Velvet Dogma

chapter 5



They found a noodle kiosk and sat awhile for tea and pho. Probably mediocre by street standards, the tastes amazed Rebecca's palate. Maybe if they added more lemon grass to the institution food, people would want to stay. As she slurped the noodles, she thought about what had happened. So much had happened since yesterday she felt overwhelmed. Was she really free? Was David really dead?

She remembered Andy passing David's miniVid to Panchet. She'd wanted to scrutinize the vids and see her brother, how he really was. In the commotion she'd forgotten to ask.

Sucking down a noodle, she gestured with her chopsticks. "Why'd you give David's minVid to Panchet?"

Andy's chopsticks paused on the way to his mouth. He examined her, then took a bite. Around the noodles he said, "He and David had a partnership. There was some work-related stuff on there that Panchet needed."

"I wanted to see it. I wanted to see David."

"We can get it back from Panchet when he's done."

"If we survive." Rebecca laughed half-heartedly.

Andy nodded as he took another bite.

"If he survives," she added, meaning Panchet.

Andy put his chopsticks down. Although there was a third of a bowl left, he pushed it away and wiped his face with a napkin. "Why the interest, Bec? No offense, but David's death hasn't disturbed you in the way I'd anticipated. Frankly, I thought you'd be crushed."

Her inclination was to get mad, be angry and show him how much emotion she could muster. How dare he say something like that? Except he was partially right. Rebecca understood exactly what Andy meant. She'd been thinking on that subject for awhile. "David was a concept for me," she began slowly, feeling her way through her own thoughts. Her voice was low enough so that Andy had to lean close to her to hear. "He was my horizon, without being too melodramatic. I hadn't seen him since the sentencing. To make it through my time without losing my mind, I divorced myself from reality. I ignored my past. I rarely thought of the things I'd missed. Instead, I read books from the prison library, mostly the classics. David and what he represented was that thing I tried hardest not to think of. By doing so, I think I blocked something, some emotion, some feeling that I know I should have. My brother's dead and I don't know how to act." She smiled bitterly. "They assigned me a reintroduction specialist for society. I wished they'd assigned me one for my family. You know, part of me feels like if I'd seen him, it would all have gone back to normal. But I didn't see him. I'll never see him again. I guess his organs have been harvested by now, no telling what they did with the rest of him."

Andy stared at her in silence for a minute, then reached out and placed a hand on her arm. "Twenty years is a lifetime, Bec. You did what you had to do. It's crazy to expect you to react normally after that."

She liked the feel of his hand on her skin. Although at first it had bothered her, she also liked how he called her Bec. That had been David's name for her, but from Andy it sounded different.

"When this is all over I think it'll hit me. I think I'll be standing somewhere doing something, and suddenly the earth will cave in and swallow me whole." She looked at him, and opened her eyes a little wider to release the tear that was balanced there. "I wished it would come sooner, you know. So I could cleanse myself with emotion."

"You're doing fine, Bec."

"Really?"





"I doubt I could do any better."

"Yeah." She took a sip of tea. "Sure."

"Oh my God!"

"What?"

"I can't believe I almost forgot."

"What? What did you forget?"

"Your grandmother. You don't know? They didn't tell you anything. Your grandmother is still alive."

A lonely feeling had been creeping up on her while she'd been thinking about David. With him gone, she'd thought that she was the last of her family left alive. She'd never even considered that her grandmother could still be alive. She had to be nearly ninety by now.

"She's still alive?"

"Yeah. David went to see her every week. I went sometimes, too."

Rebecca remembered back when everyone was alive, a Thanksgiving with her mother, father, grandmother and David. Arguing, laughing, stories of Thanksgivings past, tales of grandpa and his Vietnam exploits, all were memories she coveted. They washed through her now as she removed another stone from the dam she'd built in prison. She cracked a smile, recalling when the old woman had promised to sneak a file baked in a cake into the prison, her face as serious as could be while promising the impossible.

Grandmothers earned a special love. She needed to see hers, now. "Where is she?"

"I'm not so sure it's a good idea to—"

"Oh no you don't. You will not give it to me then take it away."

"What?"

"We're going to see my grandmother. I might be dead next time I have the opportunity to see her and I don't want to take the chance. We're going, Black Hearts or no. So where is she?"

Andy chuckled, stood, and pulled out a credStick. He'd used it earlier on the bus, explaining to Rebecca that it was a drone and couldn't be attributed to him. Long black hair pulled into a knot, sweat dripping from her brow because of the heat of the stove, the kiosk attendant pressed an electronic stylus into a space at the bottom of the stick. Andy punched in the numbers adding a small tip, then transferred the funds. Gone was money, change and the need for a purse. Everything was electronic.

