The Artificial Mirage (13 page)

“Where am I?” Charlie said.

The woman brought a finger to her lips and smiled before ducking down to the cabin below the deck. Though her hair was matted and her swimsuit torn, she possessed a grace that transcended her circumstances. The entire concept of wealth and poverty seemed irrelevant in her presence.

“You speak English?” an old man sitting by the fire said as he turned and glowered through long locks of frazzled white hair that seemed to have been formed and dyed by the sea itself.

“Yes, I do. Where is this place?” Charlie was still dazed by the woman’s presence. He approached the fire and sat down next to the man and looked in his eyes. The man had streaks of wrinkles that extended from his forehead down his cheeks. The others were boys no older than fifteen.

“Ocean. Ship sank.”

“What about the other people?”

“Don’t know. Maybe dead. Where you from?”

“New York.”

“Aah. Big Apple. Not many apple here.”

“You’re fishing here?”

“Yes. We fish. We are one with the fish.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes. Here, have some fish.” The man reached in a bag and pulled out a handful of tiny dried fish.

“Thanks.” Charlie cupped his hands and brought the dried fish to his mouth. Coming out of stasis, he was famished. The fish tasted like pure salt.

“Sardine. You like?”

Charlie nodded.

“Here,” the man said as he passed him a plastic bottle of water with a faded label.

“Thanks. Do your friends speak English?” He felt helpless without an AR translation app.

“No.”

“Hi,” Charlie said to them.

“They don’t speak English,” the man said, somewhat angrily.

“So how did my ship sink?”

“Pirates.”

“Where are they?”

“Gone. No cargo on your ship. Only people.”

“Why did you save me?”

“You don’t want to live?”

“Hi,” the woman said as she emerged from the cabin below and sat down next to Charlie.

“Hi,” Charlie said.

“You are guest. Where you go?”

“Bahrain. Where are you going?”

“Here. With fish. With sea.”

“That’s not bad.”

“Is good.”

“How far are we from land?”

“Thailand.” The man pointed into the distance with his right hand.

“Thailand,” Charlie repeated under his breath. He had no concept of how much time had passed or any details of anything that had happened on the voyage, other than what the man had just told him.

“Come. You wet,” the woman said as she stood up and pulled him to his feet. She guided him down the steps into the cabin below. She drew a curtain and handed him an old nanofiber chamois cloth. She opened an old black trunk and rummaged through pieces of cloth and clothing. After a few minutes, she held up a ragged scuba suit that had been torn off at the waist.

“Shark attack?” Charlie said.

She gave him a confused look.

“Never mind. Thanks.”

When he was dry and had changed into the scuba outfit, she scurried behind the curtain and grabbed his wet clothes. She giggled mischievously as she raced up the stairs with them. He walked up the stairs and saw her waiting for him as she held his clothes over the side. He took a step forward, and she threw them overboard. Everyone started laughing except Charlie.

“Come, sit down, bro,” the old man said to Charlie.

Charlie sat down and looked at him blankly. The fire was nearly out.

“We sleep now,” the man said as he and the boys stood up together.

“Not me,” Charlie said. “I’ve been sleeping too long.”

“No sleep?” the woman said with an expression of exaggerated disappointment.

“No sleep,” Charlie said.

The boys shuffled to the other side of the boat, but the man remained seated. Slowly, the woman descended the stairs while peering over the deck and staring at Charlie. Charlie looked away.

Looking out at the first glimmers of the sun on the horizon, he allowed his mind to rest in the idea of having a family with the woman. He would impregnate her in the ocean when no one was around, and her body would writhe in the pain and pleasure of his larger size as she delighted in thoughts of the power his larger body would assert toward anyone they would encounter. He imagined having children, a young boy and a young girl who learned to be “one with the fish” away from the absurd transactions of Chi and the complexities of AR. Away from Lauren. Away from Saigon and New York. But he couldn’t. It was just a dream. He stopped himself and tried to calculate how many minutes he had considered giving up on finding Lauren. Without AR, he didn’t even know what day it was. He listened to the lapping of the waves for what seemed like ten hours but could have been less. His eyes had nearly closed when the sun rose beyond a glimmer on the
horizon and began to illuminate the world. He could see that there were at least ten other sailboats in the vicinity. He looked to his right at what seemed to be a sliver of brown and green in the distance and remembered that he wasn’t wearing his AR glasses. There really seemed to be land there.

