“‘Is there no trust?’ he asked, but like he thought it was funny, and I said I’d be happy to walk home in the dark. So he did it, and in fact he didn’t really seem to care—the whole thing felt like it was just a gesture, his way of closing the deal.
“I woke in the middle of the night. The bedside table was covered with books, paper ones, and pill bottles, which I thought would be the usual prescription downers but they had these long chemical names and didn’t seem to be from a pharmacy. I googled him from the bathroom—Cromwell was his name—and found out that he was rich, which I could see, and that he was old, which I couldn’t, because he looked about forty-five. I got back into bed and watched the waves shatter on the glass and felt like my real life was beginning.
“I woke again before dawn and he offered me a car but I was restless so I wanted to walk. Nothing out there but land and sea, and the sun was still behind the mountains. My sandals were impractical so I went barefoot. The asphalt was cold at first but then the sun warmed it. I came to a charging station on the Pacific Coast Highway and the attendant wouldn’t look me in the eye when he sold me my morning coffee—I can only imagine the story he put me in, with my little dress and sweaty back and dirty feet. I went on down the highway, drinking my coffee, until my phone found a signal.
“They had to do the surgery offshore. A legal technicality, said Hiro, my chaperone, on the way to LAX.
“I’d never been in a plane before, much less a private one. The hospital was on an island in Japan, one of the ones that used to be Indonesia.
“The surgeon was kind. He took me aside and asked me if I was sure I wanted to do this, tried to tell me the odds I’d leave the table alive, and the probability of later complications, and I wavered, but I hadn’t seen any other chances so I said I was certain. After that he was detached, like I’d gone from being a person to an object of study.
“I’d expected the anesthesia to be like nothing but the surgeon said there’d be dreams, the ‘subjectivity of the implant meshing with the cortical tissue,’ and while I was under I remembered driving down through the hills toward the city, how the valley was a sea of light scarred by LAX and the freeways.”
“Did Cromwell keep his word?” asks Kern, wanting it to be a fairy tale, though it’s obvious it ended badly.
“In his way. There were screen tests, always on closed stages, where the soundproofing was so perfect you could hear your heart beat. The directors, who were never on-site, gave orders through the speakers like the voice of god, but nothing panned out, though I gave it everything I had. Hiro said to be patient, and meanwhile I had a lot of clothes and money.
“The loneliness was worse, which was almost unbelievable, and some nights I took a limo and went out looking for beautiful boys on the streets. They were always so happy when I told them to get in, though they usually looked like they couldn’t believe it was happening.
“Sometimes Hiro would come by with a laptop and a data cable and plug it into the socket just under my ear. I asked him why it couldn’t be wireless and he said that wireless wasn’t ever totally secure. I hated it—it was like my soul was draining away, though it felt like nothing, but I didn’t say anything, and would’ve tolerated more.
“Hiro was actually very nice to me, though I think he’s psychotic. I was seeing this guy for a while, Johann, who’d been a boxer in Germany, and was getting work as an action lead. One night in the Four Seasons he drank too much and started getting mean, but just when I was starting to actually get worried, Hiro let himself into our suite, casually, like he’d come to change the sheets. Johann was steroid-big and got right in his face and started screaming but Hiro just giggled, like literally giggled, and when he went for Johann he was so relaxed it was actually unsettling. He broke all the bones in Johann’s face with a highball glass—he was conscientious about it, double-checking to make sure he hadn’t missed any. I never saw Johann after that, and later I heard that Hiro had worked for the cartels before joining the private sector, that there’d been a price on his head for years.
“They’d said the implant wouldn’t affect my memory but they must have been wrong, because everything from the moment I got it is a lot clearer. But they must have gotten what they needed because one day I woke up in this goddamned house, and so far I haven’t seen anyone but my surgeon.”
“Why would they do that?” asks Kern.
“He gave me these jobs, at first, the surgeon. Hardware installation, mostly, and I had to do them all through the phone, the one you have now, but there must have been something going on behind the scenes, because now Hiro’s trying to get it back. At first I was expecting him to kick down the door any minute but now it seems like I’m on my own.”
“Do you have internet?”
“There’s nothing, no connectivity except the link to your phone.”
Kern holds up the phone, wondering why it would be her only portal onto the world. A winking red light probably means low battery. “I should recharge,” says Kern. He fishes the multipack out of his carryall, tears it open with his teeth, finds the charger. He runs his fingers over the phone, looking for the power socket, finds both that and what feels like a standard ethernet port.
In the little light he looks at the snarl of cables and connectors left in the multipack; among them is an ethernet cable.
“What are you doing?” asks the ghost.
“Maybe we can get you wired,” says Kern, plugging the ethernet cable into the wall jack, then into the jack in the phone. Little green lights on the phone start flashing.
“There you go,” he says, eyes closing, clutching the phone, using his carryall for a pillow. “Now you’re connected.”
The ghost says nothing.
29
Bad Pattern