The Presence Read online

  Intrigued, Marl exits the shop on the off chance that the woman, Miss Unnatural, might actually be in sight. Emerging, he finds himself in an endless sea of discarded faces, all perched atop their winter coats in a desperate attempt at comfort. The crowd moves along the viscera of the sidewalk like gray waste forced ahead by a peristaltic emotion he can only label “despair.” In the week since his arrival, he has sensed a connection forming. The people fascinate him, because each one is a stunning collection of eukaryotic history, all traceable to one singular start buried deep in a lineage that spans the millennia. He searches their faces and begins feeling a tremendous pressure, like a physical declaration of the intense importance of his assignment. Then a shift carves through his being, destroying the resolve that his foundation rested upon. Suddenly, he wonders if he has arrived too late, like a doctor realizing there is nothing left to do.

  He becomes overwhelmed, and the nausea rises again.

  Staggering, Marl leans heavily against the glass of Mr. Korean’s shop. He feels a hand at his shoulder.

  “Hey, are you all right? You don’t look so good.”

  The stranger’s eyes are calm, and his grip full of care.

  Marl straightens and struggles to smile.

  “You gotta watch yourself. New York can bite you in the ass if you’re not careful.” The stranger winks, then waves off the question and slips back into the flow.

  3. DE ACUERDO

  The courier measured his pace as he trotted down the long corridor. A minute too soon would be as damaging as a minute too late. He glanced at his watch. 11:58:04 a.m. He slowed to a walk.

  12:00:00 p.m.

  “Good afternoon, Stephen,” a disembodied female voice said.

  The courier took the final step and leaned toward the reader panel. “Good afternoon, Ms. Sanchez.”

  “Are you packed today?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I am.”

  The courier could feel the HVAC kick in, creating a faint hum somewhere at the edge of his hearing. The hallway was empty, the nondescript system panel the only element embellishing the stark white walls. The muscles of his neck tightened in anticipation.

  “I’m ready,” the woman said.

  The courier released the optic fiber from its cell with a swipe of his card and caught it as it popped free. A complex task reduced to an artfully simple move by hundreds of deliveries. He removed his sunglasses and snapped the fiber into the connector below his left eye. Widening his stance, the courier closed his eyes and prepared for the transfer of data.

  “You’ve styled your hair differently.”

  The courier opened his eyes. “Yes, ma’am, I have.”

  “Muy atractivo.”

  “Gracias, señora.”

  There was a sound that resembled a laugh. “I think I like the new Stephen.”

  The courier smiled.

  “Are we ready?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Let’s begin.”

  The courier took in a deep breath, and his vision dissolved.

  * * *

  Oscar Pavia was sitting comfortably in one of the overstuffed leather sofas that defined a meeting area near the front of his boss’s office.

  “Mr. Pavia, Ms. Sanchez is here,” a smooth female voice declared.

  “Thank you, Maria,” he said.

  Hidden by the opening door, Pavia watched Isabel Sanchez walk into the room. He could always tell the importance of a file by where his boss would stand. By the windows was bad. By the desk was good. By the bar was personal. Sanchez placed the sliver of organic polymer next to the desk’s Netport. Alberto Goya turned from one of the large windows that ran the length of the office and eyed it.

  “Gracias,” he said politely.

  “De nada.” Sanchez turned but froze when she saw Pavia.

  He smiled, forcing the genuineness.

  Sanchez acknowledged him with a slight, awkward tilt of her head, then hurried from the room.

  “Alberto,” Pavia said. “When are you going to enter the modern age?”

  Goya looked up from slipping the file into his Netport. “When it’s secure, my friend.”

  Alberto Goya was a tall, native Mexican who had been born just before his country’s merger with America. His hair was as black as his skin was dark, and his penchant for biosuits kept his look at the edge of fashion. He stepped into a shaft of early afternoon light, and his tie’s pattern changed.

