Tortured Echoes Read online

  Victor touched the data egg in his pocket through the fabric of his pants. It was still there, helping to keep his brain from going into overdrive, Jefferson’s secrets locked inside it, along with, perhaps, the answer to who had murdered him.

  To the west, hidden by an earthen levee, a few kilometers distant and tucked amid rolling hills and forests was the Eastmore Estate where his great-granma Florence lived. He hadn’t seen her since the last family reunion a decade ago. She’d not been well enough to travel to Jefferson’s funeral and, besides, she’d long ago sworn never to set foot in SeCa. Victor knew he should visit her. The problem was he didn’t trust himself not to tell Florence how Jefferson, her son, had really died, even as the killer remained a mystery.

  The Handy 1000 chimed.

  Connection pending…

  Ozie’s face appeared on the vidscreen. “Hello, fuckface,” he said.

  Victor didn’t bother with a greeting. “What’s going on in SeCa? What did I just watch?”

  “MeshNews feed, classified for officials only. BioScan is moving Samuel Miller to New Venice in two days.”

  Victor felt suddenly out of breath and grew quiet.

  “You knew about this,” Ozie said. “Don’t let it rattle you.”

  “I just didn’t think it would happen so soon.”

  “They’re making a big deal out of it in SeCa,” Ozie said, “but as far as I can tell, there’s been nothing about it anywhere else in the American Union, including the Louisiana Territories, but that’s not surprising. You know how the Mesh works. Its info flows are more dammed up than the Oauchita watershed.” He paused a moment. “The crowd would have torn him apart if they could.”

  “I don’t want to think about it,” Victor said. “Where are you?”

  “Off grid and on the move. I haven’t been outside the van in six days.” Ozie swung the vidlens around to show off the interior of his mobile hacking station and home. Racks of blinking electronic equipment lined the walls, blankets were pushed into a pile in one corner, and Victor spotted a box that looked suspiciously like a chemical toilet.

  “Come to New Venice. You can stay with me.”

  “In a BioScan-rented suite? No thanks. There are things I have to take care of here.”

  “Where is here? Or can you not say?”

  “Somewhere in the Organized Western States. I see road ahead and road behind,” Ozie said.

  “You really can’t tell me? This is a secure feed, isn’t it?”

  “Secure is the easy part,” Ozie grumbled. “Staying untraceable is harder, but not much.”

  Victor could tell Ozie was anxious despite his boasting. It couldn’t be easy living that way. Ozie couldn’t go back to the Springboard Café. Not after the King of Las Vegas had sent his Corps mercenaries there looking for the person who’d stolen gobs of data from the Institute for Applied Biological Sciences.

  Ozie removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes with his shirt sleeve, and put them back on, blinking. “Therein lies the problem,” he said, as if responding to Victor rather than continuing whatever private conversation was running through his MRS-affected mind.

  “Problem?”

  “No hack is satisfying after you’ve moved a fleet of satellites around the world.”

  “Come to New Venice and crack the data egg. It’ll lift your spirits. That’s what it’s doing for me, right?” Victor noticed the kayak had drifted toward the muddy shore. He unhooked the paddle, dipped into the water, and pulled, swinging around so he was facing the Petit Canal.

  “That is not technically what the data egg is doing and you know it. It’s attenuating your resonant episodes like my braincap. Doesn’t do anything for depression. Wait, why is your feed all wobbly? Are you on a boat? Don’t tell me you actually have the data egg with you on a boat! What if you drop it? Victor, you need to keep it secure. I’ve told you that a thousand times.”

  Victor shrugged. “I have to keep it with me. That’s as safe as I can make it.” The data egg was in his pocket, close by and keeping his brain from running away with itself.

  “I have a better idea.” Ozie paused for dramatic effect. He loved pregnant silences. Victor rolled his eyes, making sure the Handy was close enough to convey the expression.

  “Implantation,” Ozie said, emphasizing each syllable.

