Part 23 (1/2)

Somebody up there loves me! The bus is at the stop. At the last moment, I rush through the doors and as they hiss shut I allow myself to look at my helpless pursuers, left behind. I give them a finger, mentally. I'm still the best in business, chums!

It is only then that I look at the people in the bus. Several pensioners, couple of kids, two women. It might even be worthwhilst attaching the swarm to one of them. And a...my knees almost let go when I spot him on the back seat: dark grey suit, hat, shades, undefined traits. And I think it's game over, but no, the bloke just sits there and stares at me. Then it dawns upon me: we're not alone, and he doesn't dare waste me in front of some fifteen people. Piko, as dumb as a d.i.c.k, must have arranged a meeting in a lonely place.

I run out of the bus at the next stop. The goon does nothing. He doesn't give chase. But as the bus leaves, I see him opening his mobile phone and pressing the keys. I turn around. n.o.body suspicious nearby, but I haven't gone far and I should move on.

Suddenly, a hollow KA-BUUM! Gla.s.ses shudder and alarms go off everywhere. I try to determine where it came from, and then I see smoke billowing into the sky and realise they blew my place up. They want to erase me thoroughly, as if I never existed.

The rest of the day is a long, cold, and exhausting chase. Whatever they were, and now I'm certain they weren't human, they were real good. I tried every trick in the book, changing buses, taking cabs, getting lost in the crowd, everything I know. But they were always one step in front of me. Every time I thought I finally got them off my d.i.c.k, one of them would tap my shoulder. One by one, they cut all my attempts to leave the town unseen, to take a fast ride to Vienna or Belgrade, where I could disappear.

I even wanted to change my phiz. In the black parlour, naturally. It would last perhaps an hour or two, and it would pull me through the dragnet. And I'd have done that, not gladly, if I haven't found that bloke waiting at the address. Grey suit, hat, shades...I just turned tail and ran.

Then it occurred to me. Maybe they had pinned a tracer on me? I didn't have the slightest idea how: I'd had no physical contact with any of them, but it wasn't impossible. And so, a visit to the cleaner's. I wasted a lot of cash just to find out that I was wrong. Even telepathy came to my mind, but then why would they use mobile phones? I knew they couldn't buzz around the town that fast, so there was only one explanation left: there was a whole s.h.i.+pload of them, and they deployed at the start to block me. That means they are very keen that Lydia's business doesn't leak and there is no possibility I can make some deal with them.

I'm completely helpless, unable to move, and I should. I'm asking for trouble now; all they have to do is comb coffeehouses in the city. The waiter brings me another cup and I don't recall ordering it. I lift my eyes and I see him well for the first time. Human face, seemingly everything in place, but to describe it....

The waiter glides on, and I know I flew right into their hands. I want to get up and run, but the legs don't work. I touch my left leg. I don't feel my hand on it. I pinch myself; I don't feel it. I'm f.u.c.ked. I know it for certain now. There is some nano s.h.i.+t in the coffee, and they've stuffed me like a goose with it since I came in here. It screwed my nerves: the connection to my legs is history, and there's no reason to believe it will stop at that.

That's why they let me go, once I gave up breaking out of town and turned back. And me, dumba.s.s, didn't find it strange how easily I got rid of them in Martic Street and again in Jurisic Street and how I slipped away in the crowd on the square. I mean, why chase a jerk who's impaling himself?

I recall a party a couple of years ago--there was a conspiracy freak there. He was more fun than most of the others, so some of us gathered and listened to him. I couldn't believe my ears.

Flying saucers and MIBs and they're everywhere and Chris Carter was their man. Seriously, they sent him to cloud the truth. Otherwise, he would have ended up under a truck before take one. But that was just for starters: masons and who wasted JFK and Marilyn and why they brought the Soviet Union down and started the war in Yugoslavia. That's when it became crazy. There was a whole treatise on trucks as a.s.sa.s.sination weapons; the guy was obsessed with trucks. And why Quebec separated from Canada and how nanotechnology became the ultimate step in a conspiracy to rule the world. Of course, it all started back in Roswell in nineteen-forty-something, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

I have nothing to complain about. I can't say that I wasn't warned.

