The Memory Hole
The palest ink is better than the best memory.
– Chinese Proverb
1
People would try to do one of three things when I was about to kill them: bribe me, beg me, or pretend they didn’t know me. A bribe could be any number of things, but it was usually money. The rational proposal that their counteroffer was of greater value than what I’d been paid for the hit. Begging was usually an emotional reference to family – I’ve got three kids to feed, I love my wife – that sort of inconsequential bullshit. Chances were, if it got to the point where I was paying them a visit, they hadn’t made family the most important thing in their life. The last was ignorance, feigned: I don’t know you, I’ve never seen you before – like it’s all a simple case of mistaken identity.
I never understood that one. Bribe me, beg me, but don’t bullshit me.
The guy looking up at me was trying to do just that. Fred ‘the Rake’ Bartlett: westerner, Former United States, business suit, crumpled now with blood on the dark grey lapel. He had a full head of brown hair that probably wasn’t natural and he was smaller than you’d think, given his occupation. The product in his hair held it neatly in place, even after the beating I’d given him.
His apartment was far more tasteful than anticipated. I was expecting oversized gold throw cushions, monogrammed bathrobes, maybe a large painting of a tiger eating its prey. The usual gangster bullshit. But his place was surprisingly understated. Minimalist white-and-red furnishings, brass fittings in the kitchen, nondescript art on the walls. Down one corridor I’d glimpsed a door with the letter S on it, sparkling with glitter.
The floor-to-ceiling windows provided a generous view of the city: the mammoth, bulging structures of the casinos draped in their eternal neon. The hard perpetual rain that drew a thin veil over it all. Macau – that steaming, throbbing gambling mecca; the dark underbelly of the Chinese Dream; the gaudy, glittering, and unapologetic face of its power.
Bartlett was seated with his back to the windows, dripping blood onto his white lounge. He was a nobody, really – a middle manager in an ice-nine drug cartel who had been fool enough to try cutting in on Mister Long’s territory. The memory of dinner, two nights ago, was burned deep:
Alone, eating chilli clams sautéed in beer, fresh-baked bread on the side and a large glass of whisky, straight up. The clams were real, so the dinner was expensive, but someone in my line of work ain’t saving for retirement, as a rule. The two small rooms of A Lorcha were cosy, friendly, and filled with the tantalising smells of baked seafood and crisp soy chicken. Conversations in Cantonese and Mandarin and Portuguese washed around me while I dipped the fresh bread in the clam sauce and savoured the reason this was my favourite spot in town.
The front door opened and a short guy (who I later learned was Fred Bartlett) sauntered over, cigarette dangling from his lips, a goon on either side of him. He had a gun in his belt that only I could see from this angle, sitting at a small table in the back corner of the second room. The guys with him were big shouldered: one Filipino,
one white. The white guy had a shaved head and teeth that glinted metallic blue – a nano-alloy affectation wannabe gangsters had taken to implanting lately. The Filipino wore a white fedora and the calm, coiled stance of a professional fighter.
Bartlett had this grin on his face that made me want to break a chair across it. He said: “Endgame Ebbinghaus, in the flesh.” He made a show of looking me over. “I guess I thought you’d be more intimidating. Solid titanium limbs, tattooed skull, a dick that shoots flames – that sort of thing.”
I slugged half my whisky and said: “I have no idea who you are. And the woman who takes the reservations here is more intimidating than you.”
The grin stayed on his face, though it strained a little. He took a drag on his cigarette, blowing the smoke out through his nose. “I have a feeling you’ll remember me after this,” he said, and pulled the pistol from his belt.
I’d looked down the barrel of enough guns not to get too flustered by this one, but it’s never a pleasant experience. Quiet rippled through the restaurant as heads turned to watch. A table of three got up slowly to leave; one of the goons pointed at them and made them sit back down. Everyone else sat stock-still.
So, yeah – I’ve looked down enough barrels to know there’s one thing you never do: hesitate.
I threw the table up with both hands, the edge slammed into Bartlett’s wrist, making him fire a shot into the ceiling. I followed in one smooth motion with a straight right to the man with glittering teeth, using the full force of the augmented joints in my shoulder and knees as I rose with the punch. His head snapped back and he crashed into the table behind as he fell.
The Filipino was already moving, kicking low. I checked it. He flowed smoothly into a high kick. I stepped back; the blow didn’t come close.
I smiled at him. He didn’t like it.
He came at me hard, as expected, I moved inside to meet his charge, ducking and ramming my elbow into his face. The Filipino staggered, I grabbed him by the collar before he could fall and hefted him above my head, easily. The titanium sockets in my arms clicked and whirred softly.
