Chapter 5: Freerolled
Second mark drones rule the understreet. These aren’t service robots but civil bots and police apparats and private security and who knows what else. There are no pleasure plumes here, no civic drugs. Instead, only lone user chill clouds appear, their tell-tale silver blooming and vanishing. The sun is scant, diffused in shafts of cold low glow. Almost all light, really, is soaked up and resisted by floating causeways, casino towers and square concrete foundations which pull like fat children on the great electron cords which ground the adverts and floaters. The air is still and dry as a cough.
All I have to do is make it to the old Wynn compound, now a sky-scraping supercasino known affectionately as the Big Player, but one mile down here seems like ten. Still, it is safer than on the floater trains or even just being on the tourist level if you want to remain unviewed. Most people down here are hooded and cloaked, so I can be as private and discrete as they are without anyone caring. My Lavendar’s uniform of mummy-like rags doesn’t even create any interest, for everyone is dressed differently and even strangely. There are men in long cloaks with long arms that drag across the concrete and steel, like ancient doctors. There are naked women in electron bubbles, advertising their wares and who may not even be human. There are even other things, such as the large numbers of Fun Rats, those dog hybrids the Chinese brought over to help with the garbage and insect problem.
It can feel warm down here in the desert winter, because clouds of real steam and gusts of fan exhaust billow through and over the sparse walkers and move the dead air. There are a few brave or desperate vendors set up in stalls or on improvised tables, selling mock fruits and other 街头小吃, many of which have been popular with citizens ever since the Great Deal and the purchase of the city.
Still, I am uneasy. I keep to the shadows and shapes of the buildings. The streets are not packed, not at all, which is both a relief and disturbing. You can’t see identities, only the shapes and movements lumber in and out of shadows. I’m used to surviving, to recognize the maroon 城市守卫 from a distance, from their arrogant walk to the way they often don’t care about looking around – are even citizens so bold? So I creep along.
Near the old highway for the wheeled machines, I notice that a beam of light is tracking a small pack of people. They are short, maybe children. However, they break and scatter the moment they reach the angled concrete of the highway base. Perhaps I am wrong and they are animas or hybrids or something else. I don’t pause to think about it. The high beam flashing back and forth suggests that the drone is comically flummoxed, but it then then shoots off at frightening speed to the north. I can’t see it but there is lightning and a cry. The few people walking don’t move or react. Everyone knows how to behave around police floats.
When I pass the foundation to go under the old highway, the sounds of squabbles disappear. With few exhaust or sewer vents here, it is colder. I whisper to my goggles to turn on their own beam. The street is full of debris and even cinderblocks pulled or cut out of the city. A barrage or siege or something happened here. Looking on the foundation block, I see the painted words of this or that, mostly long-forgotten tags and words of failed defiance. Or maybe just homeless rantings; is there really a difference? However, there is a pale outline of an arrow that I’ve seen before used outside the wall.
I approach the foundation and examine the arrows. Citizens may not know this, but the arrows usually have codes that can be read with high spectrum light. I change to infrared but see nothing. However, the field is not black and something is moving to my left. It can only be under the foundation. There are people there, somehow, secretly perhaps, or maybe they are just undiscovered homeless that have not been put outside the fortress. Or just rats. Either way, I can’t get caught up with them. I must find my love.
I look up and there are the Maroons, right in my face. This close, I can see one is human and the other a drone. I shove the drone into the highway base, hoping the human is slower, then sprint south toward the bridge and the old strip. I feel an intense pain in my shoulder and see the concrete rise to my face. There is a manhole with some naive language cast into the metal, and then nothing.
When I open my eyes my head and back ache and my hands sting. I feel a drone buzzing beside me. One of his probes is pulling a needle out of my arm. I try to wave it away but realize why my hands sting: they are electron-bound to the table. I’m in a police station, perhaps. The room is small and grey and white. I smell mold and faintest bleach. I look around as my eyes adjust. There is no one else here, but there is a data lens on the wall that anyone or any machine can see me with. I run my tongue along my teeth instinctively, somehow knowing I have broken a tooth.
I don’t panic. That’s not who I am. However, when it dawns on me that I am seeing the room without a filter, that my goggles are gone, something like depression sweeps through me. They have even taken off the long scarf I wrap around my face. They have me, they have my information, who I am.
