The Immortality Game

by Ted Cross

  THE

  IMMORTALITY

  GAME

  A novel by

  Ted Cross

  Published by Breakwater Harbor Books, Inc.

  Scott J. Toney and Cara Goldthorpe, Co-Founders

  www.breakwaterharborbooks.weebly.com

  First Edition: November 2014

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9909877-0-3

  Visit Ted Cross’s official website for the latest news, book details, and other information

  Copyright © Ted Cross, 2014

  Cover art by Stephan Martiniere

  e-book formatting by Guido Henkel

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  For Victoria

  Moscow

  Saturday, June 7, 2138

  2:47 p.m. MSK

  Zoya hummed along to a pre-Dark Times rock tune as she sketched a final line of purple lipstick onto the grossly fat man on the stainless steel slab. She often listened to music while she worked, since it helped take her mind from the peculiar canvas upon which she plied her art. Her preference was for rock from the quaint times when people played their own instruments and wrote their own songs. Lennon and McCartney, Waters and Gilmour, Plant and Page…‌demigods of a dead age.

  She didn’t enjoy working with corpses—the faint smell of decay and the stronger one of embalming fluid, the coldness of the skin—but after three years of working in the morgue, she no longer feared them. Instead she focused on her beloved music and tried to imagine what kind of life each of her customers had led, what dreams they had left unfulfilled.

  Fans whirred softly, stirring the chilled air of the room. She stood up to get a better view of the face, and jumped as someone dug fingers into her side from behind.

  “Hey, little Sis. Did I scare you?”

  Snapping off the music from her slot interface, she whirled and was swept into the arms of her brother.

  “Georgy!” She pretended to punch his shoulder. “Won’t you ever grow up?” Despite the tender warmth she always felt around him, there was an icy undercurrent now. He had never visited the morgue before. His jet black hair, usually combed straight back on his head, was mussed, and a day’s worth of stubble scratched her cheeks as he kissed first one and then the other. He was always so meticulous about shaving; something must be wrong. “Why are you here?”

  He stepped back, still holding her narrow shoulders. “I need you to do something for me. You know I’d—”

  “You swore you wouldn’t involve me.”

  He nodded. “I wouldn’t ask this if I had anywhere else to turn. You know that.” He reached into a pocket and pulled out a small package, a rectangle of old-fashioned brown paper tied off with twine the way Mother always did it.

  “You have lots of friends,” Zoya said. “Don’t do this to me.”

  “My friends can’t help me now, Sis. You’re all I have. Take this.”

  He thrust the package at her, but she backed away, holding up her hands like a shield. “I won’t ruin my life, even for you. I have plans. Nearly saved up enough for a child. Don’t you dare.”

  Georgy set the package on the table next to the corpse. “I’m sorry, but I have no one else I can trust right now. Please, just bring it to me tomorrow, say around ten.” He pulled a small Web cable from a pocket and snapped it into the slot interface hidden in the black hair behind his left ear. “I sure wish you’d let me buy you a wireless upgrade.” He reached out to plug the other end of the cable into Zoya’s slot.

  “No!” She shoved his arm back. “I won’t do it.”

  Georgy stroked a finger down Zoya’s cheek and smiled. “This little packet is going to save our family. It’s going to get us away from here to someplace better. We’re going to—”

  “Please don’t lie to me. Lie to your gangster friends all you want, but don’t lie to me.”

  Georgy pursed his lips and stared down at the floor for a few moments. Slowly he reached out and placed a finger on the nose of the corpse. “He’s awfully young to have died. What happened to him? He eat himself to death?”

  “Have some respect,” Zoya said, slapping his hand away from the body’s nose. “I’m not a coroner. I just prepare them for the funeral. Don’t change the subject on me.”

  Gently, Georgy took her shoulders again and pulled her face close. “Look at me. What do you see?”

  Zoya stared into his brown eyes. There was a haunted look she had never seen before. “You’re afraid?”

  “Terrified. I fucked up so badly this time. You have no idea. I’ve got to disappear for a while. I need time to prepare, and I can’t have this on me. And then things will get better for us. I swear.”

  He’d used the moment to slide his hand up close to Zoya’s ear, and now he popped the music card from her slot and slipped the cable end into its place. Reluctantly she enabled the connection in her firewall and saw the location where he wanted her to go. It was in a deserted part of old Moscow, a crumbling wasteland where only the drunk or the dangerous ventured.

  “Yugo-Zapadnaya? I can’t—”

  “Don’t tell anyone where you’re going. I have a safe house there. You’ll be fine, you’ll see. Tomorrow, around ten, okay?” He pulled out the cable and leaned in to kiss her cheek again. “I owe you big time.”

  “Georgy,” she moaned, but he had already turned away, walking swiftly toward the morgue exit. It’s what they always do, isn’t it? If there was one thing Zoya had learned in life, it was that men always walked away from their responsibilities.