Suddenly, I sniff a stench coming from under the table. I don't even have to touch, I did a number one in my trousers. That went, too. The system is falling apart. Soon I'll know the answer to another big question. The one about life after death.

There's only one way out, better than none. The Lazarus.

I got it two years ago in return for some five hundred terabytes of clips. I open the Apple, turn it on, unfold the headset and put it on my head. I put the glove on. My hands still serve me, but I know I don't have much time. I plug it all into a connector on my table. VROS unfolds before my eyes, and I touch the Lazarus with my finger. Black stuff, real black. I heard of it before, but it was only then that I saw it for the first time. Two years ago.

The man came to my home carrying two cases of equipment. It took him fifteen minutes just to unpack it all and unwind the cables. Then he put a helmet on my head and recorded with the Lazarus for an additional half an hour. My brain, everything in it, the complete content, memories, everything. He never explained how the stuff worked. He just told me there were a lot of big shots using it, and often, in case somebody iced them. When the session was over, he had me completely downloaded to his computer. I took a look: the machine was custom-built, nothing you would see in shop windows.

The recording was step one, followed by the compression, to reduce it into an acceptable size. Finally, it all ended on my Apple, together with the user's part of the Lazarus. Theoretically, I should have dialled the man every few months to update. In practise, the thing had remained untouched since the evening he'd first recorded me.

Now, all I have to do is raise the Lazarus, to uncompress me and return me to life, me, two years ago, in the VR, scattered across the sites, but alive. Sort of.

And whilst the Lazarus rises, I choose a site. I know a good one. I discovered it six months ago: an abandoned virtual role-playing game site in Nairobi. I cut the remains of C-level security; the last access was two years ago. G.o.d only knows how the site survived that long. Perhaps it went unnoticed when the Kampala server blew up, pulling all of East Africa with it. But the site is big enough, VRPGs need memory, and it will be enough to put me in and unpack. And the black clinics are near, Kampala, Kinshasa, Luanda. Allegedly, they can raise you out of nothing, like Adam out of clay, if only they have the DNA. Expensive, though.

The Lazarus interrupts me, giving me thumbs-up. It's connected. All I have to do is touch ”okay” and we go. But before that, I send all the programs and the DNA and all the materials from the portfolio disc, to keep them handy. And Lydia, my perfect baby, I will go nowhere without her. I place her comfortably next to me. I open a notepad and type several remarks, what happened to me and why. What is past to me is future to my doppelganger: I have to warn him. Finally, I give the Lazarus a go-ahead and it streams me to the site, me of two years ago.

It's over in a moment. TRANSMISSION SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED and the line is terminated. The Lazarus sweeps tracks, leaving me alone in the VROS. With the last touch of my finger, I activate the virus to burn everything in the Apple, whilst somewhere over there, in Kenya, I'm being reborn amidst the roar of lions.

Here, in the coffeehouse, in the murmur, the body loses the last atoms of strength. My hands drop feebly on the table. I lean back, my neck barely holding. I can't take off the headset. I remain that way, then the head drops, too.

I feel myself shutting down...eyes...as if I drain, dirty water in the gutter....

...darkness....

They say that your whole life pa.s.ses before your eyes...no time, not even for that.

Fear...somehow, I don't feel it...worse...could've been worse....

Everything around me disappears...

...just one...last....

Lydia...meet you...I'd like to meet you so much...

...perhaps one day...

Lydia....

”Into the Night”

Anil Menon.

Anil Menon grew up in Mumbai, India, and moved to the United States in the 1990s. In 2006, he was a nominee for the Carl Brandon Society's Parallax Prize. His short stories have appeared widely, and his first novel, The Beast with Nine Billion Feet (Zubaan/Penguin) has just been published.