I paused to savour the moment while Bartlett scrambled for his gun and patrons gasped or screamed or quietly cried. I laughed, though I’m not sure why, and then hurled the Filipino, knocking Bartlett backwards and over a chair. But the blow didn’t hit square, and the runt had sufficient adrenaline and panic coursing through him to pick himself up and fly out the front door.
I didn’t bother following him. Men that careless were easy enough to track down, and my main concern at that moment was finding a new spot for dinner.
I surveyed the mess. The Filipino groaned, but stayed down. The white guy was out cold, marinating in the beer and garlic prawns from the table he’d taken with him on the way down. I walked over to where the manager, a short Portuguese woman, was standing behind the bar. Her usual expression was harried and stern, with a touch of you-must-be-fucking-kidding-me when confronted by an atypically stupid customer. But now her mouth was parted in shock, and she had this look on her face like she was seeing me for the first time. I got that a lot.
I was mildly disgusted at myself for the scene I’d made, but outwardly I kept my face hard as carved wood as I threw a bundle of currency onto the counter.
I said: “I seem to have spilt my dinner. This is for the mess, and the meals of the patrons here whose evening I interrupted.”
She took the fat roll of yuan and weighed it in her hand, then eyed me. In Portuguese, she said: “[We don’t have any associations here.]”
“This isn’t the start of one,” I replied.
“[We can handle security just fine.]”
“Lady, I’m just here for the clams.”
She thought it over, lips pressed together, then closed her hand around the money. When I lingered, her familiar temperament returned: “[Well don’t just stand there, clogging up my bar with all that shoulder and chin.]” She nodded at the door. “[Get out of here.]”
“I’ll see you next week.”
She eyed the two thugs groaning on the ground, the splatters of red wine and broth on tablecloth and wall, and the shocked customers whispering emergency calls into their cochlear implants. “[Better make it two.]”
Hard to credit the tough-guy grin and trigger-happy disposition with the beaten-down, pleading little creature here in front of me now. But that is always the test of the mettle of a gangster: how they face death. Most failed in my experience – they begged or wept or wet their pants, and I went ahead and killed them all the same.
Bartlett wiped away the blood from his mouth, his hand shaking. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, his voice higher than I remembered. “I’m not a drug dealer. I’m a nanotech designer at Baosteel Technology.”
“You’re saying you don’t remember me?”
“I’ve never seen you
in my life.”
I seated myself opposite on the tasteful white-and-red faux-leather lounge. I nodded at him, impressed. “Comfortable.”
He kept giving me the scared shitless look.
I said: “You should have left town while you could.”
“Huh?” His pretence of confusion was very convincing. Imminent death has inspired some of the great acting performances, and Fred was angling for Best New Talent at the Shanghai Film Festival.
“It’s always the most logical response. You mess with the wrong people here, you’re dead. Macau is the most unforgiving town on Earth. Indifferent, too – just swallows you up into its black bottomless maw, and not a shred remains. Not even a memory. Everybody knows this, yet everyone believes this somehow doesn’t apply to them. So here you are, sitting in your nice apartment, trying to disbelieve the bullet that’s about to enter your brainpan.”
His eyes were wide open. When he spoke he made sure to verbalise each word, slowly. “Mister. I’ve never seen you before in my life. I swear.”
I placed the pistol on the armrest, pulled a packet of Double Happiness cigarettes from my pocket, and tapped one out. I lit it, snapping the heavy lighter shut, and drew the biting nicotine hit into my lungs. I sighed through my nose, blowing out the smoke. “Cigarette?”
“No I…” He took a deep breath. “Are you really going to kill me?”
“You’ve been in this business as long as me, Bartlett. I’m going to paint that nice view behind you with your brains.”
His lip quavered, tears welled. I shifted in my seat. I’m not sure why, but seeing a grown man cry made me more uncomfortable than beating one to death. When the first tear rolled down his cheek I stood up, stepped over, and slapped him.
He looked up at me, eyes glistening, hand at the spot where I hit him.
I held out the pack. “You need a cigarette.”
Bartlett cleared his throat, then took one, hand shaking. I lit it for him. He inhaled deep, sucking on that stick like he was giving head to the last moment of his life. Then he started coughing, hard, as though it was the first time he’d smoked. At first I thought he was faking it, that maybe he was looking for a chance to grab at my pistol. But his face went bright red, so I sat back down and let
him cough it out. He did so, colour in his face abating with the shaking in his hands. He took another drag, coughed a little, but not too much this time.
“Have mercy. I have a family – a daughter,” he croaked.
“Shouldn’t have brought them into this.”
“Please.”
