It was not unlike many scenes he’d seen before. In the days before the Flood and the Crawl, he’d paid men and women to do whatever he wished to see. One particular time, he’d been in the company of the Russian President watching the soon-to-be American President get his money’s worth from a gaggle of young prostitutes. They were putting on a golden shower performance for the old man. The man in the moon couldn’t remember if he’d been more appalled, or amused, by the spectacle as the geriatric toad who would become crown-king of the West clapped along to a whore defecating in another whore’s mouth.
Afterwards, the Russian President took him on a private visit to Chechnya where they had set up special camps to dispose of the gay population. The Russian had droned on about the camps being for the good of the people, something about societal purity, and protection of the children. The usual nonsense. The Russian was undoubtedly a shrewder man than the dull creature he was grooming for the White House, but that did not make him any less tedious. The hypocrisy was also deeper, as the man in the moon did regularly procure underage boys for the Russian to rape and abuse.
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair…
The man in the moon was a businessman, then and now. He was not concerned with nationalistic moral dimensions that politicians obsessed over; only with learning further methods of getting what he wanted.
This was what he had travelled to Chechnya to see; a dirty concrete room where man after beaten man was brought in and made to shit and piss himself as wires were inserted into bruised, sweating skin and electricity coursed through his flesh. The man in the moon was amused by erections the Chechen torturers were sporting as they brutalised their victims. He watched and listened to the shouts of religious condemnation and the screams of pain, impressed by the simplicity of the method and the results it achieved.
For all his love of technology’s endless complexities, sometimes the hammer applied correctly is all you need to keep someone in their place. And, returning to the present, he knew this woman, wearing a man’s aspect, had wounded him with her pain.
She needed to be put in her place.
He’d return the grief she’d dealt to him a thousand-fold. He placed an undead hand on her shoulder and made it happen, in the same way the Chechen torturers marked their victims. Grief coursed through her, burning her soul to its roots, leaving scars that could not be seen or undone. Then, he deleted his presence before she could be made aware of it. His work was done.
The Flood unpaused.
He disconnected and returned to the moon.
Chapter Seven
Celeste disconnected hard. She couldn’t see for tears. That had been rough. The worst trace she’d dealt with. She felt like a murderer as she stepped out of the pod, and dropped to the floor, trying to catch her breath.
…you are nothing to me…
“No,” Celeste whispered. “You were… something.”
You were real.
“Walker.” Breda’s voice said from above.
Celeste looked up, unable to get up.
“Your shift still has twelve hours left. You have defused one trace. Not enough.”
“I need a break.”
“Twenty mins, then back in your pod.”
Celeste snapped a thin smile and headed to the canteria. She’d lost her headspace completely, and needed to realign. She could feel the eyes of other chasers following her. Although most of them were plugged in, she knew that she was subconsciously overlaying without engaging her soulwire.
In the canteria, she sat in a booth. On a tray in front of her, a nuke-pac sweated plastic condensation. Its yellow, semi-liquid contents bulged when she prodded it with a finger. She should eat; tear open the packaging and swallow it down like a black or a sugarshot, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Real food would be good. Something wholesome and solid, but she didn’t have the shecks for that kind of expense. Her feet hurt, so she shucked off her boots and unpeeled her foot-sheaths. That felt better. Someone sat down in the booth without asking. It was Fenya, another chaser, younger than Celeste. “You’re not looking so great, Cee.”
“I had a rough one. Real bad. An emotive trace.”
“Ouch. How’d you defuse it?”
“I’d rather not talk about it.”
“Fair one. What’s up?”
“It knocked me out yuge, but I’m feeling them all super-bigly these days. The forty is coming up. I’m getting old, and I can see most the other chasers are ten younger than me. Some, even more.”
“You’re experienced. You’re good. You’re strong. That’s why you’re still here? How many other chasers started out same one as you and’re they still here?”
Celeste shrugged and shook her head.
“That’s what I mean,” Fenya said, “none of the rest got this far. They either dropped or lost it. You’re still going. That means something.”
“Does it? Lot of good it’s done me. Same pod every day for twenty. Same journey in and out. Same module that smells of old shit and pipe-waste.”
It was Fenya’s turn to shrug, “Mine smells of sweat and boiled clothes. You want to swap? Can throw my kiddles in too, if you like.”
Celeste smirked. “How many more times can I do this, Fen? How many more times before I come out and there’s no me left. My matrix can’t hold forever. With each translation, I’m feeling less of me gets back out. It’s eating away who I am. Give it not much more, I’ll become a memory, lost inside the thoughts and feelings of someone else. The traces I defuse never really die, y’know. I remember them. I feel them. After doing this for twenty, that’s a lot of trace-crud. A lot of bad memories that aren’t even mine. Do you know how many good memories we hold onto? Not many.”
“You’re not thinking of getting wiped and reset, are you?” Fenya asked.
“No,” Celeste said, slowly. “I don’t think so.”
“I knew someone who tried. Thought a clean brain would be a clean start. Those wipe-clinics though. Allah! She might as well have pickled her brain and put it in a jar.”
“That bad?”
“They had to hub her back from the clinic with a med-droid. There was nothing left behind her eyes. All gone. Went down to zero the next day and they dropped her. She’s in the lo-secs somewhere, what’s left that is, vegging out to channels twenty-four-seven for the rest of her lifespan.”
“No, I don’t want to be reset,” Celeste said. “But I know I’m not going to last much longer here before I lose a trace, get lost in one myself, or fuck up some other way.”
“Who’d I have to share my brown with then, eh?” Fenya asked, raising her cup of water. The liquid was murky and taste neutral. It had been put through so many filters that all minerals, chemicals, and pollutants had been sterilised – supposedly – leaving a cup of wet, tasteless nothing. Some said all water in the Crawl was urine recyc. Most preferred not to think about it too much. Like nuke-pacs, it helped keep you alive, and that was all that mattered.
“How’ve you done it, though?” Fenya asked. “If all the others from your start have gone, I mean. You have a secret?”
“Tight boots,” Celeste answered.
“Excuse me?”
“I started wearing boots a size too small the last time I started feeling old and tired like this. Believe me, it takes your mind off things when you spend most days cursing the boots you’re wearing.”