The island of Meridian was still thirty minutes away, but Kallikulam Ramaswamy Iyer had already done enough neck stretches, shoulder shrugs, hand wiggles, and toe scrunches to limber his joints for this lifetime and the next.

He was tired. He was eighty-two years old and had relaxed his ancient Brahmin joints through many a stressful hour, but the last few days had been some of the worst: first, a thirteen-hour flight from Mumbai to Sydney with a three-day layover in Singapore, then a four-hour flight in a boomerang-shaped aeroplane from Sydney to Fiji's Nadi airport followed by a two-hour ride in a catamaran ferry to Meridian. Far away.

Ramaswamy shook his head. Why had Ganga decided to settle so far away? She'd always been peculiar, his daughter, this bright-eyed girl they had raised from a mustard seed through plaits and school bags to first-cla.s.s first and first menses, this wild daughter of theirs who squeezed their hearts so, squeezed them till he'd sworn not to love her anymore, but of course it was all talk, as the missus would verify, for wasn't he here in the belly of a fish, going to a land of cannibals for the sake of their bright-eyed girl who only thirty-seven years ago had begun a mustard seed as modest as an ant's fart.

”Think in English,” advised his wife. ”Tamil will only make it harder for you to adjust.”

Oh, listen to the Queen of England. Who was the matriculate, madam? And who was the Sixth Standard twice fail?

A wave of laughter surged through the boat. It was beginning to irritate him, these periodic laughs. What were they laughing at? And why was it funny? A pa.s.senger in the adjacent seat, a sleek cheetah of an Indian girl who'd been gesturing with her silver thimbles throughout the last half-hour, lifted her head, blinked rapidly and smiled. She looked tired too. What was she doing here, alone, so far away from home and husband?

He continued to brood. She could've stayed. There were plenty of jobs for Hindus in India. Even a job in Europe would've been acceptable. But the South Pacific! Meridian was so new it wasn't even listed in his Rand McNally 1995 World Almanac. Who could've foreseen when he left Kallikulam in 1962, barely nineteen years old and with ninety rupees in his pocket, when he'd left his parents, dressed in their starched best, left them behind and forever at the Thrichedur railway station, who could've foreseen this final migration, three score and three years later, to a land without elephants, to a land without ancestors; who could have foreseen?

”Stop beating that drum, sir,” said Paru. ”Fall on your knees and thank your Krishna-bhagavan that you have such a sterling daughter. You're in her care now. So chin up and get ready for the next innings.”

You? What had happened to the we? His wife, Paru, had been younger by ten years. By all logic she should have been on this boat, not him. But of course, the ”we” of sixty years plus had ended at the Sion Electric Crematorium in Mumbai.

He flexed his neck. No. That had just been the disposal of the end. The end had come with a shopping list. Paru had sent him to buy groceries and when he had returned, it was to a world without-- No, it was no use dwelling on that day. Today was the first day of the rest of his life.

He sat, resigned, as another rash of laughter broke out. The girl was also laughing. She must've sensed his inspection, because she turned her head in his direction. Her eyes were milked over, like the white, dead corals he'd seen near Fiji. Pity struggled with revulsion in his mind. Oh G.o.d, what was the matter with the girl's eyelids? Why was she rolling them up? Almost like a lizard. Poor girl. Ramaswamy quickly turned his head. So there were handicapped people in the West as well. But then, Earth itself was handicapped now, broke and broken.

People may say what they want, thought Ramaswamy, but fate was blind. Why else would this beautiful girl be blind, why else would he have had to leave India, and why else would the last conversation with his wife have been about potatoes, brinjals, and coconuts, and would he, for G.o.d's sake, please, please check the tomatoes before buying them, because the last batch had been overripe and practically rotten. It could've been about anything, and it had been.