He felt the woman’s hand on his shoulder. His body felt cramped as he turned around and saw her standing naked just two feet in front of him. Her body seemed to glow from something within her, and she emanated a placid contentment that alone seemed capable of satiating all of his needs. She brushed his face with the back of her hand and pointed into the distance. He looked at her finger and then at the bay that was now visible where before there had been only an indentation on a brown sliver. He looked back at her, and her eyes seemed to tear. He knew that if he hesitated any longer, he would never leave. He sprung up and felt his body uncramp and then the shock of the cold water all around him.

He swam until he reached the beach. He stopped at the edge of the surf where his feet could touch the ground. American voices were shouting back and forth. The woman was nowhere in sight. His chest was heaving as he caught his breath and looked out at a group of Thai men and women in sarongs and bathing suits laughing and joking as they made their way back onto their small sailboats. The solar liner was partially submerged beyond them. He crawled to the water’s edge. Some men in brown uniforms held him steady before letting him collapse on the beach. He turned to the right just as a man about ten years older than him in an immaculate white US Navy uniform sat down beside him in the water as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“Who were those guys?” Charlie said between gasps for air.

“Sea gypsies.”

“What?”

“They can do things in the water that can’t be explained. They can hold their breath for I don’t know how many minutes. They can dive depths that most people can’t. It was pure luck that one of them was there when you went down.”

“Where are they from?”

“Here. Thailand. You’re on Phuket. But they don’t speak Thai. Their language is different. We’re working on a real-time translation app. But for now we just smile and play along when we encounter them.”

“So why did they sink my ship?”

“They didn’t.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. What’s your name?”

“Tommy Nguyen.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yup.”

The man looked at him as if waiting for him to say something. His face went blank as he went into AR. “Yup. You’re on the manifest.”

“Yup.”

“Consider yourself lucky, Tommy.”

“I do.”

“You know…we’re just renting time here.”

“Are we?”

“You just got a new lease.”

“On what?”

“Well, whatever you believe about the soul or an afterlife…We’re on this planet for a limited time.”

“Everything’s limited—yeah. I used to think that way…It’s a waste of time.”

“You’re alive. And why do you suppose that is? These gypsies just happened to be swimming around when you went under. And one of them just happened to save you and no one else in your compartment. But you can’t question it…If you start questioning it, you’re gonna drive yourself crazy. Just trust it.”

“Yeah. If you can’t trust a sea gypsy, who can you trust?”

“You don’t look like a Vietnamese laborer. What are you doing going to work on a fish farm?”

“I have my reasons.”

“I guess. You just don’t seem like the farming type.”

“What type is that?”

“They’ll be checking your ID before you board. Have a safe trip. You can wash up and change clothes on that vessel right there.” He pointed to a gray naval ship nearly as big as the solar liner.

“I appreciate it.”

Looking at the sailors, he became aware of how his body had atrophied. He felt the symbolic magnitude of how he’d fallen. As they walked along the shoreline over a sandy embankment, there was a row of about twenty black plastic body bags with bodies partially inserted.

“Who are these guys?”

“Your shipmates. The ones in your compartment.”

“Oh.”

“The ship submerged as part of its anti-piracy programming because it detected small vessels. Your compartment didn’t seal. There was a malfunction.”

“It’s my lucky day.”

“Somebody wants you alive.”

“Who?”

The man grimaced for a few seconds and heaved his large frame up off the beach. “Enjoy your time in Phuket. The ship should be ready at dawn. Don’t worry about safety—we police ourselves.”

