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  His interview with Dr. Etive booted up and began to play back, her voice clear and compelling in the quiet room. He jotted down notes as he listened: conventioneers, carnivale tourists, costumes, virtu rigs, fighting, celebrities.

  “It’s Rory McClaren. So you tell me.”

  Eugenio opened up the citizens’ directory and typed in the name; a full page of links and references came up, but no physical address. He delved several layers into the information, up to the limit of his clearance until finally Eugenio found a record a quarter-century old: Penthouse, Spires, Building 1. Eugenio doubted it was still a valid address, but he had no other leads. With a last glance at the reports, Eugenio packed his bag and left the office bound for The Spires.

  

  Reaching into the stratus clouds, The Spires rose in front of Eugenio. The first two floors were encased in clear plexi. Through it he could see the building’s waterfall and the sleek floating counters and seats from the street. His gaze lingered on the waterfall and slowly moved elsewhere. Above the first and second floor, the plexi reflected the surrounding buildings. The Spires, it seemed, had been designed to tantalize, but not to satisfy the desire of the onlooker—that was reserved for those permitted entrance, and not via the service entrances, Eugenio would wager.

  On the other side of the plexi, a doorwoman approached the entrance and coded the visitor’s portal down. As it separated from the plexi above it, a small line drew itself across the portal and descended a meter so that Eugenio could speak freely through the invisible barrier between him and the doorwoman.

  “May I help you?” she asked.

  “Yes, I’m here with the City Health Department.” Eugenio held up his wrist for an ID scan.

  As he expected, the door slid open even before he’d finished his last word. The doorwoman indicated the concierge’s desk and went back to her post near the entrance. Eugenio approached the suited middle-aged man behind the counter. The suit must have cost as much as Eugenio’s monthly pay.

  “I need to speak with Rory McClaren.” This brought the first sign of hesitation from the staff.

  “Sir, The Spires’ policy—”

  “I’m not suggesting you let me into his home. Just the comm. Where is it?”

  “Mr. McClaren does not receive visitors.”

  “I’m sure he can make an exception and receive one unannounced visitor.”

  “Excuse me, sir, but I didn’t say unannounced visitors. I said visitors. Mr. McClaren does not receive visitors of any kind. Any exception would be by solely at Mr. McClaren’s instruction.”

  “Listen—”

  The concierge interrupted, speaking slowly. “Mr. McClaren has not left his residence, not once, since I have been employed here. I have recently celebrated my twentieth year with The Spires.”

  Eugenio blinked, considering this. It was only a momentary hesitation.

  “Mr. . .” Eugenio began.

  “Xiao,” the concierge finished.

  “Mr. Xiao, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that the City Health Department takes its responsibilities very seriously. Despite this, like any agency, mistakes are sometimes made. I have to admit that the City Health Department has neglected to do a full systems and residential inspection of The Spires in over—”

  “The comms are right over here,” Xiao said, directing him to a half-wall a few meters beyond the desk where he and Eugenio stood.

  “If you please?” Xiao said, waving him closer. As Eugenio took two steps forward a half-moon of plexi swung out of nothingness and closed behind him.

  “Mr. McClaren has unique protocols,” Xiao explained. Eugenio waited as the other man input the code that would connect him to the penthouse. The line up to the penthouse rang audibly, a throwback Eugenio hadn’t heard in years. On the fifth ring, Xiao turned to Eugenio.

  “As I said, he’s unaccustomed to visitors.”

  “Of course.”

  On the ninth ring, the line opened. There was no visual image to accompany the voice.

  “Mr. McClaren, please excuse the intrusion. It’s Nicholas from Personal Relations. There’s a Dr. Eugenio Oliveira from the Emergency Management Division of the City Health Department here to speak with you, sir.”

  Silence from the other end.

  “I’ll leave you two. If you need anything, sir, don’t hesitate to call,” Xiao said. He walked toward the plexi until it gave way, and stepped deftly out of the small booth.

