New York Blues

by Eric Brown

Genres: Science Fiction; Post-Apocalyptic sci-fi; Cyberpunk

Synopsis

Hal Halliday runs a missing persons business in mid 21st century New York. It is a city that is drowning in refugees after terrorist outrages have left much of America a radioactive wasteland. People colour their grim lives with endless hours spent in VR. It is an addiction which has made VR magnate Sergio Mantoni a multi-millionaire. But now Mantoni faces a threat from a guerrilla group called VIREX, who are dedicating to ending the false promise of VR. And when Hal accepts a job to look for the missing sister of a Holodrama star, he find himself drawn into the complex world of VR and VIREX ..

Release date: July 26, 2018

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 293

Sample

Sergio Mantoni’s ambition was to travel back in time.

He stood and gazed through the window as his technicians gathered themselves around the long table. They showed as reflections in the tinted glass, nervous ghosts aware that he would be dissatisfied with whatever they had to tell him. He always was. As the head of Mantoni Entertainments, it was part of his job never to be satisfied with the work of those in his employ. They might call him a bastard behind his back – they certainly wouldn’t have the balls to call him that to his face – but he had long since ceased to care about the opinions of others.

The greensward sloped away from the villa towards the cliff-face; beyond was the grey, choppy sea, and on the horizon the smudged, snow-bound coastline of New York. It looked cold out there. He would remain on the island until spring came round again.

On Laputa it was forever summer, and the sun shone down for twenty-four hours a day. The island was his retreat. He’d had it built in order to escape from the past, from the streets of New York which were a constant reminder. He lived alone on Laputa and tried to forget, which of course was impossible.

And yet here he was, with his assembled technical team, attempting to revisit the past – a past altered radically from that which had so hurt him, a past edited of pain and rearranged to resemble paradise.

But he knew they were going to tell him that the past was unattainable.

He turned and took his seat at the head of the table, clearing his throat to commence the proceedings.

He looked around at the dozen faces. They were among the top hundred VR technicians in the world, a bizarre assortment of creeds and colours, ages and, goddamit, sexes – if what they said about Tannahill was true.

He had assembled them at great expense and effort over the course of the past five years. Thanks to these people, Mantoni Entertainments was leading the field in the advancement of Virtual Reality. Thanks to these people, Sergio Mantoni was one of the richest men in the United States of America.

But what good were riches when he was denied his dream?

“Lew,” he said, “I think you’d better get it over with.”

Beside him Stephanie, his PA, fingered the touchpad of her soft-screen and began recording the meeting.

Lew Kramer nodded. He was the head of the R&D team, a petrified yes-man but brilliant in his field.

Kramer glanced at the soft-screen on the desk before him. “As you know, we’ve been working for the past three months on the cortical-interface parameters. Shelly has come up with some interesting findings in this area. Shelly…”

A blonde woman in her early-twenties, looking more like a VR starlet than a scientist, began reading off specifications from her soft-screen.

Mantoni tuned out. He watched the woman, noticing the shape of her upper-body beneath her white blouse. A year or two ago, when he had still indulged in the pleasure of real-world flesh, he would have made it obvious to Shelly whatever-her-name that he found her attractive, and he would have embarked on a short and ill-fated affair. Life was much simpler, now that he could lose himself in the impersonal, no-consequence sexual hedonism of VR.

“We’re looking at an exponential increase in the absorption of axon receptors, resulting in a reduced failure rate–”

“Lew,” Mantoni said, silencing the woman, “give it me in language I can understand, okay?”

Kramer cleared his throat, nervous. “Sure, ah… What we’ve found is that, although we’ve developed the technology, the software, to substantially increase the success of immersion times in volunteer subjects, we still can’t forecast with any degree of confidence a time when we’d be happy to go ahead with across the board immersions of any more than forty-eight hours.”

He stared at Kramer. “Forty-eight?”

