I don’t know my name. I don’t remember my childhood. I don’t know how old I am or where I live, can’t picture my wife’s face or even remember if I have a fucking wife.
I am living in the present, in the moment.
I am incomplete then, a partial download. The rest of me is out there somewhere, waiting for my return . . .
All I have in my head is the knowledge required to carry out this hit—that’s all they gave me. A killer’s knowledge, a killer’s instinct. It’s all I have. All I can do is return.
The old man is sitting at his stall, selling pipes and tobacco and peculiar herbs and spices in pots and little plastic bags. A front for his real business.
He sees me, bows his head, and smiles widely.
I stride past him, and he follows me inside. The flies still buzz in aimless circles under the stained ceiling.
“Okay,” I say. “I need to get back. That part of the deal?”
He raises his eyebrows, as if he’s going to pretend not to understand. Maybe he doesn’t.
But he does. I see it in his eye as he hurries past, waves at the couch, starts fiddling with the skullcap and leads.
“You settle down here, mister,” he says, too eager.
“You’ll be gone real soon.”
I remain standing. Why does he want to get rid of me? Why do they want me to upload as quickly as possible? The people who commissioned this job.
To get me away from the scene, I tell myself. That’s all it is. All the forensics point to this body, and they don’t want me caught in occupation—I don’t want me caught in occupation!
I step round the couch, take the little fellow’s jaw in the cup of my hand, and force him so hard against the wall that I swear the ceiling shakes.
“So,” I hiss, “tell me . . . What excactly did you mean by the word ‘gone’? What’s going to happen to me when I’m plugged in? Do I get uploaded to netspace and reunited with the rest of me, or might it just be that I get wiped altogether? All the evidence tidied away? Eh?”
Is there even another me for me to be reunited with? Or am I just a construct, a bunch of killer traits pumped into this body for a single job?
I’m just another fucking sweat! Just like the jerk whose body I’ve been using . . .
The old man stares at me, barely reacting. He must have seen some real shit in his time, I realize. He’s not going to tell me anything, and suddenly I’ve lost my impetus, confused.
I’m faced with the choice: go through with what I understand of the plan or not? Do I let the old man upload me to netspace and pump the owner of this body back into his own skull? Do I trust that back in netspace I won’t just be wiped?
I’m assuming now that I have controllers out there: people who commissioned the hit, people who set it all up. But maybe it’s just me out there. Maybe I wanted Mr. B dead for reasons of my own and so I sent a part of myself down to use this sweat to kill the fucker.
I loosen my grip on the old man’s face, let him slump against the wall. He’d been on his toes before, I’d been holding him so hard.
Something isn’t right.
The old man is looking past me, toward the window.
I turn.
Police. Or soldiers or armed security of some kind. Hard to tell. A green jeep is forcing its way slowly up the street, through the throng. As I watch, a couple of uniformed men jump out and start to jog alongside it.
I look at the doorway, but they would see me if I left now.
The police will have picked up my body’s signature at Mr. B’s gates. They’d have the eyewitness account from the guy I didn’t kill, the stream from the security cam that would show them everything that had happened.
They’ve been quick; less than an hour since the hit, they’ve pattern-matched my face from the security cam, found me on security-cam streams as I crossed the city. Some of the systems are probably even body-smart: They’ll have sampled body scent and pheromones, matched them to those of the killer.
They’ve tracked me down to the ghost company’s crossload parlour.
I look around. This is just a single room in some kind of lean-to. One door. No other way out.
I glance up, then step onto the couch, bent at the knees. Straightening abruptly, I drive my shoulder into the plywood, and it gives with a sharp creaking sound.
There’s a gap between ceiling and wall. My shoulder is screaming with pain, but I haul myself up and through that gap, tugging myself clear of flapping plastic sheeting.
I’m on a sloping roof now, at the back of the parlor, starting to slither down. I spread my limbs to slow the fall, then get to my knees and clamber down just as shouts come from within.
I hear a thud—something hard on something soft—and the old man cries out.
I hit the ground running.
Bartie Davits is a sweat. A student working his way through business school, paying his own way because his parents are in no position to help, one of them a low-paid supermarket assistant, the other long since dead and gone. Sweating is easier than shop work and generally safer than dealing, although he does a bit of that too—that’s just a natural extension of his business training, he always argues.
He likes the SweatShop parlor in Haymarket. Real class. You can taste it in the air.
He opens his eyes, remembering where he is, getting used to his own senses again after spending what feels like a couple of days warehoused off in netspace, playing TrueSim games while some rich wanker fools with his body.
A face looms over him, cheekbones like geometry, perfect skin, eyes like the flawless glass eyes of a perfect porcelain doll. Bartie can smell her, and she’s like apples. He smiles.
“What’s the damage?” he asks.
She smiles back at him, everything symmetrical. Someone paid a fortune for those looks, he guesses.
“Narcotic residue,” she tells him. “Alcohol residue. Black eye—looks like you had a run-in with someone. That’s all, though, Mr. Davits.”
No serious damage this time, then. Right now there will be drugs cleansing his blood and liver, stripping out the narcs and booze, replenishing his reserves. That’s one of the perks of sweating; some people argue that the clean-out could add years to your life. Rich wankers would pay a fortune for some of this shit, and here is Bartie Davits, getting it all for free. Fuck no—getting paid for it.
“Like we agreed,” he says, sitting slowly. “Cash in hand, right?”
She smiles her professional smile again. “The fee is already in your registered account, Mr. Davits, minus tax and obligatory pension, just as always. No special arrangements.”
He stands, stretches. Feels unfamiliar aches and stiffnesses. Raises a hand to his left eye, suddenly aware of its dull ache.
He looks down at his clothes: a slick pair of jeans, a crumpled silk t-shirt, poi
nted snakeskin boots, none of it his. There’s a bag on the side containing his own newly laundered clothes. The new outfit—another perk.
He hopes his body had a good time while he was warehoused.
Funny to think that his own body has had far more diverse experience than he himself has—and he knows nothing about it other than a bunch of hints and signs and scars . . .
Out along a corridor, mirrored walls multiplying him, bright lights making him squint. Into the foyer, all tall, angular plants emerging from chrome pots full of glass pebbles. The street outside looks dark through the clinic’s floor-to-ceiling tinted glass front.
The cops grab Bartie as he steps outside. He’s just wondering whether it’s a Comedy Store night, who might be on. Maybe he’ll call a few mates and front them for a night out, make the most of the new wad in his bank account. But the cops have other ideas.
He steps out through glass and chrome doors that slide open as they sense his approach. He has time to notice the sudden clash of warm scented air from the interior of the clinic mixing with the smells of the damp London street, has time to emerge into the drizzle, to look left, then start to look right, and then they’re on him.
A sudden rush of figures . . . Two men step out from his right, and as he opens his mouth to speak, to curse them for jostling him, for not looking where they’re going even though it’s actually Bartie who has stepped out into the flow, another two take him from the left. His arms gripped tightly, he smells something cloyingly sweet, realizes someone has sprayed something, feels it infiltrating his lungs as he breathes it deep, hears the gabble of street noise suddenly fizz to static, to nothing . . .
. . . wakes in a cell.
He remembers now, the men grabbing him, the prickle of some kind of nerve agent in his lungs. He realizes they were police, some in uniform, some not. He hadn’t had time to take it all in as they descended on him, in the sudden rush of sensation as the foundations of a normal day were abruptly pulled from under him.
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