Chapter Twelve
The buzzing in his head was nearly drowned out by the throbbing. The room was hardly lit at all — the windows had automatically become translucent according to Dex’s daily program for the apartment, but the surrounding buildings and cloud cover kept the sunlight a dull dishwater streak. Even so, Dex thought his eyes were going to pop out of his head when he looked toward the weak light. He turned off his system’s alarm and at least the buzzing stopped. He felt his gorge rise as soon as he sat up and he grabbed the bottle of Flying Fish on the way to the lav.
After a few minutes on his knees, Dex thought he might be able to keep the tonic down and sipped carefully from the bottle as he turned the shower on quickly to hose down his body and the room. He stayed on the floor as the water turned to warm air and he dried off. He waited a few moments for the electrolytes and other chemicals in the tonic to calm his stomach and sooth the throbbing in his head. He’d get to B&B a few minutes later than usual, but he was already in line for a reprimand for the cancelled account — he figured that another minor infraction didn’t really matter much.
Dex yanked his spare uniform out of the autoclave, dressed and grabbed a nutrient brick, which he stuffed in his pocket. He took another swig of Flying Fish before he left the apartment and rested his head on the pole of the lift as it spiraled him down to street level. He nibbled gingerly at the food brick as he rode the train to B&B and ended up arriving only a few minutes later than he usually did.
Thankfully, he was on text duty, so he didn’t have to actually speak to anyone. He spent the next three hours answering questions ranging from the moronic to the incomprehensible. Aside from the occasional attack of vertigo, it was really the perfect mindset for the job. At break time, Dex grabbed a coffee, then hightailed it back to his work station and called up the contact details for Uri Farone.
Interested customers could get a quote for the “software memory upgrade” of their choice in a variety of ways — there was a text form, a voice messaging line and Farone provided a link to a small kiosk in Marionette City where he or a bot was available 24/7 to help potential clients realize their dreams. The CSR in Dex was impressed with the customer service commitment. He went back to answering client queries, still thinking about Farone’s offer.
Dex was self aware enough to know that he had a problem. The disaster of his date with Annabelle only reminded him a truth he had known for a long time. Maybe he wasn’t cut out for the modern world, but he was pretty sure there were other people like him, only they didn’t spend every spare moment curled up in a bottle watching the same videos of their past on eternal repeat.
Just after he’d first joined up with the Cubicle Men, Dex had actually made an effort to at least pretend to be normal. He’d searched out boards for people who record their lives, ostensibly to hone the technical aspects of the operation, but secretly Dex hoped he might meet someone he could actually talk to. There were plenty of people on the boards that probably would have done, but it never worked out. Dex kept looking for the ease that comes with physical, real world companionship, that connection with another person that he just never felt online. Eventually, he gave up on the boards and just focussed on the work. He told himself there was more than enough stimulation on the job.
And that might even have been true, once. Dex was rarely bored; the work he did as one of the Cubicle Men was fascinating to him and he liked to think he was good at it. He’d certainly been given enough encouragement by his squad leaders. Two full time jobs managed to fill the days and Dex usually didn’t feel like he was missing out on anything. But today, this morning, in his stimulant-weakened state, he let himself want things to be different. Maybe Uri Farone’s ad text was right — maybe Dex could change the past in order to change the future.
• • •
Dex spent the rest of the day focussed on B&B work; it hurt his head too much to manage two viewers at once. He did send Ivy a message in the afternoon, asking for another meeting. It was time to check in, to find out if she had any other information and see how she reacted to the news that while he hadn’t found the killer, he had found the murder weapon. They set an appointment for that evening at Monte’s and Dex figured he’d have at least thirty minutes at his apartment before he’d have to link over. On his way back to the apartment, he found himself surprisingly looking forward to the taste of real alcohol. He wondered how he could be in such pain in the morning, but by the time the workday ended, be ready for another drink.
It was raining again, the drops big and cold, making the street slick and drawing up the smell of something long dead from the pavement. The city seemed darker, more ominous to Dex when it rained. It could be just the lack of the weak and ineffective sunlight they usually got, making the world a grimmer place than usual, or maybe it was the shine that made the concrete and metal gleam like a knife in the LED streetlights. Whatever it was, it made Dex’s mood even more foul and as he trudged from the train stop to his building, he wished he could skip meeting with Ivy and go straight to bed. Twelve hours of oblivion seemed about right just then. Even so, he stopped in at the store and picked up another bottle of Jamaica’s Best to replace the previous day’s dead soldier.
Dex spiraled up the lift to his floor, dripping water all the way down the shaft. He stepped off into the dank hallway and walked down the hall and into his apartment. He had his system turn the heat up a couple of degrees as he undressed. He stuffed his wet things along with the previous day’s clothes into the autoclave and stepped into the lav. Ten seconds of water, followed by the blower and Dex was almost warm again. He found a light fleece blanket and without bothering with clothes, wrapped himself up. The joys of living alone.
