Crash Deluxe (15 page)

Silence from Merv.

The residue of me recognised irony. My whole life - the smallest dot of information. It seemed fair.

So why loiter?

I saw the shimmer of activity as a wall of data assembled, ready to convert and transmit across the connection.

Boost away
, I thought-sent.

Goodbye . . .
the whisper came back.

Riding the light wave was a roller coaster. Slamming and rising. Slamming and rising. Speed irrelevant and yet everything. Transparent and opaque at once.

Then.

I decoded after a delay into a temp reservoir that duplicated a watered-down version of the 5-Gen vrealspace I’d just travelled.

I tried to recollect myself, to make some coherency, but bits seemed to be missing. I knew what I was doing here but I couldn’t remember who I was.

Compelled only by the momentum of a half-remembered purpose, I sifted data quicksand until I found the shape of a name.

I imprinted the information in my shadow cadaver’s infinitesimal storage and moved forward searching for another shape.

I found it among other recognisable shapes but I ignored them.

As I imprinted, a hexagonal shape began swirling up and down the data-streams, scanning for corruptions.

I finished imprinting and found a well to hide in.

But it vibrated on towards me.
Erasure. Erasure. Erasure.

While my shadow cadaver stayed undetected by the ancient security, it picked me clean of the imprinted data and put it back.

Like an obedient robot on the assembly line I repeated what I’d done and squatted again.

The scan ran and re-sorted.

We continued the slow dance over and over. I stayed, trapped by my own lack of impetus and forgotten identity.

I imprinted the information again and instead of finding my well, I began sniffing.

I followed a pale auburn stream of data, seeking out a familiar smell. It was there, behind the salty tangs of the data-streams and the mustiness of the repositories - the faintest odour of life.

I set myself after it like a dog.

 

 

 

 

M
erv booted me back to realtime with a derm of adrenalin.

I jerked out and struggled to get a handle. Everything seemed so dull and barren, even compared to the degraded vreal of the impartial.

The screens on the wall resembled bulging eyes. I sorted smell and touch first because vomit had collected in the creases of my clothes and I was drooling.

The headache came next and was to die from.

I finally resolved the figure of Merv beside me. He looked tired and disturbed. Even more than usual.

I stumbled groggily out of the jockey seat, rubbing circulation into my legs. ‘Did you catch it?’

He nodded, his mouth ajar. ‘T-tell m-me, how did you get out of there?’

‘Let’s just say don’t ever lose your sweet smell.’

Merv grinned.

First time for everything.

‘Give me the data I collected and then erase any trace of it off your systems,’ I said, too tired for niceties.

‘Where do want it?’

‘Dump it into my p-diary. It’ll give her something to think about.’

A shower and some food brought me some humanity.

Or did it?

My references for that particular word had shifted. If my vreal hallucinations could be at all believed, I’d just found out that I was a product of a symbiosis with an alien parasite and without its presence I wouldn’t survive another day. Not just me but all of us.

It felt like the ground was shivering beneath my feet so I sat on the edge of my bed and told Merry 3# to display the files.

‘No audio,’ I instructed.

She primped and pranced about. ‘Euuch. What
is
this stuff?’ she complained. ‘It’s like my shoes are pinching.’

‘It’s called work, Merry,’ I sniped. ‘You obviously weren’t built for it. Life isn’t just fashion bites and fake automatic-rifle noises.’

She gave me the finger and changed into optical glasses and a cape, nipples peeping through.

I read the first file. Then again, cross-checking with Merry’s thesaurus for the meanings of some of the words.

It was a contract between the Prisons Corporation and a consortium named Stem. The prisons were to provide suitable inmates for the
Code Noir
project in exchange for a specified remuneration. (‘That’s money, Parrish’ said Merry.)

‘I know that.’

I didn’t even scowl at her.

Rage distracted me and there was too much of it to be provoked by something as banal as Merry’s banter.

Voice trembling, I told her to show me the other file.

. . . AKA Ike del Morte. Gaoled for a series of murders committed against media students.
I read on impatiently.
Released to head the
Code Noir
project by the director of Stem corporation . . .

I told Merry to shut the information down and purge it.

Then: ‘Cancel that,’ I said sharply. ‘And encrypt it.’

‘I should warn you,’ she said crossly, ‘my encryption is only factory-standard. Any halfwit could decode it.’

I thought for a moment. Like all her generation of p-diaries, Merry was capable of making changes to her configuration and programs as long as she didn’t ignore a direct command from whoever she was encoded to.

I tried to imagine the one thing she didn’t want anyone to take away from her. Especially if that anyone was me.

‘Hide it in your wardrobe files.’

She poked her tongue out. ‘Is that a direct instruction? ’

‘Yes.’

She gave a large, dramatic sigh and the information disappeared to the safest place she could put them.

‘Access netspace and search on the company Stem.’

It only took her a few minutes. ‘It’s registered to a long string that comes back to James Monk.’

Monk.
‘That was quick.’

Merry gave me the smuggest of grins. ‘I’ve got friends.’

‘What do you mean,
friends
?’

She placed a finger on the side of her nose and tapped it.

I frowned. ‘You sure it’s right?’

‘
P-diaries
don’t lie,’ she sniffed. ‘Why did you ask me if you weren’t going to believe me?’

She had a point. So why on earth did the thought of Merry having a
friend
make me so damn uneasy?

I kept her working until I’d recorded everything I could think of. Then I got her to run Snout’s pattern-recognition software. Merv had designed it for his seeker to be able to make sense of vrealspace.

Merry yawned and complained that she was too tired to think, so I minimised her and concentrated on the holo-schema from Snout’s programme.

