Reopening the map, he zoomed in on the red dot. A simplified outline of the apartment layout came into view: a living room, kitchen, bedroom, and veranda. The dot was located at Rick’s front door. Amon copied the coordinates into his manifestation app of choice—Teleport Surprise—and clicked to engage.
Amon shifted his whole audio and visual feed to a graphical copy of his body that now stood in Rick’s apartment: he could feel his clammy skin on the swaying warm flesh in the cold A/C’d air and smell the perfumed human stink, but couldn’t hear or see any of it.
Teleport Surprise had plunked him into the living room with his back to the entrance. Walls of dark brown clay rose up from a floor covered in rugs of tightly-matted reeds. Above, a ceiling of the same clay sloped diagonally upwards to a sunroof in the dead center. Windows stretched across the far end, with curtains of brownish fur from some animal of cold climes—like grizzly or wolverine—drawn aside. Outside he could see a river lined with trees and crossed by golden bridges like rings over a blue finger. In the middle of the room was a wide sofa of purple leather covered in a dull green pattern of spear-hunting figures. A huge aloe vera plant reared its vigorously ramified branches over the sofa-back, and miniature palms in slim glass vases stood on each side, their roots soaking in a clear red liquid like diluted pomegranite juice. On the left, a fireplace of smooth, silver-gray rock holding two charred logs opened from the wall. On the right, through a crack in an open door, a haphazard tangle of sheets and pillows hung suspended in a king-size hammock of shimmering silk threads.
Amon had heard that Rick recently moved from the grimy bowels of Ueno to verdant Kiyosumi, but had never before seen his new apartment. He was both stunned and appalled by the wild, sumptuous decor. There was no way Rick could afford such extravagance on their Liquidator’s salary, less so with his job on the line.
Amon bent his pinky to turn his perspective towards the front door and started in surprise, the force of his movement jostling the passengers around him. Instead of Rick there was a bundle of hair, clothing, and intertwined limbs. It was two people—not one—and Amon’s surprise quickly changed to horror when he realized what their bodies were doing: they were hugging.
Rick had his right arm around a woman’s shoulders, his left forearm vertically cradling the back of her head. She was a head shorter than him, and he crouched down to nestle his face into the nape of her neck, tufts of his tousled hair pointing straight at Amon. The woman, whose back was to Amon, had one arm wrapped behind Rick’s chest and the other behind his waist. Amon couldn’t see her face, buried as it was into Rick’s torso, but he noticed her hair: a remarkable shimmering brown. Something stirred in his memory.
Rick and the woman had yet to notice the figment of Amon standing there, and he decided to wait a few moments, hoping they would extricate from each other.
The train stopped. Amon felt bodies brush past, then space opened up around him, and a force pushed from one direction (that he guessed was of the doors) before everyone molded back into place. Still Rick and the woman clung, and listening closely, Amon could hear across the living room their deep, quivering breaths and a low-pitched mmm that made his spine crawl.
In his lifetime, Amon had enjoyed heaps of porn, acclimatizing him to harshly exultant panting, passionate moans, and vulgar pillowtalk. Yet the humming of Rick and his partner had an unfamiliar resonance, suggesting not lust but a kind of tenderness. To Amon’s ears, it seemed to carry dangerous overtones, like a time-bomb counting down with the eerie jingle of a wind-up music box. All actions concerned with dating were expensive: the purchase of bouquets, the writing of romantic poetry, dinners by candlelight. They were so expensive, in fact, that many lovers only met online; website marriage being a common practice amongst the middle class and long distance artificial insemination popular amongst the wealthy. On special occasions when face-to-face meetings did happen, Amon thought it foolish to waste creditime on holding hands, snuggling, kissing, and other behavior with a poor cost-to-stimulation ratio. He understood the need for foreplay, but it was prudent to limit minimally arousing acts so as to reserve funding for frequent, satisfying consummation… and this hug was going on far too long. He could almost smell the odor of sexual frustration and monetary irresponsibility drifting through the room (even though his olfactory senses were elsewhere, amongst the perfumed human stink).
RCK! Amon typed, but there was no reaction. Amon tried again. RCK. PLEEZ!!! Still nothing. Rick’s message alert must have been set to silent, meaning there was nothing Amon could do. Unless that is, he sent a message through his work account and bypassed the block. Sensing the awkward timing, Amon was tempted to leave the lovebirds alone and return his perspective to the train. That would be the polite thing to do. But this compassionate impulse was overwhelmed by a rising panic, like acidic light congealing in his veins. Backing off now, said a frantic inner voice, would mean leaving Rick in his spacious (read “extravagant”) new apartment to hug forever (already about one minute and thirty seconds by Amon’s count) when he was already running late for the billionth time (on evaluation day no less). If Rick wasn’t punctual, Amon might lose the respect of GATA’s upper executives. He might lose bonuses and promotions. Lose his job. His dream. Everything.
RCK. KIIP YER HANZ TUE YERSAYLF. EETS TAIM FER WERK! Amon sent an official text with an emergency tag. He had wanted to be diplomatic, but the months of pent up tension had exploded. Rick’s shoulder muscles bristled like a startled cat. He disengaged his arms from the woman and raised his head from her neck to meet Amon’s gaze.
Like Amon, Rick wore the Liquidator uniform of concrete gray. Built like a cone stood on its tip, he always kept his long, slim legs placed close together, his hips went out slightly wider, and his muscled shoulders were the broadest of all. His hair was golden-brown, bangs swept to the right over his forehead and the sides stylishly disheveled; his long chin slightly pointed with a cute little dab of fat on the end like the pads on a cat’s paw; his nose thin and longish; his eyebrows thick and straight; the white skin of his cheeks tinged with a healthy flush. Overall he was handsome, but his looks were marred somewhat by a brooding depth in his light brown eyes, always seeming to hint at some half-forgotten tragedy. Reacting to Rick’s abrupt withdrawal, the woman tilted her head to look in his eyes, rippling her remarkable, shimmering hair.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. Her voice, like her hair, was uncannily familiar.