by Jones, Raya
‘I don’t know where to start.’
‘Before the Apocalypse?’
‘Yes, it starts there. It was set in motion in the twilight of the ancient nations and the dawn of corporate nations whose borders are defined by the nature of their products. When history took that turn, your destiny and my fate became fixed like the trajectory of a large rock, hurtling unhindered towards the birth-world of humanity... I know, I know, I’m reciting my lectures. You want the mundane facts. It’s always “facts” with you,’ he sighed melodramatically. ‘A few months ago ET started to ask about you through my ex. You have to know this about my caste: we’re an inbred lot. OK and ET might seem to you like mortal enemies, but we unite against non-exec. If a distant cousin or an old pal want me to help them to corrupt a CSG agent, why should I refuse? I’d do it for the sake of one-up on the CSG. Heck, I’d do it for fun. But then I had that dream, your deodorant advert, and it reminded me how the skinny kid from the slums has made the life he wanted when all the odds were against him.’
‘Did you tell them that?’
‘No. I don’t owe them anything. I’ve realised another thing too, Al. There’s something more important about who we really are than the circumstances of our birth. An old man philosophising, sorry. What will you do now?’
‘I guess I’ve blown my chances with ET.’
‘Oh no, no, they want you more than ever, believe you me. Your crusade is the best-case scenario for them. You’ve handed yourself to them on a silver platter. Now they have you in a compromising situation for a CSG agent. They’ll help save your skin, and nobody will suspect you of being their puppet.’
‘So start corrupting me already.’
‘Corrupt a CSG agent who’s not even with the CSG? It takes the joy out of it! Are you smirking? Can we have the light on? Don’t bother. I can see without light that you’re smirking.’
I went back to the mat. ‘Could you book us into another hotel? With proper ventilation, please.’
‘With pleasure. I thought you’d never ask.’
The competition was in full swing when we arrived at the hangar at the organisers’ invitation. We were given a tour of the place. Screening all the contestants was going to take most of the remaining ten days to the Sol-bound departure. More than a thousand youth in high spirits milled about, but things were orderly. The hired guards were relaxed. The organisers provided free refreshments, and traders from the Backs were doing good business. There was lively music, people danced and made friends. ‘It’s a big party,’ Freedom said happily, and I admitted that I liked what we saw.
Large screens displayed the auditions, which were conducted on a stage inside the hangar. The contestants talked about themselves and their interest in the entertainment industry. Some performed songs. People who got through the audition were sent for neuropsychiatric screening in a mobile lab outside. I was offered the full rundown of the tests, but declined. I didn’t doubt that ET was scrupulous in that respect. It was a matter of product quality: they couldn’t risk their acts being contaminated. So far only a dozen candidates completed all the screening successfully. There were going to be fifty winners.
When I’d seen enough, we were ushered into a backroom that served as the organisers’ base of operations. A tall woman about my age introduced herself as Hudson, the project leader. ‘Good of you to come, Jexu Jiu,’ she said coldly, invited me to sit down, and told everyone else to leave. I insisted that Freedom stayed. I told her truthfully that I was impressed with how well everything was organised. I also noticed the grey trade, and liked that too.
She brightened up. ‘It’s the hangar you’re really after, isn’t it? We’re just in the way. We’ll be out of your way soon enough. Will you retract the eviction order?’ When I replied that I didn’t need the hangar and will sell it at a loss as soon as they’re out, she protested, ‘Do you realise what will happen if you close us down? The youngsters out there are all hyped up. They’ll riot. People might get hurt. These are the young people you’re supposedly trying to help. Have you thought of that?’
‘Yes.’
Hudson said like someone taking a deep breath, ‘I appreciate your concern. There are scare stories about mental health risks, and I won’t bullshit you saying that there’s no risk whatsoever. You can see the statistics for yourself. You’ll find that there’s less than 8% chance of mental disturbance.’
‘The latest ET report says 7.8% chance of a serious permanent psychosis. This means that 3.9 people out of your 50 winners might be affected,’ I pointed out.