  “It is secure, and has been for about a century,” Pavia said with a taint of frustration. He uncrossed his legs, and the sofa complained with a noise that sounded like it could have come from the ass of some enormous beast. Pavia’s mass wasn’t built from fat. His bulk had been cultivated from a career that included 12 years in Special Forces and eight years of anti-terrorist duty with the NSA. As he waited for the file to appear, the muscles of his jaw worked under a skin speckled by the scars of childhood acne.

  Goya leaned onto his desk and lit a cigarette. He exhaled smoke just as the holochive appeared in the center of the room.

  “Shade, level 4,” he said. The room obeyed, dimming the window’s glass into dark gray panels that blurred the cityscape beyond. His smoke spread lazily through the data stream, and it rippled slightly.

  Pavia leaned forward and intently studied the flow of information as it quivered before him.

  Goya drew again from his Gitane a long drag, then let the residual smoke linger about his face. He had built upon his father’s empire by leveraging Grupo TVid Azteca’s world audience share into the second-most-watched Network on the Net. Having grown the company through shrewd acquisitions, Goya had amassed an empire that would secure him a place in business history.

  “Stop!” he said.

  The data stream froze.

  “What is it?... What do you see?” Pavia asked.

  “I don’t know.” Goya, his face lined from years of dealing with serious matters, peered at the bits of information.

  Pavia rubbed his chin, and his meaty fingers scraped across his afternoon shadow like it was 220-grit sandpaper. “Hell,” he said, glancing at his watch, “if you don’t know, I certainly won’t!” He extracted himself from the sofa, leaving a crater no bioleather could restore.

  “Sit down, my friend,” Goya said with a tone of authority his head of security had come to respect.

  Pavia sat, and his pant legs hiked to expose the fur-covered trunks that were his calves. He scoffed as he settled back into the sofa.

  Goya continued studying a certain area of the file. “See this?” he finally said, pointing.

  Pavia focused on the section.

  “Why would she need this?”

  Pavia edged between two chairs to get closer to the holochive, leaned in and read.

  “I couldn’t say,” he said, straightening.

  Goya crushed out his cigarette. “Look at the download path.”

  Pavia reviewed the data again.

  “Why would a 10-year employee – one who has an exemplary record – move this kind of data in such a convoluted manner?”

  Pavia thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his Trussardi pants and shrugged.

  Goya sighed. “She is either harmlessly retrieving it for some kind of research ...” He eyed Pavia in a way that caught the veteran security man off guard. “... or she’s retrieving it because someone has paid her to.” Goya lit another cigarette.

  “But this is useless information. What could anyone do with this sort of crap?”

  “Resume,” Goya said, and the holochive began to slowly stream. “Stop. Extract these files here, here, and here.” He touched the holochive, and it instantly separated into three separate files. “Isolate and enlarge.” The holochive divided again and extracted the data into large info-panels.

  Pavia stepped closer and studied them. Suddenly, his mind saw the pattern nestled in the bits of seemingly banal information. He whistled.

  “Yes, my friend,” Goya said. “When they are separate files, they have n
o significance. But seen together–”

  “They reveal that our model employee isn’t so model.” Pavia rubbed his chin again and felt the scar from that assignment in Jordan.

  “No, she appears not to be, eh? Light, level 10!”

  The window’s grayness quickly vanished, and the office filled with early New York afternoon sunlight. Goya eased into his chair and propped his vintage kangaroo Noconas on his desk. They had been his father’s.

  “Do you want me to bring her in?” Pavia asked.

  Goya crushed out his cigarette in the large glass bowl. “No,” he said after some thought. “I think we’ll let her continue.... It should be interesting to see where this goes.”

  “I must advise you, for the record, I think that is unwise. We don’t know who she’s working for, or what they are trying to do.”

  “Don’t worry, Oscar. You’ll figure it out before it goes too far, eh?” Goya ejected the file. “Here, take this.” He flicked it at Pavia.

  The tiny wafer sailed through the air; Pavia lumbered and caught it with cupped hands. He grunted from the effort and straightened. “Who is she, anyway?” he asked, pocketing the file.

