by Aies Jay
-Sure.
She ladles up half a portion of each pot of lovely on top of a generous pile of rice and half-closes the round paper bowl, sticking chop sticks sideways through the flaps of the lid. I hand her a cred chit with 500 creds on it and as she checks the chit I ask
-Do you know where I can find Nicola Teresian? Used to be a nurse.
The girl looks up at me without returning the chit once she’s debited it for the food.
-What do you want with her?
I shrug. In this neighbourhood, you speak the truth or stay candid as fuck. I’ve never been good with candid IRL.
-To be honest, I just want to see if she’ll help me fuck up her last employer.
She barks a laugh.
-Cute choice of words. You hack?
-M-hm.
Her eyes narrow at me.
-What’s your name?
-Jeremy Star.
-I’ll remember that. And you’re on camera.
She waves at a little lensed machine over the counter. I give her a bitter smile.
-We all are, all the time, if you know it or not, one way or another. I know people who locate nuggers just by looking for the last shadow they slipped into.
The lingo seems to impress her. Nuggers, short for “naked muggers”, is an old time expression for people without cybernetic surgery who try to commit crime on S2 by staying out of the System and thereby dodging its finest. Shadow means a spot where there’s no cameras or waves, simply enough where no machinery of observation can see you. She grins.
-What’s your real name?
I hesitate for just a second before telling her.
-Lionfish.
-Sumatr4. DemonMountain Portal.
I grin, despite myself. I knew it. She’s a hacker, too.
-Axorpa.
-Wow, you’re really old, aren’t you? Nicola, or Nicla, has her corner half a block from here. In front of JMax.
-The convenient store?
-Yup. She’s not classy or pimped, but you hurt her, you’re in trouble. There’re people here that owe her. Nasty people, some of ‘em.
I don’t answer and don’t comment on her keeping the entire cred chit. This has gotten cosy enough already. I make a small gesture of thanks and start eating as I walk. The food is just as good as it smells and I grouse over the location of the hole in the wall. I takes me ten minutes flat to scoff it all, that’s how good it is, crispy kale in soy sauce mixing with sweet and sour meat, it’s the stuff of Heaven. Delicious, but hell if I’m going back here. I just saw a beggar stabbing a guy who got offensive. And by offensive I mean saying “let go of my arm, dude”.
I spot her the moment I come around the corner. JMax is lit up in cold light that breaks through the steel bar curtain that keeps people from smashing the glass and it lights her up in a streaked pattern. She’s wearing a cropped fake fur coat that’s seen more than one year too many, a short skirt and threadbare cloth ballerina shoes. Her hair is somewhat longer than on the pic from the clinic, like she hasn’t cut it since then. She’s standing tinkering with her wrist Gate hooked up to a jack in her neck and as I walk closer, I conclude she hasn’t had dinner, surgery or anti-rejects in time since her nursing days either. She looks up at me and unhooks by yanking the cord out and it zips into the wrist Gate. Old but expensive stuff, not the kind you should have out in the open in a place like this.
-Hi. You want company?
she says right before I open my mouth. Shit, I’ve never done this before and suddenly I’m awkward.
-Um, sort of. I want to talk to you about your former employer, Prima Care clinic. I have a bone to pick with them and I thought you might want to help.
She looks right at me and then says
-Sure. But any funny stuff and I put nitro gum in your jack and slap you.
That was one of the nastier threats I’ve gotten in a while. Snappy, too.
-Message received.
-Good.
Her face immediately softens and she hooks her arm in mine and start walking in a firm direction.
-You got a place?
I ask, surprised and not interested at all in fucking and definitely not at her coffin hotel. Those places give me the creeps. It’s not the small spaces, it’s the name. Why couldn’t they just call it box hotels or mini rooms hotels? She gives me an odd smile.
-Unless you want to talk while screwing you’re taking me to dinner. And I get the feeling you don’t want to screw.
-True. I kind of just ate, though.
She snorts a laugh.
-There goes my impression of you being a hacker.
I make a face between a cringe and a smile.
-I am, though.
-Whatever you want to be, baby. What’s our business?
-Over dinner.
-You’re buying.
-I had no doubt about that part.
in cahoots
The Bamboo Curtain is a fairly expensive establishment and we had to walk for almost an hour to get here. I almost lost my patience on and off but this girl has hidden talents. She’s magnificent with her small talk and her presence is soothing, somehow. She’s a fine combination of the nurse she used to be and the prostitute she is today. She’s more of a high class girl than she looks in behaviour, and when we come in she’s treated with respect by the staff and her spoken Japanese is first class, vocabulary as well as pronunciation as far as I can tell, plus the little behaviourisms of when and how to bow properly. We’re given a table at the deep end of the place, the farthest away from any decent customer, though, and I don’t think there’s any coincidence in us getting one of the few tables with screens either. She sits down on the knee pillow and orders for the both of us, just smiling apologetically when I point out I’m not hungry, and the waitress in the short, pink kimono just giggles as she comments on something about me. My Japanese is only half decent at best, but I understood that part. The waitress leaves us and we both stay quiet until she returns with sake. Nicla looks at me, then pours for us and we drink it down before she says
-So, you’re more than meets the eye, too.