‘How can you have a 0.9 person?’
‘Precisely, it’s statistics. These are real people out there. Do you want me to quote the figures for mild disorders and suicides?’
She winced. ‘No. We provide excellent psychiatric care. I can show you.’
‘No need. I know that ET uses the best clinics.’
‘What do you want from us?’
‘I want you to clear out by the deadline, Hudson.’
She said unhappily, ‘I’m authorised to give you access to all our project files. We have nothing to hide. Not from you.’ She glanced at Freedom suspiciously. I assured her that she could count on my confidentiality. ‘That’s what they’ve told me,’ she muttered, unconvinced. ‘My CEO has vouched for you personally. Is there any specific aspect of the project you’d like to see? We’ll extract those files for you.’
‘Thanks, but I’d like to see everything.’
‘Everything?’ she echoed.
‘Yes, from the first brainstorming session to the moment I stop. I’ll audit everything with a fine-toothcomb and then rake behind the source codes.’
She paled visibly. ‘You’ll need a team. Do you have a team?’
‘I work alone. It will take about a week.’
‘You’ll have to put back the eviction date,’ she pointed out, hopeful.
‘The deadline stays.’
‘There will be riots!’
‘There will be many disappointed kids, but they all came here knowing they might lose. They’ve had a great time whatever the outcome. The security consortium will help you to control the situation. I’ll give you a contact.’
She seemed lost for words.
Freedom took pity on her. ‘He won’t budge, believe me. When he starts something he doesn’t let go. It won’t reflect badly on you, Hudson, take my word for it. It’s just your bad luck to have Jexu Jiu turn up on your watch. Your team couldn’t factor everything into the working model. You’ll score merit points for how you handle what happens next. I’ll put in a good word about you with Abe Goshen. I know people who’ve made it to high management despite having to abort projects early on in their career. Ask Goshen about the X File sometime. A good business sense is also about knowing how best to cut your losses.’
She thought for a moment, and then said tiredly, ‘Fine. We’ll close. You win.’ She looked at me frostily. When I asked for the access code, she bristled, ‘Why? You have what you want. We’ll clear out. You can stay here and see us do it. What do you need to see my files for?’
‘It’s like he says, I don’t let go when I start something.’ I rose.
She rose too. ‘I know this is not a CSG concern. If it’s not espionage, why are you doing this?’
‘People are not statistics, that’s why.’
Five days later, Freedom and I confronted a travel agent in the local Main Street. She pouted cutely when Freedom argued that the Aurora had fifty spaces free, now that ET won’t be sending any winners to Sol. He asked to speak with someone senior. The computer-generated image replied in a deeper voice, ‘I’m the senior manager. May I offer you guaranteed places on a leisure expedition to Sol in two years’ time? There’s an early-bird discount if you subscribe to our holiday club now.’
It was the same story everywhere we tried.
We shifted our avatars to the ‘street’ domain of Main Street. Freedom hadn’t updated his image, and appeared in cyberspace with his old ex
travagant hairdo and a flamboyant kimono. I modified the image of Jexu Jiu that ET had sent to Harvey Schmidt. In all our time together, this was the first time we met in virtual reality. We stood amidst rows of shop fronts. Billboards for groceries and kitchenware surrounded us. People walked, glided, or flew about their business. A small brown dog sidled up to us wagging its tail and whispered, ‘Fares to Sol are going cheap. Special for you. Hold my tail.’ It turned around obligingly, tail up in the air. Freedom eagerly reached for it—and found himself lying on the floral bedspread of the hotel bed.
Cussing loudly, he removed the headset and sat up pulling the hotel’s bathrobe around him. ‘You can’t do that! You can’t yank me out like that! It’s not even supposed to be possible!’
The wall portal reverted to a default display of local attractions, all of them in the virtual city and most of them identical to any other virtual city anywhere else. The rest of the windowless room was wallpapered with a moving seascape, the gentle rhythm of waves soothing the souls of people who had never seen a sea. I stepped off my mat. ‘The dog wasn’t what it seemed.’
‘Really?’ he said sarcastically.