  “Huh? You want me—”

  “It’s not that big. Plenty of room in your belly. Under the skin right about here.” Ozie lifted his shirt and gestured to his midsection, which had grown a little flabbier since Victor had last seen him at the Springboard Café.

  Victor jammed the paddle into the hooks. “No. I’m not doing that. End of story.”

  “Beats dropping the damn thing in the water, but whatever. So… Why hasn’t Karine or Circe looped you into the Samuel thing?”

  Karine LaTour, Victor’s boss, rarely ever told Victor anything except to get something in return. Not to mention Victor had accused her of killing his grandfather and still thought she might have done it. So they weren’t that close. And Circe, his auntie, always seemed to think she was protecting him by withholding information.

  “It’s kind of an open secret at BioScan,” he explained to Ozie. “The public isn’t supposed to know, and MeshNews hasn’t made a story of it yet. The thing is, today I saw a woman rowing down the Grand Canal with a big sign that said, ‘Murderers Go Home. No Madmen in New Venice.’”

  “So word is out.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Yeeps. Yet another reason for me to stay away. Besides, I’m chasing a hot lead on where the polonium came from.”

  Victor brought the Handy 1000 close to his face to get a better look. Ozie wore a manic smile as he fiddled with a piece of equipment in the van. “Literally chasing?” Victor asked.

  Ozie looked up, his smile gone. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve got something for you in the meantime. Terabytes of data I scraped from Karine’s traces on the Mesh. I’m sending you the access protocol now.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “No idea. Maybe a clue as to whether she killed Jefferson.”

  “No idea what’s in terabytes of data?” Victor repeated. “Ozie! How am I supposed to go through that much information on my own?”

  “Sorry, my plate is full as it is. Too bad you didn’t get what you wanted when you tied her to a chair.”

  “Tosh tied her to a chair. I stopped him and Elena from killing her.”

  “Yeah, about Tosh, I’m keeping my eyes peeled. We’re going to get that piece of Jefferson’s tongue back from him,” Ozie said.

  “Yeah, let’s do that,” Victor said meekly. He was reluctant to do anything to get on Tosh’s radar again. They’d had no contact since Victor came to New Venice, and he was fine with that. “But let’s do it in a way that doesn’t get us killed.”

  Ozie said, “What a smart idea. I’ve got to go. Talk soon.”

  Victor was about to tell him to stay safe, but Ozie had already terminated the feed. Great. Ozie had always liked alone time, said it helped him keep on the level. But this seemed different.

  They’d often joked that MRS could be like walking a tightrope in a hurricane. Now the winds seemed to be blowing hard in Ozie’s van. Victor hoped his friend’s brainhacking gear was up to the challenge.

  Victor paddled toward New Venice. Cold moisture rose from the water, making him shiver. MeshNews said the unseasonable cold spell was supposed to end soon, perhaps as early as tomorrow. As he neared the esplanade, bustling cafés, bistros, and bars came into view. The strip of buildings directly facing the southern bend of the Passage held hundreds of revelers who were drinking, dancing, and gambling.

  He waited in Little Lock, where the Petit Canal emptied into the Passage. The lock’s stone walls surrounded him, looming. It was like floating at the bottom of a stone-walled grave. Water gushed from holes in both sides; soon his kayak rose to the top, and the gates swung open. He maneuvered around a clueless tourist couple whose rowboat was going in cir
cles while they laughed and blamed each other.

  The streets along the Petit Canal rose several meters above the water in this part of town. The walls seemed to descend as he slid north, so that by the time he neared the Pond the streetscape was almost level with the water. He passed under Triton’s Deep Crossing, a three-pronged bridge with steps that looked like stone but were actually made of fungus grown over an aluminum scaffold.

  Victor reached a dock, climbed out, and dragged the kayak onto the pebbled shore, where city employees who were paid to keep things tidy could pick it up. He climbed the steps of Triton’s Deep Crossing to take in the spectacular view.