He pocketed the stick and pushed in his chair, making room for Rebecca to get out.

She stood, snagging a couple napkins to take with her. The strange gray composite material was absorbent, but visually took some getting used to. When they were ready to go, she cocked her head and peered down her nose. "So?"

Andy nodded. "She's in a D-Pens. I don't know where it is exactly, but we can figure it out."

"D-Pens?"

"A death pending facility," he explained slowly, understanding the volatility of the words. "There aren't any nursing homes to speak of anymore. Now there are places for those with levied organs to be cared for until they die."

"How horrible!"

"I know, I know. Some of the things that have happened in the last twenty years in the name of advancement have left our humanity behind."

"How is she? Is she dying? Is she okay?" Rebecca wanted to know everything.

"I don't know." Seeing her reaction, he amended, "David didn't tell me she was dying, so I think she's stable. She's just old, and with no place to go, D-Pens are the most likely place to prepare for the end these days."

"Prepare for the end? This is my grandmother you're talking about!"

"I'd be lying if I said she was healthy enough to get around. David begged her not to go to the place, but she insisted. She didn't want to burden David. She wanted him to live."

Her grandmother had always been one to take the hard road over the easy. When Rebecca's grandpa had died in 1997, the old woman hadn't lost a beat. Where some of her friends' grandmothers in the same circumstance had ended up blue-haired shells of themselves whose daily highlights were petting the dog and flipping between Oprah and Jerry Springer, her grandmother had seemed to grow stronger. She'd become a bigger part of her and David's lives, especially when their parents died in 1995. She'd become the mother, father and grandparents, wearing the mantle of responsibility with what Rebecca now remembered as enviable ease.

And now she was waiting to die. The image of cattle in a stockyard came to Rebecca, like the ones she'd seen in Stockton, California. It wasn't right. She deserved better.

"Where is she?"

"I don't know."

Rebecca scowled. "I thought you said you'd been there."

"We shared an inDrama together, she, David and I. It was the perfect way for her to deal with the pain of age and her situation. I've never seen her in person." Seeing her reaction he added, "Not everyone inDramas are inVid iDicts."

She shook her head slowly. "How are we going to find out where she lives?"

"Easy. I just need to find a boarder."

"One of those—oh. Why them?"

"When you want to get on the ID without any snooping eyes, boarders give you the best chance. Right now we're about as hot as they come. You aren't even allowed near PODs, and I don't dare link anytime soon. I'm sure that they know I'm with you. If not the government, then whoever hired the Black Hearts."

"The gravBoarders will help you?" She watched one zip through traffic, using the side of a taxi to bank in an impossible turn. Skateboarders of her era would have killed for a gravBoard. "They don't seem very social."

"Time to use some of the clout we have. Our friend Panchet is revered by them."

"Revered? That's a pretty strong word."

"Not strong enough." They rounded a corner and found themselves beside an inDrama kiosk. "We'll wait here. One should be along in a minute."

She had good views of Hollywood Boulevard and the side street. Now that night had fallen, foot traffic had picked up giving her the opportunity to see clothes combinations she'd never anticipated.

Before she was imprisoned, the celebrity look-alikes in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater and along the Walk of Fame had been pastiches, easily identifiable as pretenders to fame. But she'd seen four Marilyn Monroes in as many minutes, each one more perfect than the last—and they all were perfect, somehow capturing Marilyn's patented naive vixen stare. Michael Jackson, Sly Stallone, John Wayne, Pee Wee Herman and Dolly Parton were but a few of the celebrities people had transformed themselves into. It was uncanny to see them striding down the street, locked in conversation or eating noodles from one of the kiosks. But most prevalent were the freaks, those who'd combined celebrity and animal, transforming themselves into something barely human.

A boarder zoomed around the far corner, dodging in and out of traffic, swerving through death-defying spins and turns. He wore silver and black, another set of colors that Rebecca hadn't seen. Perhaps one of these days she'd decipher their color system and understand where each group's turf lay.

Andy stepped to the curb. He wolf-whistled. When the boarder glanced his direction, Andy held one hand to his head with his finger pointed out, and the other to his groin, his encircled fingers forming an 'O.'

The boarder slid across the hood of a car, banked off the side of delivery truck, and came to an impossible stop within inches of where Andy stood. About forty, the man's eyes were bright blue and jiggling from side to side. He was wired—no telling how much dope he'd ingested. His teeth gnashed together as he spoke. "What you doing with the sign, pounder?"

"We need your help."

"What's a pair of pounders need with me or my mates?"

"We need access to the ID."

"Then go to a kiosk. Do I look like a terminal?"

"You are more than a terminal, boarder. You are a server. I know, because I helped build the network."