‘It was one of those illegal games that suck you in, and afterwards the Game Master collects a hefty participation fee. If you held its tail you’d have got a menu with options for watching yourself being killed by chainsaw, vampire, werewolf, or some other gory deaths I didn’t bother to read.’ I went to sit on the other bed.
‘You saw all that behind the doggie? Do you ever see things like they really are?’
‘I see things like they really are behind the audio-visual façades. There are no black-market fares to Sol. Ricardo would have known.’
‘We’re not staying here for two years!’
‘Not in this luxury hotel, that’s for sure.’ It was the most expensive hotel in Section-9. To call it luxurious was an overstatement.
‘I can see the hardship of sleeping on a soft bed is beginning to tell on you. If you want me to corrupt you for ET, please act a little bit corruptible. Meet me halfway,’ he pleaded. I smiled and closed my eyes to think. ‘You’ve been doing a lot of contemplating your naval lately,’ he complained. ‘Can’t you make an effort to read Hudson’s files?’ The audit was running itself. I had no interest in reading it. He said to annoy me, ‘God I’m so bored. Can we have sex?’
Rinzler’s finding had just come in. The boy had noticed something, a tiny inconsistency, between the pre-explosion maintenance record and the forensic report. I knew that the gravity generator was in perfect order during our ‘picnic’, but Freedom could have tampered with it afterwards. He lost all his material possessions, the antiques he was so fond of, in that explosion. He blew up his own home like burning his bridges. Freedom Cordova is not the sort of man who’d burn his bridges. I opened my eyes.
He was getting dressed, muttering that he had to get out of the house. He usually went to a gym and a bar afterwards. I told him, to gain thinking time, ‘I’ve won too easily. Hudson gave in too quickly after you spoke with her. You spoke some sort of code. The X File? Does Abe Goshen exist?’
‘He’s my ex’s cousin. What are you getting at?’
‘What did you do to make it happen?’
He sat back down on the edge of his bed. ‘I’ve made a little deal, okay? I’m not going to tell you everything I do. Right now it’s in my own best interest to make sure that you don’t get yourself killed over a stupid matter before you even start on your real job.’
Taken aback, I asked as nonchalantly as I could manage, ‘Which job would that be? All my jobs are real.’
‘The Big Job, the job to die for, sunshine,’ he snapped. ‘You’ve got the result you wanted, haven’t you?’
Hudson cancelled the competition, but nineteen candidates already passed the medical tests, and ET could offer them a deal.
Freedom grimaced. ‘Let me guess: and when they do that, they’ll get a warning telling them that initiating the surgery will activate something nasty in their system, no?’
‘No.’
Hudson had given me access to confidential files. I wouldn’t abuse her trust by planting malware. Instead, I tagged the candidates. When ET contacted them, my piranhas gnawed the communication to the bone. I made the piranhas visible, because I knew that ET technicians could dismantle the creatures.
Freedom’s grimace became a grin. ‘My blood is running cold already. What’s the next horror in store?’
There were hundreds of piranhas and they self-replicated. The Aurora departed before ET could create something to kill them in one swoop. Most candidates lost interest sooner. Whenever ten piranhas were dismantled, all nineteen candidates received a video clip of someone in psychiatric care after carrying experience monitors. I had copied the clips from the clinics’ promotion videos. The clinics presented the worst cases in the worst light to show the benefits of the treatment, but I’ve left out the post-treatment part.
‘There’s an evil streak in you,’ Freedom said proudly. ‘Why don’t you wave your magic badge, audit the ship or something to get us on it?’
I shuddered at the idea. ‘If I do that I’ll be trapped in hostile territory for three years. Will ET give us a couple of their spaces if you make progress corrupting me?’
‘They might, but you have to meet me halfway.’ He sighed, ‘No, all the way. I haven’t the faintest idea how to blackmail or bribe you. You haven’t done anything illegal except for sabotaging the beacon at the spaceport.’
‘I paid the fine.’
‘See what I mean? You’re so upright it makes a flagpole seem crooked.’
