CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

There were cams everywhere, he knew that. But most of them focused on a strip ten feet deep in front of a particular business. Front doors also had them, with even tighter focus on people going in and out. Rarer were traffic cams, up on light poles, and rarer still were floaters, some of them high up, scanning for terrorists and crims of high degree.

Not to mention persons of interest, the infamous POIs, of which one Rook Venner was now most definitely included.

He kept his head down, moved quickly but not as if he was in a hurry, and did his best to keep other people between himself and the shop fronts and front doors of buildings. He used every tree, every lamp post as a screen, and on a couple of occasions he took advantage of delivery vans sitting double parked, and used them as cover.

The hat was a big help, and by keeping his head lowered just enough, he hoped he was keeping his face out of camera view.

Within a few minutes he was back at Nancy’s club, and then down the stairs and through the door.

There was that familiar sense of diminishment at seeing a club, so fantastic at nighttime, in the daylight. The floor was worn, some of the bar stools needed replacing. The silver stars stuck on the mirror behind the bar were old and dusty.

“You’re back?” He turned. Nancy Pell was there. She didn’t have all her makeup on, but the trademark black suit was in place, along with the heels and fishnets. In daylight, she was clearly of a certain age.

“Yeah, how is she?”

“She’s different now. You understand that, right? Not your sweet little pleasure model anymore. She’s not designed to suck cock now.”

“Great. Glad to hear it.”

Nancy came closer.

“We thought you were dead. Pipo told us.”

“Came close, and I don’t want to drag you into what’s chasing me. I should just go talk to her, see if she wants to come with me, and then get out of here.”

“And go where?”

“California. Canada. One or the other.”

“Think you can get there?”

“California is easier.”

“You won’t be flying or taking the rail.”

“No. Not that easy.”

“You think she’ll go with you?”

“Don’t know, but I’ve got some things to tell her. Things she needs to hear.”

“Is she going to be okay? I mean, do you know what this is all about?” Nancy’s voice had genuine concern.

Rook hesitated. “You probably don’t want to know that kind of stuff. Get you killed, too.”

Nancy knew Freddy Beckman had been murdered. She’d heard about “invisible men,” she knew Rook was right. Rook could see her backing off.

“Okay, serious shit. Got it.”

“Yeah, and time isn’t on our side. Where is she?”

“She’s here. Come with me.”

Rook followed Nancy across the club and through a secure door. There was a narrow passage, doors on one side, and then a room painted red with a white rug on the floor. Plesur was sitting in the corner, deep in thought.

“Honey, your friend is here.”

Plesur looked up, saw him and for a moment there was stark disbelief there, and then the eyes sparkled and relief lit up those gorgeous, perfect features.

“Rook?”

She slammed into him. Arms wrapped around his chest.

“I thought you had to be dead,” she said in a new voice. “I gave up. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

She had tears running down her cheeks.

Rook had a huge lump in his throat. He couldn’t say a word. Then eventually, he just patted her shoulder and mumbled, “Okay, it’s okay.”

She was looking up into his eyes. He noticed that something was different there too. Then he took in the look. Her clothes, jeans and a shirt, buttoned all the way up.

“You’re smart now,” he whispered.

She smiled for a moment, then broke back into tears.

“I know what I am,” she said, pressing her face back into his chest.

Oh, that had to be hard. He thought his heart would break, listening to her sob.

Something had changed in the way she held herself, too. Even the way she hugged. She was protective of herself, in control of that outrageous sexuality she’d been designed with.

When at last they separated. He saw that Nancy had left them and shut the door. They sat together on a beat up couch along one wall. Plesur held his hand and told him about the clinic and about waking up “all different.”

There was a framed poster above it, a real antique, for something called Led Zeppelin at Seattle Center Arena on December 27 1968.

A hundred years, thought Rook, for a moment. He wondered what life was like back then. That was before computers, even before like, phones. Or was it? They had cars then? He was sure they didn’t have Plesur Models, though. Whores and pimps and diseases, but not genetically crafted human sex objects.

And, of course, he thought with a grim internal smile, they had cops. There were guys back then just like him, busting their humps trying to clean it up, get it done and put the bad guys away.

“I woke up,” said Plesur again, so excited she was unaware of the repetitions. “They did the operation and fitted me with the earback, see?”

Now he noticed that she had a little silvery tear drop placed behind her right ear.

“And I remembered everything, and I saw the truth. I’m a, thing, a slave, I was made to just be fucked.”

He sighed. The truth was bitter. She had been designed as an ultimate home convenience, a luxury sex service, always willing, always submissive, always seeking to please.

“I’m not even a real woman,” she muttered. “I can’t have children.”

Of course not, he stopped himself before he said it. If Pleasure Models could have children then there’d be a whole market in secondaries, tertiaries and free range sex objects. The real human gene pool would soon be polluted. And besides, the value of the real thing, gorgeous Pammies like Plesur, herself, would fall in value.

“I don’t know anything, except what I got from the downloads. I,” she stopped and started sobbing again. He held her close.