Tulu worked for a broker who was selling information on illegal genetics to the Banks. (If Merv was right.) This explained why she was hanging out with Ike back in MoVay. She was poaching information about his practices, and winging some of her own. If Slipstream had sold that info to the Banks then how were they planning to use it?

And why in the freaking Wombat had Daac sold himself at the meat market?

Thrown into that mix of questions were a few extra curiosities.

My media ally . . . who was she? And why had Monk accepted and responded to a call from an unknown
Amorato
named Jales Belliere?

Now that I knew he was the one behind the company called Stem, that question seemed to burn hotter than the others.

If I went ahead with Lavish’s plan to try and persuade Monk to hire me, and succeeded, maybe I could find the answer.

But could I do that?

Could I play the
Amorato
game after my experiences with Glorious? The experience was so fresh - a wound of sorts. Not something I ever wanted to repeat.

I’d started thinking about Glorious. I’d been harsh towards her. Unfair, maybe.

After I heard her come back from a client, I went and knocked on her door.

She’d already showered and was watching OneWorld.

‘Jales, wait until you see this,’ she said.

I waited and watched until the five-second grab replayed - a Live-to-Air murder-suicide in the ’burbs with a house cam catching the moment for DramaNet.

‘The effects are so clever. So
realistic
,’ she sighed.

As the bona fide images flashed by, my heart contracted. My hand fell away from her shoulder in disgust. She couldn’t tell the difference.

Any lingering desire for her died a final, permanent death as she greedily watched the upcoming ads.

‘I always wanted to go into acting,’ she said.

‘I think you probably did,’ I said.

I left and walked slowly back to my room.

Why was I so surprised? Glorious was just one of us, a whole generation who couldn’t tell reality from production. Didn’t need to, really.

She came after me a few minutes later. ‘Did I say something?’

I didn’t answer. A set of stiff lace underwear had appeared on my bed. We both stared at it as if it was a third person.

‘Merv.’

Merv answered straight away, as if he’d been waiting. ‘Delly said you’ve got half an hour to be ready for the call.’

Glorious made a noise and disappeared to collect her array of sprays and make-up. She returned laden with lust makings and crooned over the underwear. ‘Delly has such good taste.’

I poked the elaborate brocade and lace bodice with distaste. I hated being trussed up. Knife and pistol belts were one thing but this . . .

‘It’s all in how you take it off,’ she explained.

‘You mean striptease?’

‘We call it
unveil
. Certain repeated rhythms can enhance the release of pheromones.’

I didn’t want to shatter her illusions but I wasn’t
unveiling
for anyone. I just needed to pass myself off as enticing enough to get hired by Monk - and get the hell out of here.

Glorious wiggled her hips and started to peel off her shirt to show me.

I was fidgeting-bored before she’d finished with her buttons.

Sensing my mood, she sighed and stopped. ‘Monk will be a veteran dizzies user. His tastes will be jaded. He will have a high tolerance for most of these things. You will need to find something inside you that will work with the chemicals . . . your unique signature.’ She looked at me almost wistfully. ‘For you it’s probably violence.’

Merv cut in before I could think of a reply. ‘Glori, tell Lam to bring Jales down to the sensorium. We’re going to link sooner than we thought.’ He sounded nervous again.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

Lavish answered for him. ‘The Militia is out looking for you, Plessis. They know you’re in Viva . . .’

‘You bastard.’ I shouted. ‘We agreed—’

‘Call it a performance-enhancer. You get Monk here or I’m handing you over. I’m not having my club closed for harbouring a media-murderer,’ said Lavish.

I opened my mouth to defend myself and shut it again.

Justification was a waste of breath. Lavish Deluxe was just the same as every other player in this players’ world. Working an angle. Paddling his carcass up the river. He didn’t care who’d been murdered or who’d done it. He just wanted the win.

I started shoving myself into the brocade bondage.

‘
You
’re Parrish Plessis?’ Glorious said.

‘Yeah, well. Sorry.’ I didn’t usually apologise for being me either, but maybe I owed her that.

She grinned. ‘Don’t be. It’s kind of sexy.’

Everything was
kind of sexy
to Glorious.

She held out her hand. In it was a plastic ring.

I raised an eyebrow.

‘Take this as my apology. It’s a truth-say. Only use it when you need to find out something important from someone. Slip it into their mouth. Their saliva will do the rest. It’s my own blend.’

‘And we know what your blends are like.’

She gave a rueful grin. ‘Sometimes you need an edge.’

I slipped it on to my little finger and stared at her, feeling a kind of regret. I didn’t love Glorious and without the help of dizzies I wasn’t attracted to her, but you couldn’t go to the places we’d been together without something sticking.

‘You need anything, I can’t promise I’ll be around, but I’ll help if I can.’

Glorious blinked back tears and set about daubing me with a freshly made concoction of lust. ‘I have a client coming, so I won’t be there with you. I hope everything . . . works out.’

I didn’t know if she was sincere. How could you ever know with these people? But she’d helped me in her way.

I always kept a track of those things.

 

 

 

 

L
avish was like a canrat with skinned-paws excitement, heightened libido and paranoid nervousness all clamouring to possess him.

I stepped wide of where he stood to combat my desire to throttle him.

Slapping a filter across his nose to nullify the effects of my dizzies, he waved me into the body sensorium.

‘This model is top of the line. Profound senses reproduction. Monk will get the full benefit of your enhanced pheromones and he will trace the fluctuations in your body heat and pupil dilation. Believe in what you’re doing or he’ll know you’re a fraud.’ Lavish’s voice sounded soft through the filter.

I glanced around the room, looking for Merv.