  “Mr. McClaren?” Eugenio asked uncertainly.

  A strong, slow voice filled up the booth. “I’ve no business with the City Health Department. A contact person has been assigned for all administrative affairs; it’s in the records. I suggest you get in touch with him. Good—”

  “Mr. McClaren, thank you for taking the time to speak to me, but I’m not here on an administrative matter. I’m researching the Crumble epidemic.”

  Silence. Eugenio continued.

  “I recently conducted an interview with Dr. Rosalynn Etive, and she mentioned that she and her husband had been with you on the night that the news of the infection began to spread. I’d very much like to speak with you in order to get your impressions and memories of that time.”

  No response came.

  “Mr. McClaren, I assure you I wouldn’t waste your time if this weren’t a very important matter. I don’t have to tell you how much was lost—”

  “No, you certainly don’t.”

  “Getting your impressions would be tremendously helpful.”

  “All that’s done now,” came the voice on the other end. The connection was severed.

  7

  Rory wouldn’t share those days with anyone. He hadn’t then and he wouldn’t now. Who was this Eugenio Oliveira to try and call him down from his tower? Rory leaned against the kitchen counter, trying to catch his breath, his thoughts, and a break from the onslaught of guilt that began to press down on him. He had survived, but was this what he had survived for?

  He looked around his empty rooms and beyond them out into the city teeming with life, just a few centimeters of plexi separating him. Or was it teeming with death and danger? Rory couldn’t be sure anymore. The world was a memory and when not that, a show he watched in his living room, but not much more. He struggled to take a breath. Rory left the great room and entered his bedroom; the softness of the grass underfoot soothed his skin, traveled up and tried to penetrate his thoughts. By the time he reached his armoire he’d begun to feel a bit better, but he knew the contents of the bag inside would calm him.

  The black leather satchel contained an innoculator, new hearing aids, credit stick, palmlock, keys, reconsti food, flash light, water purification tablets, a rainbow of antibiotics and supplement tablets, GPS, a battalion-grade retractable stun stick disguised as a cane, and of course a portable virtu rig and recorder. Rory called it an emergence kit. He had inherited his Pop Pop’s sense of humor. As much as he wanted to use the kit, he doubted he ever would; the time was never right to leave, what with so many people between him and home. Still, he checked the contents on Thursdays and reordered supplies each quarter, regular as Leiodare’s unremarkable seasons. He’d toyed with the idea of being buried with it—one way or another, some day he and it would get out of these rooms together.

  8

  The Dire lived up to its name. Everywhere Anna looked a profusion of people, carts, signs and storefronts vied for her attention in the narrow streets. From building to building the smells assaulted her—first garlic rolling out of a restaurant, then blood at a scarification parlor, urine in an alleyway, the rich smell of honeysuckle at the herbalist, and burning hair at the beauty shop that abutted it.

  The intensity of the place was well known to locals and tourists. Because of The Dire’s reputation for feeding on the uninitiated, trans usually parked at the edges and only a few tourists were brave enough to venture more than a couple of blocks in. Battalions even avoided the place as much as possible. So here at the esoteric center where Anna no
w found herself, Leiodare’s shadow economy was on full display. As she made her way to Leiodare’s largest virtu nexus, The White Light, live bird calls from illegal stalls punctuated the din. She looked around and saw a woman pull back the drape on a cage. A bright green parakeet stood inside.

  “Wild lured,” she called out to Anna. “From a hole in the perimeter.”

  “There are no holes in the perimeter,” cried the cart owner next to her. “The bird’s raised, sure as you are.”

  “How would you know?” the peddler squawked back. Anna hurried on as the woman tried to lock gazes with her.

  Up ahead, the building came into view—an aluminum facade with holo hawkers out front shouting the nexus’s wares. Anna ducked in, from one crush of humanity to the next.

