I remembered reading that a blind person’s brain rewires itself to use the visual cortex, essentially hijacking it to improve the processing of other information such as sound and touch. Because of this, some blind people learn to use echolocation—reflected sound waves—to build a mental picture of their surroundings, like bats or dolphins.
Abe, one of the guys I worked with, could do this. He was born blind, but his parents were Three Religion Fundamentalists, so they didn’t allow him to get implants as a kid. When he got older, he gave up religion and ran away from home. In his secular twenties, he finally got his comms installed but opted out of ocular implants. Being blind was just a core part of his self-identity. I recalled him claiming to be able to tell an object’s distance, size, texture, and density by clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth about three times per second. I’d seen pictures of him hiking and cycling, so maybe he was right. But he was a smartass like me, so there’s also a good chance he was full of shit.
Just for kicks, I tried clicking my tongue against the roof of my mouth.
Click. Click. Click.
It worked! Not the echolocation thing, but my tongue worked! Progress.
I tried blinking my eyes open. Too bright!
The voices were becoming clearer. I could hear mutterings in a Middle Eastern–sounding tongue—one of the Levantine languages, I thought.
I had no idea where I was, and no idea who the out-of-focus head trying to communicate with me belonged to. Now someone else shined what looked like an interrogation light in my face, blinding me and catalyzing an even more painful headache.
“Hey! Cut it out.” It appeared my vocal cords worked, too.
“Ahlan habibi,” the blurry face greeted me. I smelled cardamom and jasmine. “My name is Ifrit. Are you okay?”
“No, I’m not okay. Could you please stop shining that thing in my eyes?”
The bright interrogation light blinked off.
She asked me if I was okay again.
I rubbed my temples and groaned. “Well, I’m not dead.”
Ifrit’s blurry face started to come into focus. She was in her late twenties or early thirties, with attractive Middle Eastern features—coffee-colored hair, dark almond-shaped eyes, and olive skin.
“I’m sorry we had to shock you, but our security system doesn’t like unauthorized visitors.”
“Well, thanks. I guess.”
I looked around. Other than the woman tending to me, there was nothing remarkable about the room I found myself in. Why did she send me here? It was another conference room, like the one I had just escaped, although the comparatively sparse decor indicated whoever occupied this space had significantly less of an aesthetics budget to work with. For example, the table on which I was lying was made of plastic, not wood, and the chairs were less “comfortably ergonomic” and more “painfully pragmatic.” There was a medium-sized printer by the door, though. A very recent model, taking up most of a desktop, and a rather expensive accessory for such an otherwise scant room.2
But I had made it. I was alive.
Do the thing!
I had rehearsed this moment in my head before my escape.
“My name is Joel Byram. People are trying to kill me. My comms have been disabled. I need help!”
“Shhh!” Ifrit chided. “You don’t have to shout. We can hear you.”
I guess I was yelling. Wait—“we”?
I painfully lifted my head to try to gather my bearings. Beyond Ifrit, at the head of the table on which I was lying, was a lean, salt-and-pepper-haired, smartly dressed older man. The first thing that came into focus was his forehead. He had more creases on his forehead than I had metaphors to describe them.
The smoke from his cigarette snaked toward me, framing his face like he was in one of those old-fashioned film noirs from two centuries back.
“Is he okay?” the man asked her. A low, gravelly voice.
She nodded. “Yes, I think so.”
The man jerked his head sideways, and Ifrit, the only person who genuinely seemed to care about my well-being since the attack, left the room.
As she walked out, I tried once again to access my comms and pinpoint my GDS location to get an idea of where I was. But all I got was the same irritatingly familiar error message:
UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS. INVALID USER.
The man silently stared at me. The kind of icy, appraising silence that didn’t encourage small talk. Finally he rose and motioned for me to get up off the table.
As I got up, my body took the opportunity to remind my brain of its various aches and pains. The worst of it seemed to spread along my right flank. My wrist was also on fire, so much so that I could barely move my hand. My shoulder sent pulsing shots of pain with every movement, and my ass felt like I was sitting on a family of fire ants.
All of a sudden the room became more illuminated. Generic video streams of remote beachfront resorts played on the walls of the otherwise plainly appointed room.
“Café?” he offered, placing his cigarette down at the edge of the table.
I nodded and sat down in an uncomfortable nonadjustable chair wedged between the table and the wall.
“Turkish,” he told the printer, his Levantine accent lingering on the u like it was four o’s long.
Soon, a small copper pot with a long wooden handle coalesced out of nothing. Next to it were two small ceramic cups atop tiny ornate saucers. He placed those on a small tray and then started back toward me.
He placed the coffee tray down on the plastic table. Then, confidently holding the pot by its handle, the man filled each cup about three-quarters full, the size of a shot.
“Back home, far away from here, there is a small man with a small cart who makes these the real way,” he said. “It took me a long time and a lot of chits to convince him to let me copy it, but now I can print it whenever I want.”3
He sipped slowly. I wondered if he thought it truly tasted the same as the original from his memories.
He picked up his cigarette from the table, took another drag, then sat down on the chair opposite me, signaling it was time for business.
“My name is Moti Ahuvi. You are a guest of the LAST Agency. Land, Air, Sea Travel.” He spread his hands, indicating the small room around us. “That’s where you are. We cater to Levantines and other peoples for whom teleportation is not an option. I am responsible for security here.”
Well, at least I won’t be teleporting anywhere.
“My name is Joel. Joel Byram.” I paused to see if my name elicited any reaction. It didn’t. Hopefully that meant my face wasn’t all over the comms yet. “If you don’t mind my asking, why does a travel agency need security personnel?”
He half smiled. “The world is a dangerous place, my friend. People don’t want bad things to happen to them while they’re traveling. You would agree, yes?”
“I’m realizing that in spades today.”
He nodded knowingly. “Yoel, I have some questions for you.” His brown eyes were focused but calm.