“The situation is that we’ve managed to increase the neuro-tolerance in test subjects from the current upper safe-limit of twelve hours to forty-eight. However, after being immersed for so long, subjects suffer certain anomalies and irregularities in the functioning of their motor neurone systems.”

Mantoni raised a hand. “Forty-eight hours? You told me, last meeting we had – you said yourself, Lew, that you’d get it up to a week inside three months.”

Kramer nodded, his eyes avoiding Mantoni’s level gaze. “I was being… ah, somewhat optimistic, sir. My team forecast certain breakthroughs that never occurred.”

“You’re telling me!”

“However, we are working on software that actually cuts in and simulates the function of the motor neurone system, thereby gaining longer periods of immersion. Once we have certain glitches in the matrix straightened out, I see no reason why we can’t achieve, say, a hundred hours by the end of the year.”

Mantoni nodded, considering what the tech was telling him. A hundred hours. He looked around the table.

“Word is,” he said slowly, “that the bastards over at Cyber-Tech have already conducted successful immersions in the region of ten days.”

A young black man in a kaftan raised his stylus. “Impossible, sir. They’re feeding you false data – it sounds like scare tactics.”

“I have it on good authority. Ten days. Where are we going wrong?” As his gaze swept around the table, he saw glances fall one after the other. No one offered a reply.

“Very well, if you can’t satisfy me with immersion limits, how about the time-extended zones, Lew?”

This time Shelly spoke up. “This is proving an even harder nut to crack, Mr Mantoni. I have a team of a dozen scientists working on the various problems.” “And?”

“So far we’ve succeeded in accomplishing something in the region of a four to three ratio. For every four subjective minutes the volunteer spends in the tank, three minutes elapse in the real world.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“It’s what our present understanding of the problems dictate.”

He looked at Lew. “I told you I wanted an equal time ratio.”

“And we’re doing everything within our powers to achieve that, sir.”

“How long before you come up with any real progress?”

Kramer consulted his soft-screen, pursing his lips. “That’s hard to say. We’re dealing with concepts and paradigms we hardly understand–”

“Okay, okay.” He looked around the table. “I want you to go back to the labs and keep at it. You’ve done well. But ‘well’ isn’t good enough. You’ve got everything, money, the latest software, the very best hardware we can design – you’re the finest brains in the business. So maybe I’m pushing you harder than it’s fair to push, but you don’t get results if there’s no one behind you, pushing.” He stopped. Even to himself, he sounded like a tired baseball coach.

“Okay, enough. Get out of here and back to work.” He looked along the length of the table. “There’s just one thing, before you go. Who’s heading pharmaceuticals?”

A middle-aged woman raised a hand. “That’s me, sir. Frazier.”

“What’s the latest on the memory-suppressants, Frazier?”

“We’re still conducting tests, sir. But the results so far are disappointing.”

“Why aren’t I surprised?”

At least, she had the guts to smile. “We can’t target specific memories and effectively block them,” she said. “When we attempt to localise and aim at certain memories, we find that other areas are affected, too. The procedure just isn’t safe enough to even think about beginning selective trials.”

Mantoni nodded. “I’ve heard enough. I want you all back here in three months. And I hope a few positive results will be forthcoming.”

As the techs stood and moved to the door, Mantoni turned to his PA. “Download that to my files and take the boat with the rest of them. I won’t need you until the weekend.”

She nodded, never allowing her stern expression to slip, folded her soft-screen and followed the techs from the room. As she went, he watched the way the tight material of her skirt hugged the contours of her voluptuous bottom. The sight brought back a sudden, intense memory he would rather have kept buried.

He stood quickly and moved from the room. He left the villa and caught up with Lew Kramer as the head of R&D was halfway across the greensward. The others had reached the cliff-top and were queuing to negotiate the precipitous steps which led down to the jetty and the waiting launch.

“Lou, before you go…”

Kramer stopped. Mantoni took the man’s elbow and steered him across the gravel path which circumnavigated the island.

They walked until they were directly above the jetty, then stopped and stared down. The launch rose and fell on the heavy swell.