  New Venice prospered because Old Venice was now mostly underwater, save for glittering glass towers, floating walkways, and aquarium corridors that allowed submerged glimpses of the former merchant republic. Everyone said it was a shame the old city had been lost but at least the water quality had improved enough to enable submarine tourism, thanks to some cleverly engineered zooplankton.

  Tourists came to New Venice for a taste of the old life, whether it was real or not.

  When Victor reached the highest point of the bridge, with the sweeping curve of Ouachita Dam visible above the stone houses lining the Grand Canal’s north side, he checked to see that no one was looking at him. Then he took the data egg out and held it to his head. By the law of inverse squares, whatever radiation it was emitting should be much stronger and have a greater effect the closer it was to his brain. Unless it could sense its distance and vary its power level. Victor put the data egg in his pocket again. He’d repeated this same sequence of actions countless times. Data egg to head, wondering how it worked, questioning its effectiveness, then returning it to his pocket. Over and over again. Doing this had almost replaced his mantra—the wise owl listens before he asks who.

  Victor leaned over the railing, exhaled, and listened. Construction had finally ceased for the day. He heard water lapping against the canal walls, ducks quacking to each other, the drone of traffic from the highway north of town, and, oddly, voices chanting. The chanting seemed to be coming from the western edge of Pond Park. He descended to investigate.

  Assembled in the park with their backs to the pond was a group of a dozen or so people dressed in dark pants and white robes. They wore thick, gaudy, multicolored belts that might have been Caddo designs. Some normally dressed folk stood nearby and seemed to be debating whether to join the gathering. The chanting evolved into a strident call and response. Perhaps it was a political protest; Victor was too far away to make out the words.

  A bonfire with flames as tall as a man’s shoulders burned at the edge of the grass. One man poured a bucketful of water around the fire’s perimeter and returned to the pond to refill it. A woman tossed planks in. Sparks spiraled up.

  Fire glow warmed the faces of the gathered people. Every few minutes, a robed member of the crowd, and less frequently an unrobed person, would approach the fire and toss an object into the flames.

  Victor approached cautiously. When the next verse of call and response rang out, he heard the words clearly.

  “Who are we in this universe?”

  “We are unique, we are sacred, we are human.”

  “What is our role in this fallen world?”

  “We must preserve, we must protect, we must prevail.”

  “What must we do in the name of our sanctity?”

  “We must be pure, we must be human.”

  The chanting faded, and a short, plump man with gray hair fringing his bald head stepped to one side of the fire while the crowd shifted opposite him.

  The man said, “In the beginning, we lived as beasts. We picked berries and roots of the forest. We hunted boar, stag, and buffalo. And we were human. We planted fields, we raised cows and chickens, we lived and died on the land. And we were human. We created the steam engine, the coal power plant, the Mesh, and virtual entertainment. And we were human. But we have been led astray. We are injecting poisons. We are consuming degradations. We are becoming monsters. Yet we resolve together: We will remain human. Give up your poisons! Set yourself free! Human life! Human life! Human life! Human life!”

  The crowd energetically took up the chant. More people stepped forward and tossed their possessions into the flames: pill bottles, tubes of liquid, syringes, and cream containers melted in the fire. A few also flung electronic components in. Victor thought he spotted a braincap. Along the periphery of the crowd, a few onlookers accepted white robes and put them on.

  Victor maintained a distance of several meters and gripped the data egg in his pocket. He had never seen a religious ceremony in public before. Semiautonomous California was one of the most secular societies in the world, despite having been settled by Cathars. Adherents to religions worshipped in private, quietly. They rarely inflicted it on others. Even the Puros in the Republic of Texas were more focused on building a sober community than they were in proselytizing.

  The ceremony confused Victor—there didn’t seem to be a metaphysical logic to it; there was no deity invoked, no reference to established religions. There was an odd animation to their faces: tight, shiny, luminescent. Some were holding their hands close to the fire, yelping in pain, but at the same time smiling, exultant.

