Don’t think about it.
You are the Toymaker’s avatar in this nation-state. You’re the executive: strong, and determined, and entrepreneurial, and skilled. You’re not some kind of paranoid-schizophrenic personality-disorder case, stoned on his own brain chemistry. There really is a chip in your skull, monitoring and controlling and stabilizing on behalf of the conspiracy for which you work. There really is someone or something watching over you, controlling from afar. The hallucinations are going to go away, then you’re going to take this reality by the throat and twist it until it crackles under your fingers like… like…
The replacement prescription sits heavy in your pocket, reassuring, a chemotaxic anchor pulling you closer to the harbour of high-functioning quasi-sanity. Just knowing it’s in your system makes you feel better. So you walk back along the main road towards town, taking your time (and avoiding the nosy buses and their intrusive cameras). About half a mile later you pass a hole-in-the-wall diner, where you pause to order a mixed meze and a plate of falafels. The bored Middle Eastern guy behind the bar spends his time between serving you hunched over an elderly pad, handset glued to his ears, evidently talking an Alzheimer’s patient through replying to an emaiclass="underline" “No, look, at the top, it says get mail, write, address book, reply, tap reply—no, not the red dot, below the red dot, what do you see?” His despairing half-duplex monotone soothes your rattled nerves, reassuring you that he’s not remotely likely to be spying on you.
When you leave the restaurant, the day has brightened considerably. There are no bushes for concealment, no sinister shapes flitting past overhead—an unmanned police segway rolls up the hill, cameras panning in all directions, but even the neurotypical can see that.
Another fifty minutes of walking sees you back in the West End, approaching the marble-fronted monolith of the Hilton. You are relatively calm, at peace with what it is you are about to do. It’s true they have misplaced your luggage, and with it your sample merchandise. However—let us retain a sense of proportion—this is not the worst thing that has happened to you today, is it? Once you have unpacked your 5.62 kilograms of home and bolted the hotel-room door you’ll be safe. It just depends on whether the fool on the hospitality desk has found—
Your march across the polished floor of the lobby comes to an abrupt halt. There’s a well-dressed woman waiting beside the desk, but nobody behind it. You can feel your arousal level rising: You need your bag; your commercial sample is sleeping in it; are they playing with you? The woman is watching you with elaborate inattentiveness, carefully avoiding eye contact. “Do you work here?” you demand.
“No.” Now she looks at you. A wry twist of the lips. “They’re trying to find my parcel. I had it sent poste restante—FedEx say they delivered it this morning, but the hotel know nothing.”
The very idea! Suddenly it strikes you. You shipped your luggage via Yamato, a takuhaibin logistics company, and they simply don’t lose things. But if this woman’s package went missing, and she used FedEx—“My luggage is missing, too,” you confess. “Think they’ve got a problem?”
“I’d say so.” She nods. “Mr. MacAndrews says they’ve been having network trouble all day. That’s usually a euphemism for malware, in my experience.”
An upswing in cybernetic infestation isn’t your problem, but it puts the hospitality manager’s attitude in a different light. Maybe he’s not actually trying to fuck with you—
And here he comes, scurrying back out from a locked door with a box in his hands. He sees you and does a double-take, but goes straight for your companion: “Ms. Straight? We found it! They’ve got the computers working again, and it was sitting in our loading area along with the other inbound consignments.” He looks at you directly. “Mr… Christie? Your luggage was missing, too, wasn’t it?” Cheeky sod. You nod. “I’ll just go see if it’s turned up as well, now we’ve got our logistics working again.”
He turns and rushes off, leaving your companion looking at her box. “Humph. I thought he was supposed to get some proof of identity before handing items over,” she says disapprovingly.
“Well, that’s his problem, isn’t it?” you say, and smile at her. You focus on her properly for the first time, taking in: red hair, carefully styled; lips and eyes emphasized, but not heavy on the slap; wearing a green dress with a low neckline that’s kept on the business side of sexy by a black jacket. Mature but rootable, in other words, and if she isn’t on the pull, you’re a cactus.
You haven’t had any action for a couple of weeks now. You don’t know where the local cruising grounds are, and here in the dour puritan anglosphere the hotel front desk doesn’t provide room service. You have certain needs—exacerbated now you’re coming down from your little reality excursion. You posted an ad on a swinger aggregator a couple of days ago, but no joy yet. The idea of her plumped wasp-sting lips wrapped around your cock appeals: You take conscious control of your smile and widen it.
“I suppose so.” She catches your eye and smiles back. “I’ll just have to wait.”
Interested but coy: You’ve met this attitude before, and it bugs the living fuck out of you. Why don’t these sheeple admit that it’s pointless and drop the pretence that they care? Oh, but I’d feel guilty, they say if you ask them why they tipped the waiter/returned the excess change they were given/didn’t pad the insurance claim/turned down the zipless fuck—even though there’s absolutely no chance that anyone would catch them. You smile back at her and nod.
“Are you staying here for long?” you ask.
“Oh, just checking in for a few nights.” She raises an eyebrow. “Yourself?”
“The same,” you say honestly. “Here on business, just checking in, gone tomorrow. At a loose end, really.”
Her pupils dilate slightly, and there are some other cues: You’ve studied this shit, looked into NLP, and you focus on emitting the right signals, mirroring her subconscious arousal. “That’s a shame,” she says. “What line are you in?”
That’s off-script, but not too far off-script. “I’m in toys,” you say. It’s even true. “Re-establishing a local supply-chain subsidiary that’s been neglected for too long.” The door is opening: The irritating Mr. McAndrews is on his way back. “Busy by day, totally at a loose end by night. I don’t suppose you’d be interested in dinner?”
Two out of three times, they say no at this point: If she says yes, you’ve got about a 40–per cent chance of finding out if she swallows. McAndrews is busy with the telescoping handle of what out of the corner of one eye you recognize is your case. You keep your eye-balls pointed the right way (which is not at Ms. Straight’s face or tits).
“Sure,” she says, her smile medium-flirtatious. “Meet here, eight tonight?”
“Glad to,” you say, mirroring her expression and carefully concealing your satisfaction. Then you break contact deliberately, slewing towards Mr. McAndrews, who is wrestling your suitcase to a halt in front of you. “Ah, excellent. By the way, Ms. Straight here—”