by Elle Hawken
LAST YEAR’S MOON
by
Elle Hawken
© 2015 Elle Hawken
All rights reserved
It didn't pay to scrap junk anymore. Wrecked cars and worn-out appliances sprawled outside the city in moldering roadside heaps. People photographed them and gave them names, like Turtle Crawling Sideways and Steeple Kiss. Decay was the new art. It had character, and not much did these days thanks to the surge in global mass production. Everything was brand new, and cheap. Dirt cheap. I lived in a penthouse I'd bought last November that looked out over the Hudson. And I was dirt cheap, too.
Shadows cut stark lines across the railing and stairs beneath a burnt-out bulb. My session at the Paulsen-Krynor Institute started in less than twenty minutes, and I hustled. I had forgotten it was Friday. When I reached the lobby, I smoothed my long hair and tugged at the hem of my dress, pretending I was going somewhere nice. And who knew, maybe I would be. I could end up downtown at a glitzy bar nestled in an old bank vault, drinking sixty-year-old whiskey and basking in the glow of bronze turn-of-the-last-century deposit boxes. Or maybe I'd find myself chasing rats in the Holland Tunnel. Again.
Friday nights meant tough competition for cabs, but I caught a break. The Institute didn't bother to send a car. Showing up was your responsibility, and if you broke more than three appointments there was hell to pay.
I hadn't broken an appointment yet. But I thought about it every time.
The door handle on the cab jiggled, bolts loose. Interior hinges groaned and professed their rust. The sedan was only a few years old. Nothing lasted.
Factories employed more than a third of humanity, and they turned out crap products at an astonishing rate, but our government had given every high-tech contract to the arc-phens after the ISS incident. Too many high profile tourists had been cruising that deathtrap when it finally gave up the ghost in a blinding flash of incandescent plasma. Maybe one in a billion people could explain what had gone wrong with the new fuel grid. And those ten people were too knee-deep in their own elaborate endeavors to even tweet about it. Science had gotten that complex. We were manipulating structures we only understood in theory, and sometimes the gamble paid out in blood. So we quietly handed creation over to the arc-phens, the perfectionists. I often wondered what it was like to have never made a mistake. To have never crossed an I or dotted a T. To never have said yes when you meant no.
I wondered if that meant you lived without regrets.
We crept south. The tiny cinema marquee crammed into the corner of a sleek hotel facade came into view with a few minutes to spare, and the driver put on his signal. I never gave out the Institute's address. Part of the rules. If you didn't follow the rules, you got kicked out of the program. I suppose that meant different things to different people, but I knew what it would mean for me.
I walked around the corner and crossed the street. Capped by twin American flags and a smattering of satellite dishes, the Mid-Century building was all beige, gray and glass. Nothing marked it as odd. Yet my stomach crawled as if it were a dilapidated house in a nice neighborhood – the kind of place where if you snuck in and chanted 'I believe in Mary Worth' three times at midnight, maybe you really would see a ghost in the mirror and get your face snatched off. My destination was on the sixth floor. I took the stairs.
A red sign at the end of the hall read Paulsen-Krynor Psychiatric Institute – We change minds, but it was a front for the US Department of Transfer.
The arc-phens didn't want money in return for their services. Not mostly. They wanted time, time in flesh. So they got paid in TIF-mins. Call them what you want – spirits, demons, AI's. No one had ever proven anything and the arc-phens weren't exactly forthcoming about their origins. Maybe it was just a hard question. Humanity's been mulling that one over for a very long time. Some poor fools thought arc-phens were angels come down from heaven. But I knew better. Because I knew what they did when they thought no one was looking.
I was an org-av, an organic avatar. I let them rent me. They doled out their TIF-mins, I got paid in cash. And I was mostly immune to the effects of meta-benzodiazepines, or MetZeps as we called them. Those were the drugs org-avs got jacked up with before a TIF-min session. They selectively suppressed consciousness, or they were supposed to. But like I said, it didn't really work on me. So I got to watch.
But that's a secret.