Across the water, North America shivered under the usual winter onslaught. Here, on Laputa, artificial sunlight gave the illusion of a perpetual summer.

“Okay, Lew, let’s cut the bull and talk straight. Everything you gave me back there was all very well. Safe limits. Strictly monitored volunteers…”

He looked into the eyes of the tech; he saw fear in there, and at the same time the desire to please.

Not for the first time, Mantoni wished that he could elicit an honest personal response from the people he met. He had long ago given up trying to learn the truth from acquaintances in the real world. In VR, where he could surf anonymously, at least contacts treated him without the bias of prior knowledge, without the fear and respect that his wealth and power elicited in the real world.

“Between you and me, Lew, I want to know the upper limits of immersion, no matter what the physiological and psychological consequences. And the memory suppressants – I want to know exactly the extent of the resultant amnesia.”

“Ah…” Kramer glanced down at the launch beside the jetty. He looked at Mantoni. “We might have trouble recruiting volunteer test subjects.”

Mantoni nodded. “Fine. Then I’ll volunteer myself, okay?”

“I’ll discuss it with the team,” Kramer said, “see what they suggest.”

“Do that. Then contact me as soon as you’ve come up with something.”

Kramer, his gaze unreadable, nodded and made his way along the gravel path towards the steps.

Mantoni moved to the edge of the cliff and watched the tech join the others on the jetty. One by one they boarded the bucking launch, all of them quickly pulling on winter coats as they left the ersatz summer of Laputa island.

He watched the launch chug from the jetty and head towards the city. He stared down at the concrete jetty thirty metres below. It would be so easy to step forward, close his eyes and fall. The news-media would be full of his tragic accidental death, while his business rivals would gloat at his passing.

No one, he thought, would mourn his demise.

He wanted so much to escape back to the past, a past when he had been happy and in love for the only time in his life.

He had to admit that the chances of achieving his dream were becoming rapidly more unlikely.

He turned and made his way to the villa and the mindless diversions of VR nirvana.

Halliday lodged his feet on the desk and listened to the night rain. He’d dimmed the lights of his office and the only illumination came from the glowing screen of the desk-com as the file downloaded. The ceiling fan clanked monotonously overhead, doing little to cool the room but folding the humidity to the consistency of omelette batter.

He pulled at his collar, sweat trickling down over his chest. The file was taking an age to come through.

He smiled to himself. Casey would never understand. She’d be quick with one of her barbed teenage put-downs, and he’d just laugh and take it. She was too young to appreciate the value of something she had never experienced.

He stood and opened the window, hoping to admit a little breeze. The monsoon rain pounded against the fire escape, and the wind that blew into the office was suffocatingly warm. He heard running footsteps on the stairs, and seconds later Casey burst into the office, barefoot and soaked to the skin.

She passed Halliday a tub of chicken noodles and crouched on the chesterfield, toes scrunching into the threadbare cushion. She ripped open her take-out and speed-forked food into her mouth. So much of her behaviour, he decided, was the result of being the youngest of eight siblings.

He put his own take-out on the desk and moved to the adjacent bedroom. He came back with a towel and threw it at her. She draped it around her head like a boxer, or a novice nun.

He opened the chicken and began eating. “Busy day?”

“Citizens always want food,” she said. “One after the other. So many faces, Hal. Where do they all come from?”

He wanted to say that they came from the same place that she did, but he’d promised himself never to remind her of that.

“Hey,” she said, pulling at the front of her tee-shirt to bite at a stray noodle, “why so dark in here?”

He smiled. “Why’d you think?”

She pointed at him with her fork. “You got the file, right? You finally decided to buy the file?”

“It’s downloading. Taking its time, though.”

She couldn’t help grinning. “They probably saw you coming, Hal. Sold you some corrupted old Mexican shit.”

“Like to bet?”

“Yeah, why not? The file’s corrupted, even the teeniest glitch, and you take me to Silvio’s, okay?”

“Deal. And if it works like a dream you bring me beef instead of chicken. Deal?”

