Chapter Nineteen
Dex hadn’t heard from Annabelle and he was willing to believe that if she found something she’d let him know, so he just paged away from his messages. He refocussed on his physical surroundings and discovered that he was alone in the lobby. He checked the time and was relatively unsurprised to discover that a couple of hours had gone by. The Cleanse propaganda certainly had a point — you could easily waste a lot of time on the ’nets.
He took a drink from the half full water bottle and stuck it, along with his second, uneaten food brick, into his bag. He pushed open the front door and was assaulted by a heat and humidity he’d never encountered outside of a lav. It wasn’t actively raining, but Dex could feel drops of water condensing on his skin and he wished he was wearing some lighter, more breathable clothes. He walked up the street looking for Free Robots. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, but he hoped for a sign or something obvious. He walked up three blocks, getting hotter and wetter with every step and didn’t see anything that looked like a café of any kind.
Dex crossed the street and headed back toward El Presidente, still looking for the café. As he was almost directly across the street from his hotel, he realized that while he might be looking for a Cleanser hangout, that didn’t mean that he had to take a technological vacation. He paged over to his search program and ran a query for the café. In less than a second his map was glowing slightly from just behind him and to his right. He turned and followed the directions. He stopped as soon as he had caught up to the slight glow and focussed fully on his surroundings. He was next to a fairly short, somewhat derelict looking building. It seemed to be unmarked and its main door opened into what appeared to be the lobby of a private housing complex.
Dex tentatively climbed the outside stairs and pulled on the doorknob. It opened and he found himself in a large vestibule. The locked door to the main lobby was ahead of him, but there were four other doors on either side of him, leading off to what he presumed were businesses. None were clearly marked, but he could hear the sounds of music and people talking from behind the one on his right, closest to the outside door. As he walked toward it, Dex did see a very faint image of the words “Robustezas Libres” imprinted on the metal of the door. He pulled it open and a blast of cool air greeted him. He stepped inside and closed the door against the heat.
It was dark and cool and at first that was all Dex could comprehend. His eyes adjusted to the low light and the mixture of condensation and sweat cooled on his brow and he started to look around. There were several low tables with chairs scattered about the place and the walls were lined with banquettes. The inside wall was taken up with a large bar, behind which were several bottles of liquor and a couple of urns of what Dex assumed by the smell of the place was coffee. He headed for the bar and was surprised to see a handful of food options as well, all of which seemed to be made from real, grown in the ground food.
He wasn’t about to experiment with the solids, but he guessed he’d be willing to try the stuff in the urn. He ordered a coffee from the touchpad at the bar and a stiff metal arm shot down from the ceiling, hooking a cup with a thin extremity and drawing the dark brown liquid into it. The arm then swung the cup carefully around to where Dex was standing and placed it on the bar. The whole process took about ten seconds.
Dex took his cup and made his way to an empty table in a corner where he could see the room. It was about midday and he guessed that the place was half full. The tables were mostly occupied by one or two people, most of whom were silent and staring. But a couple of the booths were full with what seemed to be one larger group of people, who were talking animatedly with each other. Dex figured they had to be the Offline Cleanse people the woman earlier had spoken about.
Dex sipped at his coffee, which was strong and bitter and made his heart feel a little funny, but he thought he rather liked it. There were about a dozen people at the two booths across the way and none of them were tall, thin men with long dark flowing hair and a van dyke beard. Dex realized that he couldn’t even use gender as guideline, everything being malleable as it is, both online and off. He pulled up his physical control and figured out how to magnify his sight and was truly thankful that he’d stayed off the booze the previous night. The shift in perception was immediate and off-putting and Dex wasn’t entirely sure that he wasn’t going to throw up even though he was completely hangover-free.
He kept his vision magnified as long as he could, just trying to get a good recording of all the people at the table. After about a minute he had to turn it off and even then he had to keep his eyes closed for a few moments to let the nausea wear itself off. The acidic brew in his cup didn’t really help, but it was there, so he sipped at it anyway. Once his stomach had calmed down some, Dex opened his eyes and pulled up his viewer. He isolated the best still images of each person in the group, pulled them out and sent them to Annabelle with a message explaining what he’d found so far — the Offline Cleanse, the café, the people there.