Frosted glass obscured the interior of the Institute. I stared at the jumbled light and for the thousandth time wondered what the hell I was doing to myself. Two warped forms approached, darkening the glass. I turned the knob and swung the door open for them. A couple in their mid-sixties smiled and thanked me. They weren't org-avs. The Institute treated regular patients to keep up appearances. You could tell who was who even though they corralled us in the same waiting room. People whose appointment was with the Department had a look about them, as if they'd had to stab their best friend to stay alive.
Org-avs never lasted more than a couple of years in the program. Suicide, always. There'd never been an exception. The Department of Transfer had even added an option to tag our profiles, so some lucky Had Enough of This Sorry World arc-phen could throw in the towel with you. For the first time in the history of mankind, you didn't have to die alone. I'd been renting myself out for four months. I couldn't imagine how the other avatars held out so long.
I had rules. That helped a little. You could have as many rules as you wanted, as long as your schedule stayed full. Few of us exercised the option, so I wasn't as popular as some of the other org-avs. But I didn't wake up in lockdown freaking like a crack addict, either. The rules weren't something they you told about at the beginning. Everyone got baptized by fire. They said it made it easier on your body, and they called it the Conditioning Phase. The ability to have rules and set limits was a bit of consolation the director handed out like candy when your mind started to break.
The front office smelled like lemon chlorine. A polyester-clad nurse greeted me with a measured smile and ushered me into an exam room. I got checked before and after a session. The Department of Transfer had its own rules about what you could and couldn't do to an org-av. No technological implants, no irreversible damage, and no sex.
I'd developed my own following, arc-phens who appreciated renting a body in top condition. They were happy to comply with the note on my profile: No crime. No broken bones or maiming. No brain-frying drugs. No animal cruelty.
The director had laughed at me when I'd added the No Animal Cruelty clause. Unenforceable, he'd said. How would the Department know? But my clauses were rarely violated. Even though we didn't use our real names on our profiles, I had a feeling the arc-phens knew who I was. They probably figured I'd skip the bureaucracy and hunt them down in the Aether. Burn them out.
That's what I did for a living before I got Listed. I was a Senior Purge Analyst for the EnCryptagion Corporation. We stored sensitive data in helical strips of viral RNA. If it got corrupted it was my job to dig up the reason, and I'd discovered a way to hunt down trespassers from the Aether. The arc-phens had been sneaking around in our world for a very long time. I built a bridge that allowed us access to their world. For the first time, the connection was a two-way street. We were ghosts in the Aether like they were ghosts here. The arcing phenomena – that's what WorldSpan had dubbed them back in the New Twenties and the name stuck – had shut down the bridge from their end back in December, but that wouldn't save them from me. I had also built a secret trap door.
I held my thumb against a glass plate next to the steel-webbed barrier between the Institute and the Department. Some people thought you had to mash your print against the pane since the computer was sometimes slow to read it. But I knew it was analyzing
far more than the print, and the pane was dirty. Even though I had wiped the glass before presenting my thumb, I could envision the traces that countless others before me had left, and I knew the computer was having to sort it all out. Make sure I was really me. Not an impostor. Or a clone. No one had made a full human clone that could rapidly reach adulthood, yet. But they'd figured out how to copy and graft thumbs eons ago.
With a dull hum, the doors slid open. I advanced and went through security.
“You got bid up again, Beswick,” said Rogers with an air of congratulation. The government had taken a cue from internet auction sites, and org-av TIF-min fees varied according to demand.
Rogers grinned at me. He was six-foot-seven and black as opera velvet. When he handed me my tablet, I noticed the feather tattoo on his bulky forearm for the hundredth time. I'd always wanted to ask about it – what could a feather mean to a giant of a man like that? But the bright white acronym splashed across his armored vest loomed like a concrete wall between us. I was Listed. He was Government. We should have been enemies, but I liked his smile and returned it.
Sometimes I wished I'd met someone like Rogers before I'd been Listed. But before I'd stepped into the wrong elevator last December, I'd been a workaholic who had drowned myself in endless tasks and research to fill the void left by Husband Number Two. I wouldn't have met a new man unless he'd driven a taxi or delivered Thai food.