  She sagged against the edge of the table and looked down at the small package. Fear made it difficult to swallow. Fear for Georgy and for herself, though it was tinged with anger that he had forced this upon her. She closed her grip around the package, and her hand brushed the clammy skin of the corpse. An image filled her mind of Georgy laid out on the slab while she rouged his cold cheeks. She shuddered and tucked the package into a pocket of her lab coat.

  Phoenix, Arizona

  Saturday, June 7, 2138

  10:15 p.m. MDT

  Marcus sat up in the recliner and rubbed his eyes. “How long was I out?”

  The husky voice that sounded almost but not quite like his dead father’s responded from the nearest wall speaker: “Twelve minutes, forty-two seconds. You passed.”

  “I did?” Relief coursed through Marcus as he exhaled. Six years of hard studying and now he finally had his degree. He reached back and unplugged the cable from the slot behind his left ear, let it slide back into the wall socket. “You sure, Papa? We’re not supposed to know until tomorrow.”

  “You know me,” said the voice that was a bit too monotone to mimic Javier Saenz’s true voice. “A system has to be top-notch to keep me out. I knew you’d pass anyway. I know your mind.”

  Marcus pushed the recliner back into place, stood, and stretched his arms with a yawn. His shoulders popped.

  “You should take a walk,” said his father. “You could use some exercise.”

  “I’m hungry.” He glanced down at his expansive belly and scowled. “And it’s too late for a walk anyway.”

  “You just don’t like to go outside,” Javier grumbled. “Fine, eat. Now that you’re through with school, we need to talk.”

>   Marcus strolled to the tiny kitchenette and sat on the stool. “My usual,” he said to the wall speaker.

  “Medium pizza, pepperoni and black olives, ten minutes,” said the soothing female voice of the apartment.

  “At least add a salad and an apple or something,” Javier said. “You’ll need the energy.”

  “What’s that mean? You have some big plan to celebrate my doctorate?”

  “I need you to do something for me. Take a trip.”

  “A trip? To where?” Marcus stood and walked to the single window on the far wall. Years ago Phoenix would have been a sea of shining lights this time of night; now the darkness was broken only by the streetlights and a scattering of lit windows. The sky should have blazed with tens of thousands of air cars. Instead he could see only a few dozen. On Bell Road, six stories below, not a soul could be seen.

  “Moscow.”

  Marcus jerked his hands up from the window ledge. “What the hell? What’s going on?” Sedona was the farthest Marcus had ever gone from Phoenix, and he had rarely even left his apartment in the eight years since finishing high school.

  “I found something. Something I’ve been searching for ever since I died.”

  Was it Marcus’s imagination or did his father’s flat voice actually have a hint of excitement in it? “Go on.”

  “Someone plugged a data card into the Web from an address in Moscow. It’s clearly something that was never meant to touch the Web. Research that must have been going on for decades, at least.”

  Marcus smirked and walked back to the stool at the small table. “The cloning thing again?”

  The wall speaker emitted a sigh. “You know better than that. Everyone does cloning. This is the digital copying of a full human mind. Like I did, only much different. Better.”

  “So? You already exist digitally. How does this change anything?”

  “I want…‌no, I need to be real again. A few years work, with me to help them…”

  Marcus shook his head. “You won’t convince me. I call you ‘Papa’ because it makes things easier and because you know enough to fake it really well, but you’re just a great simulation, a bunch of computer code.”

  “Give me a chance. Please. The worst that can happen is you end up being right and they can’t do it.”

  “Moscow’s a scary place. Heck, everywhere’s pretty scary these days. Are we even allowed to travel there?”

  “Not normally. I’ve hacked into our Foreign Affairs net and arranged a passport for you on the next suborbital out of Salt Lake City. You’ll be a diplomat.”

  “You crazy? You’re gonna get me thrown in prison!”

  “The credentials are genuine. No one can touch you.”

  “I’m no diplomat. What job am I supposed to be doing there?”

  “It’s a special position. No one will question you. I’ll fill you in with everything you need to know.”

  A ping from the wall speaker told Marcus his late supper would arrive in a minute.

  Marcus shook his head again. “I don’t like it. I should be setting up interviews to get my career started, not getting myself into trouble halfway around the world.”

  “What career? You and I both know this country—hell, this whole world—is all but dead. When’s the last time you saw a person on the street out there? You haven’t set foot out of this apartment in months. What is there left for anyone here? I mean, unless you happen to be Mormon, and even they are trying their damnedest to hotfoot it off this planet.”

  “If there’s nothing left, then why have you let me waste all these years getting my degree?”

  “Learning is never a bad thing.”

  “I dunno. What about Mom? I can’t just leave her here.”

  “She’ll be fine. I can keep tabs on her here and still be with you in Moscow. Look, please don’t argue with me. I need this. I’m begging you for this one favor.”

  The wall pinged again. The polished steel door of the smartwaiter hissed open, and a tray slid out holding a neatly sliced pizza on a white plastic plate and a cup of Pepsi with ice. The aroma of sizzling pepperoni filled the room.

  Marcus picked up the plate. “If I do this, and I mean if, when would I go?”

