“Me neither. Whatever it was.”
She smiled for real then. He pulled her forward, kissing her full on the mouth. Sylvia stiffened, but soon responded hungrily, her hands roving up and down his arms. I suppose it wasn’t cheating because, technically, she didn’t know I was alive in New York yet. Still, it felt a little wrong. Just as things were starting to heat up, she broke off, wiping the tears from her face. “You wanna get out of here?”
Joel2 looked his wife—my wife—up and down. “If it means more of this kind of medicine, yes, please.”
“I’ll go have a nurse clear you—I mean, release you. Sit tight.”
“As you know, my love, sitting down and resting are my two greatest competencies.”
Sylvia patted Joel2’s arm and exited, the glass wall breaking apart as she passed through it. As she spoke with a young Costa Rican woman who may have been a doctor or a nurse, Joel2 studied his reflection. The nanos were doing an amazing job. He looked fresh out of the box, not a scratch or a scar on him, except for those he’d already had. This was his first time in a bona fide hospital. He’d been to clinics a few times for minor wounds or broken bones. But those were more like hotel rooms: soothing pictures on the walls, courteous staff, comfortable bedding. The room he was in now was more like a bank. White walls, glowing blue power strips, and a spare, utilitarian bed. There were holographic displays of his vitals on one wall, but the only other indication that he was being worked on was the occasional metallic tickle on his bare skin.
Outside, Sylvia finished speaking with the young woman. She nodded, pulling up something on her comms. Her fingers pressed a few buttons only she could see, giving Joel2’s nanos a new directive. The tiny robots knocked him out, sending his brain directly to REM sleep. He drifted off into warm, healing darkness.
16 In the early twenty-first century, a company called Amazon began marketing a storage cloud service called the glacier, which included unlimited storage of data in what they referred to as cold storage. Within the Amazon Glacier service, data was stored in archives. Customers could upload archives as large as forty terabytes (I know, funny that was a lot back then), and once an archive was created, it could not be updated unless it was retrieved, modified, and then restored. The service became the status quo for data storage because it didn’t charge for the storage of data, but rather for the retrieval of it. This eventually led to the creation of unlimited storage tiers whereby data’s value was directly attributed to its utility and accessibility, a theory known as “Data Gravity.” Basically, the lesser utility a piece of data had, the lower its value, but if it suddenly gained value, then the cost of its retrieval would be directly proportionate to its utility. So useless information could be archived forever, but if it suddenly became very important to retrieve it, then the cost of retrieving it would be based on the speed with which someone wanted it retrieved. Eventually the dictionary definition of the word glacier became amended to include these utility-based data storage services, and the word outlasted the company that invented it.
THE LAW OF HOLES
NOBODY SAID ANYTHING.
A hum of white noise permeated the room after I finished recounting the entire chain of events for Moti and company. It had all played out mere hours ago, but telling it made it feel like ancient history. It made me ill to relive it, but I had spared no detail. The anniversary fight with Sylvia, my own failings in my marriage, the loss of my comms, Pema, Taraval, Corina Shafer, and the ugly truth about teleportation. Now came the part when (hopefully) these guys would help me get out of the mess I was in.
Moti broke the silence. “IT commed us, you know.”
“Oh?” I was cautious.
Moti shrugged. “They said you broke into their office but then ran away. They suggested you may be dangerous.”
Just as I suspected. Those fucks were going to kill me and cover it up. “That’s absurd,” I said. “I tell jokes to computers for a living.”
“They said they tried informing the police,” he continued, “but you managed to disable your comms to avoid detection on GDS. They said if we saw you, to immediately turn you over to building security.”
Shit, shit, shit. “Look, man, they own the building security. If you’re going to cut me loose, at least call an independent—”
“We did not believe them,” said Zaki, flipping his cigarette.
“You didn’t?” I asked.
Moti rubbed his chin with his right thumb. “A thief,” he said, “especially someone smart enough to disable their comms, that kind of person would have run down and out—not up and in.”
Thank God. “So—what do I do now?” I asked, instantly realizing how vulnerable saying those words made me feel.
Moti scratched the back of his head, reached into his pocket, and pulled out his pack of TIME cigarettes. He opened the cardboard box, slid one of the sticks out, and placed it in his mouth. He took a puff, and I stared at the smoldering end of the cigarette. “Yoel, there are three things you need to know.” He exhaled, his breath smelling of burnt tobacco and coffee grounds.
“One.” He raised his eyebrows and drew on his cigarette. “William Taraval, Corina Shafer—these are dangerous people. You think this William Taraval is some administrator, but he is in reality the head of special projects for the most special company in the world, the company at which your wife works—International Transport. Departure, Arrival … Delight!” He breathed out cynically. “As you know, International Transport isn’t just a corporation, Yoel. It’s the centerpiece of our new world order. Unelected, undemocratic—you in the West no longer have the power to vote with your money, despite what they tell you. But I suspect you already know this, Yoel: that they control your lives through commerce, and that it is fine. Maybe even you believe it is better this way. But International Transport is the worst of them, Yoel. They are too powerful, even for this crazy world. They control how we go from A”—he flipped over his empty cup of coffee and in a lightning-fast shuffleboard movement with no care for the china, slid it across the table at me; I barely caught it in time—“to B.” His eyes bore into me. “They had an opportunity to fix this, to clear you. No comms, no evidence, and the perfect alibi: you, happy and alive in Costa Rica. But because of this mystery woman, this Pema Jigme, you have gotten away. You, your existence—it threatens the entire IT empire. They will search for you. They will not give up.” He paused, not yet done. “And they will also go after the other you and your wife. It is most likely they have already done that.”
Sylvia.