My smile made Rogers nervous. His hand jerked away from the tablet and came to rest on his hip. The pistol there seemed superfluous, but it wasn't. All these advances in science and you still couldn't beat the physics of a chunk of metal tearing through flesh.
“Who's up, do you know?” I asked, even though I knew I shouldn't.
“Mozart.”
I smiled again. Mozart was my favorite. His sessions were more like a date than a nightmare. “You gotta tell me if the Knicks win tonight, okay?” I said as I passed through the second metal detector.
“You got it, babe. See you in the morning.”
I'd be leaving the transfer station in fifteen minutes with a bag of goods from an arc-phen's locker, but I, of course, would not be me.
***
It was like watching myself on TV through a drunken haze. Starring in my own show, I played a lot of different characters who did surprising, and sometimes disgusting, things. I didn't have to worry with Mozart.
The door to the liquor store bounced open with a jangle as tuneless bells smacked against glass. Mozart was partial to vodka, and he – or we, since I retained semi-consciousness – headed straight for the hard spirits. Peach vodka and a bottle of real orange juice. My favorite. He laughed. Sometimes I worried that he heard me, but I doubted it. I had shouted at some of the other arc-phens when I'd first started renting, when they were on the verge of doing something I objected to, and not one had ever given any indication of having heard a peep.
After securing the night's entertainment in a paper bag we headed to Mozart's apartment. If any of the others kept a physical address, I'd never seen it. They usually stayed out all night.
We took the train to the Upper East Side. Flanking a pair of revolving doors, streamlined statues supported a sunburst arch at the entrance of Mozart's building. The doorman had seen me enough times to recognize me when I approached. He probably thought I was a high-dollar hooker. I tried to tell myself that wasn't true as Mozart flashed him my flirtatious smile.
Then I realized the doorman must think I only show up when Mozart is gone, because Mozart would have to trade in his other org-av to rent me.
“Evening, Miss de Winter,” the elderly gentlemen said, as if I were a siren from the golden age of cinema. I liked it that Mozart had picked that name for me. Org-avs used handles on our profiles, no names. Mine was aloysia1777. I wondered if Mozart knew what it meant. Maybe his name was just coincidence.
“You're looking smart, George. New haircut?” My voice was husky and rich in Mozart's control.
A flush crept up from the doorman's collar. “Kind of you to notice, miss.”
The elevator opened when we reached the eighth floor. Vestiges of art deco architecture strained to be noticed through the many sleek upgrades in the long, narrow hall. Sometimes it seemed like everything new was cheap and everything old was solid. Well, not everything. But Mozart's door was a fine example. Heavy black walnut, with the rounded number 807 inlaid in brass. Mozart had held out against electronic passcard conversion, and slid a big heavy key into the lock.
After Mozart poured us a stiff drink, he cued up my favorite Eighties movie about a bunch of marines who get stranded on an alien planet. Then he switched the audio over to a Viennese recording of Don Giovanni. It was strange seeing the movie this way, but I liked it. The absence of dialogue didn't matter so much. I knew every line, word for word. And so did Mozart.
After a few light sips of the drink – he knew better than to drown me in alcohol after I'd been shot up with MetZeps – Mozart peeked down the front of my dress.
“What did you wear for me tonight?”
Not your favorite, I thought. Unfortunately. Purple cheetah print was a bit loud for his taste, but it was all the rage at the upscale lingerie boutique I frequented. If I'd known we were having a date tonight, I would have put on something old school, something with black lace and nude lining. Something that hinted and beckoned rather than screamed.
But org-avs were never told which arc-phen we were renting to before we showed up. The info was usually withheld until we were on the table. In other words, until it was too late. Rogers had done me a courtesy this evening.
Guns flashed and zapped on screen. Someone mouthed a snappy quip. Everyone was dirty and sweaty, but still gorgeous. Good ol' Hollywood. Mozart picked up the vodka and held the cold glass against my skin. Then he slid it down over my breasts. My body reacted and he grinned. Two empty marriages had left me no stranger to my own hands, and Mozart's touch felt safe and familiar.