  Inside the dim nexus, soft lights highlighted the attractions in the main hall. Anna’s gaze followed the spotlights, searching. A bank of booths made up one side of the room. Judging by the huge, unwieldy rigs that hung from them, Anna supposed they must be early models of virtu. For the moment they were empty, but as she watched a man entered the one farthest from her and put the rig over his head, inserting a token into a slot. His face went slack as the real began.

  Beyond these booths Anna saw a jukebox-like server and a hallway with several private rooms, similar to the ones that she and Peru had often used to review their virtu reals before they set a final price. Nearest her stood a long line of partitions separated by plexi walls coated with simulating foam that intermittently moved closer to the users, embracing the half-dozen people in each cell to enhance whatever sensation their mind saw behind the blacked glasses of their virtu rigs. In the center of the room another twenty or so people were seated at a sort of massive lazy Susan studded with virtu rigs.

  The White Light brought back Anna’s old mixed feelings about the time she and Peru had spent recording reals to get by. Suppressing those feelings, she looked around the room for an attendant to whom she could speak to about any new exceptional reals. Peru’s work wouldn’t be found in any of these arcade attractions next to teenage threesomes and lunar walks. There was no front desk or call button; Anna wasn’t sure where she should look for the attendant. She walked around the corner and saw only private rooms. She walked to the end of the hallway where a group of forty or more people all looked to be linked into the same real. Clothes started to come off. Anna turned around, intending to go back the way she’d come. A girl, perhaps thirteen years old, stood in front of her, dressed in black leggings and t-shirt. She wore large, beat-up red work boots with the tongues pulled out through the laces.

  “Need something?” the girl asked.

  Anna furrowed her brow; she looked up the hall to see if there was anyone else.

  “You’re looking for someone—probably me. Do you need a real?” The girl chuckled at the look on Anna’s face. “I work here. I’m the attendant. You’re looking for me, right?”

  Anna answered slowly, her brain still resisting this possibility.

  “Yes, I guess I was.”

  “What do you need?”

  The girl kept using that word. Anna didn’t like the conclusion it contained. Still, she had to admit she’d been compelled to come here—just not for the reason the girl assumed.

  “I’m looking for something exceptional.”

  “What’s your exceptional? We’ve got surgery, sex, crime, transmutation—”

  “Anything from Peru?”

  “We don’t usually break it up by place, I’ll have to look.”

  “No, from Peru, the virtuoso. Anything branded Lima or Quito?”

  The girl’s eyes narrowed and she nodded appreciatively. “You know her work. You’re a connoisseur then? She had a piece once where—”

  “Do you have any?” Anna asked.

  “It would cost.”

  “I have money. Do you have a new real?”

  “The piece that she had it was a stereo feed, you know I’m sure, the ones with two virtuosos doing a simultaneous record. But this one was much better than any others. The other virtuoso was the only one nearly as good as her. Her handle was Armour, but she stopped recording a couple of years back. That real, though there was something about their frequencies, made it the best jack ever. There are harmonics, these beautiful bits of emotions and images that weren’t there, you know, like not in the world, but only created because of these two. Incredible shit. Hasn’t been anything like it before or since.”

  Anna glared at the girl, and had to look down lest she notice.

  “That real set off a fire. Everyone wanted them and zzzt they both disappeared. Like legends. People tried to track them down—they’d let slip a clue. That virtuoso, her handle had always been Quito but in the real, the other said a different name. I’d almost forgotten what it was, but you must have seen the real, ‘cause it was Peru, right?”

  The cold dread that crept up Anna’s spine since the girl began the story stopped just above her shoulders.

  “Yes,” Anna said. With a conscious effort she made her tone sound casual. “It was Peru. That real, that’s the kind of thing I’m trying to find. Have anything like that?”

  “Oh, everyone started using those names after that—Titicaca, Piura, Chachapoya, Moyobamba. She became impossible to track after that.”

  “Yes, I know,” Anna said, almost to herself. “I was hoping you might know more or come across one of her reals since then.”

  “Nothing. And the other one, who knows? Just dropped off into space somewhere. But—we do have some amazing stuff coming out of Budapest.”