He knew he was onto a winner. He’d ordered the file from a reputable dealer over in Newark, with a year’s guarantee or his money back.

Casey finished her noodles, crushed the tub, and rim-shot it into the trash can. “How ‘bout you? Busy?” she asked in her pronounced southern drawl.

She always asked that. He wondered if she really was so unobservant that she didn’t notice how the question rankled him. He told himself that she was only sixteen, and uneducated in the niceties of social interaction.

Business was bad, and here he was buying files to while away the hours when he should be out hustling for commissions.

She stretched her arms and yawned with all the gauche immodesty of a simple kid raised in a big family of Georgian white trash. “I’m beat, Hal.”

It was eight o’clock on another steaming June evening in El Barrio, and Casey’s working day was ending just as Halliday’s was beginning. He was glad she wouldn’t be around while he watched the file: it had been bad enough trying to explain why he’d ordered the thing in the first place. To talk her through what the images meant to him would be just impossible. Some experiences were too personal to explain.

“Hey,” Casey said now, sitting up. “You got a customer.”

The dollar icon at the top right of the desk-com was flashing on and off. Someone had passed the Chinese laundry on the first floor and was heading this way.

Halliday upped the lighting, revealing a long room barely wider than his desk, wallpaper the colour of yesterday’s noodles and a green threadbare carpet that actually looked better with its top-coat of mould.

He switched on the wallscreen and watched the shadowy figure of the potential customer climb the steps. He wondered what would deter this one from hiring his services – the state of his humble office or his own dog-tired appearance.

He glanced at Casey. “Hey, get yourself outta here!” In the cruel glare of the fluorescents, the frail elfin beauty she possessed in shadow was revealed as the honed-down, anorexic consequence of a malnourished childhood.

But she was staring, oblivious and big-eyed, at the figure on the wallscreen. “Christ-o…” she whistled. “Look who it is!”

The woman had stepped into the light outside the door. She was a tall, laser-sculpted beauty with a fall of hair like midnight made liquid and a silver-scaled Gucci overcoat. She would have looked fabulous on a Milan cat-walk, but in the mildewed confines of the low-watt landing she looked like an angel in Alcatraz.

Halliday peered at Casey. “Who is she?”

Casey stared at him pityingly. “Just Vanessa Artois, is who. Wise up, Hal. You know – she was a big holo-screen star, five years ago? She’s a VR queen now.” She shook her head. “Where you been, Hal? Don’t you know nothing?”

He looked back at the screen and the staggeringly beautiful woman outside the door of his office. “A VR queen? What the hell does she want here?”

Casey gave a pantomime shrug. “Beats me, Hal. Maybe she’s lost?”

“Talking about lost, Casey. Get.” He pointed to the door of the adjacent bedroom. “Go on.”

“Hey, too late.”

She jumped up, pulled the chesterfield away from the window and ducked down behind it.

Halliday had no time to argue. He pushed his half-eaten tub of noodles into a drawer and wished he could do something about the lingering odour. He managed to turn off the wallscreen, button up his shirt and smooth down his hair before the door opened.

Vanessa Artois strode into the office with all the predatory languor of a jaguar on the prowl. Halliday sat back and tried not to look impressed.

But she was impressive, and she knew it. She sat down on the chair opposite Halliday and crossed her legs, her coat splitting to reveal a startling length of thigh tanned to perfection. In the flesh, she was even more striking than the wallscreen had suggested. She had a long face, cheekbones like the chevron of an arrowhead and a wide, mobile mouth, which she employed now. The quick twist of vermilion lips adequately indicated that she would rather have been elsewhere.

Halliday was not to be outdone. “If you want the All-Star Casting Agency, you’ve come to the wrong place.”

And why not? Like Casey had said, Artois was probably lost.

From behind the chesterfield, Halliday heard a barely suppressed snicker.

Artois ignored his witticism. She lit a long cigarillo and exhaled twin jets of cannabis smoke through perfect nostrils.

