Time-stamp the reflection, bookmark it.
I run another Facecrawler, limiting to “Polish Hill” and the years of Albion’s lease, but instead of searching for Albion’s Accelerant, I search for this substitute car, the ’53 Altima sedan. Ready to kill the process if I hit the same flood of errors, but the hack’s slipped up: whoever deleted Albion’s car used the Altima as a universal substitution, probably with something as simple as Find and Replace All. The Facecrawler brings manageable results—I pin the results to a map of Polish Hill and the pins cluster around two locations like a trail of bread crumbs: Albion’s apartment on Dobson and the underground parking garage of another nearby apartment, a high-rise just a few blocks away tagged the Pulawski Inn. I save my search, reset the Archive to a date when the Altima should be parked at the Pulawski Inn, and walk to try and find the car.
Every floor of the Pulawski Inn is quartered into lofts, every loft expansive with picture windows and sliding glass doors that lead to slim balconies. The lobby’s the color of champagne, with wingback chairs and couches candy-striped in pale gold. A mahogany table centers the room, topped with a vase of orchids. The building manager receives visitors at a front reception desk. She’s reading Camus—her brunette hair matches the mahogany table, her skirt and blouse match the walls. She smiles when I approach, says, “How may I help you?” but when I ask if she’s ever heard the name Albion, she searches through her database of recorded conversations and says, “No results found—”
“Can you tell me how to get to the parking garage?”
“The elevator’s just off the lobby,” she says, pointing my way.
I take the elevator to P1 and pace the narrow lanes of the garage, scanning cars, cross-checking with the results of my Facecrawler, and find the Altima parked in a row of spaces reserved for guests. I save the image, but everything about the car’s been wiped—no license plate, no VIN, no garbage or stuff in the backseat or the floors, nothing but a generic sculpt of a Nissan, probably ripped from a dealer stream, nothing unique to Albion.
I loiter by the car, hoping for Albion to come. Waiting, disoriented by the odd angles of the garage sculpted from fish-eye security cam footage, I focus on the elevator and bookmark the moment when the doors slide apart. Zhou. A navy peacoat, her hair tucked down inside her collar. She wears a white knit dress, her legs luminous in the elevator light. She’s with a blonde, another stunner—taller than Zhou by a few inches, in tailored blue jeans and a crimson paisley halter that shows off her shoulders and neck, her hair in a loose braid that hangs well past her belt. The blonde’s features are pure Scandinavian, with sharp cheekbones and almond-shaped blue eyes. Her left shoulder to elbow is inked with a tattoo sleeve—a complex pattern of red roses and calla lilies. She lingers with Zhou in the elevator, laughing at some remark Zhou’s made, their fingertips touching, and before Zhou leaves, the blonde reaches beneath the collar of Zhou’s coat and untucks her hair. I follow Zhou from the elevator to the Nissan, but the moment she steps inside the Nissan she disappears, a red spot hovering in her place to let me know a TimelineException has occurred.
Follow the blonde. We ride together to the tenth floor and although the blonde and the elevator are illusory, I can smell the floral scent of her shampoo, the fabric of her clothes. I touch her arm and feel her muscles and skin—she responds to my touch. Someone’s sculpted her here—her specifically, layering in her scents and reactions. She doesn’t have the generic flesh feel that others have in the Archive. At my touch, she leans close and parts her lips, expecting me to kiss her, it seems, but I keep to myself and she eventually resets, watching the ascending floor numbers. Someone programmed this scene to relive intimate moments with her. When the doors open, I follow her. The hallway is the same champagne color as the lobby with wall sconces that emit a pale glow. She unlocks her door, Room 1001, steps inside and closes the door behind her. When I try to follow, the door is locked.
“Override,” I say and a keypad hovers in the wall. I enter my access code and the door swings open, but the room’s been replaced with a generic sculpt, nothing but the model floor plan for this type of room, generic furniture and generic decor, nothing else, nothing of the blonde.
I return to the lobby. The building manager tips a cup of water into the vase of orchids. I ask her for the name of the woman who lives in Room 1001, and after a quick search she responds, “Peyton Hannover—”
I note the name.
Checking the results of my image search for the pig’s head graffiti—nothing conclusive, but an interesting string of hits that’s surely the inspiration for the image: an etching and aquatint from 1879 called Pornokrates, by a Belgian artist Félicien Rops, of a woman nude except for stockings, opera gloves and a blindfold. She’s walking a pig on a leash. I find a hi-res version of the image and save it along with the graffiti on Albion’s apartment. Not sure what this all is supposed to mean—
12, 29—
The old houses here in Polish Hill feel like they’re sinking into mud or sluggishly collapsing downhill toward the riverbeds. Row houses with wood siding, the siding unpainted or the paint long since peeled away, the wood blanched silvery gray but gone to rot near the foundation and gutters. The gate in the chain-link’s padlocked but the fence is waist level so I climb it. Mud-swamped stamps of yards studded with dog shit and toys, the porch a slab of concrete that’s cracked apart. I’ve been working in the end unit. The screen door hangs on loose hinges.
I open the front door. I step inside.
The hallway’s dim from a mass of dead flies and gnats never cleaned from the fixture glass. “You’re in Steelers Country” in needlepoint, framed. Hardwood, the tap-scratch of claws and the wet suck-breath of a large dog. It turns the corner and I yelp—embarrassed by the start of terror at yellowish eyes and teeth the color of buttermilk, but it’s all so real, the guttural apparition of a pit bull pushing against my legs and nosing into my crotch, sniffing. The dog’s all muscle, its social profile glowing: Oscar, beloved of the Stanleys. I touch his ears, rub the folds of his velvety head. I know he’s not real—it’s not real—but iLux pulls memories to fill out the gaps of the sculpt, the smell of wet dog and the feel of dog’s slobber and moist nose. Hot breath and smooth tongue. “Okay, boy, it’s okay,” trying to push the bulk away from my knees.
Oscar doesn’t follow up the stairs. He watches me and sneezes a rope of snot that he shakes from his face. Carpeted stairs, a length of pipe for the rail. The Sacred Heart of Christ hangs on the landing. Other pictures clutter the upstairs hallway, of the owners of this house, Edith and Jayden Stanley, their friends and family, all dead—dumpy women with dull hair in scrunchies and wiry earnest-eyed men, baggy T-shirts and Steelers jerseys, nurses’ scrubs and bright white sneakers.