  “No. Thanks,” Anna said, brushing past the girl and toward the exit.

  As Anna made her way back through The Dire’s maze, she found her past around every corner, her regrets and reminiscences waiting in the shadows.

  The afternoon that her mother died, Anna was to join Bly downtown after her mother finished a business meeting. It was meant to have been a planning afternoon; thoughts were jammed up to the edges of Anna’s skull—how to get into the coveted Sloan Arts Academy, ways to save for a cross-country trip, when she’d have to start. Anna waited at a fountain for her mother. It was a bright day brimming with color, and Anna itched to be home with her oils and pastels or even for a holo pad so she could render the saturated afternoon light as vibrantly as it shone. Maybe she could include it in her admission application, she thought.

  Out of the corner of her eye she watched her mother finishing up her goodbyes in an adjacent courtyard. Anna knew Bly had been pitching her reintroduction campaign to a group of investors. Bly had gone over the speech so many times that Anna felt certain she could read her lips from afar as Bly reiterated key points. Anna watched her mother wrangle the group toward her desired result, and gracefully turn to exit.

  For years after, Anna racked her brain to see if she’d suspected anything about the woman jogging by, the one who wore a yellow jumper and bare legs. Over the years Anna embellished her with details: a staggered gait to her step, freckles, a scar on her knee, sometimes a ring, but really she didn’t remember the woman clearly. She’d been just a momentary hiccup in her mother’s goodbyes. The jogger had bumped into Bly, mumbled an apology and sprinted down the block before anyone realized what had happened.

  After the collision, Bly briefly looked confused and clutched at the inner pocket of her jacket. She turned towards Anna, locked onto her gaze and then doubled over and hit the ground. The circle of investors stepped back, but a second later hovered closer, as blood began to pool on the ground beneath Bly. They asked questions, but didn’t contact with her.

  Anna was the first to touch her mother, the only one before the paramedics arrived. She cradled Bly’s head in her lap and stroked her forehead, fighting the panic that welled up in her chest. A few breaths after her mother dropped, Anna began to follow instructions. They issued from somewhere inside her, a combination of memory and survival, everything Bly had taught her and developed her to discern, repeated itself calmly and quietly until Ann
a obeyed—Put her head in your lap, say the right things. Don’t panic. Stay here with her. See her there in her eyes, tell her yes, tell her you remember. Listen. Tell her—. She’s not breathing anymore, she’s not breathing, she’s not—. She won’t be breathing again. Stand up, Anna, walk away. Put that back. Fine, keep it safe then. Keep it close. Stand up, Anna.

  Walk away.

  She had kept walking until she reached their home. She’d made it as far as closing their front door, before she collapsed with Bly’s bloody jacket clutched to her chest. A meter away, on a table, Bly’s credit stick blinked green as Anna stared, still unable to form a single thought. There was only the knot of horror and grief that occupied her chest. When the first tear dropped onto her shirt, it touched the tight ball of pain that had hit her the moment Bly had hit the ground. It expanded, decompressed and the pain broke open in her chest. In the process, she lost several hours.

  Anna found herself in the studio, sprawled on the floor in front of a large, raised platform. Remnants of wax caked the top of it. Thick stalagmites of the stuff stuck up at the edges of the platform. Dapples of blood speckled the side nearest Anna. She got her legs beneath her, noticing tiny cuts on her ankles and on one hand between the index finger and thumb. Her back ached as she stood. A bit unsteady on her feet, Anna studied the platform, trying to piece together the time that had been lost and place what she was looking at. She leaned over to get a better look and quickly drew back, unable to catch her breath.

  Two footprints, slightly larger than her own, clearly stood in the wax, a few centimeters apart. And behind them she saw the unmistakable impression of buttocks.

  What have you done?

  Anna’s gaze followed the trail of wax crackles, thin as shavings, that led from the platform, across the room, and to the window. There the glass had been broken out; a single triangle of it remained in one corner. Anna found herself staring at the fire escape.