  “The suborbital leaves Salt Lake City as soon as you arrive. I’ve arranged for a shuttle to pick you up here at ten forty-five.”

  Marcus dropped the hot plate onto the table with a clatter. “You’ve got to be kidding me! I can’t leave—”

  “Sure you can! Why not? Pack a few things, kiss your mother, and go. There’s nothing to it.”

  “Why’s it have to be so fast?”

  “Marcus, the longer we wait the colder the trail may get. I have no idea why someone accessed the Web with that card. Something is wrong there. All I have to go on is a location. Please, just get on that shuttle. Don’t worry about your mother.”

  Marcus stared at the pizza, no longer hungry. He glanced over at the doorway to the bedroom.

  “She’ll be thrilled to hear you graduated,” Javier said.

  “Yeah,” Marcus muttered. He got up, walked to the bedroom, and leaned on the door frame. As always, his mother looked like a corpse, lying in bed with the autodrip in her emaciated arm and a catheter in place to remove the tiny amount of waste her pale husk of a body still produced. Marcus moved close and sat on the chair at the head of the bed. He placed a hand lightly on his mother’s hot brow. “What’s she up to now, Papa?”

  “With her friends, gossiping away as usual. They’re on a nice beach. She’s going to have a candlelight dinner with me later.”

  “If you really think Meshing is killing the world, why don’t you force everyone out like you did me?”

  “Marcus, you know how hard it was to get you clean. It only succeeded because of the bond we share, and even then it took me constantly being in your head to keep you from plugging back in. I can’t manage it with the rest of the world.”

  “Why not Mom?”

  “She…‌she’s happier where she is. My stroke hit her nearly as hard as it did me. She wants to be where she is. The only regret she has is you.”

  “Right. She’d rather be gossiping with her friends than be with me.”

  “She knows it’s not fair. Mesh addiction is hard enough to overcome when someone wants to, as you well know. It’s impossible to overcome when one doesn’t care to.”

  Marcus rubbed his thumb along the ridge of his mother’s eyebrow. It was ironic that she had succumbed. She had always scoffed at Meshing, never had any interest in it, at least until Father died seven years ago. Then she dove in and never looked back. Could Father be right? If he is, maybe Mom would come back to us.

  “All right,” he whispered. “I’ll go.”

  “Thank you.”

  Marcus leaned in and kissed the papery skin of his mother’s cheek. “Love you, Mom.”

  Moscow

  Sunday, June 8, 2138

  10:07 a.m. MSK

  Poplar seeds floated like snowflakes on the summer breeze, as they did each summer in Moscow, a reminder that winter would come again before too long. Zoya loved strolling through the flurries, watching the white drifts pile up along the curbs and in the gutters, her thrill dampened only by having to visit this abandoned part of the city.

  She stepped carefully over broken sections of concrete. Trash and glass littered the yellowed grass and weeds that lined the sidewalk. A sound from the building to her right brought her to a halt. A crash of metal followed by a yelp. A wild dog, she thought. Perhaps a pack. Why did I let Georgy get me into this?

  Ancient dormitories that had housed university students a century ago now towered forlornly in staggered rows along the decaying street. A twisted sculpture of rusty metal—a fire escape?—lay across the sidewalk, and Zoya was forced into the street to skirt around it. She peered out of the corners of her eyes at each dark doorway or window, imagining drunks or crazies lurking in the shadows, watching, w
aiting to pounce.

  Clutching the small package in her pocket, Zoya wondered again what was so important about it. Too small to be drugs or money.

  She checked the number on the side of the nearest building and counted ahead. Only two more. Should be the courtyard entrance, according to the map he’d shown her. She could see it now across the road, though an old ground car, rusted and burned, blocked the way. Zoya nervously hummed Goodbye Blue Sky as she circled around the car.

  Georgy blinked sweat out of his eyes and stared at the carpet, noticing for the first time the delicate pink lines of the rose patterns in the thin matting. He knew he was going to die. He wondered how painful they would make it and whether his sister might somehow survive.

  “Tell us where it is and we’ll make this quick for you.”

  A strong hand grasped Georgy by his hair and twisted his head around until the salami breath of his inquisitor washed over his face. Georgy winced and glared at the man who, until today, he had thought of as a brother. “I don’t know, Tavik. Don’t know where it is. I swear.”

  Tavik clasped Georgy’s face gently with both hands and smiled. He bent close and kissed Georgy hard, first on the left cheek and then on the right. The kind expression didn’t extend to his pale blue eyes. “Come now, my friend,” he whispered. “How long have we known each other? What? Four years? What made you think you could get away with this?”

  Out of the corner of one eye Georgy took in the rest of the participants in this little charade. Sitting next to him on the worn tan couch was Ilya, barely out of school, a gang member for less than two months, and naive enough to have trusted Georgy. Now I’ve killed him, as sure as if I put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. Ilya sat ramrod straight, panting and pale. Standing behind the couch nearby was one of the two goons Tavik had brought with him. The other stood a few paces back, holding an old .45 in one hand and looking disinterested, a sim-cig dangling from the corner of his mouth.