There is one door, and it opens. A different Maroon, but he doesn’t go in. Instead, a familiar face. The Uniparty officer who gave me the task, and my work pass reward. Mortimer. He’s not police, and now I’m not sure where I am.
Mortimer sits. He is a man of medium build, with soft shoulders and a big head crowned with a greasy plant of curly, thinning hair. His eyes are grey and large and humorous. He has no facial hair. Really, he has not changed much other than a second chin rising up like a honey bun out of his neck. He is calculating and slow in mind and shows it in every movement. He sits down at the table I am glued to.
“How is work going?” Mortimer asks me. “There is no life without work, after all.”
I don’t answer. Mortimer puts his hands together evenly. He’s wearing an old-fashioned suit, the kind with the pin stripes and wool and buttons. You sometimes see them on the elder bodies brought to the BLM, but not new like this one.
“It’s curious that you made your way into the fortress just as we were about to take you in. Why are you running, you can’t possibly think to avoid us?”
He chuckles slowly, the laughter spaced out, like he wants me to fully believe how mirthful he is.
“I’m looking for someone, it’s none of your business. It’s nothing to do with-”
“Now that is funny,” he interrupts as if I had said nothing. “Lavendars aren’t known for their sense of humor. It’s all the shoveling and blood and bones and death. I’d imagine. I don’t know, you are the expert.”
I’m not going to respond to this. I didn’t make a joke and I don’t understand what he wants. I did the job for him, kept quiet, got my work pass and now he is mocking me.
“Why am I here?” I ask.
Mortimer blinks and he makes his big, wide smile, the kind of smile he made when I first met him in that old green Army tent.
“You know you are a loose end and why. You’ve had a good… run, but now we’re worried you will use your information for unproductive purposes.”
“I’ve been dead quiet,” I protest. “This isn’t necessary.”
I see my love on the train, I see her in my mind. This is a waste of time, this is a nightmare.
“Well, you see,” Mortimer leans forward and his voice falls to a whisper. “We’re starting journalism again. It’s delicate. Many people and counterparties involved, et cetera, et cetera, and so on. We live in interesting times, alas. It’s a bit of a burden for everyone.”
Now he has my attention. He’s not suggesting a new job. There is a throbbing in my forehead.
Mortimer waits for me to respond. He clasps his hands together slowly, but this time a finger taps a ring. Might be hormones or chill stuff.
“It’s nicotine,” he says, reading my mind. “I like the old pleasures.”
Mortimer pauses. I’m wrong, he has aged, it’s just all hidden. His skin is thin and bloodless. His hair is dyed.
Then he begins again. “I want to give you a choice. There is work in the colonies. It’s a life.”
He turns his head the other way, coaxing me into something with his motions, as if i were an animal.
“Or, you can go in a container back to the BLM. You know, not as a worker.”
It’s an ultimatum. Get out or die. But I helped them get rid of Adelson. He owes me. This conversation is not over.
“I will go to the BLM, if it comes to that,” I start off, “but I have a different idea. Let me play poker in the tournaments first.”
“The colonies are the chance I give you. Sorry. 加州 is not so bad, even if it belongs to us now.”
I’m not interested in California. I know what happens there. My love must have experienced hell.
“Fuck the colonies!” I shout at him, surprising myself. “They are all mining and drilling and factory work. The ocean is dead, the coast is ashes. I want to stay here.”
“For what? One more pleasure tour? You want to go to the Torch of Vegas and see the sky again? There are new girls in the brothel bubbles, is that what it is? This Lavendar has quite the worldly appetite! Is it a medical condition, perhaps we can help…”
I ignore his jibes. “No, listen to me. I want to play at the Wynn. Poker. You see what I am saying?”
Mortimer looks perplexed, and then his features harden. He measures out his response, not even bothering to correct my anachronistic name for the Capitol Casino. “You think you can win and escape. But we will code you for disposal if you lose, just like all the elderly.”
That word. I bristle at what he might say or be saying. “I know,” is all I say, hiding my fear, hopefully.
Mortimer touches his ring again and breathes in. His head twist upward: he’s listening to me now, good. His mouth and cheeks wrinkle and twist, then he says, “We could just dispose of you now… hmm… but you’re right, we have some respect for you. Do you know why?”