“I am a man of violence, Bartlett. I don’t care about your children. I don’t care about your woman. I don’t care about that irrelevant sideshow you call a life. I’m not even going to remember you tomorrow, and the way this world is, nobody is going to remember you long after that. Violence is the language of these streets, and I am merely the calligrapher’s pen. There’s no mercy here Bartlett, no negotiation, no compromise, no way out. There’s just this.” I showed him the gun, side on. “Now, I have rules when I do this. The first is to tell you why you’re going to die. The second is to give you a minute for a drink or a cigarette, while you make your peace with the world. Enjoy it.”
He started to argue again.
Irritated, I shot him in the forehead. The windows behind were painted with blood and brain matter, as promised. I sat there and finished my cigarette, the air thick with smoke and gunpowder. I felt flat as I looked at the body. Mild disgust, at the man’s weakness I guess, and nothing more. Nothing more.
2
I sat on the glimmer bike at dusk under the deep shadow of the cemetery wall. The air was hot, fecund, so rich in this town it could be mistaken for something rotten. Rain was coming. When it wasn’t here already, it was always on its way. I kept the mirrored visor of my helmet down as I watched the little girls cross the crossing: white dresses, big red kerchiefs around their necks, hair in pigtails. A level of cuteness so absurd and un-self-aware it made even me smile a hidden smile.
Jian waited at the other side of the crossing, watching the children approach. My heart tightened in my chest – even after everything – as it did every damn day. Her bare arms were like pale jade in the low light, the smile on her face warm and easy as she bent down, and two of the girls in the parade of tiny children ran to her. Kylie, my angelic child, her face alight and more beautiful even than her mother, laughing as Jian picked her up. Seeing her, the tightness in my chest twisted until it hurt, as it did every day, as well. The other girl was younger than Kylie – Jian’s new child with her new husband. I didn’t know the little girl’s name. But I didn’t feel angry or bitter, like I was supposed to. All I had was this deep dull pain, this old familiar ache of wanting that girl to be my girl, too.
I gripped the handles of the bike hard, the leather of my gloves creaking. Not mine and they never will be, because I am a violent man.
I gunned the glimmer bike, shooting out between slow-moving automated cars, the solar particles coating the bike scintillating, even under the roiling grey-clouded sky. I swerved, barely missing a Chinalco delivery truck, the big C-little c insignia looming large as I flashed by.
Further and further from the school and those beautiful children, my pain anonymous behind the reflective visor. Over the roar of the bike no-one could hear me scream.
3
“Endgame. Come in, mate.” Wangaratta Nguyen slapped me on the back and led me into one of the hotel rooms at the Grand Lisboa. Porkpie hat, always smiling, hands big and strong enough to crush a man’s throat easy as blinking. He was the only other Australian I knew in Macau. Often we’d drink whisky down on the foreshore, eat fresh-grown mussels with garlic and butter, and talk about the white sand beach at Bondi, how it felt under your toes. That big sky country, blue and limitless, where the Macau skyline was cramped and grey. Manufactured, where Australia was raw and fierce. They had their architectural triumphs here, sure, but sometimes you’d wonder if these were what you consoled yourself with once the wilderness had been consumed.
We talked and tried to remember, and remind each other, how it was back home. And once the reminiscing was done, we’d go find a dingy pool hall and pick a fight with local gang members. Always a good night, with Wangaratta.
We entered a three-room suite with canary yellow walls stencilled, for no apparent reason, with black elephants. Mister Long sat at a mahogany table, eyes closed, no doubt watching his c-feed. He wore a tight, white, stiff-collared silk shirt that accentuated his slender, too-perfect body. His face was smooth, buffed clean of lines and wear and emotion. His lips were painted red, his heart another colour entirely. Some people would look at Mister Long and think he was twenty-five years old; I knew he was closer to fifty.
On a lounge nearby sat Chrome Linh Phu. Purple eye shadow and matching lipstick, short dark hair, she was wearing a black singlet and her default anger. Tattoos twisted up each arm, depicting the serpent designs of her first gang in Shanghai. The slender tails started on each wrist, twining around as they disappeared under her top, before reappearing on the other side, the heads ending on the top of each hand. The design could be mistaken for a snake, if not for the thin beard of spikes that lined the long, slender jaws of each creature. Holotype ink had been used to edge the scales deep blue, creating a shimmering effect when she moved her arms, as though the serpents lived. The eyes atop each hand burned a fierce blue.
There weren’t many people in Macau I’d hesitate raising my fists against, but Chrome Linh Phu was one of them. She moved so fast when she fought, her opponents didn’t even know when or where they’d been cut. She’d just walk away and three minutes later they’d find themselves dead, bled out on the steaming polycrete of some anonymous back alley.
Wangaratta announced to the room: “Endgame here to see you, Mister Long.” He turned, winking at me as he did so, and left.