Charlie stood up and looked at the beached ship. Some welders were working on the jammed door. His clothes were wet, but he didn’t feel like dealing with the hordes of sailors inside. He could see them bringing up two more bodies in sealed black plastic bags. Efficient. Clean. Accountable. Once across the gangplank, he was directed to the smallest shower room he’d ever seen and given a pair of black pants and a black T-shirt. They ignored him, and he was grateful for that.

He left the US Navy boat and walked on the sandy beach beneath the swaying pine trees. The windy air was clean and clear like a forest oxygen treatment in Saigon. He made his way to the long row of restaurants and bars that lined the street across from the beach. The sidewalk was packed with ambling tourists. He overheard some US Navy guys talking about an oil leak on their ship that they had fixed. For the first time, he wished his own life was so simple and so predetermined. He felt he finally understood the price of taking risks and leading a life that was not predetermined. Nothing was guaranteed.

His dollars and dinars were still soaked. A woman at a street booth behind armored glass dismissed the dinars with an irritable wave of her hand and only grudgingly accepted a few of the lower-denomination dollars with an emphatic wince.

He walked slowly along the broken sidewalk with occasional gaps that went straight down to canals gurgling sewer water. The sound of the surf
across the street was consumed by the whirring of scooters and the music and laughter of the bars and restaurants. A row of Thai women were dancing on a bar counter, keeping in step to the pulsing music. Though he had been awake for hours, he still retained the grogginess of having been asleep for a long time. His AR glasses were with his checked bag still sealed in the solar liner, and he realized he was alone. Many of the bars and restaurants didn’t even have signs. He stopped into one that did, the Yorkshire Pub. Its wood paneling and plush lounge chairs seemed inviting, and the atmosphere was decidedly quieter and devoid of music and dancers. Some older white men sat at the bar while the lounge chairs were nearly all taken by Thai teens gesticulating in occluded VR. He asked the waitress for a menu, but she just looked at him confusedly.

“Looking for a menu?” said one of the older men at the bar with an accent somewhere between British and German.

“Eh, yeah. I don’t have AR.”

“A man after my own heart. I just might have a fossilized one in the back.”

“What’s your special?”

“Bangers and mash. Synthetic pork, of course.”

“Why?”

“The other side of the island went to the Muslims after the secession, and they do their best to make things difficult for the rest of us.”

“I’ll take it.”

“And to drink?”

“Local beer.”

“Good choice. The brewery is just down the road, but don’t tell anyone. Our imported stuff is twice what you’d pay in Bangkok.”

“Sounds like a good deal.”

“You can use the Light DJ at your table. Otherwise, enjoy the quiet.”

“Thanks.” He sat back in the reclining chair, and a cylinder of light shone down on him carrying the sound waves of the welcome menu. He spun the 3-D dial projected on the small table beside him and selected the “ethereal mix” just as a waitress brought his beer and set it down beside it. The music was familiar. He had heard it in the background of a restaurant in Saigon. It was strange not having her around. AR Lauren had only a basic idea of Lauren’s preferences in music, and he would have had to update her memories of specific
songs and the places she had heard them. But the real Lauren was on the other side of his next long empty dream on the solar liner. He had been in stasis for at least a few weeks, and he still couldn’t remember a single dream. The beer rushed straight to his brain, and he stopped caring about dreams.

When he got back to the solar liner, the dock was lit up with floodlights as bright as daylight. He approached the gangplank, which was guarded by two Thai policemen. They were doing retinal scans with handheld scanners. He hoped they were inefficient enough not to be connected to Interpol. He got in line and tried to blend in as best he could.

“You don’t look Vietnamese,” an American sailor standing on the dock said to him.

“My father was American.”

“Oh yeah? Bon voyage, buddy.”

The Thai policeman on his right scanned him indifferently, and he walked onto the boat. It was done. He was clear. Just like that. He made his way to his compartment. He wanted to be sedated as quickly as possible. Since he was the only one left alive, he had the place to himself. The nurse came in wearing a white lab coat and smelling of jasmine. Mechanically, she gave him a soothing pat on the head before inserting the needle into his arm. Her face blurred as the sedative took effect.