  Goya glanced at his Netport. “Moriarty ... Deja Moriarty. She’s in Entertainment.”

  Pavia turned to leave.

  “Oh, and one other thing ...” Goya folded his hands behind his head. “The more I think about it, the more I feel this one should be off the grid.... Agreed?”

  Pavia pondered the request. “De acuerdo,” he replied in the best Mexican accent his New Jersey heritage would allow.

  “Bueno,” Goya said, and snapped his Netport shut.

  4. PARIS

  “You goin’ to hang upside down all morning?” Deja asked from the cocoon she had created with the bed’s thermo-blanket.

  Chaco relaxed and let his arms dangle. He looked at her. “No,” he said. “One more and I’m done.” A drop of sweat fell from his forehead and hit the cement floor with a delicate “thap.” It vanished into the puddle that had been forming under him for 20 minutes. He grunted and pulled himself up for the 50th time.

  Deja stretched and watched her lover hang from one of the loft’s ceiling supports. She often thought how unfair it was that Chaco’s muscle tone was more the blessing of genetics than of any structured lifting. What workout he did consisted of the occasional 50 reverse pulls and some new yoga he had been into since before they met. All she knew was that it involved chrome balls the size of melons and required a Liquid Fiber connection to the Net. But what got to her wasn’t the fact that it was taught remotely from somewhere in India by a hot female instructor who had thighs that could crush coconuts. It was more that Chaco just had to disappear to the class twice a week. He referred to it as “me” time. “Suspicious” is what Deja called it.

  She pulled her knees in and tightened her cocoon. “Doesn’t that make you sick, hanging like that?”

  “Not really. You get used to it after a while. Throw me that towel, will you?”

  Deja flung it in kind of a blind, reverse-flick. It missed his outstretched hands and landed on Chaco’s cat. The big tabby growled from under the towel, then scooted blindly across the floor, pawing and jabbing, until it slammed into one of the concrete columns.

  “Oh, shit, Meatball!” Deja said.

  Chaco twisted to get a better look at the heap crumpled at the base of the column. The cat’s exposed tail twitched angrily.

  “Don’t worry, he’s all right. He does that all the time, don’t ya Meat?”

  The cat’s tail flicked and curled as if in answer. Then Meatball popped his head out and bolted across the loft in a kind of crazy sideways gallop.

  “See? He’s fine.” Chaco disengaged the boots and lowered to the floor. “He’ll probably have a headache for the rest of the morning, but that’s a cat’s life, isn’t it?” Deja groaned and pulled the blanket over her head. Chaco fell onto the bed and began playfully grabbing at where he thought her waist might be. She squealed and thrashed at his repeated jabs.

  “Jesssus, Sonny!” Deja sat up and pulled the blanket off her head. She caught her reflection in the floor mirror and saw her product-brittle hair was splayed as if a small nocturnal animal had been nesting in it.

  Chaco retreated from his attack to the edge of the bed and looked her over. “Nice style, baby.”

  Deja smiled and answered with her middle finger.

  “So elegant this early in the morning.” As Chaco left the bed, he passed his hand over the tips of her spiked hair, and Deja swatted him away. He walked into the kitchen, and its lights slowly greeted him. Deja fell back onto the pillows.

  “About last night,” Chaco said. “That was incredible. What got into you?”

  Deja opened her eyes to the cobwebs that were building in the rigging of the loft’s trusses and smiled. Meatball hopped onto her chest and began kneading. A large drop of drool fell from the cat’s mouth and spread into the threads of her T-shirt. She stroked his back, and Meatball purred with appreciation.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  Chaco looked up from pouring orange juice into a large glass and smiled.

  Something fluttered across Deja’s heart, and for the first time in their relationship, she felt a defined sense of comfort. From the beginning, she had innately sensed a connection with Chaco, and even though he never mentioned it, she was sure he felt it, too. But now, snuggled in the familiar comfort of his bed and barely descended from a passionate ledge that only two people in love could reach, she decided to allow herself the sole emotion she knew little about.

  “Hey,” Chaco said, filling a second glass. “Are you happy?”