He opened the new bottle of rum and poured a small amount into a mug, then topped it up with ginger ale. He put the mug in the zapper for a half minute, then took his makeshift hot toddy to the chair. He settled in and linked over to Monte’s.
He headed for the usual table and ordered a coffee. He was still chilled from the walk and the image of a warm drink fitted his mood better than his usual cocktail. His avatar sipped the coffee while Dex sipped his hot toddy, waiting for Ivy. Dex waited about ten minutes, spending the time catching up on news from around the boards and the Cubicle Men’s own feed. He was getting near the end of his coffee when Ivy linked in, looking somewhat frantic.
“What’s wrong?” Dex messaged over to her, as she looked for him in the darkened room.
“I’m supposed to be with Renna and the others and I just had a bit of trouble getting away,” she said as she walked over to the table. “I don’t have very long.”
“No problem,” Dex said as Ivy sat across from him. “I’ll just give you the executive summary. Whoever killed Reuben tried to hit me with the same code.”
“Oh my god,” Ivy said, her avatar’s face registering shock. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Dex said. “I linked out before it got me and anyway all it would have done is kept me out of Marionette City for a few days. Everlock would have eaten it.”
Ivy nodded gravely and said, “I was always worried about that.” Dex looked puzzled and she continued. “The multi avatars. I knew Everlock didn’t really do anything for them; I knew they were vulnerable. Oh, Mr. Dexter,” Ivy looked panicked. “Is going around? Has it replicated?”
He shook his head. “Don’t worry,” he said. “That’s the other thing. The code was specifically non-replicating. The good news is that means everyone else is okay, or at least they’re safe from this. The bad news,” he looked in her eyes, “is that someone really specifically didn’t like Reuben and I’m no closer to knowing who.”
Ivy’s avatar’s face went slack and she was quiet for a while. “No, that’s good news,” she said, finally. “I don’t know what I did to deserve this, but at least it was only for me. And now that it happened, I can maybe find a way to protect the others from this kind of attack.”
Dex was surpr
ised at her reaction, but in all his dealings with the multi community it had been clear that they tended to look out for one another. But there had to be a leak, a crack, a chink in the armour somehow. “Ivy, I need you to tell me something,” he said. “The work you do for people in the community, the work Reuben did for Stella Bish, what was all that? Why is it so secret?”
She looked at Dex like an adult looks at a retarded child. “Do you tell everyone you know about this?” she asked, gesturing at the two of them. “Your landlord, your lovers, your regular job, if you have one? Do they all know you live off grid?”
Dex was silent a moment. She had a valid point. “Fair enough,” he said, “but what were you doing? Alvaro Zuccarelli told me you started with his building and I know you do avatars for multis, but by the look of Reuben’s bank statements, there’s a lot more to it than that. What did Reuben do, Ivy?”
“Do you have a regular day job?” she asked. Dex nodded, hoping she’d cut to chase sooner rather than later. “So you’re on the two full time job schedule?”
“Sure,” he said. “A lot of it is concurrent, if you know what I mean.”
“Of course,” Ivy said, smiling without warmth. “I’ve been doing it a while now, myself. I do UI for a big firm for big, normal projects and Reuben does... did UI for Stella Bish, for small, underground projects. I don’t know how you do it, but it’s been fucking hell for two years. Hardly any time to myself, trying to juggle all the projects, keeping all the secrets... but it all seemed worth it. I was getting somewhere, you know,” she said, looking at Dex with sadness in her face. “I thought I was finally getting somewhere.”
“I’m not sure I follow you,” Dex said, softly.
“I think I just about had it all worked out,” she said, talking as much to herself as to Dex. “I think I could have done it.”
“Done what?”
“Disappeared,” she said, looking up at Dex. “Left Ivy behind once and for all. Become Reuben. Full time, all the time, just Reuben. Who I’ve always really been all along.” Dex was silent, waiting for her to finish. “As soon as I created him, it just felt so much more right. His personality, his body, everything about him... was me. I just never knew it before. I thought...” she paused, as if trying to catch her breath. “I thought I might actually get to be happy.”
Dex had nothing to say to that and once he didn’t answer her, Ivy looked embarrassed and begged off to go back to her friends. “They’ll come looking for me if I’m away much longer,” she said and Dex told her they were done. Ivy linked out of the bar and with no other reason to stay, Dex linked out of Marionette City and went offline. He thought about what she had said and saw the sadness in her face as she remembered how close to happiness she might have been. It was a familiar sight. What remained of his hot toddy had grown cold and Dex threw it down the drain in the middle of the floor in the lav. He drank a glass of water, took a draught of SleepingJuice and slipped into the dark well of sleep.