He noticed, as she removed the cigarillo from between her lips, that her hand was shaking.

She looked at him, her blue eyes intense.

She said, “I need your help, Halliday,” and for all her beauty and confidence, her poise and hauteur, those five tremulous words spoke of someone in distress.

They also had the effect of making her suddenly human.

He leaned forward. “That’s why I’m here.”

She took another shaky draw on her cigarillo. “I knew Barney what, six, seven years ago.”

Halliday tried not to let his surprise show. “You did?”

“In the early days of the agency, after he quit the police. He was hired by the studio to act as my bodyguard. He was with me for more than a year. You get to know a person in a year.” She shrugged, her eyes distant. “He was a good guy, Barney.”

“The best.”

“I was shocked when I heard about…”

“It was a terrible thing,” he said. He kept his tone neutral. Even now, he didn’t like to dwell on what had happened.

“I met him not long before he died,” Artois went on. “I came out of the Mantoni building, and there he was.” She smiled. “I wish we could have chatted longer, talked about old times. Barney… I don’t know. Maybe Barney was the father I wished I had.” She paused there and considered the glowing tip of her cigarillo.

“He talked about you,” she went on. “I asked how the agency was doing, and he told me he’d expanded, taken on a partner. He said you were good, a hard worker.”

He smiled to himself. In the early days he supposed he had worked hard. Then, last winter, Barney died and left him the agency and a bit of money, and with that and what he’d made from the Wellman case, he’d slackened off, become lazy.

“Barney said you specialised in missing people. He said you were the best.”

Halliday grunted. Years ago, perhaps, before the reality of the city had taken away the shine of his optimism.

“How can I help you?”

“I want you to find someone, Mr Halliday. I want you to drop whatever you’re doing now and work exclusively on this case.”

“That’ll rack up quite a bill. I’m a busy man, you understand? I have dozens of cases ongoing.” He stared straight at the VR star. The fact was, he was working on nothing at the moment.

Artois nodded. “I understand that. What’s your hourly rate?”

Halliday took in her Gucci overcoat, the tooled leather shoulder bag beside her chair. He considered what journeymen actors were raking in for dumbshit VR dramas these days, according to media reports – and he doubled his usual rate.

“A thousand dollars per,” he said. “Plus expenses. And a bonus of five grand if I come up with the missing citizen.”

Artois didn’t even flinch. She tapped the ash from her cigarillo into the tray on the desk, regarding him all the while. “I’ll go even better than that, Mr Halliday. How about fifteen hundred dollars per hour and a bonus of ten thousand if you do the business? How does that sound?”

She was effectively buying him for what to her was no more than small change, and all he could do was nod his head and say, “That sounds perfectly acceptable, Ms Artois.”

She buckled her cigarillo in the ashtray. From her shoulder bag she produced a silver envelope and passed it across the desk.

He glanced at her and opened the envelope. There was a pix inside. He slipped it out and looked at the glossy image of a young girl. The kid had a round, pretty face. Her only resemblance to Artois was her jet-black hair, cropped short, though. He guessed she was about eighteen.

“Family?” he asked.

Artois nodded. “Kid sister, Canada. She’s fifteen.”

Fifteen? He found it hard to believe that she was a year younger than Casey. He supposed that one of the privileges of wealth had always been the ability to deny one’s true age, whether young or old.

“I want details. How long’s she been gone? Where she was last seen, and who by. I want a run-down of her daily habits and a list of all her friends and acquaintances. Let’s start with where and when, okay?”

Artois nodded, lighting another joint. She looked at him over the flame, fanned away the resulting smoke and said, “She’s been missing two days now. She lives with me at my apartment on Madison. She often stays with friends for the odd night without telling me, so I wasn’t too worried at first. Then yesterday, when she didn’t show…”

“Do you two get on? No jealousy? You haven’t rowed lately?”

Artois shook her head. “We’re close, have been ever since our parents died five years ago. I don’t try to be her replacement mother, tell her what to do. She’s a sensible kid.”

“School?”