I tried, ‘Maybe there’s something in my past. Yoko...’
‘No, no, no, don’t bring my Suzie into this! Just drop it, drop the whole thing!’ He jumped up and stormed out of the room.
Seconds later, he burst back in to pick up his pert. Then he left again.
I thought: he’s getting me entangled with ET so as to throw me off Cyboratics. Perhaps he believes he’s protecting me.
I didn’t believe that theory for a moment.
Freedom had an ulterior motive. Whatever it was, he mustn’t find out the real reason I was travelling to Earth.
My mission had been decided before he returned from RK-17. To fulfil my mission I had to get physically near the President of Cyboratics, Wye Stan Pan. I couldn’t come up with any scenario to persuade him to see me. And then, as if by sheer coincidence, Freedom gave me a highly personal reason to seek audience. I thought about my dead mother, who used to be his wife, and how she escaped from him.
I thought about Fairweather, who died because she had discovered something about him.
I went online to stop thinking about them.
There was a message from Dee Valiant. She was back in RK-17. When I contacted her, she said, ‘It’s an interesting story we’re hearing about you and ET, Jexu Jiu. What are you up to?’
‘I’m going back to Earth.’
‘With Freedom Cordova? You’ll soon be with him longer than we were together.’
‘It’s not the same sort of relationship.’
‘What sort is it?’
‘A strange one.’
‘Watch your back with him. I was worried when I found out that he knew your real name,’ she said.
‘When did he find out?’
‘I don’t know exactly when, but it was when he was still here. Are you fighting his war on ET? Don’t get involved in their politics. Get a ringside seat and watch the sumo contest.’
A shiver ran down my spine. She wasn’t supposed to know about that. I asked, ‘Who’s the ringmaster?’
‘You are travelling with him.’
After we signed off, I logged into my toy-box and saw my old message: Freedom Cordova is a Russian doll… I added to it: I still like him a lot. I like him even more now. The doll inside is nothing like the one outside.
Then I got my tools and started to create a new creature. I made it a six-foot tall fluffy pink rabbit
with glittery diamond eyes.
The next few days we led parallel lives as usual. Twice Freedom persuaded me to join him for a restaurant meal, but everywhere was crowded with noisy spacers on shore leave and youth who had come for the competition. We got passage with the Aurora thanks to what Freedom called my Method. ‘But I haven’t pulled the badge on them,’ I pointed out, puzzled, waiting for him to finish getting dressed so that we could check out of the hotel. He had upgraded his biosuit to a khaki Kudo Sigma Safari 2.0, and now took his time testing its features. He laughed, ‘Using the badge is one of your techniques, not your Method-capital-M.’
‘What’s my Method-capital-M?’
‘You become the Other-capital-O.’ His eyes twinkled. I muttered ‘Give over,’ and he became merrier. ‘Your destiny’s taking us to the birthplace of humanity, Al. And we’re going there thanks to your Method, O Unborn Other.’ He knew the legend somehow.
The previous night he got lucky with a spacer on shore leave, and I got luckier with her captain, who hadn’t returned any of my earlier communications. When Freedom brought the spacer to the hotel, he said that I could either join them or clear off. The two of them were already undressing and raucously falling onto the bed. I asked where I could find Captain Romanova, and the spacer laughed, ‘You’re not her type, not even the right gender!’ When I insisted, she suggested the pizzeria at the spaceport mall.
The mall was heaving with spacers tattooed with elaborate Aurora insignias. It was the last night they could come to town, and the first time that the captain came ashore herself. She sat at the back of the pizzeria, a wiry heavily tattooed woman in her sixties, eating alone surrounded by her crew. None sat down with her. I pushed through the throng, and they pushed me back roughly, ‘No seats there, Mister!’ Romanova caught sight of me and ordered them to let me through. As soon as I was near, she said, ‘Hello, Jexu Jiu. Do you want to buy my ship for two cents?’ People within earshot chuckled, but she wasn’t smiling. She indicated the seat opposite her. I sat down. ‘Talk, five minutes,’ she said with her mouth full.