The boarder whistled. "Strong words from someone I don't know. How do I know you aren't trying to hack me?"

"Because P. Rao is too close a friend to me. I'd never do anything to harm him." Andy passed his fingers over his eyes in a complicated wave and finished by tapping his chin three times with his thumb.

The response from the boarder was immediate and intense. He popped off his board, flipped is board upright and into his hands and kneeled. Andy kneeled with him, then pulled several lengths of cable from his pocket and handed them to the boarder. Without hesitation the blue-eyed boarder inserted them into the shunts on the back of his cal, attached the other end to his board, and closed his eyes.

"Connection secured. Proxy boarder hack savvy. Altruism. Boon. 743621. Recode. Provide parameters."

"Rebecca Mines, last known locations for all related levy points."

Within seconds the boarder spewed rapid-fire jargon, nodding and shrugging as Andy jargoned back. Individually Rebecca understood the words, but the context was crazy. Either they were speaking in code or some kind of verbal shorthand. Less than five minutes after they'd began, they were done. As Andy pushed his cables back into his pocket, the boarder leapt back atop his board and hauled his ass around the corner.

Andy nudged Rebecca to the side of the building and spoke into her ear. "He searched for active connections to you, those who've optioned to be notified of your whereabouts. Besides several Asian companies whose exact names we were unable to determine, three persons had requested notification through the ID. One was your brother, of course. The other is your grandmother. And the third is a woman named Olga Pavarnick. Does that name sound familiar?"

Oh, did it. Rebecca hadn't seen Olga in at least twenty-five years. They'd attended the University of California at Dominguez Hills. For the first two years they'd had almost every class together, been roommates and inseparable friends. All their secrets had been laid bare as they talked about their pasts, their futures and their innermost fears. Their only arguments had been about family. Where Rebecca, in essence, didn't have one, because both parents had died when she was fifteen, Olga came from a home with sixteen members of an extended family. Love, hate and curiosity were a constant part of her daily life. This translated to strained dynamics when Rebecca wanted to be alone, but they'd worked through it. It wasn't until their degree paths forked their junior year that they'd finally drifted apart. Olga followed the hallowed path of English Majors, immersing herself in T.S. Eliot, James Joyce and the iambic pentameters of William Shakespeare. Rebecca focused her energies on computer programming with a minor in political Science. By the time they were a quarter through their senior year, they went their separate ways, with Rebecca spending more and more time in a self-imposed cone of silence as she began learning, then perfecting the intricate algorithms of chaos hacking. By the time Rebecca was ensconced in the Warez Underground, they'd become Holiday Friends, only hearing about each other's lives when they exchanged Christmas cards.

"Yes! I know Olga. Where is she? Does it say what she's doing?"

"None of that, but she's actually closer than your grandmother. If you want, we can swing by her flat without making much of a side tour." Reading the indecision in her eyes, he added, "Until we can figure out what's going on and who to trust, you need a place to go to ground. Maybe Olga is just the person we're looking for."

Rebecca nodded, realizing the soundness of Andy's advice. In fact, Olga's place might be the answer to most of her problems. A part of her wanted to save her grandmother. She didn't know the legalities of the D-Pens or the organ levy laws, but if she could somehow manage to spirit the old woman away, Rebecca might think of something that could be done. "You're right. Let's go."

They turned to go, then spied three grey-suited police officers zoom to a halt at the corner of Hollywood and Cahuenga on hoverBoards—similar to the gravBoards but round where the gravBoards were long. The cops wore glistening black helmets. Each wore a POD over his left eye. Knee high black boots covered their legs, snapping into heel-sleeves on the fore and back parts of the boards.

Rebecca and Andy stood north of Hollywood Boulevard and uphill from the corner. The crowds thinned as the police advanced at a careful pace on their boards, one down Hollywood, one south down Cahuenga and one directly towards them. She thought he'd seen her, but he stopped at a burrito stand and spun a woman around with short blonde hair around. She fell to the ground, but he made no move to help her up. Instead, he began searching up the street.

The police were definitely looking for Rebecca. Without thinking, she grabbed Andy and jerked him into her as she leaned back against the wall. She kissed him deeply, closing her eyes as she willed herself invisible. Andy, to his credit, didn't pull away. Just the opposite—he kissed back, his body covering hers as their lips danced. He made a small moan.

They held each other for nearly twenty seconds as she heard the hum of the board as it passed. Then her worst fears came to pass. She heard the board pause, then return and stop, hovering directly behind Andy.

She opened her eyes to slits, meaning to sneak a glance. But surprise took over as she noticed the policeman staring directly at her. As their gazes met, her eyes widened. Andy felt the change and opened his own eyes. She glanced at him, eyeball to eyeball. What could they do now?