I need to answer him, because I need to avoid the underlying question – why does Mortimer have to do anything at all for me? I could be in a disposal vat in fifteen minutes. The Maroons are deadly, and drones all incapacitate.
“Because it’s fair,” I answer him. “After I helped with Adelson.”
“True, that would be considered fair in the old world. And the Uniparty is fair, but death is fair, too! You’re little more than a hired goon. So that’s not it. We don’t owe you anything. That’s a wrong path, friend. So why do you think I am going to help you?”
I wait for it. Mortimer’s grey eyes dance. He wants to talk.
“It’s because you’ve been an amazingly good worker! You dispose of bodies like no one else! Such ability is admirable.”
Anger rises in me. Is this some sort of insult? Mortimer’s eyes smile and he sniffs. He is looking right through me.
“Then I will go back to work and bury the dead if I am the best at it!”
“That would be interesting, my friend! See, you can still surprise me! And I might trust you to do that! Yet, alas, the party cannot. No, I have my orders. That’s why we must send you to the colonies or to the vats. We don’t need you dead. You’re already dead, we just need you away and quiet.”
“So I am dead even if I am useful in my job, is that it?” I am spitting and feel my face, exposed for the first time in years, turning red.”
“Our party, you mean.” He watches me but continues. ” We all belong to the party and we serve all of us. But yes, I will admit you are interesting. Most Lavendars quit or go insane. Yet you haven’t even asked for a change in positions, which is astounding! You’ve helped bury tens of thousands. Frankly, many of us are a little in awe of you. Not me so much. I know why you are there, why you work so hard. The real reason.”
I think he is trying to mock me. I need my goggle. I am exposed. I must think only of my love, not the bent and angled bodies. “I don’t have a full work pass, I do what I am allowed. Don’t make a big deal of my work.”
“Foolish. Anyone who does so well for the Fortress of Vegas can have a new job. I wish you had come to me before. Your life could have been better. Now…” Mortimer raises his eyebrows and smiles.
“I’m not going to the colonies.”
Mortimer’s smile leaves him. He nods at the lens and my wrists are unbound. “No, you’re not, are you. Which means…”
Mortimer leans all the way back and clasps he hands. “…that we’re going to let you go.”
What?
“Look. Lens, mirror,” he commands.
I follow his gaze to the lens, which is already turning silver and bright and angling itself to us.
“See, my friend? You are old. So old! You will be dead soon anyway. And playing in the poker tournaments, my my. You’ll never survive, and the system will just throw you out naturally. Players your age have to win to stay around. Wouldn’t you rather live, with a new job and new prolongations?”
He’s said it openly. I can’t look at myself, I don’t want to see it. That face is not me. It is not mine.
“Now, this girl, you have formed a foolish attachment for, this immigrant from the California penal works – let me see. Lens, show us Madelene. Ah.”
I sat transfixed as the mirror vanished and a video replay of the girl from the train came to the lens.
“What is she, twenty-five? And you are, what, ninety? Am I being generous? How many prolongations have you had?”
I might answer, if I knew.
“You are as fit for her as a fish is, or some other species is,” Mortimer adds. His voice is no longer sweet or agreeable. Mortimer is shaming me, trying to kill my spirit. “You like your job because your face his hidden. You are hidden. You’re no prodigy. I know you.”
I watch as the red-haired girl disappeared and the lens returns, neutral and clear and illuminated.
“So go on, go chase her.” Mortimer’s grey eyes are laughing again, shining like an oasis beyond the fortress wall. “You are fully passed to the poker tournament. Your entry is paid for. It’s on the house, so to speak! Don’t go anywhere else except the BLM, I suppose. We’re done. You’re done. Any debt we owe you is discharged in exhange for this game you want to splash in.”
But my hands had been freed. Am I done? I reach up toward Mortimer, unsure I if I want to tear out his laughing eyes, plug his evil mouth, or choke his fleshy neck. It does not matter, for though his eyes widen in fear, the electron whip slams my wrists back down on the table. I yelp and my rage turns to agony.
“Run well,” Mortimer snorts, only slightly shaken. He rises up while straightening his suit and reaching for a pocket inside it. He places my goggle on the table but leaves a finger upon it. “You’ll find your entry where it should be. Goodbye, Jason.”
I don’t see Mortimer leaving as I double over in pain, my wrists broken. A drone floats into the room, prodding me and buzzing like a fly. I can’t wave it away.
