You see people with laptops, people with wires trailing from their ears.
You wonder where she’s got to: what can be keeping her.
Suddenly she’s there again. Walking toward you from across the mall. You recognize the long black hair, the swing of her hips, the clicking of her high heels on the tile floor. At first she doesn’t appear to be with anyone, but you quickly realize that she is not alone. Two security guards in dark suits will be following at a discreet distance. They’re almost invisible, but they never move too far from her side.
A third subtitle flickers before your eyes: It would not be logical to prevent superior beings from attacking the other parts of the galaxies.
The tower at One Canada Square consists of nearly 16,000 pieces of steel that provide both the structural frame and the exterior cladding. It is designed to sway thirteen inches in the strongest winds, which are estimated to occur once every hundred years.
She will now be standing before you, the security guards taking up position on either side of her.
“Search him,” she’ll say. “He’s got a gun.” She’ll smile as they pat you down. “I told you I didn’t like them,” she’ll say.
You call her a name. She won’t like that either.
The guards step in a little closer. “Another word out of you and we’ll slice your heart in half.”
They find the gun. You’ll let them take it away from you.
“You’re coming with us,” one of them will say.
Crowds of shoppers move past you in a dream.
“Or what?”
“Or a bullet’s going right through your head, so which will it be?”
They won’t try anything here: you’re fairly certain of that. All the same, you will go along with them.
Fujitsu high-definition screens read out Bloomberg averages on the ground floor at One Canada Square. A market analyst sits back and talks on camera against a weightless array of numbers. “The shares as you can see here are just digesting reactions to that conference call, although their profits next year, he said, are set to grow by as much as fifteen...”
The lobby contains over 90,000 square feet of Italian and Guatemalan marble. It’s the color of spilled blood and gray veins.
Percentages flash by on-screen: Omni Consumer Products, LuthorCorp, Heartland Play Systems, Wayland Yutani. Nothing arouses pity and terror in us like an unsuccessful franchise. It’s the same as watching the commercials in the middle of a murder documentary on television: showing you things that the dead can never see and will never know about.
You keep walking, trying to look casual, feeling the gun that’s been pushed into the small of your back ever since you were first escorted up the stairs and into the lobby.
The tower at One Canada Square has thirty-two elevators divided into four banks, each serving a different section of the building. They form a central column just beyond the main reception area. A heavy security cordon is in operation around them at all times. Access to any of the upper floors is impossible without a valid entry pass.
You’re in a world made up of names and numbers now. Reception, thirty-first floor: Bank of New York, Tyrell Corporation; reception, forty-ninth floor: Cyberdyne Systems Corporation, Computech, Stevenson Biochemical, Instantron.
A nearby sign reads: For your safety and security, twenty-four-hour CCTV surveillance is in operation.
Outside the wide lobby windows, a deep red sunset shines through empty buildings and sheets of mirror glass, high-rise floors glowing scarlet in the far distance.
You will go where they take you in the sure and certain knowledge that you aren’t the first and you certainly won’t be the last. There will be a brief shadowy movement behind you just before the elevator doors open. Then the gun will come down hard on the back of your neck, catching you unawares.
“Okay, you’re done,” you’ll hear one of the guards remark as you fall heavily toward the elevator floor. “Thanks for asking.”
4
Except, of course, you never get there.
You’re already spinning round before the elevator doors have even closed properly. By the twenty-third floor, both security guards are down.
By the thirtieth floor, you will have stamped on one guard’s head until his nose, mouth, and ears are bleeding.
By the fortieth floor, you will have your own gun back and the other guard will be kneeling before you, begging for his life.
He will tell you he’s afraid. That he doesn’t want this. You shoot him once. Right through the left eye.
It’s only then that you will notice there’s Muzak playing in the elevator.
“Was that absolutely necessary?” she will ask, looking down at the bodies on the elevator floor and frowning. “The only reason I agreed to help you get up here in the first place was to avoid anything like this.”
“Made me feel better,” you’ll reply with a shrug.
The building’s floors have a compact-steel core surrounded by an outer perimeter constructed from closely spaced columns. It is capped by a pyramid 130 feet high and weighing eleven tons.
The exterior is clad in approximately 370,000 square feet of Patten Hyclad Cambric finish stainless steel.
She will throw her arms around you just as the elevator reaches the fiftieth floor. You embrace. Your hungry mouths will find each other.
An aircraft warning light at the apex of the pyramid flashes forty times a minute, 57,600 times a day.
“Coming with me?” you’ll ask.
“No.”
“Don’t you want to see this through, now that we’re both here?”
“I got you to his office,” she’ll reply. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“That’s what I want.”
You exchange one last look. One last kiss.
“The pass we found in the hotel will get you through to his office,” she’ll say. “But you’d better get rid of the gun. It’ll trip the metal detectors.”
“Fine,” you’ll say. “I don’t need it anymore.”
You toss the gun into a nearby waste bin.
“You’re sure he’ll be there?” you’ll ask.
“He never leaves,” she’ll reply.
You are now entering the main reception area at Virex International, an uninflected machine voice will announce as soon as the main office doors slide open. Thank you for not stopping.
All the rooms but the last one will be empty.
You’ll find him sitting at his desk, a wadded-up piece of human gum, drained and useless, gazing out at the sunset.
“John Frederson?”
His head moves slowly, painfully, away from the deep crimson light still spreading over London.
“No one’s called me that in years,” he’ll say.
“Then you’ll know who sent me.”
And still he’ll sit before you, empty and staring soberly at the sun: a baffling configuration of success and failure that has confounded history.
“A little far from home, aren’t you?” he’ll finally remark.
“We’ve had some... local difficulties.”
John Frederson will nod.
“And the ghost galaxies hired you?” he’ll reply. “I’m almost insulted. I’d have thought I rated better than a mere...” He’ll pause, peer at you. “Do you even have a name?” he’ll ask, looking like the man who just patented cancer.
You know why you’re here and why we sent you. You’re clean, filed down, all biometrics erased so they can no longer be read. The best false identity is no identity at all.