I stood, feet shoulder-width apart on the thick cream carpet, while the two ignored me completely. Chrome cleaned the action on her sleek needle pistol while Mister Long mumbled under his breath, talking with whomever it was he could see in three technicoloured dimensions on the back of his eyelids. The only word I heard him murmur was the incongruous happy.
I pulled the pack of Double Happiness from my pocket and tapped one out, grabbing the cigarette with my lips.
“No smoking,” hissed Chrome, her eyes flashing. “How many times I got to say?” Linh’s English was excellent, though whether from learning it in Vietnam, or being raised in an English-speaking country, no-one knew. I thought I heard a touch of Australian in it, but she’d told me I was an idiot when I’d once asked.
I snapped shut my lighter, put the unlit cigarette behind my ear and said: “I don’t remember you ever saying it.”
Her mouth twisted into a whisper of a sneer before she returned to working on her gun. It was a look she often gave me: somewhere between disappointment and contempt. The latter I got. The former was harder to figure.
For a few more minutes I stood there, waiting while Mister Long mumbled, Chrome cleaned her gun, and I thought about the cigarette sitting behind my ear. Finally, Mister Long opened his eyes and gave me the look he always gave when we talked – like he saw right through me, knew everything turning over inside my head. It was a feeling I just couldn’t shake. “[Mister Ebbinghaus.]”
“Mister Long.”
He held out his slender hand, palm open. “[Your memory pin, please.]”
Mister Long was a mainlander and, as such, spoke only Mandarin. I couldn’t sing, play an instrument, or learn another language. Just wasn’t in my skill set. So I relied on the translation from my cochlear implant. It ran a couple of seconds behind the pace of conversation, making any non-English speaker seem badly live-dubbed to my eye, their lips not matching the words pumped into my ears. My lack of aptitude at Chinese never worried me that much, what with the implant and all, but it seemed to rub a lot of people the wrong way. Once I was running security at one of Mister Long’s cocktail functions when a white guy wearing a silver-grey Xiong original suit and matching fedora, thinking I was one of the guests, acted appalled when he realised I couldn’t speak Mandarin. He proceeded to lecture me about the crudities of cochlear translation and the nuances of cultural resonance – whatever the fuck that was – I was missing by not knowing the language. I leaned in close and asked him how hard it would be for him to resonate the
different tones with all his front teeth missing. He smiled, then un-smiled when he saw the look on my face, then stuttered and walked away.
Wangaratta had me remove my memory pin before entering the suite. I handed it over to Mister Long. He unfurled a flexiscreen flat on the table and whispered into it. The surface came to life with scrolling, soft glowing green icons. He placed the pin in the centre of the screen, the icons begun swirling around it, the pin the eye of a digital storm.
“[Your new memories will take two minutes to upload.]”
I nodded.
He placed a green glass vial on the table across from him. “[Miz Phu will fix you a drink while you wait.]”
Chrome Linh allowed irritation to cloud her features for half a second, then rose and walked over to the bar at the side of the room.
“Single malt, straight up,” I said.
Mister Long and I looked at each other while she made the drink.
The red on his lips glistened. “[Effective as always, Mister Ebbinghaus.]”
I shrugged.
“[Take a seat.]”
I sat opposite as Chrome Linh placed a tumbler in front of me, filled with vodka. I eyed the drink and then the enforcer. She looked back, her mouth a thin line of disdain, and returned to the lounge and her pistol.
Mister Long indicated the glass with his eyes. “[Drink up.]”
I picked up the glass vial, unscrewed it, and used the eye dropper inside to put three drops into the vodka. The drops glistened golden yellow as they fell. I knocked back the booze in one hit. It was just after breakfast, so only my third drink of the day. My head spun, but not too much, and left a metallic aftertaste in my mouth, but that subsided quick.
I pulled the cigarette from behind my ear, tapped it on the table. “Anything else?”
He blinked at me. “[No. Your pin will load the new memory while you sleep. A day or two and it will encode. I’ll have something new for you in a week.]”
I waited.
He blinked at me again, then directed his voice at Linh: “[Miz Phu.]”
Chrome rose slowly
and walked over, reaching into the back pocket of her black, faux-leather pants. I tensed, but all she pulled out was a brown envelope. She threw it onto the table in front of me. I picked it up – the weight felt about right – and put it inside my leather jacket.
I got up from my seat and walked to the bar. I looked over my shoulder at Mister Long and said: “You want anything?”
Mister Long stared back, looking at me with the disinterested contempt I usually reserved for barflies begging for change. He said: “[Sobriety. At breakfast time.]”
“Come now,” I said, grabbing a bottle of expensive single malt and pouring myself a triple. “A pusher shouldn’t be so squeamish around drugs as mild as this. ...
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