I almost grin.
-I’m more than “awkward and big”, at least.
She apologizes in perfect Japanese to me without even so much as a hint of a smile. I shrug. This is getting friendly enough. Again. I hate the flesh world.
-Never mind. I don’t give a shit, really.
Her face closes down.
-Fine. Brass tacks. You want to wait for the food?
-No.
-Then shoot.
she says, refilling my cup just as carefully as the first time, still standing on ceremony while cutting the lace trimming, so to speak. I chuck another small bowl of sake down the hatch before ripping the wound open.
-My son died in the clinic you worked in a little more than a year ago. I’m suspecting foul play. Not the clinic, but something else. To prove it, I need the samples and any tissues but the asshole doc won’t hand them over.
-You signed the papers?
-I did.
-Then legally, you’re out of juice.
-I’m not that obsessed by doing this legally anymore. So I thought you might have some way to press the doc or something else.
She makes a face.
-Did you bother finding out why I was fired?
-I don’t care. I really don’t. What I care about is to find out if my son was murdered.
We just sit quietly for a while. Meanwhile, the food arrives. My dish is a tasting menu, with nothing bigger on the plate than a bite, fifteen morsels, all in all, presented like little tid bits on a sea weed bridge across the plate. It’s beautifully made but I don’t care for beauty right now. She’s ordered the sumo sized sashimi plate and is somehow succeeding in eating with impeccable table manners at a high pace. We’re done at the same time. She dabs at the corners of her mouth and downs a cup of sake, refills us both and then says
-What was your son’s name?
I down my cup.
-L
ychee. Lychee Star.
She downs hers and refills again.
-I think I remember him. Premature. Small, pale, blue eyes. Suffocated to death?
Nausea is gripping me. Maybe I ate too much or too fast.
-Yes.
She nods again.
-Yes, I remember. Samples were taken, biopsies of the throat, lungs, lymph, as well as E swabs to pick up any bacteria. There are a lot of medical companies that pay small fortunes for those. We bio freeze them and ship them out when the box is full. Shipping costs a fortune and very few companies do any form of pick up themselves.
The nausea rises in me.
-So… they’re gone?
She shakes her head.
-No. The boxes we ship are huge. It takes almost two years to fill them up and the samples in them are never high priority. When Lychee died, we’d just made the shipment, I remember that because I was the one doing the paperwork that time. It’s just about impossible that the box with your son’s samples has shipped, like I said, it usually takes at least two years to fill a box. They’re probably still in the clinic.
My hope rises. I was hoping for something to extort the doc with but this is pure gold.
-You know where they’re kept?
-Yes. But I need the storage number.
I press my access clicker and check the document from the clinic. A sticker on the lower left says
-“A21-26STB”
-That sounds about right. Column A, slot twenty-one to 26, Swabs, Tissues, Biohazard. But I can’t get in there anymore since I was fired.
I lean over the table.
-Still got your access card?
She shakes her head.
-No.
-Remember what kind it was?
-Yes, but they don’t use them much. They use thumb print and soft log your access level.
Praise the System. I find myself almost grinning.
-You remember the name of the Portal or do they use a closed Gate System?
-Gate System. BlueAri.
-Then we have no problem.
-Except they know me and they’ll stop me at the door physically.
I groan. The flesh world foils me again.
-A robbery? A distraction of sorts?
She smiles, pouring us the last of the sake.
-If you come up with one, I’m game. Until then, hacker-sama.
And she puts her hands together in front of her, gets up and leaves, plugging in her hand unit again as she walks, only stopping to say goodbye to the staff. As I get up to stop her I notice she wrote her email on the napkin in front of me. The delicate silk thing with her mail on it feels so soft and expensive but no one even bats an eye at me pocketing it.
teeth
The walk home is spent pondering and wrecking my brain for a plan. The flesh world is not one I walk often and I sure as hell don’t commit crime in it. Shit and fuck. I need a thug for this. And I’m not even sure what “this” is. How do I advertise for a thug? I’ve never needed one before in my life. Exhausted I take the elevator to my level bridge and pass the other hovels, trying not to get hit by any of the motorcycle traffic or bumping into other pedestrians as I approach my home. The hour is odd and there’s an unusual amount of people out and about but I’m way too busy in my own mind world to care and way too busy to see him coming.
I barely had my hand on my doorknob, the lock clicking open at the touch of fingerprints as he shoves me into my little house, spins me around and before I can get a grip on it all the katana I saw earlier is laid to rest against the skin of my throat without ever drawing blood. He’s stronger than fuck, he’s has me pinned with my back against the wall and his other hand has a firm grip on my sweatshirt, his arm against my chest under my collar bones holding me from struggling. I recognize him and that only makes matters worse. It’s the guy from Nicla’s turf, the body mod. His wolf-like teeth shine at me as he growls
-The fuck are you up to, looking for dead babies, Mister Jeremy Star?
I do my very best not to swallow because if I do, I might slit my own throat against his blade. I’d love not to piss myself but I think I just lost a few drops anyway.
-The fuck are you who’s asking?
