Vid Coppers were watching our meal, making sure my drunken state wouldn’t turn into something that might go against the request of my hostess. Mostly, it was an AI machine that measured hormonal levels and motion activity to interpret possible criminal behavior. I guess my hormonal levels were suspect as Rebecca got a phone call. She picked up, uh huh’d a few times, then hung up.
“They’re telling me you’re horny and I should be careful,” she said and laughed heartily.
“What?” I asked.
“Your face is red.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, completely embarrassed.
“The doctor warned me you’d be like this,” she replied. “It’s the increased hormonal activity from your therapy. Don’t worry. I won’t hold it against you.”
I knew if Larry were here, he would have said some suave line, turned things in his favor, then swooped her off her feet. I couldn’t get over my initial shame at being found out and asked her if she minded me using her computer to log into my network. “Sure, go ahead,” she told me. She put her palm against the wall which turned into a 3D display.
I sat down, logged on, and tried to determine if anyone had stolen my identity.
We all had one global identity number, confirmed by a passcode, voice-identity test, and several random algorithms hooked into the credit agencies. While I’d forgotten my password, a scan of my eye, fingerprints, and voice unlocked my account. I reset the basic codes and went through a list of all my financial accounts as well as my personal communication number. Everything was intact. No unusual activity, not even the leech-ware that sucked one to two cents every month and wasn’t worth reporting as that invited reprisal from hackers who’d get upset that their tiny tribute exacted from millions could encounter resistance (our modern-day protection racket). I had to delete spam and block out news updates about the garbage epidemic and the property selling in Antarctica.
“Everything okay?” she asked, sidling up next to me. Her hip brushed against my arm. She smelled like apricots.
“Yeah, perfect,” I answered. “I was expecting worse.”
I tried calling Larry but his communicator was off.
“Mr. Chao will be in Shanghai tomorrow,” Rebecca said.
“For what?” I asked, still unable to get my head around the idea that he was alive.
“Attending a convention to show his latest movie.”
“Rodenticide?”
“It’s been huge a hit since the explosions. Everyone’s been raving about it. Number-one hit all over the world.”
I thought about how depressed he’d been over the lack of attention the film had initially received. Then reminded myself that I’d seen his corpse. I checked all the different links and pages. Reports, video, and photographs of Larry were everywhere. I was perplexed. Had I hallucinated his death?
“Dr. Asahi told me about the convention a week ago and said I should check it out as long as I was in Shanghai,” Rebecca interjected. “A real-life big explosion is all he needed for fame.”
I brooded on it, confused.
“How do you rank Rodenticide?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean among the movies you worked on.”
It took me a second to register what she was asking. “I’m not sure.”
“What was your favorite movie to work on?” she asked, and I realized she was trying to get my mind off the situation.
“58 Random Deaths and Unrequited Love.”
“Why?”
“W-we wanted to make a movie showing how pointless everything was,” I answered.
“You think everything is pointless?”
“I could have died out there and no one would have known. The overwhelming motivation for me to come back was to avenge Larry. If I’d known he were still alive, I probably would have just waited for him to come to the rescue.”
Rebecca filled my cup with wine and took a long draught herself.
“Would you still make the same movie if you went back in time?”
“No one would ever make the same movie they did when they were younger,” I replied and finished my cup. “What kind of movie would you make if you could make one?”
“I don’t know if I’d ever want to make a movie.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to spend a year of my life suffering just so I can make other people happy, then wait to hear what critics say, hoping they’ll like it enough so people can watch it. Why don’t you make your own movies?”
“You already know the answer to that. I’m a ‘follower’.”
Rebecca chuckled. “My ex was a follower who wanted to be a leader. He never could accept that he didn’t have what it took to be a leader. He eventually divorced me so he could meet other women.”
“He cheated on you?” I wondered, surprised.
“He was honest enough to separate with me before sleeping with any other women. I respect him for that. Do men always want more?”
“I don’t know very many that want less.”
“What about content with what they have?”
“That takes a humility and a level of awareness that isn’t much valued in our world,” I said, knowing how hollow it sounded.
“Do you have that level of awareness?”
“I used to until I got married.”
“She pushed you?”
I shook my head. “I wanted to give her the world for all she’d done for me.”
“Why?”
“She gave me something no one else ever had.”
“What?”
“Family. Even now, I’d give up the world for her.”
Rebecca laughed. “I didn’t know you were such a romantic.”
“I like to pay my debts.”
“So she’s a debt to you?”
“At our wedding ceremony, her family had hundreds of people. You know how many my side had?”
She shook her head.
I made a big zero with my thumb and index fingers.
“It was humiliating,” I admitted, thinking back to the day. “But she didn’t care. Her family treated me like their own even though I had nobody. I’ll never forget that.”
“Why did you guys separate?”
“I was an insecure asshole who pushed her away,” I answered, the drink making me more honest than I should have been. “I was pretty terrible to her near the end.”
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Unrequited love is my theme song.”
“Doesn’t have to be,” she said. “Maybe you just like it that way.”
“Everyone likes to make up movie versions of themselves in their mind.”
“You have no other family?”
“Larry’s the only other person I consider family.”
“Did he come to the wedding?”
I shook my head. “He got entangled in a menage a trois with two sisters he’d been chasing for four years. I was pissed at him, but at the same time, I couldn’t blame him. Still, he was supposed to stand in as my honorary brother. I was disappointed.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. Is there a way we can get hold of Larry now?”