“You’re still you. You’re still a person. And now you’re as good as anyone else.”

She looked up at him again, tear stained, and looking incredibly lovely.

“True?”

“True. Maybe, even better, because you can learn something like Korean in just a few minutes.” He tapped gently on the little silvery bud behind her ear.

“But I only live ten years.”

There was no way around that. Not that he knew of.

He held her, while she wept the bitter tears of self knowledge and understanding that came with awareness for a human being grown in a vat and sold as a Pleasure Model.

Eventually, she calmed a little. And then, gathered herself and pulled back.

There was a long silence, while he mulled over what he had yet to tell her. She took hold of his hand, again, held it tightly with both of hers.

“How could they do this? Make me?”

Oh, god, how to answer that? He shook his head slowly.

“Desire,” he whispered. “They made you so you would drive men crazy with desire. And spend money to have you.”

“Money. Everything you people do, comes down to money.”

“The root of all evil, girl. That’s what they say, anyway.” Rook felt tired suddenly. The odds against them making it seemed impossible. What they were up against was so huge, so implacable, so callous.

“So cruel. I hate them. Hate them all.”

“Yeah, I can see that you might feel like that.”

She sobbed, almost broke down again, then stiffened and pushed back against the old couch and her face set in stern lines that were utterly unlike anything little Plesur had ever shown before.

“I smart now. I make my own life.”

The way she said this drove a knife into his heart. He was in love. He asked himself if he was really insane, or just plain crazy.

“Yeah, well, listen. We have to get out of here, go to California. It’s a long way. That is, if you want to come with me.”

“They still after us?”

“Yes. It turns out you know something.”

“Me? What I know?”

Rook spread his hands. “No idea, but it must be something they want really bad.”

She thought about that for a while. “I don’t know what this means. Don’t know anything.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“You think they want to kill me?”

“It’s complicated. But, yes, they’ll kill you.”

“Didn’t kill you.” She was almost accusing in her tone.

“They were going to, but I was lucky,” Rook pulled out the Nokia. “And our friend here saved my ass.”

“Friend?”

“I call her Ingrid.” He handed the little yellow and black superphone to Plesur.

“Hello?” said Plesur.

“You have been upgraded,” said the handheld supercomputer. “That is a positive development.”

Plesur shot Rook a look, puzzlement fading into awareness, and some newfound pride.

“Thank you.”

“On the other hand, SIO Venner is correct. You are being sought by the authorities.”

“Why?”

“They don’t provide reasons. But your image and a description of you has been circulated to police and security forces.”

Plesur looked frightened. “I haven’t done anything.”

“That isn’t why they’re looking for you.”

Plesur seem to shrink into herself.

“I know. Something.”

Rook had an encouraging thought. “Other thing is, you’re not exactly alone, either. I mean, there are more of you, if you see what I mean.”

She did. “How many?”

“Don’t know.”

“Approximately fourteen thousand, three hundred. In the United States,” said the Nokia in her cool, Swedish accented English.

“Is that a lot?” said Plesur, clearly astonished.

“It is the largest single type group under Pleasure Model listings. However, I think the figure is suspect. It is probably several times larger than this.”

“Point is,” said Rook. “They’re going to be chasing down a lot of pleasure models that aren’t you.”

Plesur got it. She was smart.

“And I am going to change my appearance.”

Rook boggled for a moment. The way this was said, the tone, the word ‘appearance.’ This really was a very different person from the little Plesur he’d taken back to his house that night, just a week or so ago.

“We talked about it at the clinic,” she said. “Where they did the operation.”

“Okay.”

“Someone there suggested I cut my hair short. Someone else said I should just dye it.”

Something inside Rook, winced. Since Plesur represented a kind of sexy perfection, almost anything that changed her seemed a desecration of some male dream of human femininity. Then, Rook acknowledged that ambivalence with a wry smile. Plesur caught it, and to his surprise divined instantly what it sprang from.

“Yes, I will not be so damned “nice” anymore. Too fucking bad.”

There you were. Nancy said she’d be angry. And why the hell wouldn’t she be?

Rook’s smile shifted on the spectrum, losing the irony, perhaps.

“You know something, it’s really great to hear you say that.”

Plesur stared at him for a moment, eyes blazing, and then the mood changed, and she grinned back, and that too was a completely different sort of expression, filled with understanding on a subtle level that she would never have known existed before.

“Thank you, Rook,” she said, and hugged him again and even kissed him on the cheek.

“You know something,” she said with another wise little smile. “I remember being at your house.”

“Yeah, well.” He recalled teetering on the edge of madness, driven there by a certain sexy pleasure model.

“You were good to me. Not what I would have expected from any man.”

“We’re not all the same, you know. Not by a long shot.”

She looked at him for a moment,eyes filled with suspicion.

“You are not, so I suppose that must be true.”

“Thank you.”

For a moment she was silent, then tears returned and she came back into his arms. She cried for a while, then just held onto him, silent, lost in some place where newfound knowledge was breaking over her older self in irresistible waves.