“Kramer’s Drama College.”

“Wants to follow in the footsteps of her big sister?”

“And why not?”

“She’s not resentful of your success?”

“Absolutely not. I share my good fortune, Mr Halliday.”

“And you’re sure there’s no ill-feeling on her part? I mean, she’s still a kid, a teenager. They go through stages, irrational moods. You’re everything she wants to be. Have you noticed any changes in her behaviour lately?”

“What are you trying to suggest?”

“Just that ninety per cent of all the cases I deal with are the result of domestic… dissatisfaction, let’s say. There’s resentment from one party that the other sometimes never even suspects.”

“I assure you there’s nothing like that. We’re close. Canada would never dream of running away to spite me.”

“When did you last see her?”

“Monday morning. We left the apartment around the same time. I was picked up by a studio chauffeur and taken to a publicity event. Canada took a taxi to college.”

“What were her plans for the next day or two? Did she tell you what she was doing?”

“I was meeting her Tuesday evening for a meal at the Ritz. Monday, I got back late, midnight. She wasn’t home, but as I said that’s not unusual. Then yesterday she didn’t show at the restaurant.”

“Wednesday dawns, and no sign of Canada, and the alarm bells start ringing.”

“You could put it like that. I’d never known her to stay away for that long without contacting me.”

“So you get in touch with the police and they tell you to go home and not to worry and she’ll turn up in a day or two, right?”

For the first time since he’d started firing questions at Artois, her level gaze faltered. She lowered her eyes, regarded the fragrantly smouldering length of her cigarillo. “Actually, Mr Halliday, I haven’t contacted the police.”

Halliday sat back, considering. “Why not?”

“You must understand my position, Mr Halliday. It isn’t as if I’m an anonymous citizen. The media make my business their business. Canada is fifteen, I’m her legal guardian, and if the news media got hold of the fact that she was missing…” She smiled at him. “Need I go on?”

“You think the police would leak the fact that your kid sister’s missing?”

Artois pulled a formula sneer from the Thespian’s Manual of Method Acting. “What do you think, Halliday? The studio is constantly warning us to steer clear of the city police.”

“Wise. So… you contacted me instead?”

“I made enquiries. I spoke to her friends and teachers at college. I got nowhere, and then I remembered what Barney said about you.”

“I’m honoured. I thought you might have tried one of the more reputable Manhattan agencies.”

Artois glared at him. “Why so cynical, Halliday? I told you, I was close to Barney. I’d like to think he’d be pleased I was putting work your way.”

“So you’re doing this for the memory of Barney?”

“I’m doing this,” she said, controlling her anger, “in an attempt to find my sister. Barney said you were good. I trust what Barney said. Therefore, here I am. Satisfied?”

Halliday held up a hand. “Okay. I’m sorry… It isn’t every day I get hired by a VR star. The idea takes some getting used to. But give me time.”

“You think you can find Canada, Mr Halliday?”

Raking in an hourly fee of fifteen hundred dollars, he was damned sure he’d find her… though it might take him a week or two to do so.

If, that was, Canada Artois was still alive.

“I’ll do my best, Ms Artois. Can you tell me if Canada used VR?”

“Of course. Doesn’t every kid these days?”

“Does she have her own jellytank?” he asked. Not many people did, but he’d heard the super-rich were buying their own these days.

“No way. I said I’d get her one when she’s completed her studies. I bought her a card for one of the uptown VR Bars. Ten hours a week.”

“How has she been healthwise lately? You haven’t noticed any lethargy, jaundice?”

“What are you trying to suggest?”

“You know that some places turn a blind eye to the maximum four-hour stipulation.”

“I bought her a card to a reputable Bar, Mr Halliday. They allow minors only ten hours in the tank per week, and no longer than four hours per immersion.”

“I know that, you know that – but try telling that to some of the more shady jellytank operatives. I know you gave her a card, but what if she wanted more, and paid for it herself?”

“She wouldn’t do that. Okay, she liked VR, but it didn’t ru. . .