  “Yes,” she replied warmly.

  He entered the bedroom. “Aha! In bed with another man.”

  “Guilty as charged.” Deja gently pulled Meatball’s tail as he jumped from her chest onto the shelf behind her. “And this guy never bitches about cold feet. Do you?” The cat playfully sparred with her from the protection of his high ground.

  “He’s a good guy, as cats go.” Chaco settled onto the bed and handed her a glass. He paused and took her in.

  “What? Is it my hair?”

  “No, baby, it’s not.”

  Chaco took a small sip from his glass, set it on the nightstand, leaned over, and tenderly kissed her. “You know,” he said softly, “I felt something last night.”

  Deja wrapped an arm around his neck. “Me too,” she whispered, and leaned in to kiss him.

  “Agent Chaco.”

  Deja stopped in mid-kiss.

  “Agent Chaco-san,” the voice said again.

  “Fuck,” Chaco said against her lips.

  Yoichi Tsukahara’s pudgy figure formed in the center of the loft.

  “Good morning, Agent Chaco,” he said, with a slight bow. His eyes moved to Deja; she pulled the blanket around herself.

  “Tsuka,” Chaco said, shifting to face the holoimage. “This better be damn good!”

  Tsukahara bowed again, more deeply this time. “I’m so sorry to disturb you, but there’s been a–”

  “Listen, if the drives for the NetLinks are acting up again, get one of the techs to check them.”

  “No, not NetLink Hubs. They’re running at 100 percent efficiency.”

  “If it’s the Data Transfer Units, Davis can fix them. We saw him last night at a party down in the Lower-”

  “No, Chaco-san!” Tsukahara’s face was grave, and his bow was much slower this time.

  “Yeah?” Chaco said cautiously. The holoimage rippled slightly, and its linear waves of pixels oscillated into little moiré ovals.

  Tsukahara finished his bow. “Protocol demands you return to the unit.”

  “Why?”

  “This is not a secure channel-”

  “Damn it, Tsuka. What the hell is going on?”

  Tsukahara hesitantly opened his Netpad and nodded to himself. He looked up. “We believe there has been an incident.”

  “What magni
tude?”

  “Ten.”

  “Oh my God,” Chaco said under his breath.

  Deja looked from her lover to the holoimage and back. “What, Sonny? What does he mean?”

  Chaco turned slowly, his brow furrowed.

  “Sonny?”

  “A ten is biothermonuclear.”

  Deja gasped.

  “Yeah,” Chaco said, “just like Hawaii.”

  When the Biolution arrived, it swept away many industries that were once the anchors of modern life, and in so doing, changed the dynamics of the world order. The technology it spawned created new sources of synthetic fuels and reduced the Middle East to the status it enjoyed prior to the development of the internal combustion engine. This drove radicals within the Middle East to show the infidels one last act of Arab anger.

  On a beautiful spring day in the Hawaiian Islands, the terrorist detonation of an untested biothermonuclear weapon caused the tropical paradise to debiolize, or what TVid pundits aptly labeled “merged.” At precisely noon, one million Hawaiians, tourists and military personnel (not to mention all animal, plant and aquatic life within a 300-mile radius) merged like an ice cream sundae on a hot afternoon. There was no flash of light, no rain of fire – just a congealing of matter that shocked the world. What had once been a concept was now a brutal reality whose specter hovered at the rim of the world’s collective nervous consciousness like a low-grade fever.

  Chaco slowly rose from the bed.

  “Sonny,” Deja said, “your legs, they’re shaking.”

  “Probably from the workout.” He turned to the holoimage. “Disengage this connection.”

  Tsukahara bowed, and his image disappeared.

  Chaco collected his clothes and began walking toward the bathroom.

  “Sonny?”

  Chaco stopped, but didn’t turn. “Yeah?”

  “Talk to me.... What’s going on?”

  “Deja, level 10 could mean anything from a contaiment issue to a ….”

  Deja could only think that his mind was struggling to wrap itself around the enormity of the situation.