After about half an hour, he became aware that Nancy was back in the room with them.

“Coffee?” she said in a quiet voice.

“Thanks.”

Plesur pulled back, groped for a tissue to wipe the tears away.

“So much. Difficult. Process.” Rook marvelled at all the new words in her vocabulary. For a bitter old cop, falling in love with someone about three years old was turning out to be a revelation.

Nancy came back with a tray and three cups. They had coffee together.

“We need to head for california,” Rook said after a moment or two.

“You think you can make it that far?”

“No idea. Have to try. First step is getting out of the city.”

“California?” said Plesur.

“Long way,” said Rook, “But safer than here. We may be able to hide there, have some kind of life. I could work in corporate security perhaps.” Then he thought of how tough it would be to pass any kind of security check and grimaced. “Maybe I’ll just freelance. Private dick.”

“What is that?”

“Oh, private detective. Way to make a living.”

Rook realized again how difficult it was all going to be and how long the odds were against them.

“First thing though is getting out of the city.”

“I can help there you there,” said Nancy. “I’ll call Eve.”

“Eve?”

“Euridiki, she’s an artist. She’s a guerrilla warrior, in the culture war.”

These were unfamiliar terms to Rook, but the name rang a bell, though nothing came up.

“Don’t want a war,” he murmured. “Want to get out of the city alive.”

“If anyone I know can do that, it’s Eve.”

“Yeah? Well call her then. We need to move, and soon.”

Nancy made her call, Rook turned back to Plesur.

“I realize I’ve been assuming that you want to come with me. Not trying to, uh, you know, make your decisions for you, okay? Just think it might be the safest way to go for you.”

Plesur nodded. “I don’t know much, but I trust you, Rook. I have to. You my friend.”

She didn’t say only friend, but they both knew what she meant.

“Right,” and Rook knew he was more than a friend, that something had happened to him and he was in love with this artificially grown person, a being that had never had a mother, or been a baby or a child.

Stranger things had probably happened, but not to him.

“How far is California?”

“Long way. We’ll have to get a car and drive small roads. It’ll take a week at least.”

“What’s it like there?”

Rook chuckled. “Sunny. Warmer than here, most of the time. Big cities though, much the same.”

“Why go there, then?”

“Safer than here. We can hide. It’s all politics, okay? I don’t know the details, but they don’t have control over there, the way they do here. It’s more like it used to be, before the emergency.”

“I heard that, what was it? Emergency?”

Rook shook his head. How to explain something like that, especially when he didn’t really know himself.

“Really complicated, and the truth is, I don’t know that much. I grew up afterwards and nobody spoke about it. It was just too scary.”

“What does the phone say?”

Rook felt his eyebrows bob up and down at that. Plesur was smart now.

He raised the phone. “Can you access information about the Emergency?”

“Yes, of course. Internet sources are tightly held, however. Regular purging of all wikis. Hard to access from within the United States.”

“Risky to try?”

“For wikis, yes. Those are surveilled. But there are many other sources.”

“Okay, keep it simple.”

“The National Emergency Powers Decision was made by President Neal Marion in September 2025, in the wake of violent protests and the Great Social Security March of that same month.”

“That’s how it started?”

“Probably. But Presidet Marion was assassinated, November 9 2027. Vice President Wake Ewell became President and officially declared the National State of Emergency.”

“Then what?”

“Information is scarce. The National Media Security Act of 2028, closed off news and discussion of political issues. The internet was closed down. Reopened under official control with complete censorship.”

“And then what?”

“There is no information available. At some point in 1928, mass arrests began.”

Rook nodded, that was lodged deeply in the folk memory of the nation. When the Homeland Security men came and took away your neighbors, that’s when you became afraid of the government.

“What does that mean?” said Plesur.

“People judged a danger to the state were arrested and sent to labor camps,” said the phone.

“How many?” said Rook.

“Different numbers on that, consensus figure seems to be two point four million, altogether.”

“Wow,” muttered Rook. “That’s huge.”

“What happened to them?” said Plesur.

“Official US sources claim they were released after two years imprisonment. However, other sources, all non-US, say that approximately 800,000 died of disease and starvation during 2029-2037. There is considerable non-US debate and many websites. All are blocked to US users.”

“How do you know any of this then?”

“There are ways around the blocks. I am Nokia Supaphone.”

Rook blinked. Was that actual pride he was hearing there? From a phone?

“So, blocked, but you could access the sites anyway.”

“Yes. The filters and blocks were devised decades ago. They are completely out of date. There are thousands of exploits that can cut through them.”

“I guess I never tried,” muttered Rook.

“Not many do.”

Rook wondered if he was hearing a note of reproof in the phone’s words. Were Americans too accepting of the limits and censorship imposed on them? Were they all too obedient?

Rook’s thoughts were interrupted. Nancy came back in, eyes alight.

“Eve loves it. She’s on her way.”

loves it?

“Yeah? Okay, we’ll be ready. What’s the plan?”

“I don’t know, exactly, but with Eve, you know?”

“Yeah?”

“Anything goes.”