Dex sat at the table, thinking. In his time as a investigator, he’d never been in a situation where he didn’t have an idea of the players involved. At a very minimum he had some name, even if it were a false one and he could look up a person’s history based on that. This was more like working the goon squad, where everyone was anonymous and you had to just run on instinct. As much as Dex wanted to barge over to the table, shout “Sterling Ljundberg” and see who flinched, his gut told him to wait. His gut also told him to eat something, so he pulled out the second food brick he’d taken from the hotel’s kiosk and unwrapped it.
He spent the next half hour eating his lunch, drinking his coffee and watching the Cleansers interact. He wondered if maybe they weren’t so crazy. What was so bad about just turning it all off for a couple of days a month and actually talking to people? The thought of it scared him a little, but the more he watched them — smiling, laughing, even touching — the more he liked the idea. It would be impossible for him though, really. Weekends were a gold mine for doing Cubicle Men work and he couldn’t afford to be cut off from his clients, the squad, and everything else for three whole days.
He finished his coffee and brought the empty cup up to the bar. The metal arm dropped down, picking up the cup and depositing it into the industrial autoclave. Dex steeled himself for the inevitable temperature change and pushed open the door to the cafe. He headed out the door of the building and walked back to El Presidente. He needed to talk to Annabelle and he figured that he’d probably be stuck here at least another night, so he ought to see about getting his room for another night.
When he walked into the lobby, the “Welcome to El Presidente Metropol Hotel” banner popped up and Dex was able to get the same room again. He took the stairs up, his heart pounding and mind racing. He walked into his room and stripped, then stood under a trickle of water in the lav that didn’t last anywhere near long enough before the blower kicked in. He figured out how to manually dim and open the window and stretched out naked on the bed.
Dex didn’t think he could possibly have slept, even with SleepingJuice. That coffee was nothing like the swill they served at B&B, which was no surprise, but it was like nothing he’d ever even had before. He thought he could feel every cell in his body twitching, ever so slightly. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but it made concentrating on anything else somewhat difficult. He forced himself to be productive and pinged Annabelle. She was up and available. He linked into Marionette City and sent her a link to Monte’s.
He sat at his usual table, unable to forget his physical body like he usually did when he was in Marionette City. He could feel the slight breeze from the window over his skin and his right leg seemed to have developed a tiny twitch. His avatar was mindlessly sipping an effects-free drink — Dex was afraid what might happen if he started adding more chemicals to the mix. He waited a few minutes, visually and aurally focussed on the lights and music at Monte’s while physically focussed on his own body. I
t was an eerie experience.
Finally, Annabelle walked in. She was dressed more the way Dex was accustomed to seeing her, in a patterned t-shirt and dark pants and she walked over to him grinning. “Hey, Dex,” she said, sitting across from him. “It’s great to see you again.”
“You too,” he answered honestly, a shiver trilling its way up his spine. He blinked and composed himself, then asked her if she’d gotten his message from earlier in the day.
“Of course,” she answered. “I’ve just spent the last bunch of time looking up this Offline Cleanse. I’m sad to report that they’re a pretty boring group. All they have is a bunch of propaganda boards that say nothing new or enlightening. It’s just a couple of high profile people who are into it that caught everyone’s fancy. That and the three days off idea. But they don’t seem even remotely dangerous.”
“I wasn’t too concerned about them being dangerous,” Dex said, “though you can’t be too careful. I didn’t think that they were the reason Reuben was killed. I still like a practical, financial motivation better than any ideological one.”
“Agreed,” Annabelle said, “and Ljundberg definitely has one of those.” She grinned and Dex knew she’d found something.
“Well,” he said, leaning closer to her, a smile forming on his avatar’s lips, “give up the goods. I know you’ve got something for me. Did you manage to identify Ljundberg out of those images? Do you know what he looks like?”
“Slow down, tiger,” Annabelle said, laughing. “No and yes.”
“What?”
“I didn’t identify Ljundberg in those images you sent,” she said, “but I do have an image for you.” She pinged Dex’s system and an image download came across for him. “Ljundberg wasn’t there this morning. I’m sure of it.”
“So, why are you grinning like an idiot, then?” Dex asked.
“Because I identified someone else in those images of yours,” she said, sending another image to his system. “The short blonde woman in the corner.” Dex pulled up the second file she’d sent and recognized one of the more active participants in the group.
“What about her?” he asked.
“I’d guess that she’s probably going to be Ljundberg’s boss pretty soon, if she isn’t already,” Annabelle said, leaning back in her chair with a smug smile on her face. “That’s Stella Bish.”