  A young woman in a robe saw Victor and began to approach him. She had pale skin, wide oval eyes, a full mouth, and a button nose. She held out her arms wide, palms up, and smiled at him, a broad, toothy expression that made him smile back. She had freckles, an endearing flaw.

  “Welcome,” she said. “Don’t be shy. Or be shy, that’s fine too. No matter who you are, you’re perfect already. My faith name is Wonderment. Wonda for short.”

  Victor guffawed, but then he realized his name was also a noun.

  She giggled. “You don’t know what to make of us, do you?”

  “You’re all human, I hear.”

  She giggled again. Victor loved the sound. It tasted sweet, like a drop of syrup. He wanted to sit close with her by the fire and see what would happen when the embers cooled, how they might keep each other warm.

  “And maybe you’re all suffering from buyers’ remorse?” he said.

  More people were tossing their possessions into the flames. The good feeling drained out of him. The medicines they were throwing in the fire were probably made by Eastmores. Would they prefer to live in caves and die of common and easily curable diseases? They were just like the Puros, only worse.

  She reached for his hand. He jumped back with a sudden yelp.

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  Victor said, “I don’t like being touched.”

  She frowned, concerned. “You don’t have to choose sadness.”

  Sourness like green lemons flooded his mouth. “It chose me a long time ago,” he replied.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “I get it, you know. I took Personil for years. It was like living in a plastic bag. Nothing touched me. I know what it’s like to hate a handful of pills, to really hate them.”

  “You don’t take them anymore?”

  “That’s not the point. They probably saved my life. They kept me sane, and they kept me free.”

  “And now you’re free of them too,” she said. “Shouldn’t everyone have that chance?”

  “I’m free, but I’m not easily fooled. What you’re telling people is medieval. Sorry, but it’s true. Good night, Wonda.”

  As he turned and left, he kept his gaze on the reflection of flames in the water and repeated the owl mantra a dozen times: The wise owl listens before he asks who.

  Victor took a direct route toward the center of town. His steps clanged on large steel slabs partially covering a ditch full of pipes and electrical conduits. As he walked across, the edges of his vision shimmered—synesthesia, a symptom of mirror resonance syndrome. A tingle in his groin and a weightless sensation throughout his body signaled that blankness was close.

  He had been doing better recently. A combination of fumewort and bitter
grass tinctures helped him manage most aspects of his condition. He hadn’t gone blank since he’d stood in front of the Lone Star Kennel, hovering at the edge of blankspace, seeing shapes moving across his vision and feeling that there was something inside the blankness, as if he’d glimpsed a secret world.

  Blankspace had felt oddly full.

  The vision had shaken his understanding of himself, his brain, and mirror resonance syndrome. He’d managed to retreat from the blankness, to stave off a blankout for the first time, which caused the data egg to open and divulge his granfa’s message.

  Granfa Jefferson had said the data egg held both Victor’s and Samuel’s neurograms in it, that the data egg would help both of them, and that Victor should spend time with Samuel, implying the data egg would open again when they were together.

  What could he have been thinking? Victor wondered.

  Close to the inn where he rented a small room, Victor found a quiet self-serve restaurant. From the buffet line he assembled an unremarkable plate of meat, vegetables, and starches, and found a table by himself in a corner. He tried not to think about Ozie eating, shitting, and sleeping in his van. After he ate, on his walk home, his Handy 1000 beeped. Karine’s data. He stopped for a faux-café at one of the kiosks facing the Grand Canal. It was going to be a long night.

  3

  European authorities continue to investigate whether the SatSwarm bug poses an ongoing threat. Tens of millions of Mesh users in Europe were affected by the bug last month. Officials maintain that the Mesh crashed due to a spike in demand related to the Global Games. Although Mesh coverage has been fully restored, operators may face claims from user groups whose computing time was impacted by the bug.