I reply as nasty as I can muster. He makes a point of his advantage by taking a step closer, out bodies meeting, chest against chest and that damn blade hasn’t moved at all. Full control. He’s a body mod, all right.
-The man with the blade gets his answers first.
Sounds fair enough. I have no idea of who he is or who he’s working for or why he’s really here, if he’s here to silence me on someone’s paying behalf or whatever the reason I’m as good as dead anyway. I look him straight in the eyes.
-Somebody killed my son, planted something and it killed him. Lychee choked to death before he saw his first year and I’m not fucking backing off for anything so if you’re here to end me, do it.
He looks into my eyes and then takes a step back, letting me go and sheathing his blade.
-Honour choked to death, too. She was six months old.
We sit in my living room as he tells me his story. He’s in the only other chair, I’m in the couch. His posture is straight and when I offered some hospitality, he asked for tea. I can’t tell his parentage, his origins are way mixed, but he seems somewhat more Japanese than anything, even if it doesn’t show in his face. His eyes are unmodified, he has a small jack with a hook up unit on his neck but apart from that it’s all body mods and plenty of them from what I can tell. This man is not planning to live past 50 and he probably never has, that amount of mods will tear his flesh apart from wear far ahead of time. He may even break his bones too from the force of the machinery inside of him, unless he’s steel enforced his skeleton as well. His clothes are dirty and ragged but his equipment is top notch. I have no idea what he paid for that katana but I’m damn sure it was a small fortune. From my up close look at it, I can tell it’s the real thing and he’s kept it in pristine condition. His voice is alive with fire and menace when he speaks, not dulled and lifeless like mine. When his life crashed, he took to rage as I took to despair.
-Her mother died giving birth to her. Because of my life style, her parents raised Honour. Poor, but good people, I more or less kept them fed and housed since Gem and I met, even if we never officially married. I almost blamed them for what happened, I thought they’d failed taking care of my daughter.
-How long ago was this?
He pulls out a VitaNut bar and starts chewing it down as he speaks.
-Eight months ago. Mica, that’s the granddaddy, said it started with a cough and one morning Honour never woke up. She’d died during the night. They were devastated. Me too, but I’ve lost people before. I handle it. Poorly, but still. I capsuled the anger and went about my business.
-But there was there an autopsy?
-Yes. She’d choked to death, by an abnormal swelling of the throat.
-You remember the name of the clinic?
-Star of Hope.
-Did you sign over the samples?
-No. I never sign over anything, not even my debts when offered.
My heart beats faster.
-Where are they now, then?
-A cryo hotel, Doctor Sleep. You know, one of those spots who deal with organs and keep bodies until rich fuck families come for them?
-Yeah, I know. The one establishment that’s creepier than a coffin hotel.
He snorts at me.
-I know creepier places. Like restaurants where you can order food that’s still alive when it arrives on the plate.
My stomach makes a small turn. I knew there were such places, but I’ve been pretending it’s just urban myth.
-Stop. How did you come by me?
-Like I said, I was busy blaming everyone for Honour’s death back then, including myself, but despite not being able to think rationally I heard some stuff… the young doc said some shit about another baby dead from the same cause but I was in too much grief to reg
ister it. I basically just turned it all into rage and walked away. I didn’t even think about it again in clear thoughts until I got a mail about someone asking about statistics about dead babies with the same symptoms Honour died from. They asked if they could use Honour’s case… it set me off. I just went on pure hunting instinct, taking it personal. I didn’t buy the med student crap one second so I paid a small fortune to a hacker to track you down.
-“Our justice is our own”, my ass.
I mutter, pissed the Code was broken. He does me the courtesy not to giggle.
-Yeah, well, I was supposed to tell you that using your home Gate to send that mail was a beginner’s mistake by the way, even if your Domain is watertight. Anyway, I thought you were some kind of vulture med company thug, looking to buy samples or something. Your address said otherwise but I’m used to smoke and mirrors. And I believe in hands on problem solving.
I nod. He’s hunting the same suspects I am, probably not even realizing he’s reached almost the same conclusion as me but in another roundabout way. I’m still mad as hell another hacker sold me out, but another look at his teeth and I give whatever traitor who sold me out some slack. He looks nasty as fuck even when he’s not pissed off. I’ll just route my home Gate through another couple of fake points to throw people off like I usually do, something I must have forgotten to when I did my last clean up. I suddenly remember why. That was after Yun died and I’d decided to broom anything of hers on my Gate. I sigh and run my fingers through my hair which is soon due for another buzz cut, focusing on the immediate now.
-In a way, you were not that far off. By that I mean I think you’re looking for the right suspect. I’m tracking this to med companies, too. Let me explain in detail.
He listens and the fire in his eyes grows even wilder as I talk, mirroring the only life there is in mine. As I finish he immediately jumps in.
-With both yours and mine, if we can prove both samples have the same infection, we can start tracking down these fuckers with some real evidence.
I make a small cringe.
-That’s what I thought at first but now I’m not sure proving the whole thing will matter to anyone legally. This seems a whole lot bigger than I first thought. Don’t get me wrong, I want these fuckers, but not even a holier than thou space cowboy will just take our word and two sets of samples for-