When the good guys defeated the monsters and the credits rolled, we moved into his bedroom. Mozart had laid out a nightgown and positioned the heavy gilded mirror against his headboard, as always. Sometimes I wondered if he left it there. It was an enormous antique, and must have weighed a couple of hundred pounds. I looked prettier in that champagne, age-darkened glass than I had at any other place or time.
He undressed me slowly, as if we had all the time in the world.
Mozart took a last sip of vodka before climbing onto the bed. He knelt in front of the mirror and slid my hands over my body. After I was soothed and relaxed, he laid down crosswise on the bed right next to the mirror and pulled a silk quilt over me. I fell asleep with my hand on the glass. Sometimes I imagined that he was in love with me. And every once in a while I fooled myself and believed, for a few hours, that it was true and that the feeling was mutual.
***
“You're in the wrong elevator.” That's what the creep with the consultant's badge had said last December right before he attacked my co-worker, the elderly Mrs. Chung. Like a true Manhattan native, which I wasn't, I ignored him. B5 was lit, and I pressed B4. I'd transferred to EnCryptagion's headquarters seven years earlier and I knew damn well which elevator bank went to my lab pod.
When he slammed Chung's head into the shiny steel doors, I reacted without thinking. My fist came up and clocked him in the head, then my other hand knocked away the gun he'd pulled out of nowhere and I struck him in the throat. He went down hard and didn't get up.
It turned out Vera Chung was a data miner who'd been selling military information to some terrorist regime, and the creep was not a creep at all. His name was Danny Greenberg. He was CIA.
Someone swiped the security footage, and it was all over the internet before I was even in cuffs: girl in lab coat kills armed government agent barehanded. Some people thought the video was fake. I became an instant urban legend. And an embarrassment, to say the least. Government tactical training had gone the way of medication-enhanced electrical
muscle stimulation and holographic scenarios. Apparently a bunch of steroids and VR games didn't hold a candle to growing up the wrong color in a south Dallas slum. My only consolation was that the guy had no kids.
You don't kill a cop in New York. Local or federal, doesn't matter. That sort of stupidity earned you an immediate death sentence. No questions, no excuses. No air-conditioned prison cell for the rest of your life. It was the chair or the needle, and you didn't get to pick. I respected that kind of black-and-white justice, especially considering that in today's society shirking responsibility seemed to be the new American Way. But I'd landed on the wrong side of it.
Before my hearing, government lawyers from the Department of Transfer offered me a position in the arc-phen program. It was hush-hush, but I knew about it. It dovetailed with my line of work. They offered me a five year contract in lieu of execution, same as all the other org-avs. My assets were frozen and would be returned to me upon completion. It sounded good, but no one had ever made it through to the end. At least they were honest about that part. Back then I was still an optimist. So I took it.
I hadn't realized the urges and curiosities of arc-phens could be as base and visceral as any human's. The Department lawyers kept that part to themselves. You weren't supposed to know what went on during the sessions, after all. The MetZep drugs were supposed to suppress your consciousness. Trading a cut and dry death sentence for a five year contract was too ridiculously good to be true. I should have known it. After a week in the program, I'd pulled off my fingernails, driven a car off the 59th Street bridge, eaten human flesh and shot a dog.
Then I got stolen.
I was Listed, and chipped. But IToldYourGirlfriend999 was not only a perfectionist, she was a genius. I'd been rented for three whole days to give her a head start. Everything had been planned, right down to hair dye, new fingerprints, and open-heart surgery in a bathroom at Grand Central Station. Using a duct-taped mirror and a scalpel, she removed the chip from my right ventricle in less than three minutes and managed not to kill me. We spent a month trafficking organs across Europe and Africa before agents caught up to us in St. Petersburg. When they swarmed us, I was sure they would just pull the trigger. I was Listed and the Kill On Sight bulletin had undoubtedly gone out. But they did a forced purge right there on the stony bank of the Neva and brought me back to the US.