“It’s a lot to take in,” I said.
Fayza led me past a structure that was technically a gazebo, in the same way that a five-layer wedding cake was technically a dessert. She was heading for the back porch of the house across the way. A young Afghan man in a red hoodie held the door open for us.
“I have someone I want you to meet,” Fayza said. “They’re waiting inside.”
I held up a hand. “Fayza, please…”
She turned, frowned. “What is the matter with you?”
My brain chattered like a playing card in a bicycle wheel. Had I already pissed off the drug lord? Who was waiting in that house? And would I get out there alive? I had left the House of the Grannies, crossed through the Valley of the Statuary, and was being led into the Tomb of the Unknown Hoodie.
Jesus Christ I wish I’d taken something before coming here. Screw the pellet in my arm.
“You don’t need any of that,” Gloria said. “You have me.”
* * *
The young man on the couch was skinny and black with an Abe Lincoln beard. He was dressed in layers like a street kid, but his clothes were clean and his black trainers were spotless. So, either new to the street, or on his way off it. I bet on the latter.
He nodded at me with great solemnity, and Fayza said, “You know each other?”
“Never seen him before,” I said truthfully. We were in a basement rec room outfitted with cheap carpet, Arabic movie posters under glass, and chrome furniture. A terrible place to die, in my opinion. “Who is he?”
“Nobody,” the boy said matter-of-factly.
“His name is Luke,” Fayza said. “He’s an addict.”
Gloria bent to look more closely at the man’s eyes. “The pupils are slightly dilated,” she said. “Though that could be from the excitement of being trapped in a drug lord’s basement.”
“What’s he on?” I asked.
Luke looked surprised. “Nothing.”
Fayza said, “A month ago, he was one of my most faithful customers. Not only marijuana, but a variety of pharmaceuticals. Then he stopped cold.”
Dr. G said, “Good for you, Luke.”
“He wasn’t the only one,” Fayza said. “Six other customers, some of them his acquaintances, have stopped purchasing from my dealers. Usually that means they’re dead or in jail, but these people are still in the city. None of them is buying from me.”
“Six people, that’s not so bad,” I said.
The boy in the hoodie looked at me in alarm.
Fayza said, “Don’t tell me my business.”
“I would never do that,” I said. With sincerity.
“Luke and the others have moved on to another product.”
“Which one?”
“I thought you could tell me,” Fayza said. “You’re the neuroscientist.”
I froze for a moment, trying to figure out what Bobby had told her. But of course she didn’t need Bobby. Anyone in Fayza’s position would have access to hot and cold running infostream.
The basics were free to everyone: my entire résumé from elementary school to PhD, the well-documented debacle at Little Sprout, my arrests. I’d been told by a certain paranoid inmate of the NAT that with a little cash, my entire online history could be downloaded as well. Fayza probably knew my every credit transaction, social media post, and geolocation ping going back decades. I normally didn’t trust paranoids, but I made an exception in Ollie’s case.
“What do they call the drug?” I asked.
“They don’t call it anything,” she said. “They think it’s the Holy Spirit.”
“If you just open your heart,” Luke said, “you’d understand.”
I squinted at him. Was he seeing his own angel right now? Or did his God take the form of, say, a blob of light in his peripheral vision?
“You ever hear of the Numinous, Luke?”
He went still, trying to give away nothing, which gave away everything.
“Yee-up,” Dr. Gloria said.
“How about Francine Selwig?” I asked.
“Frannie? Is she okay?” Luke said, genuinely worried.
“Who is this Francine person?” Fayza asked.
“Someone else who took a drug like Luke’s,” I said. “She killed herself.”
“What?” Luke said. His surface calm cracked. “I can’t believe she’d, she’d…”
“She was in withdrawal,” I said. “She’d been cut off from whatever she was getting at the church.”
Fayza said, “The Hologram Church.”
Luke looked hurt. “The Church of the Hologrammatic God is—”
“The stupidest name I’ve ever heard,” I said. “What were they giving you, Luke?”
He shook his head. “It’s not a drug. I keep telling you that.”
“Then what is it?”
His eyes flicked to the left. Consulting his higher power? Then he looked me in the eye and said, “It’s the word of God.”
Time for a new tactic. “Tell me about God,” I said. “Is he here now?”
He frowned at me. “God is everywhere. That’s pretty basic.”
“But you can see him. What does he look like?”
That eye flick again. “It’s hard to describe,” he said. “He’s more of a feeling. Watching over me.” He brightened. “I built something to portray my feelings for him. If you come to the church—”
“Right, and this feeling—it gets stronger after each church service?”
He hesitated, then said, “Every time.”
Dr. Gloria said, “This is like a Turing test for religion. So far, everything he’s said would apply to anyone going to a prayer meeting.”
Except he’d recognized the word “numinous.” I said to Fayza, “We’re not going to get anywhere this way.”
Fayza nodded. “We’ve been going around and around for hours,” Fayza said. “I can’t tell if he’s a very good liar or simply an idiot who doesn’t know what’s happened to him.”
“Have you considered that he really did just find God?”
“I might have considered that, before I heard you were looking for a drug with exactly these symptoms. Before I learned that such a drug had already been invented.”
The infostream again. No use hiding anything about Little Sprout, or NME 110. “That never left the lab,” I said. “It never got to testing, much less market.”
“No one’s marketing this, either,” Fayza said. “As far as I know, they’re giving it away for free. You can see how this would greatly fuck with my business model.” She stared at me as if it were my fault.
“Look, I’d like to help, but I don’t see how I can—”
“Bring me a sample of this drug. Confirm for me what it is. Luke will take you to this church.” She nodded to the Afghan kid. “Hootan will go with you.”
The kid in the hoodie smiled at me.
“That’s okay,” I said. I wanted no part in whatever gangland enforcer thing Hootan represented. “I’ll do it alone.”
Fayza turned to me, her gaze as impersonal as a gun barrel.
“Or he can come,” I said. “Either way.”
Dr. Gloria rustled her wings, getting my attention, and nodded at Fayza.
“Oh, right,” I said. “My friend, Bobby. He was wearing something your men took.”
Fayza dipped into the pocket of her jacket, withdrew the plastic treasure chest on its leather thong. She held it in her hand, and for a moment I thought she was going to open it, and Bobby’s mind would fly around the room like Tinkerbell.
She handed it to me, as well as a second object—a low-tech flip phone.
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’ve got a pen.”
“You will call me on this one,” she said. “Keep in touch.”
* * *
Hootan led me, Dr. Gloria, and Luke the black Abe Lincoln back to Fayza’s house on Tyndall Avenue. Bobby was waiting for us, pacing frantically, while the young Afghan couple ignored him. I tossed the chest toward Bobby. He screeched in panic to see it airborne, then caught it and touched it to his lips. Then he started thanking me, practically pawing me. Crazy people are tedious.
“Go back to the apartment,” I told him. “I’ll meet you there later, okay?”